Monday Made It! - Soap!

I have had an awesome week laminating my brains out and being Suzy Homemaker. Well, I felt ambitious I guess and decided to do something I've always wanted to try...SOAP-MAKING!

I LOVE great smelling soap - but it can be expensive. So, I got an eBook by Jan Berry called  Natural Soap Making and read all about the cold process. You can find her book HERE at The Nerdy Farm Wife.   I then found a recipe I wanted to try - Citrus Honey Scotch Ale Soap. Sound a little weird? Beer in soap? Well, I chose it because they stated it smelled like extremely rich caramel with a hint of citrus and honey. Mmmmmm. That's sounds good!

I have to admit - I was scared to try the soap making process. The whole deal about working with lye is scary to me! So, I got my son to do that part!

We mixed up the lye portion outside to avoid fumes. My husband wanted to know how much the soap cost to make. Ummm...well, I put a lot of expensive oils into it including palm oil and jojoba. 

I didn't want to buy a soap mold at that point, so I found this plastic container at Target and it worked fine!  My soap is now cut and will cure for 3-4 weeks. It smells yummy!

We cut it into blocks to cure. I like the "cut" look and will wrap them in wax paper and twine. Some. Day. 

Next, on to my teacher stuff. I told you I laminated my brains out. Right? It's completely true. I feel like I will go crazy if I have to laminate anything else.  First, I purchased 4th Grade Math Centers - 10 Bundle - by Tina's Teaching Treasures.   Wow. 199 pages of awesomeness.  I had it printed, then laminated like CRAZY. But, I figured once it was all laminated, I would have a year's worth of pretty sweet math centers. 

Although I will keep them in math bins, I found some cheap pencil pockets pictured above - two for $1.00 at the Dollar Store. 

I bought some photo album books at the Dollar Tree and placed the math discussion starters inside. 

Purchased: giant calculators for the math bins! Fun. Only $1.00.

After my math centers were done, I started to work on my Writing Center for Daily 5. I found a great site called Second Story Window that provides awesome ideas for writing activities.  I followed her advice, and bought some fun items at the Dollar Store:

Cute, right?  A DOLLAR! These darling journals will be used as whole class journals for writing. Love.

The Dollar Store even sold little cut outs. I bought a few and am writing journal prompts on the back. My dogs, Charlie and Raleigh, like them!

Finally, I used my digital purchase from SchoolGirl Style to create the banner for the writing center. I have no idea why the ends of them didn't print...so I decided to improvise rather than re-print and I colored dark at the tip...now they look like pens! Perfect.

To finish off my long week of soap-making and laminating center materials, I BBQ'd pizza. Have you ever had BBQ pizza? Once you start, you won't want to go back to regular pizza making again! We follow a recipe from Whole Foods found HERE. We add arugula to ours.

That's it for this week! Please share this blog and enjoy!