Using the DiY Castile Soap Bundle

Customize and make your own natural soap with Casa de Lorenzo DiY Castile Soap bundle. Mix in anything you’d like to add and have it your way. You can add fruit extracts, green tea, beer, honey or even melted chocolate. Your imagination is the only limit to making your very own soap.

Directions:

1. Pour Casa de Lorenzo Liquid Castile Soap in a clean bowl (stainless, ceramic, or glass will do).
2. Put your chosen additives and mix well. Limit your additives from 5-15% of total volume. Example: 90% Liquid Castile Soap and 10% brewed green tea.
3. If you’re adding fruit juices or extracts you squeezed out yourself, make sure you strain it before mixing. If you’re adding tea, you may brew it first in reduced water before adding (ex: 4 tea bags in 1 cup of water). If you’re adding honey or beer, just mix it in. You may even choose to put tea leaves or herbs directly on to the soap and let it stay for 24-48 hours before straining out the leaves (but a week is better).
4. Put a few drops of essential oils to scent your soap and mix really well. A mixer or wire whisk can help things go faster. Sometimes essential oils can thicken the soap when added, all you need to do is just add a little water and mix well until you reach the desired consistency.
5. Once done, put it in a dispenser and start enjoying your soap!
6. Since what you’d be using are all organic ingredients (they can spoil over time) and we’re not recommending putting preservatives on soaps, make sure you make small batches at a time and use it up for one or two so your soap won’t go bad.
7. Any questions? Email us at order@thecasadelorenzo.com or give us a call: 0939-919-2916 (Smart) or 0917-608-1219 (Globe).

Pili and Passionfruit Seed Oil Soaps

Every year, we try to come up with something different. Something we haven't really done before and something really distinct. Its a tradition we've been doing for the past few years, even before we've started selling soaps. This year, we made bar soaps made of Pili Oil and Passionfruit Seed Oil, along with Coconut and Palm Oils.

We wanted something very local, but at the same time having an exotic appeal. So we decided its time to use the Passionfruit seed oil we've extracted some time ago and we got ourselves some Pili pulp oil. The result is a very expensive and very exotic bar soap that is cleansing and at the same time very moisturizing.

Since the price prohibits us from making a lot, and there's not much source of passionfruit seed oil locally, we've decided its going to our private holiday giveaway. Hopefully, in the near future we can start making soaps with rare oils like the one on the bars we've just made.

12 Days of Christmas Giveaway

We're so excited its the season for giving again! And as our way of giving back to everyone, we've prepared exciting perks and freebies all throughout the 12 days of Christmas. We're changing the giveaways daily from December 1-12 so keep checking our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and our promo page to find out.

We like to keep it plain and simple. All you have to do finalize your order with us from 9am to 5pm and the bonus of the day will be yours! If orders are received after 4:30 pm, there's a chance it will be processed the next day, and the bonus of the day of processing will be applied.

Give us a call at 0917-6081219 (Globe) or 0939-9192916 (Smart) for any clarifications and for faster reply.

Happy holidays!

Growing Lavender in the Philippines Update 1

As promised here's our update regarding our Lavender Officinalis plant. 2 months after we've posted that we're trying to grow lavender, a lot of its leaves started to dry out. Here's a look of how she's doing:

A month ago, we noticed an increase of leaves turning brown, and this was around the time that Metro Manila was getting more rainfall so we carefully re-potted the plant to a clay pot. It helped a bit, but typhoon Lando came and the noticeable impact of too much water showed. More than 50% of the leaves suddenly began to grow limp and a few days later, they just went brown. We've also tried spraying the plant with foliar, in case the roots are not functioning anymore and it seemed to have helped. A major concern right now is that there has been sporadic rains which may aggravate the case further inspite of a potting medium with very good drainage.

To sum up, here's a few things we've surmised while we're taking care of the plant:

1. Lavender is such a sensitive plant. Slight changes affect it a lot.
2. Protect the roots from too much water. Rain doesn't seem to do the plant much good, especially if it soaks up the area where its roots are. Controlling the water is essential to the plant's survival. Watering every 2 days may work, and using less water is best practice in this case.
3. Avoid moving the plant constantly. It seemed to hate being moved from one place to another because we're hiding it from the rain. Perhaps a cover during rains may work instead.
4. Lavender likes the sun. It can survive with partial sun, but if there's a place where it can get full sun, the better. If the plant is just getting partial sun, take it easy on watering a bit further.
5. Foliar spray may have help the plant if you want to give it a boost of nutrients.

Hopefully, our plant survives this bout and no one accidentally waters it out of schedule. Nevertheless, whatever the outcome of our plant will be, we're already working on preparing for our next batch of lavender plants. We've recently bought lavender seeds and made plans for a mini greenhouse so we can apply what we've learned better.

DIY Castile Soap Bundle

We're excited to share to everyone our DIY bundle! It comes with 1 Liter Liquid Castile Soap and (2) 10mL bottles of essential oils. Now you can create your own soaps with any ingredients you can possibly imagine and make something you can call your own.

The possibilities are quite endless. With 8 essential oils to choose from, you can make different mixes and enjoy a variety of scents for your soap. Add ingredients like fruit extracts, additional oils and scrubs to spice up the benefits of your own natural soap, just don't overdo it. Here's the list of soaps and essential oils you can choose from:

Castile Soap Variant	Essential Oils
Choose one	Choose two (different oils only)
Manila Castile Soap	Calamansi Essential Oil
	Lemongrass Essential Oil
Moisturizing Castile Soap	Citronella Essential Oil
	Eucalyptus Essential Oil
Cleansing Castile Soap	Peppermint Essential Oil
	Tea Tree Oil Essential Oil
	Lavender Essential Oil

So start making your very own natural soap today, get in touch to get your DIY Castile Soap Bundle.

Growing Lavender in the Philippines

We've heard from a lot of people about growing Lavender in the Philippines. They tell us a lot of stories about how they themselves or their friends tried making the plant survive here in the country, and ultimately giving up on it. Why try? Because Lavender is such an amazing plant. Aside from the fact that it is one of the most well-known and widely used flower in the world (it surpassed roses a long time ago because of price and availability), real Lavender is but a delight to the senses. And because we dream of being able to grow our own Lavender, we are also trying.

Any species of Lavender doesn't thrive naturally in the tropics, but they can, as proven by a handful few. Cultivating them here in the country, will definitely be an uphill climb because the odds are bigger than the chances. The plant doesn't like being soaked frequently, loves a cool climate, thrives well under a good amount of sun and a dozen other factors that nags everyone to drop the idea and find other things to grow. But we'd like to try swimming against the current.

To build our confidence, we bought ourselves a 4 or 6 month old seedling of English Lavender (Lavandula Officinalis) to check our green thumbs. That was 2 months ago. Here she is now:

People seem to have understood the needs of Lavender because where we bought the seedling, they potted the plant on a high drainage potting medium which the plant seemed to be enjoying. Seeing it grow and mature in the past 60 days has been kind of a roller coaster ride. There are times when the leaves would be uptight and proud, such a happy sight. There are times when its leaves will droop low, and we'd get concerned. But now, she's going good. Her major stem is turning woody, the leaves are proliferating and the shoots are continually appearing. Whenever we pluck the damaged or drying out leaves, crushing it on our fingers releases a delightful fragrance, assuring us its going to be alright.

So we decided to take it to the next level: growing Lavender from seeds. We tried the English Lavender Munstead variant, and out of the about 200 seeds we planted, about 15 sprouted. However, because of the unpredictable weather in the past weeks and a lot of other factors, it went down to 3 yesterday and as of checking a while ago, one more wilted out. So here's one of the survivors:

All of these are just very small trials, as we are dreaming of growing a lot of Lavender locally and getting extracts or essential oils. By the looks of it, seems like we have a long, long way to go in improving the survival success of the plant. If it won't thrive well in a more or less controlled environment, how will it fare on a more hostile environment out in a field? Indeed, it takes a lot of patience, but once flowers will bloom, it will definitely be a statement it was worth all the effort.

Some Reviews of our Castile Soaps

Just a quick post to share some reviews done by our blogger friends who took some time off their busy schedules to try out our Lemongrass Manila Castile Soap and the newest Coffee Dark Castile Soap. Read their blogs to see what they think of our soaps :)

by Rebel Sweetheart
http://www.therebelsweetheart.com/

by Pensive Thoughts
http://www.pensivethoughts.com

by Mama Nees
http://www.mamaneesnest.com

by eSuperMommy
http://www.esupermommy.com

by Mum Writes
http://www.mum-writes.com

by Lhyzie Bongon
http://lhyziebongon.com

by Pinay Mommy Online
http://www.esupermommy.com









We will update this page once the other reviews come in. Thanks for reading!

Where to Buy Castile Soaps in the Philippines?

Liquid Castile Soap or Bar?

There's a lot of people looking where to buy castile soaps in the Philippines. And of course, there's a lot of choices and finding what you need won't be a huge challenge. First, one must decide whether its bar or liquid castile soap. Both are "castile soaps" and are natural, but always read the labels of the ingredients to make sure all ingredients are natural and organic in nature.

If the choice is liquid castile soap, look no further because there are a lot of ways to get yourself a bottle without the hassle.

You can always get your liquid castile soap needs with us, just fill up an order form on our website and we'll take it from there. We can also be messaged via SMS (0939-919-2916) or email (order@thecasadelorenzo.com) and we deliver to virtually anywhere in the Philippines. Casa de Lorenzo also offers the widest selection of soap variants and sizes, ranging from a type made purely of Olive Oil soap to a cleansing mix of Rice Bran Oil soap, Virgin Coconut Oil soap and Palm Oil soap. You can get it scented or for the DIY enthusiasts, unscented. We also provide it in 250mL, 500mL, 1 Liter and 1 Gallon sizes, so take your pick.

Our Newest: Coffee Castile Soap

We're proud to announce the release of our newest liquid soap variant: the Dark Castile Soaps. As it's name implies, it is darker than the usual soaps we make. One might be shocked at the contents of every Dark Castile Soap bottle because it is literally almost black. But don't be fooled by appearances, .

The first among the variants is the Coffee Dark Castile. For our love of coffee, the way it wakes us up during mornings, and how it makes us jumpstart our day, we thought we'd carry that over in the shower. We've been trying to make this soap happen for more than a year now, and it was just recent that we're satisfied with it so we're now sharing it to everyone.

Pricelist Updated as of March 2015

We've recently updated our pricelist. Kindly click on the images below to see the latest pricing of our products!

There's no changes in the prices of our locally made castile soaps. As for the essential oils there's been some updates on the pricing. The Philippine Essential Oils are also updated, but bigger volumes will definitely save you a lot.

We're Crazy About Coffee!

Like millions of people around the world, we're taking our love for coffee to the next level!

Us here at Casa de Lorenzo, makers of Liquid Castile Soap in the Philippines, are brewing something that will change the way everyone will wake up to mornings. We know that coffee is an important part of our every day life, and we've seen how coffee has been a distinct part of our history back in the Spanish days so we've decided to make coffee enjoyable as well in our products.

Did you know that the Philippines used to be a top producer of coffee in the world? Our country used to grow Liberica coffee, known to produce bigger beans and stronger coffee aroma and flavor, thus the "Kapeng Barako" name was coined to the coffee grown in the southern part of Luzon.

Watch out very soon for the newest addition to our natural products.