It should come to no surprise that in our quest for natural products that we would opt for cloth diapering, so we thought! Many people were surprised and had semi-horrified faces when I brought up that we were going to cloth diaper.  I can almost envision them thinking about our future struggles and frustrations with them. Then, I tell them about the kind of cloth diapers we are talking about, not those old school diapers! I don’t think there was much of a question for us that we weren’t going to cloth diaper. After the last couple years of educating ourselves on a greener, more sustainable earth friendly lifestyle, we knew that we wanted to contribute even less garbage to landfills and such. We set out on a learning expedition of finding a system that was going to work with us and keep our green goal in mind. Also, my dear husband didn’t want a massive battle of the poo…a great concern I’m sure to many parents who think about cloth diapers.

So, diapers that are good for the environment and easy to use. Sounded like a bit of a challenge. There are actually several options that meet that. And then there are so many other choices in cloth diapering that became overwhelming until we settled on what points were important to us. With everything, I believe there is a compromise and with those compromises, hopefully, the majority of what’s pertinent to us comes out on top.  We found 2 systems that met our needs: pocket diapers and gDiapers.

Pocket diapers are where there is a fabric cover with an inside opening and then there are terry cloth inserts that are stuffed into the pocket opening that is lined with polyurethane laminated (PUL) for waterproof barrier purposes. The ones we got are also size adjustable so as our baby grows, so does the diaper. It’s a great feature that’s cost effective over the life of the diaper and the growing baby.  For heavier wetters, there are additional cloth inserts or “doublers” for double the protection.  We have Velcro-ish fasteners, so no pins to hold these onto baby.

Our other choice is gDiapers. (I must say as a designer, I totally LOVE these aesthetically. So. Darn. Cute.) Anyway, these also have a fabric cover and have snap in polyurethane coated nylon liner. The diapers fasten with Velcro-ish stuff also. Then there are two options for inserts: gCloth and gRefills. gCloth are shaped like the doublers, made of hemp/cotton/microfleece and washable that get stuffed into the snap in liners. gRefills are inserts made from tree pulp and polyacrylate (for absorbancy). These refills are compostable, flushable and biodegradable! We also got flushable liners that go on top of the cloth inserts for those poo diapers that will lift out the solid! We can use them in both systems thankfully. We also have a sprayer for the bathroom but more about that in another post.

There are of course pros and cons to every diaper system. Upfront costs with cloth diapering is expensive instead of buy as you go disposables. Over the time though, investment is worth it since I’ll still have the diapers when the baby is out of them and can either sell them or give away. They won’t be thrown away to not rot in the landfill. Laundry will have to be done on a more frequent basis. I’ll be home for the first couple months so I can do laundry. I’ve heard about odors being a problem but honestly even in a diaper pail like one of those popular Genie’s, there’s still smell unless you take the diaper outside to the garbage. And I expect there will be something, but nothing that will be too hard to deal with since I can do laundry anytime!

There’s a lot more stuff I could go on about cloth diapers and what not. I’ll leave that to other posts for our adventures of cloth diapering. For now, I’m happy with the choices we have made and can’t wait for the baby to get here so we can try our new diapers out!  The newborn size is absolutely adorable! Hopefully, my baby won’t be too big and will still fit them!

If you don’t know by now, I’m an avid label reader. I like to know what’s in my products before I buy and use them. And since we have a new addition to the family coming soon, there are a plethora of new products to review. The world of baby items can be quite overwhelming with all the promises of gentle, safe, and natural stuff inside the packages. Imagine my surprise when I picked up a popular baby wash that we received at the baby shower and read the ingredients to my husband:

Water, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, PEG-80 Sorbitan Laurate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, PEG-150 Distearate, Tetrasodium EDTA, Sodium Chloride, Polyquaternium-10, Fragrance, Quaternium-15, Citric Acid. 

Those ingredients don’t sound so nice to put on my newborn’s skin…

Now, I’m no scientist. I don’t know a whole lot about chemistry and how things are made. I do understand the basic mechanics though. I know that there are scientific processes and manufacturing and how chemicals combine together to create other chemicals and those chemicals also can have by-products from said processes. And that’s what I think this list of ingredients is mostly made up from. So I set out to find out more and came across this blog about reading labels from a like-minded mama. She explains things more so than I ever could and goes into depth about deciphering labels and ingredients.

I don’t want to sound like I’m a hysterical person or that I’m too good for using the mass market products. I’m sure that my parents used all kinds of products on me and I used them on my first born and we are just fine so far. What I am getting at is that now as I get older and wiser, that I’m far more aware at taking a product or company’s word for their brand of safety and natural. I want to be a more responsible consumer and I believe in educating myself wherever I can. Now that I have the means to look things up and make decisions based on research and facts, I do so instead of just believing or wanting to believe something is good for me.

In this world of more commercials and more targeted marketing, I feel like people are flooded with so much information. It seems so easy just to go on the recommendations of others and trust them. I would like to trust everyone’s opinion about things but I’ve noticed that when things go wrong or expectations aren’t met, fingers are being pointed and the blame game ensues. Sometimes I think people fail to see that when one finger is pointed, there are three pointing right back at themselves. Ultimately, I think that I’m responsible for my well being and my family’s.

So, I’m on a quest to make a gentle soap and lotion for my baby. I know all about the ingredients that go into our products. I’ll fill you in as I go along...

This last week, we went through the inventory and took stock of what we have. It was a slow summer for sales overall except for the main show we did last month. But what a show it was! We were very excited by the results and have decided to go back next year. We sold out of so much stuff!  That’s awesome!

Anyway, with 12 days or so with the baby coming, we’ve ordered supplies for our next batch of production! Since we don’t want to be left long without inventory, we are going to be making lots of stuff while we still have the time and energy, because well, you know, babies are a lot of time and energy!  I also cringe each time I look at the website and see how many out of stocks we have and I just don’t like that!  We do have a lot of stuff in inventory, but some of the popular stuff is sometimes hard to keep in stock, lol!

Speaking of out of stock, we’re down to a small amount of lotion at the moment. We have been talking a while about implementing a date stamp system to make sure that you are always getting the freshest lotion possible! We already make everything in small batches to help with that, but now with a date on it, there’s even more backing that for everyone’s peace of mind! Our lotion is made with the smallest amount of preservative possible but lotion is still perishable over time since we do use natural ingredients. Also, we’ll be making our labels a bit more colorful! Instead of just our dark green printing, to differentiate different scents and flavors, we’re trying out a color system! I’m sooo excited for these new things!

And also new for us is the start of an Etsy store! We are trying to get a wider audience online and I see a lot of people trying this route out. Not sure how this will bode with us, but at least we can try. The store is up but there aren’t any products in it, so just stay tuned! I’ve got a lot of work to do with it to get it running. There will be lots of pictures to take and details to enter. Reminds me of when I built our website! What a task to take on…but hopefully, we will get some results. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I have read lots of opinions on Etsy being successful and not successful for people, however I do believe that success has a lot to do with the work one puts out!

So, lots of new stuff coming up for us and it’s such a great feeling with our 1st anniversary coming up. We’re gonna do something extra special! Just you wait! With all the hubbub going on in our lives, our next show out will probably be for the holidays. We’ll definitely keep you all informed! Thanks for the love and support this first year out for us.

Homemade Days 2011 was a success! THANK YOU!

Friday was a good day in the sense we made enough money to pay for our space. That's always a good thing! Unfortunately, the show got rained out mid-afternoon with a storm that blew our tent all around. Only a few vendors stayed open and we decided to call it a day at 4. We were really looking forward to a beautiful Saturday. And what a beautiful day Saturday turned out to be. There were a lot of people and it was just gorgeous out! We sold out of a lot of lip balm and some lotion so I'll be busy making that soon! And of course, we did sell out of some soap. All in all, it was a great weekend and we'll be heading back next year! 

So again, we just can't say it enough! Thanks for your continued support and love! Right back at ya!

I can't believe our little one is nearly here! My baby shower was this past Saturday and it was absolutely fabulous. I have awesome lady friends! I love them so! We have nearly everything for the baby. All the furniture is bought and in the room although it needs put together! We just got a pack and play, stroller and a car seat last night from a co-worker of Donnie's for a very reasonable price. I have a running list of the rest of the stuff to get. Donnie thinks it's funny that I'm nesting. I brought home the shampooer so I can do the carpets and I'll also be tackling our bedroom and the rest of the house getting things organized. There's just not much time left! And just when I'll be done with my thank you cards, I'll be putting together our baby announcements...So much to do, but all in good time.

LYE SOAP! Oh no! Just hearing that phrase makes me think old grandma’s hovering over their kettles stirring for hours making soap. I’ve read and heard stories that lye soap was not that great. It smelled of whatever fat was being used, mostly tallow (cow fat) and/or lard (pig fat) and sometimes, it probably wasn’t the freshest of fat either because fat was stored until there was enough to make soap. It takes a lot of fat for soap because it needs to be cooked down (rendered) and strained. About fat being rendered will be left over from this process. And the lye used was home made from leached wood and ashes with unknown strengths resulting in soap that could be crumbly, runny, lye heavy (note, lye heavy is not good! It burns and stings!) and other strange consistencies with dirt and bits of material embedded left over from the fat rendering process. Making lye soap was an ordeal but well worth the prize of soap.  And soap was and still is a commodity that is prized for cleaning and beautifying.

I can’t imagine making soap that way! I wouldn’t love it that’s for sure! And I love to make soap! So imagine my surprise when I started reading about lard soap. Makes me think…lard. In. my. soap. (ick?) What is so special about that? Now, before you go gross, lard in my soap, know that a lot of commercially made soap is made from tallow and sometimes lard. These are animal by products. Check out your labels: Sodium Tallowate or Sodium Lardate.  That was easier for me to swallow. And I had to admire people back in the day making their own soap because it was a luxury and people didn’t waste things! So, I couldn’t knock lard in soap, in fact, I was really fascinated and just couldn’t wait to get some for us to make soap with. Lard made into soap is a gorgeous, creamy white and supposedly, a beautifully creamy soap.

We asked around for awhile for lard or tallow hoping someone could help us out. Then my BFF’s boyfriend said his family was buying a pig and they were going to process it and we asked him for the fat left over. We were so excited when he brought us already rendered lard in a big coffee can. Beautiful, yummy lard. And he also brought us other goodies of some of the best tasting sausage, pork chops, pon hous (scrapple) and cracklins’. I’m getting side tracked here…Back to soap talk! Let’s just put it simply, we loved getting the lard and stuff! Thanks to Barb & Marty!

So last night we decided it was time to finally make the lard soap. Just lard, lye, and water. It’s not a fancy soap and we actually prefer simpler recipes for our soap. I’ve heard that lard soap is absolutely fabulous so I all up for the hype of finally using it. And I will see how wonderful it is in a few hours when we cut and test a piece! What we were not prepared for was how long it was going to take to make it. We have some pretty involved soap recipes that take some time to get the soap to its final state and that’s all well and good because I expect some difficulties and long prep time. Things were going as expected with the melting the lard down and mixing our lye solution, poured everything in the mixing bowl and started mixing away.

And mix away we went…for about an hour!!!! After the first 10 minutes or so, my dear husband asks me if I calculated the recipe wrong because it was not setting up like any of our other soaps. We had just made two batches of soap that set up in about 5 minutes, which is typical of using a stick blender. After my 10 minute stirring turn, I decided to go research why the soap was taking so long. I didn’t ever remember reading about this soap taking a long time to trace like a castile soap (olive) so I was beginning to be concerned also. I found my answer instantly thanks to Google. The first post said about lard soap said be prepared to stir til your arm falls off. There were several other posts following reiterating the same thing. I went back upstairs to inform my love of the estimated time we still had left to stir. He proclaimed that he didn’t like lard soap any more and it’s now $5 a bar due to all the time we put into it, lol. I’m thinking it’s going to be awhile before we make another batch of it. Finally, after an hour went by, I got a trace (the point where soap sets up). It was not a thick trace but enough for me! Because the soap was more liquidy than most soaps we make, Donnie pours the soap into the mold and spills a bunch all over the floor!!! Disaster! Active lye on my floor!  It wasn’t too bad. I cleaned it up quickly and we wrapped the soap up and set aside for tonight’s cutting.

I’ll post pics and a review later about how the soap comes out. I’m hoping wonderful after all the time we spent on this soap! Normally, we make just vegetable oil based soaps, but I couldn’t resist making old-fashioned lard soap. Hopefully, others will be just as interested in it as we were. 

Last night, we tried to make soap. Until I realized the soap we were going to make was short an ingredient! Oh nos! That can't be! But yes, it is. With a few expensive things we invested in for the upcoming Homemade Days (we have yet to hear from, soon!) money is tight, especially with other expenses coming up in the next couple months. Since we haven't been open a whole year yet, we had no way of knowing what summer was going to bring with soap selling and have had to be careful with what shows we could be at because of the baby. That said, I've looked into other marketing options, namely Etsy.

I love Etsy. I have realized this in the last couple weeks after perusing the site daily, almost hourly. There is some totally cute stuff on there. I have also checked out other soapers and bath and body peoples, mostly local ones...I'm a bit of a stalker I suppose, checking out our competition, lol. Gotta know what we're up against! Anyway, if you don't know what Etsy is (seriously, who doesn't) Etsy is a online shopping forum for handmade goods & services, vintage stuff and supplies. The array there is amazing with really talented people! I'm a designer by day so I like to look at stuff for creative inspiration, and boy, do I get inspired, mostly to shop lol.

Other than Facebook and this website, we don't do a lot of marketing and advertising. Surprising since that's the field I'm in, you'd think I would do more of it for the benefit of the business. But advertising is expensive! And without an actual store, the only time we like to advertise is when we are going to a show. It's not the best business model to promote sales. We do get a lot of business from word of mouth which is the most fabulous free advertising a business can get. Who would be best to tell others about products than loyal customers! (On a side note, let me just say Thank YOU to our loyal customers! We got nothin' but love for you!) Word of mouth is even better when stuff is given as a gift! 

So, back to Etsy...after checking out the site incessantly and after many conversations with my darling husband, I think we are going to Etsy. Fees are reasonable, we have a paypal, and it's a popular interface, what do we really have to lose? More sales? lol I've been inspired by a fellow soapmaker who said she quit her day job and runs her Etsy full time. Not that I expect that to happen, but it would be nice if I could do the same! And if we don't Etsy, then I think we are losing some exposure in the market. At least we can try!

Here's to Etsy! Side Door Soaps is coming soon!

With less than 12 weeks to go now, the baby is making itself more evident with my growing belly. I am so fascinated by the whole process of pregnancy. Seriously, I’ve pondered how totally awesome it is that I am growing a life inside of my body. I really didn’t appreciate that when I pregnant with my son, possibly because I was just so young. Now that I can appreciate my body, I really revere pregnant bodies, especially mine!

With the baby fast approaching its debut to our world, we are trying to prepare. It’s hard though. I’m not sure how this will affect the soaping, after all, I do remember the first few weeks as exhausting with a newborn. I really am thinking about other ideas so eventually I can stay home with the baby! I never really thought of being a stay at home mom before because I like to work. But I really want to enjoy the baby also in ways I wasn’t able to with my first-born.

In the next couple weeks, we will be getting ready for a 2-day show we hope to get into. Our application won’t come back until the end of the month. The people said we should get notice 10 days before the show. I hope we do get in.  We bought one of those outside easy up tents, which was a large expense for us. And we have been holding off buying some supplies due to rising costs and getting more income to make some reasonable purchases to get the most of our shipping costs.  It’s all such a delicate balance!

After the baby is born, we will be ramping up production for the holiday season. We were so busy last year and it was unexpected! But thanks to all of your support, that busyness really helped us realize what was important to us and affirmed our dedication to our soap. This year we shall be better prepared! I’m still hoping that some of our plans for this year will come to fruition like our plans for liquid soap. We will need to really plan this out! And I have some ideas for lotion bars. It comes down to priorities. We’re getting there!

As always, thanks for your support! We love you for it…

Egads! We haven't made soap in over a month! My DH was all concerned over the safety of me being around the lye fumes and wanted me to ask the doctor what we should do. I went last week and she said that as long as we are in a well ventilated area and the stove fan was going, I should be fine. It's not as if I'm trying to huff the fumes! ICK...If my darling had it his way, I would be also wearing a full face breathing mask. And I tried one on, I felt as if I were suffocating. It smelled funny, too.

Another reason for the lack of soap making is that he is also working a lot of overtime at work. It's their busy season and he is office bound after a couple months of traveling doing whatever he does for hours upon end. We are planning on getting some soap out soon. There's a show I want to do that I think will be good for us and we're about out of our popular stuff. I also want to make some cute soap favors for my upcoming baby shower and I'll need some time for that!

Speaking of the baby, this baby is gonna be a surprise. We had our last ultrasound and the baby just wouldn't cooperate with legs crossed the whole time. There goes my wanting to plan. Now, Donnie says this will be completely natural since we can't predict the sex. There's a lot of greens  in my baby registries. Thankfully, the baby room is already a lovely shade of green. I did want to paint it purple if we had a girl. I really want a girl! Last night, Donnie felt the baby move for the first time. He said it was really creepy and he was glad that I was carrying the baby. I think it's still absolutely amazing that I'm carrying a tiny little person to be! 

There's no denying I'm pregnant. I have quite the belly now at 6 months. I've outgrown all my regular clothes and officially have a maternity wardrobe. I got some cute stuff! I'm now on the lookout for some cute, comfy sandals. No flip flops per my protective one. As long as I'm comfortable, I could care less! Here's to my summer wardrobe!



 

You can guess what we are having! Join in on the fun!