Dark Chocolate will be available for sale from March 22nd. As always, pre-orders are welcome — just send me an e-mail. Have yourself a lovely weekend.

Available for sale from March 21st (but you can always order ahead by sending me an e-mail).

Here are some photos of the utensils I can’t do without when I pull on my gloves to make a batch of soap.

Stainless steel pots. The one on the left is for making the lye solution (sodium hydroxide + water), while the larger one on the right is for warming up the oils. It’s important not to use any utensils that contain aluminium, as the metal reacts with sodium hydroxide and won’t do anything good for soap. Trust me on this, because I found out from first-hand experience. Ahem. :”>

Clockwise from bottom left corner: 2 heavy duty plastic pitchers (to measure out lye and for containing raw soap), 2 slotted spoons (to mix lye and oils), melamine mixing bowl (I usually mix my raw soap in there), another heavy duty plastic pitcher containing hand blender attachment, two stick thermometers and a rubber spatula (for scraping off every last little bit of soap from the sides of my mixing bowl).

My two stick thermometers (also known as meat thermometers). Very important, as I have to keep track of the temperatures of both the oils and lye mixtures, ensuring that they both fall within the same range of between 32C and 42C, before I can mix them together to get saponification going. Falling out of this temperature range can mean a failed batch of soap (so I read), although I have yet to experience this.

You can find these thermometers at specialty baking shops, the more uppity departmental stores and also your local hardware store. I bought mine from Isetan KLCC, as I was still holding down a full-time job nearby at the time.

And finally, the item that works the hardest for me — my trusty Philips hand-held blender. Without it, I could be stirring my raw soap mixture for 3 hours before it saponifies enough to be poured into molds! Thankfully it usually takes me just 5-10 minutes tops to bring my raw soap to trace.

So there you have it — a little tour of my kitchen utensils that help me make soap. Isn’t it great that they’re familiar items? No fancy specialty gear needed. And for the record, all these are used ONLY for making soap — I don’t use them to prepare any of my meals. While I take great pains to make sure they are thoroughly cleaned after each soapmaking session, I can do without the possibility of having traces of soap, essential oils or at worst, LYE, in my food!

Introducing our Soap For The Year package deals, where you can opt for 12, 24 or 36 bars of soap to be delivered to you for FREE via PosLaju on a monthly basis (or all at once — you choose!). Savings go from 10% all the way up to 37.5% (the latter is based on the assumption that you go for the 36 bar package and opt for all my larger-sized soaps priced at RM20 each).

Pick any combination of soaps that is available in the shop, and if you change your mind midway during the year, because you saw a new soap variety available, or you think your skin needs a little change in routine, no problem — just let me know how to alter your order by sending me an e-mail. Easy!

Like the idea? Then hop over to the Package Deals page for full details on each bundle to see which one would suit you best. And as always, feedback is most welcome because I’m always on the lookout for ways to serve you better.

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

This is a new blend of essential oils that I’m trying out — lavender and sweet orange. The scent is surprisingly bright and cheery, which is a nice twist to my usual Just Lavender bar. It is still suitable for all skin types (yay!).

It’s also the first time I’m trying a simple surface swirl technique. I think it turned out pretty well, although perhaps I was a little heavy-handed with the amount of french red and yellow clays for the lines, as some bars have dried with cracks where the coloured swirls meet the other parts of the bars. Fingers crossed that not many more will share the same fate!

This batch will be ready to add some sunshine to your baths and showers on March 19th. In the meantime I’ll post up more close-up shots of the soaps when I get the chance to take my camera out for a whirl.

And in case you’re curious, here’s the full list of ingredients used in this soap:

Water, palm oil, certified organic coconut oil, canola oil, cocoa butter, sodium hydroxide, lavender essential oil, sweet orange essential oil, white kaolin clay, french red clay, french yellow clay, rosemary oleoresin

So in this blogpost I’d like to share with you some of the things that we do in our household in an effort to lessen our contribution to landfills, and also our impact on Nature itself. What’s important was determining what worked for us realistically, given that we live in an apartment in the city, and the lifestyle that we currently have. Some ideas here could work for you too. Or perhaps you can chime in with your own experiences with making the 3R’s a part of your life — I’d love to hear your stories!

Separate Your Rubbish

Paper, glass, plastics. I find that our kitchen is the place that generates the most of the latter two, so I put out a shopping bag just outside the kitchen in the yard as a designated catch-all for used containers. Newspapers go on a pile in the yard for me to grab whenever I need some space-fillers for packaging my soap, or wrapping up soiled diapers before tossing them in the bin to lessen the smell.

Identify Your Nearest Recycling Station

If you’re Malaysian and haven’t already spotted yours, visit this page to help you locate the nearest recycling station in your neighbourhood (the website’s search function is horrible, unfortunately — but I suppose it’s better than nothing at all). Ours happens to be extremely convenient — it’s right on the front porch of my son’s playschool, which is at the bottom of the hill from where we live. Go Educare!

Designate a “Recycling Day” Every Week

For us, this would be Friday, where I grab the shopping bag on the way to fetching the kids from playschool. I plonk the bag in front of the recycling bins while waiting for them to come out to the front door. I do this because if they see me carrying the bag, a tussle to see who gets first dips is sure to ensue!

If You Have Children, Get Them Actively Involved

Most young children love to emulate what mummy and daddy do, so getting them to help you out in your recycling chores could be really easy! In my case, they usually get very excited about placing the glass and plastic containers in the correct recycling bins, sometimes literally falling over themselves in the process. The beauty about how children think is that they don’t distinguish between ‘work’ and ‘play’. We’re taking advantage of this to cultivate good habits in them while they’re young.

Use A Kitchen Disposal Unit

We had our Insinkerator installed before we even moved in to the apartment, some 4 years ago. Here’s why:

• No dripping mess from wet refuse leaking through punctured rubbish bags from bin to front door, and from front door to rubbish room. Cleaner home, and it’s being considerate to other residents.
• We end up using fewer rubbish bags.
• Our rubbish bin area doesn’t stink of kitchen refuse (but diapers, ah, that’s another ball game entirely. Hence wrapping them up in newspaper before tossing them!)

Donate Unwanted But Useable Items

Old clothes and toys in good condition are usually welcome at places like orphanages. If you have good reading material that you won’t need anymore, you could suss out a nearby old folks’ home or library to contribute them to.

Or if you’re a fashion junkie and you want to clear some space for your next collection of skinny jeans, why not cash out on last season’s fashion by putting them up for sale as second hand goods on places like Ebay?

Or how about organizing a jumble sale with some of your friends as a fun way to part with your old clothes, furniture, books and magazines? You’ll meet old friends, make new ones, and it’s a chance for you to check out each others’ wardrobe contents. I have yet to organise one myself, but these events can yield amazing pre-loved finds. My best purchase at a jumble sale was a genuine DKNY leather jacket — for just RM30. I walked away from the sale feeling like a million bucks!

Repurpose Items

Find new uses for items around your home. For me, I found that the kids love their plastic yoghurt tubs as water play toys! It saves us a little bit of money this way. For novel ideas in this arena I usually head over to Real Simple’s website for a browse, which can turn out to be quite entertaining and inspiring.

These are just a few ways we are incorporating the 3R habit into our family life. It takes a little conscious effort and a playful approach to the serious issue of conservation. How do You do it?

I took a short break from making soap but it looks like it’s time to restock again. My DreamTime bars are almost all gone now! Thank you to all who placed orders over the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s period, and a very warm hello to new customers who made their first purchases from us recently.

Ah, here’s the thing that I’d like to announce — The Kinder Soap Company’s 100% Money Back Guarantee. I’m so confident that my soaps will benefit your skin in some way or other, that I’m willing to offer a full refund on any purchase that you are not satisfied with, for whatever reason (except for them turning up a little worse for wear after going through the postal service, sorry :p. You needn’t send the soap back to me. Just write in to me at michelle(at)kindersoaps(dot)com and I’ll make arrangements for a refund right away (including shipping costs, if applicable).

Now how’s that for quality assurance and peace of mind? And as an internet shopper, would you feel more at ease with this kind of guarantee being offered to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Wanna know what it took for me to prepare 20 of these cute little gift packs of 4 soap bars each? In a nutshell, as a mom of 2 toddlers around whom the world can be construed as an accident waiting to happen, I can only safely (and sanely) do work like this when they’re both asleep at night. :”> So here’s how I went about it.

When I first got a confirmation on Shazmin’s order (thank you SO much my dear, you helped make Kinder Soaps’ new year start with a bang!) for 20 custom-made gift packs, I made a shopping list of all the stuff I’d need for the project, namely:

• 20 new flower pots
• red netting
• white netting
• get new soap labels done at my neighbourhood printer (Lap Soon is an AWESOME digital print shop!)

I had to get to work pronto, as Shazmin’s daughter’s birthday party was on Sunday morning and she confirmed her order on Thursday. So my Friday was jam-packed with errands. It looked like this:

• 8:30am Send Brandon to playschool
• Do house chores and entertain Andrea at home
• 10:30am Put Andrea to bed
• 12:00pm Get dressed, wake Andrea, bustle her into the car to go fetch Brandon from playschool
• 12:30pm Settle the kids at in-laws’ home for the afternoon
• 1:00pm Head over to Lap Soon to print and trim labels
• 2:00pm Zoom off to IKEA to buy pots and netting after lunch at the Curve
• 4:00pm Zoom back home for a short break
• 6:30pm Meet hubby and kids at in-laws’ for dinner
• 9:30pm Come home and put the kids to bed
• 10:30pm Start work on gift packs

First was the labeling, which I did at our dining table (it’s the only area that’s large enough to accommodate all my junk. Then once all the soap bars were neatly arranged in piles on the table I started filling in the pots with their contents:

And once they were done I arranged them on the floor by the piano:

Then came the final wrapping up in white netting to hold all the contents together. I’m very glad I can avoid having to resort to plastic shrink wrapping as most conventional gift packs are done up. Oh alright, it wasn’t really an option to begin with since I don’t have the means or know-how to get the equipment to do shrink wrapping in the first place! But yeah, I’m glad I can use netting instead—and to good effect as well:

Hubby took this photo of me at about 12:15am. This was by far the toughest part of the night, as I had to sit on the floor for about an hour to put the finishing touches to the gift packs. I was sitting on a low foot stool to help keep my back straight—but with my 4-month-old baby bump it was still a real challenge to stay comfortable in that position! But I really was happy at work, so that kept the cursing at bay. The floor work included cutting up the huge swathes of white netting to wrap the pots in, arranging them nicely on the floor, then finishing off the pots with little red ribbons to neaten the tops of each gift pack.

And that was my first experience doing a large gift pack order at such short notice! I had a tremendous amount of fun in the process, but to be honest after that experience, I am even more conscious about listening to my body’s rest signals especially now that I’m pregnant. On Saturday I was still on a high from completing the job, but come Sunday I zombied through most of my hours spent with the kids.

However, all things considered, a little madness like this is what makes life SO enjoyable! What do You do to keep you excited about your life?

In other news, we found out today that we’ll be expecting a baby boy in June. :”> I’m just glad that with all the rushing around with my two little monkeys, baby no. 3 is growing very nicely.

I’m also happy to announce that I’m gearing up for this year’s Chinese New Year and Valentine’s double celebration by whipping up new soap recipes to fill your gift baskets! Also in the pipeline is a purifying french green clay facial mask which I am still perfecting, meant for congested and sensitive skin that needs some extra cleansing and pampering. Hoping to unveil that within the coming week.

Happy weekend!

I finally carved out some time a few nights ago to put my new formulation for my Dream Time Soap to the test—it’s turned out great, and my balcony smells so pleasant now that they’re sitting on my curing rack for the next 3-4 weeks to dry out.

This soap is intended for you who have sensitive skin that is prone to acne flare-ups, and especially those with reddened skin on the face when aggravated by stress or external pollutants. (Which of course means everyone else can use it too. ) My intention is to help soothe your inflamed skin, albeit perhaps only temporarily because of the vast number of underlying causes to your skin condition. Guess what—my skin behaves like this occasionally as well.

So what’s different in the soap now? Firstly I simplified the base oils, using sunflower oil, palm oil, certified organic coconut oil and cocoa butter to gently cleanse and nourish skin. I’ve also added more skin-soothing essential oils to the blend, which also means a slightly more sophisticated scent. They are:

• Patchouli
• Rosemary
• Geranium
• Tea tree
• Lavender
• Roman Chamomile

How’s that for everyday luxury?

Plus they’re now a good 100g size so they don’t look and feel like mere decorative pieces anymore—hit the showers with them! I also found that our Malaysian humidity and my storage limitations make embedding those rose buds impractical, so I skipped that (I can see my cousin nodding in agreement!).

There you have it—a fresh new batch of Dream Time Soap now curing and to be up for sale from the 26th of this month at RM18 a bar. If you’d like me to reserve a bar for you, just shop around the site as usual and I’ll send them to  you once they’re sufficiently cured.

I really hope you’ll enjoy using the soap as much as I relished the whole process of creating it!