Frugal Hand Soap

I wanted to share a frugal success story with you!  I've had some "frugal dismal failures", so every success is very encouraging.  I don't like using a lot of harsh chemicals in my house, so I've been making my own household cleaners or buying "greener" cleaners (when the price is right!).  Over the last three years or so, I have successfully made my own laundry soap, glass cleaner, all purpose cleaner and scrubbing powder (like Comet).  Today, I decided to tackle liquid hand soap!

I had previously looked for ideas online.  There were recipes for making your own soap right from scratch, which didn't really appeal to me and would require some special equipment/ingredients.  Then I found recipes that simply used bar soap as the base.  That's what I decided to go with.

Any bar soap can be used (I think), as long as you like the smell of it.  A lot of the recipes I found called for Ivory soap.  I decided to use a glycerin soap for my first attempt.  What I had on hand was a strawberry scented glycerin soap from The Body Shop (mine was in a heart shape).  I forgot to take a photo before I started.  By the way, I can't remember the last time I bought something at The Body Shop for myself.  This soap was a gift! :)

The first step is to grate up your bar of soap.  I used my cheese grater to do this.

 Once the soap is all grated, measure is to find out how much you've got.  I had about 2 cups of soap shavings.  Next, I dumped the soap shavings into a pot and added 4 cups of hot water.  Stir it a little and put it on to heat on the stove (using medium heat).  Do not let it boil!  Stir occasionally to make sure the shavings are melting.

  When everything is melted, remove from heat and stir.  Let the soap sit in the pot to cool a bit.  After it has cooled down somewhat, you can transfer it to a bowl or container, but I just left it in the pot.

  As it sits, it will get thicker.  You can stir it every now and then while it's sitting to make sure it doesn't get lumpy.  When it has cooled, it will form kind of a gel.

Stir it a bit and then pour some into your soap dispenser.  I would recommend you only fill your dispenser half full, so if it is a little too thick, you can dilute it some more with water.

Here is the finished product:

This recipe made enough liquid soap to half fill my dispenser and fill a 907 g (2 lb) margarine container.  So, I figure I can probably half fill my dispenser 10 times.  That's quite a lot from one small bar of soap!

I know you could just as easily put your bar of soap in a soap dish and use it like that, but I kind of prefer liquid hand soap for communal use :)  Also, my kids tend to make a mess with the bars of soap (leaving it floating in water, squeezing it when it's wet, etc).  Next time I make this, I'd like to try Ivory soap to see if it gives the same results.

I hope you've enjoyed my post today.  Thanks for visiting!

Disabled or Differently Abled?

My son is 4 years old.  He is a sweet, energetic little guy.  He is also almost certainly autistic.

Getting that news was really hard at first, but it was something we had suspected for a long time.  The professionals told us "He's never going to develop more than what he has..."  The funny thing is, we see positive changes just about every day - things parents of "normal" 4 year-olds don't get excited over.  Every new word, moment of independent eye contact, instruction followed is a victory for us.

When we have to explain to people (particularly people we don't know) that he is autistic, you can sometimes see a look come into their eyes like "Oh, he's disabled..."  That's not how we see him.  He is different, certainly, but we are all different (you might even say we're all weird in some way!).  God has created each of us uniquely for the unique purpose He has for us.  We are all "differently abled".  The highest ambition we have for our son is that he would be able to understand his need for a Saviour and to belong to Jesus Christ.  In the long run, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

Another Project From the Stash

As long as my kids are entertaining themselves, I can get a second post up.  This project was actually for my kids.  I guess you could call them "Personalised Notebooks".  This is a pretty simple idea but they really liked them.

We had picked up a bunch of these little notebooks at the dollar store because they reminded my husband of these notebooks which he loves:

The Moleskine notebook is about $12 - the dollar store version is $2.  I appreciate the quality of the real Moleskine but the price is a bit steep.  (I just realised the Moleskine books are slightly smaller than the dollar store ones as well.)  

So, we had quite a few of these notebooks lying around.  My kids are always asking for paper to draw on, so I decided to make them some "fancy" notebooks.

My son loves zebras so I used this vintage picture from The Graphics Fairy for his book.  Print out, cut, glue on the book with double sided glue tape.  Simple.

Here are the finished products.  Really simple but I could hardly keep my kids away from them long enough to glue the pictures on!  I'm not sure where I got the roses from but it may have been The Graphics Fairy as well.  These pictures were both in my digital stash!  I thought about putting some more decorations on the books but the kids wouldn't let me.  They were so anxious to get them.  A quick and easy project!  I'm thinking it might be fun to do up a bunch of these to keep on hand to use as gifts.

Thanks again for dropping by!

"Free" Projects - Part 1

So, now that April is over, I'm going to show you a couple of projects I made using items from my crafting stash!

This is an old leather Bible case I had - pretty worn looking.  I was thinking of cutting it up and keeping the best pieces for some sort of craft project.  While I was mulling this over, my husband happened to remark he wanted some sort of container for his collection of tin whistles.  The light bulb came on over my head and I started thinking of how we could transform this into what he had in mind.

This is what the inside looked like before we started working.










The first thing I did was freshen it up a bit and change the colour slightly.  The leather was kind of dry looking in spots and it was burgundy.  I wanted it to look a little more masculine.  So, I turned to shoe polish.

This is what my husband uses on his brown dress shoes.  I simply applied it to the case the same way you would use it on a pair of shoes.  This is what I came up with after it had dried.

                                                    

It's a little hard to see from the photos but the leather turned a nice rich brown.  The shoe polish also covered up the worn spots.  On to the next step...

After hemming and hawing for several minutes about what to use to hold the whistles in, we decided on some wide elastic I had (I think it may have come out of an old pair of pajamas).  This is where my husband took over as I couldn't force a needle and thread through the leather.  He sewed the elastic to the edges of the case and then we added some adhesive backed velcro to create some "loops" for the whistles to slide into.

  The finished product!  Cost - $0.  Time start to finish - about an hour.  Below is a a "real" whistle carry bag. It costs $24.95 plus shipping and handling.  Our version might not be fancy but it works!

Thanks for visiting today!

Changes

I've been mulling over changing the scope of my blog a bit to include more than just my crafting interests.  I often have an idea to write about but I hesitate if it's not "crafty".  So, I believe I will begin writing about various things, including my family and my faith.  If anyone has an idea for a different title for my blog, please leave me a comment!  It took me FOREVER to come up with "Eclectic Papercrafts and More".

There have been other changes in my life recently, but that's fodder for another blog post!  Today is a bit off as we watched the Royal Wedding this morning.  It was interesting to see that bit of history unfold.

Thanks for visiting today!

I fell off the wagon...

So, my last post was about April Stash Bust, blah, blah, blah.  Guess what I did?  I went shopping.

Please don't judge - I really needed to go to the dollar store to buy a fly swatter as my kids destroyed my last one using it as a sword (my duster has almost met a similar fate but it's still usable)!  While I was there, I just HAD to wander around a little.  I didn't do too badly, considering.  Please excuse the sideways photos!  I uploaded these before I thought to edit them so bear with me.

These white mailing labels are great for lots of things. I make my own address labels with them among a host of other uses.  360 labels for $1?  Yes, please.

I love these because they are so pretty!  They caught my eye in the stationery aisle.  I needed some new sticky notes because my kids got into my last pack.  I love those little sticky flags too.  Also, they LITERALLY had my name on the package!

I've seen the little blackboard stickers but I've never seen it in a roll before.  I'm going to try using this with my Cricut to cut out labels.  I also want to make a bulletin-board/ blackboard for my kids.  There is quite a lot on this roll for $1!  Much cheaper than the blackboard paint I was contemplating.

I have to get some of this double sided glue tape whenever I go to the dollar store.  It's cheap and it works just as good if not better than the more expensive stuff.  A word of caution - it is SUPER sticky and permanent.

My son has trouble using scissors so I have been looking for a pair of good kids' scissors for him that wouldn't break the bank.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw these Fiskars scissors for $1.25!  Fiskars is a great brand and very durable.  I have several pairs of Fiskars scissors and a paper trimmer which I am really pleased with (and got great deals on!).  These scissors retail at Staples for around $6 so I was pleased to get them for this price.



This is just the "crafty" stuff I ended up getting - I didn't feel it necessary to show off a photo of my new fly swatter (actually, I got 2 for a dollar), or a spatula.  I also got my husband 2 fine tip pens for marking in his Bible with.  He's always on the lookout for pens and highlighters he can use in his Bible.  If you are interested in ways to mark your Bible, he has a post on his blog here  and here.

Hopefully, I will get some crafting time in soon!  We have had an usual amount of sickness lately and everything is in an uproar.  Thanks for visiting today.

April Stash Bust

Saw this idea yesterday and decided to "participate".  It's basically a pledge to not buy any new craft stuff for the month of April and since my craft budget is pretty much...$0...this month, I thought "Why not?"  The only thing I MIGHT have to cross the line for is glue.  I use A LOT of glue!  Although, I have a pretty good stash of glue too!

I haven't had time to make much lately, but I'm hoping to get some crafting done at some point (I'm going through withdrawal).  Lots of stuff going on lately that hasn't left much time for "fun".

As always, thanks for visiting!