Finally - perfect homemade liquid hand soap

Thank you to everyone that has been praying for my aunt Pam ("Shisshy") who is in the hospital with double pneumonia.  She is still on the ventilator but her lungs are better so she should be weaned off soon.  Unfortunately, her throat became very swollen because of the tube in it that it had to be surgically removed today and a tracheotomy placed temporarily.  :(  Goodness - pneumonia is so vicious!  But I'm grateful for modern medicine.

yay! daffodils are giving the yard pops of color

Tabby had her first track meet of the season yesterday, and she had trouble running the 1 mile.  First lap was great but then I saw her face and knew her lungs were hurting.  Not just the regular runner's hurt, but it was pneumonia hurt.  She had to go to the medical tent after she finished running.  (She refused to quit the race.)    After that race, her coach told her she would not be running any more that day.  But after awhile she felt so well she begged him to let her run the other two events she was scheduled for, since they were shorter.  He talked to me about it and then let her after she promised to run slower.  She did and she ran just fine.  Lord willing, she'll be completely back to normal soon.

I love bringing daffodils inside

Last summer, I wrote a post about the liquid hand soap that I had made.  (Click here for that post.)  I tried tweaking that recipe a number of ways, but the soap just wasn't thick enough and I couldn't figure out why.  Finally I read that if you start with a bar soap that is heavy in oils, then your liquid soap will not be thick.  Oh!  That was it.  I was starting with our homemade goat milk soap, which is a wonderful bar soap, but is full of different oils. Great for your skin but not great for making a thick liquid soap.

So I bought a few bars of some good soap.  But those turned out rather gooey.  Still I didn't want to give up and go back to spending a lot of money buying liquid soap, so I kept trying tweaks.  (We wash our hands around here a lot and liquid soap works better for handwashing than bar soap for us.)

Then earlier this year, I came across several recipes for FOAMING hand soap.  It looked even easier that the liquid soap I was making!  All I needed was the foaming dispenser.  I like using pint sized mason jars for my liquid soap, so I bought the foaming dispensers for them off Ebay.

Here is the recipe I used:

* 2/3 cup unscented liquid castile soap (I use Dr. Bronner's brand)
* 20-22 drops of essential oil (I used Young Living's Thieves Essential Oil for powerful germ killing)
* distilled water

I put the soap and essential oil into my pint sized jar, then filled it up the rest of the way with distilled water.  Mixed it and it was ready to use!

Right now, in Tabby's Etsy shop, The Goat Chick, we currently have three of our four soaps in stock:  original (spearmint/eucalyptus), peppermint, and lavender/tea tree.  Peppermint has been selling like crazy lately!  We need to make Thieves asap.

zzzzzz ...