Nightmare before Christmas... when good soap goes bad!

Just when you think you've got it all figured out.....



The soap seizes in the pot! ALL 50 pounds of it! Yes - fifty pounds!
What all was going so well, turned terribly wrong when I used a new pine fragrance the supplier listed as "no CP (cold process) problems." Well, as soon as I added it to my nice little soap mix... BOOM... instant soap in a pot! Oh no! What do I do now??? $#%&(*!

But, I'm good at this soap making thing, right? So, I start thinking oven, like my rebatch shower soap... take it into hot process... but my pot is too big to fit in my oven. So, I put it on my burner - bad idea. I then spoon it into 3 smaller pots and cram them into the oven in my kitchen - yes, my kitchen, where soap is not welcome for a good reason! When it comes to making soap, I'm like a two year old with playdough... OH the aftermath!


Of course I'm in a hurry, because I need to drop off a UPS package before they close. Plus, Sawyer and I have to go to Linds Pharmacy to get Sean a birthday present (which is TOMORROW,) and run to the store for bday cake stuff.... so we leave the soap in the oven, and try to forget about it for a bit.

We come home, after picking Sean up, two hours later. We open the front doors, and SMOKE is billowing out. The whole house smells like PINE! Well, it smells like sage and rosemary too, which isn't too bad... but the smoke! So I turn the oven off, run around the house opening windows, turning on fans, yelling at the kids to go outside and play in the rain. I grab all the molds that I already have ready, and go check out the damage in the oven.


There's three bubbling, overflowing, green cauldrons, so halloween-like, it's scary. They are bubbling all over the oven (I always line with foil, always! But nooooo, this time I had to be in a hurry, didn't I?!) And I've got this new song from The Mother Hips in my head ("There's only one way out, and I'm trying to figure it out...") And the only other thing I can think of is "Oh, please let me get this all cleaned up before Steve comes home!" I end up filling a couple box molds and eight or nine tall 3" PVC pipes. I tell myself, "This is going to be the good stuff, that everyone loves!" I'm such the optimist. I'll just let people think this is how I meant to make it!


Sean looks for my phone to call Daddy, but can't find it, that tattletale. He comments that it's not that smoky, since the smoke detectors didn't go off (oh yea, we took them all off last time they went off... put that on the to-do list.) At least Sean did comment that the whole house smells really good. :-)

Oh and when Steve came home, most of it was cleaned up... so I told him to shut up and make me a drink!