This, ladies and gents, is a 15g bottle of pure vanilla planifola CO2 extract. Professional chefs use this in their creations—none of that vanilla essence you find in supermarkets. It smells like a slice of heaven, and it WILL be appearing in at least one new soap that I’ll be making soon. Will have to experiment first.
It cost me RM215, but if it turns out well in my test batches, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’ll be getting a truly luxurious, “scent-sational” bath experience like no other!
Say hello to Reuben, our newest little love bucket. 
He’s grown so much in just one month!
Starting Thursday, June 24th, my confinement period is officially over and I will be moving back to our home. It’s been a blissful time of having peace and quiet for the better part of the days, taking my time to get to know Reuben, and catching up on rest.
Initially, a few days after my delivery I was psyched up to jump straight back into the soap business. Now I know better! So I do hope that you’ll bear with me as the family adjusts to our new routine, and I figure out how to manage my time between the household and Kinder Soaps.
To all who have placed orders with me during this past month, thank you so much for your patience and kind words. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can about your soap, but please forgive me for any delays that may crop up.
Oops, it’s time to feed Reuben.
I chopped up a few red cabbage leaves and boiled them for about an hour in all, to be left with about 30ml of a deep purple liquid. Purpose: to experiment and see if it will indeed turn into a shade of blue when added to my soap mixture.
I’ve read a few websites where people have tried it out and it worked. Like this blog where a mom dyed eggs using red cabbage and they turned out blue; or this other blog where someone made a Rainbow Bento using various vegetable dyes, including red cabbage for a nice shade. The bento does look really pretty:
But by far the most interesting to me was finding this page, where it gave a rough explanation about red cabbage dye being used as a natural pH indicator in labs. Here’s the photo that caught my attention:
Is that cool or what? Now, seeing that soap is basic, when I add it to my soap mixture at trace, it could turn blue (pH8), green (pH9) or yellow. Yellow is most likely at this stage since saponification may not be complete. But will its colour change when the pH drops to the 8-10 range after the soap has hardened after 24 hours?
EeeEEE I CANNOT WAIT to try this out and take some photos!
It has long been an interest of mine to create a line of skin salves or balms to address various skin concerns, particularly:
- an anti-mosquito blend. I’ve had enough of seeing my poor Andrea come home from playschool or my in-laws’ dotted with angry, itchy mosquito bites!
- to soothe eczema flare-ups. My soap can help soothe skin over the long term by reducing irritation caused by harsh detergents and other external factors, but sometimes a more intensive treatment that is left in the skin may be required.
- to calm down and heal skin that’s itchy and inflamed from bug bites, diaper rash, minor cuts and nicks.
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Darn it, photos would have been brilliant to illustrate what I am about to describe, but I was too busy a) panicking, then b) setting things right. I spent the afternoon making Goats Milk and Honey soap, and here are the mishaps that transpired along the way to finally setting the soap in their molds to harden (with a HUGE sigh of relief!). Read more
Given Malaysia’s generally high levels of humidity, I’m wondering whether it’s actually safe to leave my stock of soap in their cotton muslin bags for long periods of time to continue curing past their usual 4 weeks on the drying rack.
So I’m going to try this out: I’ve picked a few bars of my new batches of soap to be dressed up in their cotton muslin bags, and am allowing them to sit amongst their other — uhm, brothers and sisters? — to cure in open air, as is normally done. Every 3 days I’ll be checking in in these dressed soaps to see whether anything funny starts growing on the surface of the bars or the bags.
The reason why I’m concerned about this is two-fold. Firstly of course is my customers’ safety. I don’t ever want to send you a bar of mouldy soap! I’m taking as much precautions as I can especially since everything I have in the store doesn’t contain artificial forms of preservation.
Secondly is to do with production efficiency and storage. I’m still figuring out how many bars I have to churn out and at what frequency to ensure a steady supply of soap. It’s tricky business trying to ensure that I don’t end up having too little or too much stock. Too little means I can’t meet demand, and too much means having valuable storage space being occupied, and soaps losing their fragrance because of essential oils evaporating since I don’t shrink-wrap them in plastic.
An alternative to continuous air-drying past the normal 4-week curing time is storing my soap in air-tight containers with silica gel to keep them dry. I am already trying this out. So far no mould has shown up (my soap has been in there for about a month or more now) but having to constantly check and replace the gel is proving to be a bit of a pain.
Ah well, let’s see how the next few weeks go. 
I kid you not. I’ve experimented with it on myself, and I love the results—soft, quenched skin that may not need additional moisturizer afterward. Here are some of the main reasons why I’m so excited about cleansing my face this way:
- It’s fragrance, preservative, and colouring-free. Suitable even for the most sensitive of skin.
- It’s cheap! Well, compared to buying your usual cleansers from cosmetic companies and pharmacies anyway.
- I love the thought of how it nourishes your body, both inside and out.
- Effectively clears your skin of the heaviest makeup without the use of harsh chemicals
If you’re curious about how easy, effective, gentle and simply wonderful this oil can be for your skin and its cleansing routine, read on!
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Whenever I send my kids over to my in-laws’ place for the afternoon, they invariably come home with terribly itchy mosquito bites. Hubby and I get bitten badly too. Andrea gets a lot more than Brandon—and she has been losing sleep at night because of this. Usually at about 1am she’ll start stirring from her slumber and I’ll hear her swishing her legs on the mattress, trying to rub away at the bites. Read more
…whipped body butter! Using a combination of just vegetable oils and essential oils, I’m now experimenting with blends that are luxuriant on skin without needing to rely on preservatives, stabilizers etc that are normally present in store-bought body butters.
I’ve been working hard at this—and the results are pretty exciting!
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This, ladies and gents, is a 15g bottle of pure vanilla planifola CO2 extract. Professional chefs use this in their creations—none of that vanilla essence you find in supermarkets. It smells like a slice of heaven, and it WILL be appearing in at least one new soap that I’ll be making soon. Will have to experiment first.
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