Oily projects

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I got a little crazy yesterday, getting all crafty and stuff.  Ha!  These oils are going to my head.  I'd done some research about different laundry detergents that one can make at a discount.  I'd had trouble finding the ingredients.  We found Borax at Kroger a month ago, but the other most basic (supposedly cheap) ingredients were getting to me.  Finally, a friend suggested Walmart. I hate Walmart.  But I actually needed to go there for a yarn and bagel run anyway, so Thursday I went.  So if I was going to go ahead and go to Walmart, the odious place that it is, I thought I'd give it a try to see if they had any of the ingredients that I was looking for, (still on the lookout for citric acid for toilet bombs, zinc oxide for sun protectant, and arrowroot powder for my own deodorant ;)  ).  Turns out it was a mighty successful run - I found pumpkin palooza: pumpkin bagels (with carmel cream cheese), pumpkin english muffins, pumpkin cake mix.  I got all these, but there was a billion pumpkin products I didn't pick up.  Really.  I did leave a couple. ;)  But they Also had the washing soda and fels naptha in the laundry soap aisle.

Anyway, one of the recipes I found was this one.  

I used 1 cup of Borax, 1 cup of Washing Soda, and I grated the bar of Fels-Naptha.  

For the record, grating soap is weird.  However, I loved how easily cleaned the grater was afterward.  

I thought it would be nasty to clean, but it all rinsed right off. ;) 

Then I put 2-3 drops each of Lavender and Purification into the mix and stirred it up.  

And put it into a jar in the mudroom. 

It smells very clean. 

I started a load of laundry, and can't wait to see how it goes. 

The second thing I made yesterday was These Lotion Bars.  

The recipe calls for a 1:1:1 ratio of beeswax, coconut oil, and grapeseed oil.  Hot Dog, I had all 3!

I had beeswax that was 1 1/2 ounces.

Turns out you can't melt beeswax in the microwave, so I went old school and improvised a double boiler with my pyrex over the boiling water.  It took some time, but the beeswax melted, once it was all hot and melty I used about 1 1/2 ounces of the others, just under a quarter cup of them.  They blended together quite nicely.  But started to cool as soon as I removed them from the heat.  

So I poured them in my silicone cupcake mold.  As soon as they were poured, I added a 2-3 drops of essential oil to each bar.  I made two lotion bars with Lavender oil, and 2 bars with the Joy oil blend.  I'd heard somewhere that silicon was great for popping them out.  That was true, they did, I left them in for an hour to cool, and they popped right out when I was done.   Easy peasy.  And every time I handle them my hands get a little oily, and smell great, but not too slimy.  I think these will be great for winter!