The Goddess Professor Speaks

The last time I blogged about baby wipes, I mentioned that I'd be making a new batch with different ingredients because 1) mineral oil (the base of baby oil) is not good for babies and kids and 2) while all in one baby washes are awesome, they too can be harmful for kids due to some of the chemicals commonly used in them.  Now, I'm not naive to think that I can completely rid my life, family, and home of chemicals.  But I learned a valuable lesson from my mom years ago: "you learn better, you do better."  I know a bit better now, so I'm trying to do better. So, in trying to do a different mixture, I again, set out to find the best and easiest recipes.  I found two that I've sort of combined to make my own.  They come from the Kitchen Stewardship and DIYNatural websites. From the ingredients on their websites, I developed this ingredient list: 1-1/4 C. of water (boiled then cooled a bit) 1 T of lavender liquid castile soap 1/2 t. of Vitamin E oil 2

We've been in the full swing of Lent for a few weeks now, St. Patrick's Day is coming soon, it's Women's History Month, and Black History Month was last month.  Are these things being celebrated in our culture or patronized by companies trying to sell us stuff? Since Lent began last month, everywhere you turn someone is offering a special on some sort of fish: McDonald's has new McFish Bites (REALLY not inclined to try them), Wendy's and Hardee's (and I'm sure others) are promoting their Alaskan Cod sandwiches, among other fish specials at other places.  Plus, there's the Shamrock Shake that McDonald's offers every year.  As far as I know, I'm not Irish so I can't speak from personal feelings on this, but I always cringe a bit whenever I see these shakes and wonder if people who are Irish hate these, love these, or don't really think about it. It's now March, and since St. Patrick's day is coming soon, everywhere you t

Life can offer some incredible highs and deep, horrendous lows . (If you're in a relatively good mood, or are already in a depressed mood, you may want to stop reading now.)   Wednesday, I had wonderful and reflective conversations with two people.  One a former student who is in the prime of her life; has an honest, wonderful, and growing relationship with Christ; and is figuring out things that people at least 10 years older than her aren't always fortunate enough to figure out. The other conversation was with an awesome colleague.  We started discussing work-related matters, but towards the end, I reminded her that she was one of the first people I connected with in my first semester of grad school.  Grad school is the time of my life that I grew up, became me, found my voice and purposes in life, so I feel quite blessed and fortunate to still be friends with folks I met during those years, esp. since I'm not still close to many people I met during undergrad--other tha

The beginnings of my DIY-land adventures began with making my son's food when he was a baby and it kind of fell off for awhile, but on Christmas Eve, I had a very interesting conversation with my sisters and brothers that sparked my recent adventures.  It was about detergent. While sitting around Momma's table joking, singing, eating on Christmas Eve, my brother mentions that his wife (who hadn't yet arrived) got him into using homemade laundry soap.  So, my sister gets there and she tells us her mom has been making laundry soap for years and her mom parcels it out to everyone because she makes 5 gallons at a time.  By then, my interest was seriously piqued.  "Makes laundry soap?  Hmmm?"  We inquired about the difficulty.  My sister said it wasn't too difficult. So, I promptly started googling for details the next day.  My other sister and I were talking about seriously getting into making the soap once we saw it wasn't that difficult. Fast forward to

On my quest to cut costs and figure out better alternatives to things we use daily, I did a lot of research on the easiest and best ways to make homemade laundry detergent. I don't approach anything hastily.  Before actually making the soap, I searched on countless pages to figure out what would be the easiest method to follow and the most cost efficient. The first websites I found showed how to make 5 gallons of soap.  I feared making this much at once because what if it went wrong?  Then I'd have 5 gallons of crap to toss out.  And I'm not super environmental, but tossing out 5 gallons of any mixed product cannot be good for the environment or waterways although wherever you toss it may smell great for awhile. I finally found an awesome website that offered easy directions and a 2 gallon method.  It was WhyNotSew.  I loved this page because the directions were really easy to follow, and I wasn't tied to using one specific type of soap.  Lots of websites report

My adventure in actually making stuff really began after my first son was born.   Prior to him being born, I started researching on products I could make to save money.  I researched homemade baby wipes, homemade baby food, using cloth diapers, and all sorts of other stuff.  I ended up only making the homemade food at the time. When I first began making his food, it was more about saving money than avoiding chemicals or being super organic or something like that.  After slowly becoming more cognizant of the crap that's in the foods we consume, I set out on a mission to make most of his baby food.  If I had to buy his food, it was organic  unless  we were in a dire situation (travelling on the road and only a convenience store shelf of regular baby food was available).  I bought the baby food books, the little baby food ice cube type trays, lived on  WholesomeBabyFood.com , and happily told anyone who asked about his food and my methods.  The food adventure was fun, economical, a