Coffee soap - for kitchen, thighs or garden?

I have a lot of soaps.  Lots of different soaps, that is.  Having made soaps almost every weekend since September, at least two recipes each time and practically never the same recipes I must have made somewhere between 40 and 50 recipes of soap.  That's a lot of soap!  And I haven't tried them all yet.

I know that sounds strange.  I intended to try them all, but I usually pick a soap that appeals to me and then I like it a lot and use it until its gone.  And then I pick another one.  I have finally learned to make little balls of soap out of the spills and use those, or off cuts to test the soaps for feel (and PH) but some I haven't tried at all.  Especially the first ones that I made.  So now I am spoilt for choise.

One that I haven't tried before, but just pulled out is the coffee soap.  I got the idea when I had made a coffee face cream.  I had originally thought that the caffein could be a great astringent and would work well in a cream.  Either a body lotion or a face cream and then... Eureka!  Coffee soap.  That must be great for cellulite, I thought.  Of course Google told me that everybody else had already made coffee soaps (so not that original - ok!) but I also found out that Coffee soap was considered a great neutralizer of odors and therefore best used in the kitchen.  I guess that is one of the reasons I haven't tried it already.  I have a steel soap (no! no lye in that) that I use in the kitchen and that works great!

The recipe is pretty simple.  Just use coffee as a liquid for the lye in your favorite recipe. It gives the soap a nice neutral brown colour and a wonderful smokey coffee scent.  I didn't add anything to it, not fragrance, not colour but some may want to embellish the coffee scent with some vanilla or orange or mint.  I think those would all go well with coffee.  I did put in some ground coffee (unused) to a part of the soap.  I intended that to work as a scrub on those thighs, but I guess they also serve to change my cellulite soap into a gritty gardeners soap too.

However I haven't given up the idea that Coffee soap should be a great wake up shower soap AND could do wonders for those lumpy thighs!  I have a lot to look forward to.

And I promise that if the thighs turn out to be photo worthy I'll post a picture :) - (I wouldn't hold your breath, though.  As much as I believe in my soaps I don't think they'll perform minor miracles (or should that be major?).)

Oh well, here is to hoping!

The photo: That metal dish is one of my flea market finds.  I usually pay about 1-3 dollars for each piece.  The pine cones I collect from the two large pines that grow in front of the house.