26 New Soaps - New Project

For the last year, I've been part of our local Unitarian Universalist congregation. I love the church; I love the people. It is a welcoming congregation full of diversity.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty for not helping out as much as I want to. One of the side effects of the kids integrating into the community is that we are more busy than I'd like to be. Running to this activity and that activity, time gets nibbled away until there's not much left.

But I would like to help in as many ways as I can, so I'm creating things to donate to the yearly auction, which raises a good amount of the income needed to run the church. So that leads me to my current project and one of my 4 ideas for donations: creating a year's worth of soap, twice.

The final product will be 2 gift baskets, each filled with enough soap to last one person a year. This soap will be vegan soap, scented with 100% essential oils (that's plant oils). I figure that Frank and I go through about a bar week. So 26 to 30 bars should last one person a year.

But I can't just fill a basket with 30 bars of soap. That would be way too easy. Each bar has to be different from the others and unique in at least one way. But I'm not so particular that I won't use soap that I already have made.So far I have (pictured from left to right):

1. Lavender (colored light purple w/ dark purple swirls)
2. Lavender Patchouli (white w/ pink swirls)
3. Lavender Mint (Celtic knot heart w/ green and purple swirls)
4. Patchouli Mint (green w/ dark brown swirls)
5. Sweet Orange
6. Spearmint w/ French green clay
7. Lavender Rosemary (all white)

In order for the soap to have optimum curing time, I need to finish the other 19 to 23 batches in the next 12 days! So now begins the soap marathon. Let's see if I can do it.