I thought it was appropriate then when I received a virtual bag of school supplies from Kathleen at Katydid & Kid in support of the charity blog meme, Elmer’s Bag It Forward Campaign. Bloggers are able to raise $10 per blog post for Adopt-A-Classroom by writing a blog post and donating a virtual bag of school supplies. Elmer’s will donate $10 per each post written to Adopt-A-Classroom, up to $10,000 for kids who can’t afford to buy school supplies.

HOW CAN YOU JOIN? It’s easy.

* Participate in the Elmer’s Virtual Bag It Forward and by giving away a virtual bag of school supplies and creating a blog post with specific rules described below.
* Elmer’s will donate up to $10,000 to Adopt-A-Classroom.
* You can give as many virtual bags as you want.
* The Elmer’s Virtual Bag It Forward will officially begin at 12 AM EST on July 22, 2010 and end at 12 PM EST on August 12, 2010. Blog posts submitted to us before or after that time period will not be counted.
* The blog post link has to be submitted in the comment section on the Bag It Forward post for your participation to be counted.
* In addition copy and paste the following text into your blog post:

ELMER’S VIRTUAL BAG IT FORWARD RULES

* Copy and paste these rules into your blog post.
* Create a blog post giving a “virtual bag of school supplies” to other bloggers or write about your Back to School shopping trip at Walmart.
* Link back to the person who gave you a bag of school supplies.
* Let each person you are giving a virtual bag of school supplies know you have given them a bag.
* Leave your link in the Elmer’s Virtual Bag It Forward comment section. You can also find the official rules of this virtual #bagitforward program there.
* Elmer’s is donating $10 for each blog participating in the Virtual Bag It Forward Donation to Adopt-A-Classroom (up to total of $10,000 for blog posts written by August 12, 2010).
* Please note that only one blog post per blog url will count towards the donation.

Here is the photo you can use for your virtual bag or create your own!

Virtual Bag of School Supplies

I am passing this virtual bag of supplies to Jessica of The Dietzel Family, because I know they are going to be needing school supplies soon! They have been working hard putting on childrens’ camps all summer long.

If anyone else would like to participate, please feel free! It’s an easy way to generate $10 to a worthy cause.

Next time I will take better notes on the amount of colorant to use. The pink is a bit lighter this time around, but still gives the impression of a watermelon slice. Good thing the fragrance is so mouthwatering delicious!!

Watermelon Soap by Great Cakes Soapworks

I’m planning to make these available for purchase on Friday, August 13.

Final Results

I bottled up the lotion last week, and am now printing labels, so I’m making it available for purchase. Just $7.50 for a full 8-ounce pump:

Click Here to Buy Almost Paradise Jojoba-Shea Lotion!

The poll takes about 30 seconds – if that. Please click the link below:

Click Here to Cast Your Vote!

The poll will remain open through the end of the day Monday. I’ll announce the winner on Tuesday, and make it available for purchase shortly thereafter. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions – it really helped!!

Click Here to Cast Your Vote!

So this evening, he loaded the boat on top of the ladder racks on his truck, and the girls and I followed him in the van to one of the closest lakes (about 15 minutes from our house).

Here we are in the boat:

Girls in the front

Hubby in the back, plus older daughter who gets to be in both photos.

We also saw some wildlife:

Ducks!!

Great Blue Heron

Other than the fact that it was stinkin’ hot and sticky out, it was a pretty fun trip! The only water that came in the boat was around the plug, and it wasn’t much. Success!!!

Here is the description from my supplier:

A most seductive fragrance reminiscent of a stroll through an ancient forest with delicate rays of the sun gently filtering through the trees as dusk approaches. This fragrance begins with bright sparkling top notes of mandarin and warm, sunny dewberry, giving way to a fresh breezy aura of plum, alluring moonflowers and honeysuckle. Deep dark oud wood warms creamy vanilla, with captivating musks and enchanted ambers to compose the rich base of this mysterious and inviting scent.

Feedback so far has been really great – everyone loves the scent! I’m going to take some more suggestions, then come up with a poll next week for everyone to vote on the top choice.

What would YOU call it?

Well, after the soap level wasn’t as high as usual in the mold, and the goat’s milk turned the soap orange, I realized my mistake.

I waited about a week to do anything about it because I HATE to re-batch. It’s such a pain. Especially with the enormous batch size that I make. Takes a lot of time, not to mention energy to use the oven. Well, Sunday afternoon was unseasonably cool, so I decided to just try re-melting one of the two logs. I started by cutting the soap into chunks that my salad shooter could process:

Soap chunks

Then, I started feeding the chunks into the salad shooter. I used a pot that was plenty large because the shredded soap takes up a lot of space:

Shredding soap

Next, I added the missing rice bran oil:

Pouring in rice bran oil

I put the pot in the oven at 200 degrees for about four hours. I pulled it out to stir every hour or so. This is what it looked like right before I put it in the mold:

Melted soap looks like cookie dough!

Then I smashed it back into the mold:

Soap in the mold

Tried to cut the soap, and it’s super crumbly now:

Oh great! Botched it again...

I’m guessing either I didn’t cook it long enough, or I should have added some liquid. Either way, Clean the World is about to get another box from me. I’m done messing with it!!

Hello, my name is Courtney and I was graciously invited to share one of the things I make here at home. Tooth cleanser! It is all natural, gentle, fairly inexpensive, and importantly (for my family) fluoride free. I have chosen to stop the use of fluoride in our dental products for various reasons upon researching the subject. There is much research and studies out there on the subject,* often with differing viewpoints; for me the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to it being harmful to one’s health with very little benefit. So, ix-nay on the fluoride, but you will not hear me judge someone on the other side – to each their own. I’m not too cracked on the “natural” toothpaste alternatives either by the way. Many brands are filled with silica, SLS, and artificial sweeteners. I figured I could make our own; then I would know and approve of exactly what went into it.

**Initial Disclaimer: This tutorial and recipe is provided for personal use. It is not intended to replace any medical treatment. Always follow your personal physician’s advisement. When working with essential oils you must exercise caution and be educated in their uses; they are volatile substances and improper use may result in injury. Pregnant women and young children should also take special care with the any application of essential oils. The following recipes and statements have not been evaluated by the FDA.

Okey dokey – on to the fun and messy stuff! Here is how I made my dental soap and tooth cleansing powder:

Part One: Basic Cold Process Soap suitable for Oral Care

10 oz Almond Oil
10 oz Coconut Oil (extra virgin is nice for this since it has a bit of natural sweetness)
3 oz Lye
6.6 oz Water
Essential oils of choice (I used peppermint and clove, about 25-30 drops added at trace)

Process soap as normal (meant for experienced soap makers). I CP-OP my soap for a faster cure time. Feel free to play around with the recipe and size. Always run any formula through a lye calculator.

Dental Soap

This soap can be used as-is for those going for extreme frugality and simplicity. Yes it is soap. Yes it tastes like soap. But . . . it is surprisingly mild tasting. I wasn’t frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog or gagging. Two key points are to brush your tongue before applying soap to your brush (if you do that) and to rinse very well afterward. Rinsing is key to oral hygiene anyway. Two or three swipes across the soap bar with your moistened brush are sufficient.

Part Two: Chomper Polish Powder
The goal here is to create a dentifrice that is cleansing and refreshing with a bit of mild, natural abrasiveness for tartar and plaque. For some people this will be used daily, others may want to alternate one day powder then one day plain bar soap and so on. Once your powder is mixed up it is only necessary to use a SMALL amount on your moistened brush. A little goes a long way for sure. We’re talking pea-sized or less.

Here are the basic ingredients:

Soap, baking soda, xylitol, essential oils

Baking Soda 5.5 oz
Xylitol 6.5 oz (An all natural sweetener and proven ingredient to aid in cavity prevention along with encouraging natural remineralization of tooth enamel. Effective alternative to fluoride. Can be purchased from a health food store or online)
CP Soap from above 2.5 oz
Essential oils for flavor and therapeutic benefits (I used spearmint, peppermint, clove, and a bit of lemon – good starting point is approx. 30 drops combined and go from there to increase concentration to suit your tastes; remembering that you can add more but you cannot take it back out!)

1. Using Ye Olde Knuckle Grinder aka Grater, shred up your soap bar into more manageable pieces for your food processor.

Grate, grate, grate...

2. Add soap shreds to processor and pulse to break up.

Soap in food processor

3. Add baking soda to help keep it dry as you pulse.

Pulsed until fine

4. Add xylitol and continue to pulse and mix. Once fairly small and blended you can add your essential oil drops. Try to place drops all over instead of making one large damp spot. It will mix better. Pulse more to finer consistency. You should not have large beads of soap. (FYI soap pellets are not fun stuck in a molar . . . Rinse, I say, Rinse!)

Finished product

Voila! Tooth powder/Chomper Polish. I haven’t tried it, but for anyone who has an aversion to mints or sensitivity to essential oils –they could probably use a flavor extract/concentrate in its place. For my powder I noticed it was a bit moist? I am not sure if that is the exact word I’m going for. It could be the humidity. It isn’t damp by any means – just sort of the feel of brown sugar. It should probably be left open in a cool, dark, DRY, and bug free place for a day or two to evaporate the excess moisture out. Then package as you choose. If it is for your own personal use you can do small tupperware or storage bags. Probably best to use smaller containers of it at a time to prevent any contamination of your entire batch.

Packaged in apothecary jar

For best results, sprinkle or spoon it ONTO your toothbrush. Like, don’t double dip the chip, man! Again, I recommend a pea-sized amount or less. This stuff lasts a long time! Please make sure to give it a fair chance. Despite the soda, flavoring, and sweetness of xylitol there will still be a hint of soap flavor. Within three days of using I was used to it and enjoying it. Now the cloying, pasty, thick, overly sweet gunk that comes in a tube grosses me out.

Well, that is it. I tried to be efficient but these tutorial things have a way of growing . . .
I hope you enjoyed and get a bit of use from this. You can find me at my blog – pop in for a visit. I give a big thank you to Amy for letting me visit her blog and to all the crafty folk out there who contributed knowledge in some form or another to create this product.
Cheers ~ Courtney
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*For more reading:
Dangers of Fluoride in Water and Toothpaste
Organic Dental Care | Xylitol – better than fluoride
Toothpaste: hazardous to dental and bodily health?

Living in Northeast Indiana I am in the heart of Amish country. It just so happens that my brother in law works with an Amish man that keeps bees. For $5.00 I was able to buy from him approximately 7 pounds of raw burr comb ends. Thus began my adventure in home rendering of beeswax. I had never done this before, had a vague idea of how it “should” go, and just dove in. Here I’ll show a few pictures of the process and what I learned (along with what I found would have been easier in hindsight.)

1. Take your raw burr comb and crumble it up – breaking up any big sticky chunks. This will still have some raw honey and organic matter in it. I used a double boiler on the stove. Have your bottom pot full of water and at a pretty decent medium-high to high heat. *Always take caution to not overheat beeswax especially by microwave as it is combustible. Add your burr comb to pot and begin melting down.

Raw Burr Comb

2. Continue stirring as it is melting down. I prefer using a glass stirring rod. I would not recommend using plastic or wooden utensils for rendering wax unless you intend to designate those items specifically to this project – it does not clean off easily.

Starting to melt

3. Here is where you can see it is fully melted down. There is quite a bit of debris in the wax. Larvae, adult bees, pollen, and other matter.

Fully Melted

4. Here is my super fancy shmancy filtration device. Knee highs stretched over a container and secure with rubber band. I had at one point tried cheesecloth as well, but it was not nearly as effective as pantyhose. The cheesecloth was so absorbent that it soaked up the wax rather than letting it pass through.

Filtering out the debris

5. It may be necessary to run the wax through one or two additional times depending on how much organic matter was in the wax. I sent mine through twice and it was entirely free of all sediment. You can give the hose sack a gentle squeeze as you are finishing up but be cautious of the high heat – beeswax gets very hot and will harden rapidly on your skin. Also do not squeeze too much or you will squish out gunk and make your clean wax dirty again.

Finished product, still warm

6. Here is my finished product. It smells so lovely and has a rich golden color indicative of high quality wax that has not been bleached out or over-refined. I ended up with approx. 5 lbs. of pure beeswax for a minimal amount of money and work. I highly recommend once your wax has “set” but is still warm you cut it up right then into more manageable 1-2 ounce pieces. It will save a lot of chipping away at a mammoth hunk of hard wax later. Unless you fancy that sort of thing.

Beeswax completely set up

6. Here is some of the yucky gunk that you get out of the wax when purifying. I’ve been told that if you put this “sludge gum” into egg carton compartments that they make excellent fire starter cubes when cut up.

Yucky Gunk!

All in all, I really had fun doing this. It is a sustainable product and a natural additive that can enrich so many projects. I fully plan on doing this again to keep myself in wax supply. Since this batch I have been told by a beekeeper friend about another (and supposedly easier) method. So, I’ll post again once I have tried it. Which will be soon, very soon, because I have 20#’s waiting for me in my garage!!

Reprinted from Courtney Robyn’s Nest

I asked Courtney if she would share with Great Cakes Soapworks readers about how to make tooth soap, and she graciously agreed! Watch for that tutorial next week! In the meantime, I have a double batch of Oatmeal, Milk & Honey soap to rebatch – since I forgot to add the rice bran oil. All. 27. ounces. of. it. Ugh.