Coming Soon …

…Nope, I’m not pregnant. I’ll clarify… “Coming Soon” is how I announced my 3rd pregnancy.

However, I do have a brainchild that will soon be delivered as a new product available in our Etsy shop.

I’ve been incubating the idea of soap making for a few years now. I’ve been making soap for my family for the past 5 years or so. Because of the autoimmune disorders in my family, the children and I tend to have really sensitive skin that is irritated by most retail soaps and body washes. This includes most baby formulated soaps as well, such as Aveeno (which contains avenin, an irritating oat protein) and Johnson’s Baby Wash (which, technically is not a soap, but a synthetic detergent containing sulfates) Baby Eucerin seems to be okay for our skin, except it gets a bit expensive when all 4 of us need to use it for hair and body.

That’s why I ventured into homemade soap. I’ve tried a few different recipes, but the one that is my favorite and seems to be the easiest, is beginning with a simple melt and pour soap base, and diluting it with coconut oil, and adding a few drops of essential oils for fragrance during the trace stage. Then it cures for 6 weeks before it’s ready to use.

The end result is a very fluffy, very mild, gentle bar of soap that cleans without over-drying or causing itchy irritation to our sensitive skin. No color or dye additives means yes, my soap is a little boring, nothing like this awesome unicorn soap I saw on Etsy the other day (I have no connection to this shop owner, I just really thought the product was eye-catching and unique.)

But for us, boring is good, because it means gentle cleansing with no harsh sulfates or synthetic detergents to irritate our sensitive skin.

Coming soon (beginning of April), from our little Shaggy Maple soap shop, homemade coconut oil soaps!