My first project was making soap.  It actually worked, so I took some pictures and prepped a description of the process.  It might not be helpful for you, but I am posting it here so I can look it up again when I decide to prepare another batch.

Getting Started

January 6th, 2013:
My introduction to making lye-based soap was an article over at The Art of Manliness: “How to Make a Manly Bar of Soap”

To be completely honest, my first thought was, “Isn’t lye how murderers dispose of a body?”  I probably read too many mysteries.  My second thought was, “Coffee and walnuts sounds good, but I wonder what else would work.”

So, the next step was simple: visit the library and Google soap recipes.

If you’re following these steps, I can save you some time.  The Dewey code you’re looking for is 668.12.  If you prefer the Library of Congress system, as I do, you’re looking for TP991.  Library of Congress really is a better system, but we can leave that discussion for another time.

At the local library, I picked up the following:

• Milk Based Soaps: Making Natural, Skin-Nourishing Soap
• The Everything Soapmaking Book: Recipes and Techniques for Creating Colorful and Fragrant Soaps
• Homestead Blessings: The Art of Soap Making (DVD)
• Soap Maker’s Workshop: The Art and Craft of Natural Homemade Soap

As you can see, post-colon subtitles are the order of the day.

I got these home and quickly reviewed them all.  The first two books have not proven useful at all.  The DVD was unusually helpful, as well as being amusing–the West women are sincere and serious, but just a little quirky.  Which is okay.  Honestly, that DVD was probably about the best resource I found, even considering the information available on the internet.  Finally, the last book, Soap Maker’s Workshop, does a great job of breaking down the differences between Hot Process and Cold Process soaps, as well as providing a whole slew of helpful recipes.

And of course, the internet helps.  Two sites have proven particularly useful:

• Miller’s Homemade Soap
  
• Mountain Sage Lye Calculator

As I write this, my next step is to settle on a recipe (or two) and to identify and source the necessary supplies and ingredients.

Creating a Recipe

January 15th, 2013:
So, I settled on some recipes.

The main questions I had to answer in order to develop some soap recipes:

1. What liquid do I want to use?  There are some limits.  For instance, lemon juice is acidic, and would neutralize some of they lye, leaving me with a bunch of un-saponified oil.  Milk has a  fair amount of sugar, and can create all sorts of interesting results (including separation and browning).
2. What oils do I want to use? 
3. How much lye will you need?  Caution here: lye is dangerous.  If you intend to use the information on this page, you accept the responsibility for using it safely.  You want to avoid the fumes, you want to avoid skin or eye contact, you definitely want to avoid ingestion.
4. What additives do you want?  

So, I decided to make two batches of soap.  For the first, I am going to use double-brewed coffee and for the second, green tea.

I chose coconut oil, olive oil, and shea butter.  Coconut oil helps make the bars of soap hard, and can create a nice lather.  Olive oil provides less lather, but is great for conditioning.  Shea butter mixes the best of both, making for a hard, conditioning, lather-rich bar.  Miller’s Homemade Soap has a great article describing the properties of the various oils available here.

I probably worked backwards when it comes to the lye.  I decided that I was going to use 16 oz. of lye for each batch, because that’s the amount in which my local Menard’s sells the stuff, and I didn’t feel like measuring it out.  Deciding the amount of lye first meant adjusting the weight of the oils to match.

As far as additives, I decided to keep it simple.  I’m going to add oatmeal to the coffee bars and honey to the green tea bars.

Since Walmart sells coconut oil in 31.5 fl oz (30.2 oz) jars for a very good price, I knew how much coconut oil was going into each recipe.  Smellgood out of Atlanta sells raw shea butter in 16 oz increments.  Using the Mountain Sage Lye Calculator, I was able to input these two amounts and identify the necessary amount of olive oil using trial and error.  The final result was that I needed 73 fl oz (69.25 oz) of olive oil.  To convert oils from fluid oz to weight, you can use the calculators over at {Convert To}.

You are welcome to download and use my recipes at your convenience.  Before doing so, please ensure that you have double-checked my measurements and make doubly sure you know what you’re doing with the lye.  Again, it is a dangerous substance, and you are responsible for using it safely.

Here are links to the two recipes:

• Green Tea & Honey Soap
• Coffee & Oats Soap

My next step is to gather my supplies and make the soap.

Making Soap

January 26th, 2013:
And now it comes together.  The shea butter has arrived (quick shipping by Smellgood!), the lye was in stock at Menard’s, and I have a free Saturday.

The following steps and pictures are meant to describe the process I used in some detail.  Don’t hesitate to post questions and I’ll answer them as well as I can.

Step 1:  Gather the materials

For the two batches of soap, I needed:

• Two measures of 73 fl oz of olive oil
• Two 31.5 fl oz bottles of coconut oil
• Two measures of 16 oz of raw shea butter
• Two 16 oz bottles of 100% lye
• 4 tbsp of honey
• 2 cups of ground oatmeal (I ground this with a coffee grinder)
• Two five gallon buckets
• Hand mixer
• Two wooden spoons
• Rubber gloves & safety glasses
• Food scale (Most recipes insist on a digital scale, but I converted the weights to fluid oz for the coconut and olive oils.  The scale was only necessary for the shea butter.)

Step 2: Prepare the forms

I went with the simplest, cheapest forms possible.  I lined several Amazon boxes with parchment paper.  I wasn’t sure how much space I’d need, but these boxes proved perfect.

Step 3: Prepare the liquid

I probably should have done this the night before.  The recipes call for between 29 and 43 fl oz of liquid.  I decided to use 36 oz.  I brewed the tea until it was fairly dark, and I double-brewed the coffee to ensure that it was very dark.  It should be cooled before mixing it with the lye, so I stuck it in the fridge while I prepared the oils.

Step 4: Melt the oils

This took a bit of figuring out.  Raw shea butter needs to be melted and strained through a cheese cloth to remove any shell residue.  So I measured out just a hair over 16 oz and tried to melt down the shea butter with indirect heat.  That did not work.

The better approach was to add 16 oz to the other oils and to melt all of the coconut oil and shea butter down in the olive oil, and then to pour all of the oils through a cheesecloth at the same time.

Step 5: Mix the liquid & lye

I did this while the oil was melting over a slow heat.  Since we have such lovely winter weather, I took advantage of the cold, and mixed the lye and liquid outside.  This had the double-benefit of keeping the fumes out of the basement and allowing the mixture to cool a bit before adding the oils.  When mixing these, Rule #1 is, Always add the lye to the liquid! Never add the liquid to the lye!

This was much easier than I expected, after reading all of the warnings.  I wore rubber gloves and eye protection, and cracked open the bottle of lye and poured the whole thing in.  I stirred it carefully with one of the wooden spoons, and it began to fume and steam pretty quickly.  I left it to cool for a bit.

Step 6: Mix the oils and the lye solution

Once the oils are melted, I poured them through a cheesecloth into the other five gallon bucket. I added the lye, and began blending them with the hand blender (some sites call this a “stick blender”).

A couple of bits of advice: Make sure the blender is fully immersed before you turn it on.  Don’t burn out the motor.  Stir with the blender on for about 5-10 second bursts, and then stir with it for another 30 seconds or so.

After about 2 minutes, I added the oatmeal or honey, based on the recipe that I was making at the time.

You’re looking for trace.  I don’t know why they all call it “trace.”  I think a better term is, “kind of like custard or melted ice cream.”  Basically, it gets thick enough to support drops or lightly drizzled lines.  Once you have that, you’re ready for…

Step 7: Pour the soap into the molds

This step is exactly what it sounds like.  Pour the soap into the molds.  The soap will have the texture of a loose batter.

Once they’re in the molds, you’ll want to close the boxes and cover them with a heavy blanket.  The soap needs to stay warm for a night or so.

Making Soap, Day 2

January 27th, 2013:
Now we’re onto the final steps for the soap project!

Step  8: Release and cut the soap

The parchment paper molds proved to be wonderful for this part of the project.  I was able to lift them out easily and lower the sides so that I could cut the soap into bars.  I weighed the soap first, out of curiosity.  The two recipes each produced about 10 pounds of soap.  That’s kind of insane.  And then we cut the soap into two batches of 40 bars.

Step 9: Cure the soap

The final step, apart from using the soap, is to set it out to cure.  You want to stack it in such a way that air can get to all the different sides of the soap.  It’s best to let it cure for four weeks.

I’m looking forward to using this soap in a month–I’ll be back at that time with an update on how it turned out after curing.

Post-Project Notes

January 28th, 2013:
I had an idea of the cost for these bars of soap going in, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the total cost per bar (including the costs for the mixer, buckets, gloves, and spoons) was only $1.06.  Future batches will cost even less as I already have all of the necessary equipment!

March 24th, 2013:
Now we’ve had the chance to use both types of soap and I’m very happy with how it turned out!  The Green Tea & Honey soap feels wonderful–it lathers, it moisturizes, it cleans.  The Coffee & Oats soap does all of that, and it exfoliates the heck out of my skin.  I found that I don’t care to use the Coffee & Oats soap every day because it’s very exfoliating, so I keep a bar of each on hand.  Perhaps next time I’ll try instant oatmeal instead.  That might break down a little more than the old-fashioned oats.  Either way, I’m pretty happy with this project!

Happy Soaping,
Dan J.

We’ve posted some pictures from the last month below the break.

For some context, the pictures come from the following:

1. For our 11th anniversary, we took a day-trip to Chicago
2. On the drive to Pennsylvania, we visited Eric & Christy Maurer
3. In Pennsylvania, Belfry hosted a worship concert to give us the opportunity to share our plans for ministry and to help us on our way
4. We spent a day at Gettysburg, visiting the battlefields and touring the cemetery

1. Pray for our meetings with potential ministry partners–that God would lead many individuals and churches to join with us in declaring God’s wonderful grace in Spain.
2. Pray for our health–both of us have been under the weather in the last two weeks, but it seems like we’re improving.
3. Pray for our spirits–that we would both remain continually joyful and confident in the grace of God in Christ!  His salvation is so good!

Praise God with us for the following!

1. The congregation at Whitton Avenue Bible Church formally voted to approve us as “sent” missionaries!  We are so thankful for the body there, and for our many faithful friends.
2. The attendance at Mayer Community Church has remained relatively stable during this transition!  The interim Village Missions associate pastor has sent word of a new attendee who placed her faith in Christ just a couple of weeks ago.

To give some explanation for the following pictures, the following was our itinerary:

1. Visit Dan’s grandparents & the Grand Canyon (Jan 12th)
2. Visit Lake Powell and the Zion National Park (Jan 13th)
3. Visit Dan’s folks and Yellowstone National Park (Jan 14th)
4. Preach at Grace Bible Church of Dillon, Montana (Jan 15th)
5. Visit the Hodgins in Denver & attend the National Western Stock Show (Jan 17th-19th)
6. Visit several family members and a church in Kansas (Jan 20th-23rd)
7. Arrive in Indiana (Jan 27th)

The trip was a bit busy on the front-end with National Parks, and a bit loaded on the back end with friends and family and partners, but the whole time was very enjoyable.

Thank you for your prayers!

Yours,
Dan & Anna J.

Please pray for us this month regarding the following needs:

1. PRAISE: Our field visit went very well—we enjoyed meeting the rest of the ECMI-Spain team, learning more about the ministry in Spain, and praying with them for the spread of the gospel.  We thank God daily for all of our partners, whose prayers and support made this visit possible!
2. That God would continue to add many new financial and prayer partners to our ministry team.
3. That we would do a good job sharing our vision for ministry in Spain and making the contacts that we need to make.
4. That God would give us wisdom in the many decisions we need to make as we transition out of our current positions of employment and into full-time ministry team development.

Please pray for us this month regarding the following needs:

1. Our upcoming field visit!  From 10/16-10/28, we’ll be visiting the ECMI team in Spain, meeting many of the workers, and seeing their various ministries.  In the middle of that time, we’ll have the chance to join the whole team for a few days of prayer.
2. Our sending church visit!  Just before we fly out, we’ll be joining Whitton Avenue Bible Church for services on 10/16, and Dan will have the opportunity to preach about mercy and redemption in the book of Ruth.
3. That God would continue to add new financial and prayer partners to our ministry team.

We love you all,
Dan & Anna J.

Please pray for us this month regarding the following needs:

1. Please pray as we continue setting appointments with potential ministry partners.  Pray that God directs our calls and conversations, and that he glorifies himself in the entire process.
2. Please continue to pray that God would be preparing a man for the role of pastor/elder at Mayer Community Church.
3. God has provided!  Please pray for our upcoming move from our house to a nearby apartment–that it goes smoothly.
4. Please pray that we have continued good health and energy for the ministry.

We love you all,
Dan & Anna J.

1. Pray for our souls: Pray that we both love and pursue God first, that we grow in the grace & the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Pray for our health: We have both been under the weather with the flu (January) and sinus infections (February).  Pray that we remain healthy and able to put a lot of energy into our ministry.
3. Pray for our progress: We will likely begin our partnership development training at the end of March.  Pray that we learn well & that God blesses our efforts to develop a prayer and support network.
4. Pray for the evangelical church in Spain: It grows, but slowly, and it faces much opposition from without.  Pray that the Holy Spirit moves the Spanish church into a period of great unity in Christ.

Grace & Peace,
Dan & Anna J.

One Thinline became five thick volumes.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have had a small project in the works.  I thought I’d post some photos and a brief explanation of the project today.  I’ve been working on a “blank Bible”–so named not because the Bible had all it’s words removed, but because it has many additional blank pages inserted for note-taking and outlining.  The idea is an old one, and there are plenty of Bibles available that do a better job of providing a quality-bound, wide-margin, note-taker’s Bible, but I thought it would still be a good use of an ESV I’ve had sitting on the shelf for a couple of years.  This particular ESV is the Thinline, and I picked it up at Costco for about $10 on a whim (which is a good deal considering its current price on Amazon).

If you want, you can click past the break for the pictures & project description.

Update: I added an electronic copy of the cover I created in Word.  The link is at the bottom of the article.

So the basic approach was to take the Bible to Staples and ask them, “Can you chop the binding off a Bible and then rebind it?”  They replied, without hesitation, “Sure.  Why not?”  This is far-and-away a much easier approach than Mr. Reinke’s (he recommends a table-saw and a pair of custom clamps.)  The gentleman at the counter pulled out an X-Acto knife, and within five minutes had the Trutone (read: pleather) cover removed (though he preserved the front & back in case I wanted them) and the stitched binding sheared off.  For an additional charge, he chopped a stack of printer paper to identical proportions, and I went home happy.

I spent that evening listening to the Golden Globes (I still can’t believe Inception lost to Facebook: The Movie), and sticking blank pages between every printed page, w/ a few extras at the front of each book (for outlines/key terms/author/date/etc), and after about 6 hours, I had the whole thing ready in three stacks.

Problem: Staples (and AlphaGraphics, and Kinkos) can’t ring-bind 2″ stacks made of tissue paper, so it was back to the table to break it out into five portions.  I have it broken down into the Pentateuch, the Histories, the Wisdom Literature, the Prophets, and the New Testament.  This feels good, and it binds well.  I took it back to Staples yesterday and picked the whole thing up this morning.  They had only two pages (at the beginning of Luke) kick out during the binding process, but they were able to re-insert those at the correct location.

As for the covers, I made those on Word because I’ve just got mad-skillz with Microsoft Word.  I lifted the ESV logo from their site, which I think is probably fair-use, since I bought the Bible and since I’m going to add the following phrase to this page: You should buy an ESV Bible!  There, that should cover any legal issues, probably.

The total cost of this project was right around $30.  I paid a little extra to have the nice, leatherette backing board bound onto these volumes, and I’d recommend it if you’re considering a similar project.  Total time invested–maybe 7 hours counting trips to and from the Staples.  Let me know if you do something similar; I’d be interested in hearing how it turns out.

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

UPDATE: The cover I created is available as a downloadable Word 97-03 or a Word 2007 file.  Feel free to edit or modify it as you see fit.

In the meantime, wonder with me at the reality of this Masonic Bible, discovered during a recent visit to Half-Price Books.

This really exists. I’m not sure how or why.

At least it had some excellent drawings of Solomon’s Temple.

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

Maybe I’ll do a post on how I’ve got my office set up once it’s ready to go, and then I’ll add a bunch of words like “GTD” and “productivity” and “maximum efficiency” and “lifehack” in order to get all of the “I need to be productive, so I’ll read the tubes all day to learn about productivity rather than actually working” traffic.  If what I just said makes no sense to you, then be thankful.  You probably get stuff done.

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

The flooring is this stuff from Floor & Decor, and it looks nicer than we both expected.  However, the whole “Click-Lock” thing should be renamed to “Click-Mutterangrily-Retry-Poundwithyourfistandcry-Lock.”  We had hoped to finish the office today, but our car broke down yesterday morning, and so we had to get that into a shop and deal with the repairs before we moved on to the flooring.  We made okay progress, and we’ll probably be finished by the end of the week.  I’ll post more pictures when the floor is in and the furniture is set up.

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

Julie, this one’s for you!

It’s been a busy stretch since graduation, with us placing some increased time into initiating a couple new ministries at Mayer, both of us working hard on remodeling the kitchen (pictures will follow in a future post!), and the search for a second job for Dan.  So, when he said that he felt like he was getting grumpy about things he wouldn’t normally feel grumpy about, we decided to take a brief break over the Labor Day weekend to sit on the beach in San Diego and do absolutely nothing.  The whole sitting and doing nothing thing lasted for about an hour and a half before we decided it would be nice to move around a bit, and so we visited a few places we haven’t taken the time to visit in the past–namely, we spent an afternoon at Balboa Park and a morning at La Jolla.  The rest of the pictures are below.

The first picture is of the Broken Yolk Challenge.  No, to answer David J.’s first question, that’s not Dan eating that meal (his dad learned that lesson for all of them).  It’s an insane meal, so we’ll just put a link to the restaurant’s website, and insert their own description here:

The Broken Yolk Challenge

Broken Yolk Café Special (For the iron man or woman)

A dozen-egg omelet filled with mushrooms, onions, American cheese and smothered with our chili and more cheese. On the other half of a 15-inch pizza pan is a generous pile of homefries and two biscuits.

The Broken Yolk Special is Free if you eat it all within an hour.

After breakfast, we wandered around the Gaslamp District, picked up some unique San Diego Starbuck’s Coffee, and then headed over to Balboa Park.  We’ve included a picture of the huge Organ Palace for Julie’s sake–they still have weekly organ concerts, which Dan thinks is ridiculous.

The other photos are of the Botanical Gardens, the Japanese Gardens and the various park facilities. The park on Labor Day Weekend was the location of choice for weddings and quinceañeras, and every group arrived in style–we loved the last group, which rolled up in some classic Chevys appropriately modified with hydraulic bounce kits.

As you can see, we didn’t walk side by side at La Jolla.  We just stared at each other and drank coffee while the surfers wandered by.  And, of course, we should thank Dave & Trish for hosting–you were great!

Grace & Peace,
Dan & Anna J.

Our irrigation runs have been less than pleasant in the last year.  The water fails to reach the front yard and instead, it blows out our berms and floods our back patio and driveway.  This is great if we have a dirty driveway.  It’s less great if we want a green lawn in the front yard.

Part of the problem is that our side yard is fairly narrow.  Another part of the problem is that we set our shed in such a way that it further constricted the flow of water through our side yard.  So, we moved the shed, and as you can see in the pictures, we’ve started a planter in the shed’s original location.  The run that came immediately after this change went much better; our whole front yard was watered, and our back patio remained mostly dry.  We’ve just picked up some glysophate to destroy any growth in the planter and to prepare it for Anna’s grand vision.  (I think she’s going with succulents.)

The other issue to address was the ditch itself.  It was simply a dirt trench, and the sides have slowly washed out over the last few years.  So, we’re widening it and then dropping in retaining walls on both sides.  When we’re done, it should be as narrow (or a little narrower) than when we started.  This will help keep the water pressure a little more “pressure-y.”  Our next run is in two days, so we’ll need to get this done soon.

Anyhow, if you’re in Phoenix soon, and you’re feeling handy with a shovel, you’re welcome to stop by and help move some dirt.  We’ll even make you some iced tea!

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

My Office Away From Home

Well, it’s not long now before this view becomes a thing of the past.  Ah, who am I kidding, I’ll be a Starbucks junkie for a while to come.

My plans for after graduation?  Well, that’s a good question and I’m so glad you asked.

1. Finish the kitchen ceiling
2. Dig out, repair and shore-up the irrigation ditch
3. Read everything in my library (well, maybe not everything)
4. Go camp for two days and just rest, pray, and eat some homemade chili

At least, those are my plans…I might just sleep for two weeks instead.

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

In light of that fact–that there are only 35 days left for me to write 5 term papers, read two books, and prep for two finals–I’m going to get back to work.  I’ll make up for the short post with pictures.

Grace & Peace,
Dan J.

Grace & Peace,
Dan & Anna Julian