Colorful Soap

Apologies for the slightly fuzzy picture--I took it with my Blackberry

Henry, our four-year-old, is a recent convert to the potty set. One persisting struggle, however, is getting him to wash his hands. He informed me the other day that it would be more appealing if we had "colorful" soap. Colorful has long been one of his favorite words. We had just purchased to jumbo sized (80 ounces each) bottles of clear liquid anti-bacterial soap from Costco, which were thrillingly cheap--something like $6 for both--so I wasn't too thrilled about the idea of going out and buying a little bottle of something colorful, much less paying what seams like an unreasonably jacked up price at one of NYC's over-priced drugstores. (I know I sound cheap. I'm actually not. I just don't like feeling had.)

So we came up with a solution. Paul had bought a clear glass soap dispenser for the kitchen, which we had already filled with the clear soap. Then we added four or five drops of blue food coloring--Henry's choice of color. I shook it to try to get the soap dispersed throughout. At first it looked like a cat's eye marble. But by the next morning, the color had penetrated the entire bottle. I tried washing my hands with it and though it did come out blue, it didn't stain my hands blue. So now we have colorful soap, and we can make a new color anytime, when we get bored with blue. Next time, I'll add just a couple drops. Our blue is on the navy/purple side--a little darker than I'd like.