Pinterest Project: That One Time When We Microwaved a Bar of Ivory Soap

Some life-saving, boredom-busting ideas have sprung from Pinterest in the last few days. Although Blue has been accompanying me to Playground Crossfit Mommies (which is waaaaay harder than it may sound) and then to pre-pre-preschool camp for an hour afterwards, we have about 3 hours after his nap to fill with something other than Curious George episodes and constant trips to the pool. So, we've made moon dough, homemade bubbles, and cornstarch goo. Yesterday, we made liquid chalk and painted an entire scene from Thomas the Train before the clouds opened up and washed it down the driveway.

Today, I decided to put a bar of Ivory soap (yes, it apparently has to be Ivory) in the microwave for 2 minutes...all at the persuasive urging of another mommy blogger. Do it, she said. It will be fun, she said. The kids will be entertained for hours, she said. So, we stood in front of the microwave for 2 minutes and watched a rather unassuming bar of Ivory become a massive soap cloud. A very, very hot soap cloud. It looked exactly like this:

OK, that's a really crappy picture. But my deepest Tupperware container was overflowing with a cloud of pretty white.

I gave it to Blue. "Here. Go play with this. The only rule is, you can't eat it." And then I sat down beside him and went through the mail. His hours of fun lasted about 6 minutes and made the most ridiculous powdery mess all over the patio, the patio furniture and the 4 Amazon boxes that had just been delivered. Although, to be fair, our patio is very very silky smooth now. I don't have any pictures of the during or after play but trust me when I say this project is cool in concept but not so much worth the trouble of clean-up after the fun is over. I had to pull the hose around to the front of the house to clean the patio and I have a feeling it's like New Year's Eve confetti...we are going to be find flakes of dehydrated Ivory for months to come. The silver lining to this Ivory cloud is that it motivated me to clean my microwave tonight, for fear of poisoning my family during the reheating of leftovers. I had been putting that task off for at least 2 months.

And in retrieving the original pin, I re-read the blog post, as well. Apparently, (as happens quite often with me) I read the first 2 paragraphs about how to do it and paid zero attention to the part where she said "it's only entertaining for about 3 minutes. It will fall to pieces in a cloud of soap dust so maybe just give them the whole big thing and put them in the tub. OR rehydrate it and make it into homemade soap." Yeah, that would've been cool. So, we will give this another shot using her suggestions. I'm thinking that if I can find a way to make "homemade" soap out of this, I just may put Blue to work on the Christmas gift baskets for this year!
Click HERE to get the original pin from Our Best Bites.