Soaps With No Lye?

May 15, 2006 by Judi

By Lisa Chambers

If someone tells you they made a soap without using this, I hate to tell you this- but they lied. All bar soaps are made with sodium hydroxide, also known as “caustic soda”. All soap really is is the outcome of a chemical reaction that occurs when a high alkali (the lye) reacts to an oil, but with a well made soap there is no lye remaining in the finished product.

One wise soaper compared it to baking a cake.When you first mix the batter you have your flour, eggs, sugar, oil, etc. When you beat it all together it is still just batter- not something you would probably want to eat. (Unless it’s chocolate! Hehe..) Anyway, the point is when you put that batter in the oven, the heat creates a chemical reaction and cooks the batter. When that batter comes out of the over it’s no longer your original ingredients just stirred together- it’s something entirely new. Cake! It’s a similar idea with soap, only the process is called saponification.

Even liquid soap or “shower gels” are made with a form of lye called potassium hydroxide, or “caustic potash”. Sometimes instead of using the ingredient “sodium hydroxide” on a label, people or companies may use the terms “saponified olive oil”, “saponified palm oil”, etc. It is the very same thing- just a different way of listing ingredients.

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You can visit this author’s website at Chambers’ Essentials- free healthy beauty and household tips & recipes.

Happy 2nd Birthday Ryland

May 13, 2006 by Judi

I thought about posting a Happy Birthday to Ry last week, and just didn’t do it.

Ry turned 2 on May 5th. I can hardly believe he’s already 2! We had a quiet day, just doing stuff around the house. Emily made him a cake and we sang the Happy Birthday song.. which had him all smiles and bashfulness.

I have cake pictures - I’ll add to flickr soon.

I took Ry and Tege to the big box Toys R Us to find a gift or two… As soon as we walked in, Ry picked up a small bottle of scented bubbles. We eventually walked all over the store, up and down each isle. Ry even got belly-down on the ground to play with a couple toys. They just aren’t so easy to play with inside the box with twist ties all over everything. Each toy, he’d finally say “Done” and point back to the shelf.

Even Tege didn’t pick anything out. So we left the store with 1 small bottle of bubbles and 2 mini-M&M tubes.

We usually have a cookout late in May or early June to celebrate all the May/June birthdays. Tege’s is early June and Em’s is late May. We always looks forward to a family gathering.