Wow! I am collecting supplies as we speak, and have been for awhile, to start making homemade soap. The problem I had was the lye and you totally helped me with the video. My husband has been to quite a few stores (including the farm supply stores) and hasn't been able to locate the lye. He was told the reason it is so hard to find is the "meth" making that you spoke of in the video. Who knew?? Well, besides the meth makers, of course...Also, your video, with the recipe you are using, seems to shorten the waiting time for hardening the soap by using the oven.

I have purchased 4 books on soap making (always reading the reviews for the best ones) and your video was better than the four books that I purchased on Amazon.com. Why?

1) Because you told where and what kind of lye to look for and even showed the bottle.
2) You showed you can use a cheap olive oil and a cheap coconut oil and told where to purchase them - at Wal-Mart.
3) You can use an inexpensive scale (I paid $40+ dollars for mine to make soap).
4) The containers you use to mold the soaps were not featured in any of my books. Who knew you could use a Pringles can! (Mine with shipping was around $20.)
5) You showed that aluminum could be used to mold soap (which was forbidden in the books) by using plastic wrap in the molds.
6) The oven method was never mentioned in the books. How about that to harden the soap faster?
7) The fragrance that I purchased was $20+ and a cheaper one at that (see why I was collecting the supplies? This was expensive!) but you did not need to have any fragrance in the batch of soap you all made.
8) Thanks for the visual on the tracing. My books did not show the picture of that. I assumed the tracing was exactly like softly whipped cream. But, it was liquid with streaks. That was an important step too.
9) You saved me a bunch of money in not purchasing a heavy duty apron that lye will not eat through, and better gloves than I was going to use.
10) Mostly, you eliminated the fear of the soap making with lye. I was (I hate to admit) afraid to use the lye. The books talk about the lye as if it were nuclear material and if you don't take protection, serious results will happen.

So, not only was this soap making video timely to my life, but it was extremely informative. Kathy and Jeanne, you have done it again - a home run on soap making! I am making soap to put in my food/household items storage. I will use a vacuum sealer to seal the soaps for storage. While I am dehydrating food and vacuum sealing it in vacuum bags with oxygen packs, I am also going to vacuum seal the bars of soap that I make for long term storage.

Thanks for your continued good work and help with the household.

Hugs,