Burt's Bees Baby Bee Liquid Soap Recipe

First of all, I can't even explain to you how excited I am right now to have been able to make this. I spend a fortune on soap for my kids because I refuse to use anything with chemicals and to have just made a gallon of this stuff for less than $8.00 is totally blowing my mind!

Here's what you will need:

• 2 bars (7 oz total) of Burt's Bees Baby Bee Buttermilk Soap
• 14 cups of water
• Grater
• Large pot, big enough to hold a gallon of liquid
• Empty container big enough to hold 1 gallon

Directions:

1. Grate both bars of soap onto a cutting board
2. Heat 14 cups of water in your large pot on the stove
3. Add soap shavings and heat until all soap is completely dissolved
4. Stir and remove from heat
5. Let stand for at least 24 hours
6. Your soap is done!

Notes:

• The soap should be the consistency of snot. Sorry....but it's true. If it's too firm, add more water.
• I used an electric hand mixer to "smooth" the soap before putting it in my jug
• Ladle the soap into the jug using a funnel, attempting to pour the soap into the funnel will result in lots of soap on your countertops.
• After washing my hands with the soap, they felt incredibly squeaky clean. I am thinking that the soap needs some oil added but am not sure how well that will go over. Next time I make this I will be using Baby Bee Apricot Oil in my recipe and will update ASAP.

I want to add that this was my second attempt at making liquid soap from bar soap. The first time I used a bar of Kiss My Face and it was a disaster...basically soap water. I thought I could use it to clean my floors but it left a film so I ended up scrubbing the deck with it. I was a bit reluctant going into this round of soap making fearing that the soap wouldn't turn out. PLEASE comment on this recipe if you can think of any modifications or ways that it can be made better!

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Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent

Turn this:

Into this:

What you will need:

• 1/3 bar of Fels Naptha
• 1/2 cup Washing Soda
• 1/2 cup Borax
• Grater
• 2 gallon bucket
• Water
• Empty detergent bottles.  Ask your friends and family to save theirs and pass them along to you if you don't have any! 

Directions:

1. Heat the Fels Naptha until all of the soap shavings have completely dissolved. 
2. Once the Fels Naptha has dissolved,  add the 1/2 cup of borax and the 1/2 cup of washing soda into the saucepan. Stir the mixture until the borax and washing soda are completely dissolved and mixed.
3. In your 2 gallon bucket, add 4 cups of hot water.  
4. Carefully pour your Fels Naptha/Borax/Washing Soda mixture from the saucepan into the bucket and stir. 
5. Add 1 gallon and 6 cups of water into the bucket and stir.  
6. Leave the soap rest for at least 24 hours.  During this time, the soap mixture will gel and your liquid laundry detergent is finished!

Use 1/2 cup of your homemade liquid laundry detergent per load.  

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Oobleck Recipe

Recipe For Oobleck:

- 1 cup water

- 2 cups corn starch
- Few drops of food coloring of your choice (We used blue)


Oobleck is a Non-Newtonian Fluid that got it's name from the book titled Bartholomew and the Oobleck written by Dr. Seuss. But what is a Non-Newtonian Fluid you might ask? Here is a brief explanation I found on wikipedia.com.

A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid whose flow properties differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids. Most commonly the viscosity(resistance to deformation or other forces) of non-Newtonian fluids are dependant on shear rate or shear rate history. However, there are some non-Newtonian fluids with shear-independent viscosity, that nonetheless exhibit normal stress-differences or other non-Newtonian behaviour. Many salt solutions and molten polymers are non-Newtonian fluids, as are many commonly found substances such as ketchup, custard,toothpaste, starch suspensions, paint, blood, and shampoo. In a Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the shear rate is linear, passing through the origin, the constant of proportionality being the coefficient of viscosity. In a non-Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the shear rate is different, and can even be time-dependent. Therefore a constant coefficient of viscosity cannot be defined.

Therefore, although the concept of viscosity is commonly used in fluid mechanics to characterize the shear properties of a fluid, it can be inadequate to describe non-Newtonian fluids. They are best studied through several other rheological properties which relate stress and strain rate tensors under many different flow conditions, such as oscillatory shear, or extensional flow which are measured using different devices or rheometers. The properties are better studied using tensor-valued constitutive equations, which are common in the field of continuum mechanics.

Got that? Me neither! But once you mix up the above concoction I assure that you and your children will have a much better understanding of what a Non-Newtonian fluid is!