Soaps, Sinks, and "Something"...

Today is the day before we get to finally meet our little man!  So, how does one spend the last day of being a "non-parent"?  Well, Garrick is at the doctor's office for a follow-up to his Kidney Stone "issues" about six months ago (of course, he thinks he has another one as well, so it's a good thing to be doing).  My Mom and I are here at the house while a plumber installs my new sink and garbage disposal!  We talked about doing it ourselves, but with the height differences in the sinks, the drains not being directly across from each other, and a few other "oddities", it was just easier to hire someone who knows what they are doing!  We did manage to get the clothesline post in the ground all by ourselves yesterday though, so we aren't complete "newbs" at the home improvement type stuff!  I highly recommend the "Quick-crete" that you just dump in the hole filled with water, that it awesome stuff and you don't have to mix it!

Another thing we may get to today is laundry soap making...I still have 3 gallons of the Ivory Soap stuff I made a while back (in April or May), but I remembered it last night while I was at the store, so I bought another 3-pack of bar soap.  This time though, I got Kirk's Original Coco Castile Soap...this is a soap made with no animal fats (coconut oil, "coconut soap" (made by a chemical reaction between lye and coconut oil and a few other things I'm sure), and a thing or two more)...more information on this soap can be found in the FAQ section of the company's webite, www.kirksnatural.com.  More importantly, I won't have to panic if a diaper ends up in the "regular" wash once my soap doesn't contain Ivory anymore! 

I'll take the added cost to not have to spend days and days (okay, hours and hours) stripping diapers again!  In my post, here, I broke down the cost of making my laundry soap based on what I paid for the ingredients used.  To the right is my price breakdown.  The difference with this soap lies in the soap costs, $3.49 for a 3-pack of Kirk's Castile as opposed to the $1.69 I paid for a 3-pack of Ivory.  That brings the total cost for materials to $11.92 for six batches of laundry soap (at 2 gallons per batch, making at least 64 loads)!  I also have used the Borax and Washing Soda to make many other things, including the powdered Cloth Diaper Detergent that I discussed here.  So, that averages out to $0.031 per load (assuming we get 64 loads out of each 2-gallon batch, we get more out of some batches and less out of others).  I have a coupon sitting on my desk from a few weeks ago for Tide...32 loads for $5.99 (or $0.187 per load)!  I am still saving money, that's what counts! 

If I price out a single batch of the "new" laundry soap using Kirk's...

• Borax (4 ounces) - $0.19
• Washing Soda (4 ounces) - $0.23
• Kirk's Castile (1 bar) - $1.16

That's $1.58 for a 2 gallon batch (assuming 64 loads), that's $0.025 per load!  A full penny more than with Ivory soap...but let's see you get 64 loads of laundry done with Tide for only $1.58...without being an extreme couponer (those ladies are totally nuts in my "oh so humble" opinion)!

A few days ago, I went out to spend some quality time with the chickens after they went to bed (the only time they let me near them anymore).  Poor Clyde is molting big time!  She decided it was "easiest" to drop all her feathers at once and then grow them in...or at least that's what it looks like.  She has no tail feathers at all!  Okay, she has pin feathers growing in, but she looks rumpless at the moment...  See how rough she looks compared to Henri in the photo(sorry for the blurry chicken head, they don't like to hold still much)?

And of course, it wouldn't be two days before the baby's here without a trip last night to Labor & Delivery's triage!  My Blood Pressure spiked last night while out doing some grocery shopping...  I stopped by the machine inside Fred Meyer to get an estimate because I suddenly had a headache and was unsure if it was pressure or sugar related.  When I saw these numbers (photo to the left), I went to test my blood sugar (120)!  Of course, a call into the on-call doctor meant I had to go in...  We spent almost 2 hours hooked up to the monitors (baby hates the monitors and spent the whole time trying to kick them off) before the on-call OB decided to just give me an extra 100mg of my blood pressure meds and send me home for the night.  Little man succeeded in kicking off the fetal monitor about 30 seconds before the nurse came in to remove them...which, of course, set off the alarms when his heart rate was lost.  My blood pressure never did fall much under what I took a photo of at Fred Meyer...and I think the nurse was actually surprised at how accurate it was (she admonished me for using it when we first got there).

 

Here is the new sink all installed! We had the disposal put in the smaller sink on the right (closer to the wall switch that runs it) and the bright green thing in it is designed to keep silverware and the like from getting down in the disposal, but still lets the water pass.  Most of the soaps on the left will fade away as we empty the partial bottles...the thing way over on the right side is a soap dispenser!  In fact...I may go put those two partial bottles under the sink for now (the purple one is what I make my "Gardner's Scrub" with (the glass jar next to it)...of course, I use it mor for scrubbing gunk out of pans when it's baked on then I do for cleaning my hands after gardening, but ya know...  I can't wait to give somebody a bath in it!

So, don't expect any news from me in the next few days...baby will be here in less than 24 hours!  Whoever guessed he'd be here the week of 10/10 was right!  Go you, who ever you are!  We're scheduled to begin the c-section at 7:30 tomorrow morning and I'm going to (hopefully) have someone update on Facebook soon after he's here (give or take an hour or so).  If not, I'll get around to it "eventually", ha!

Until then, I'm gonna go try out a low-carb (sugar free, gluten free) recipe for Halloween Cutout Cookies!  I love making cut out style cookies...and getting to use my ~100 cookie cutters is a definite bonus!