Journey

Easy Lip Balm

- A.E. Howard 6 Comments

So in addition to the hand salve I made the other night, I also followed a recipe from Mountain Rose Herbs and made up a batch of Peppermint Cocoa Lip balm. It smells good enough to eat and is amazing on the lips now that I’ve been using it for a few days. And the guinea pigs friends I gave it to to test it have been giving it good reviews as well!

I plan to give some of this away, plus the recipe makes enough to fill ten lip balm tubes, so you can either save empty ones and re-use, or get these pretty translucent ones from Mountain Rose Herbs as well. I plan to re-use the ones I use for myself, but these are the most convenient in terms of giving the lip balm away. If you prefer small tins they also carry those, but I don’t like having to stick my finger in the lip balm in the middle of the day if my hands aren’t clean.

I’m re-posting their recipe here because the directions need a bit of clarification.  You can find the original here, second recipe down.

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon Cocoa Butter
2 Tablespoons Sweet Almond Oil
1 Tablespoon Avocado Oil
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon Beeswax
12-15 drops Peppermint Essential Oil
A few drops of Vitamin E Oil (optional, but recommended)

Step 1: Coarsely chop the beeswax or use beeswax pastilles. Place Beeswax, Cocoa Butter, Sweet Almond Oil and Avocado in a small pot or glass Pyrex measuring cup and gently heat (I interpreted this as getting the water to a simmer on medium to medium high instead of on high) in the top of a double boiler until the beeswax and butters have melted.

In the pic below, you see the butter and oils melting together in a measuring cup set in a small metal bowl that is over a simmering pan of water, my “double boiler.” This set up works so well (the metal bowl over a sauce pan) that I don’t see the need to every buy an actual double boiler!

Step 2: Once melted, remove from the stovetop and add essential oils and Vitamin E Oil.  To achieve this, I lowered the measuring cup straight into the simmering water for perhaps a minute tops because the beeswax wasn’t getting quite hot enough. It doesn’t seem to have affected the outcome.

Step 3: Immediately pour the mixture into lip balm containers. You can purchase lip balm tubes and jars, or you can reuse glass or plastic containers. Allow to cool completely before placing caps onto the lip balm containers. Your lip balm is finished! You can now add labels, ribbons, twine, or any other decorative elements. Makes approximately 1.5 oz of lip balm, enough to fill 10 lip balm tubes, 6 of our 1/4 oz plastic jars, or 3 1/2 oz tins or plastic jars.

And there you have it! This whole process took less than 20 minutes from start to finish, with about another 15 minutes or so (I didn’t really time it) to have the lip balm cool, but it cools pretty fast and you have simple, all organic lip balm and you know exactly what went into it.  Plus it’s yummy, a great gift, and satisfying to make.

Enjoy!

Hand Salve

- A.E. Howard 9 Comments

So in my quest to be more organic and to know what’s in the stuff I use and eat and such (plus I’m still on this super creative kick where I just want to make stuff!), I decided to make my own hand salve today.  I had made a big order from Mountain Rose Herbs and the stuff all got here this week. It’s pricey to do at once, but much less per container of finished product.  Also on the list is home-made deodorant (I’ll post on that after I’ve used it for a while and see how it actually works!), and lip balm, which I made tonight too, but I’ll post it tomorrow.

I got this recipe from A Sonoma Garden, but tweaked it a little bit cause I didn’t have a scale to weigh the ingredients, so I went with parts and measured it with measuring spoons and added lavender to it cause I like the smell…

  • 4 Tbsp Shea Butter
  • 1 Tbsp Avocado Oil
  • 1/4 tsp Vitamin E Oil
  • 1/8 – 1/4 tsp Essential Lavender Oil (adjust to fragrance preference)

Step 1: Place Shea butter and avocado oil in a measuring cup and heat on medium low heat in a small sauce pan full of water until butter and oil melt (easy double boiler). Stir occasionally.

See, not melted.

Starting to melt…

Melted!

See? It looks like melted butter… oh wait… shea butter anyone?? 😛

Step 2: Stir in Vitamin E Oil and Lavender Oil.

Step 3: Pour into small bowl and place in sink that has several inches of ice water in it.

Step 4: As it cools, whip it to a meringue-like consistency.

Step 5: Smooth into containers of your choice.  I got the containers from Mountain Rose Herbs as well.

Ta Da! It’s awesome.  And I “licked” the bowl by scraping the last little bits off the sides with the spatula and rubbed them straight on my big ol’ preggo belly 😀 (with the spatula) Husband was amused.

Preparation.

- A.E. Howard Leave a comment

Little bits of green are poking back up through the fallen leaves, the tops of my daffodils planted last fall are starting to show themselves, and yesterday I cleaned out three of my garden beds to make way for new life.

This gardening cycle never ceases to thrill me, a fact, I guess, which is an indicator that I’ve found something I should be doing. :-)

I’ve ordered my seeds for next year, mostly from Baker Creek this time, with a repeat as close as possible to some awesome plum tomatoes that I got from Johnny’s Seeds last year.  Last year these plum tomatoes, Juliet, did an amazing job producing despite the fact that it was a horrible year for growing most things, and especially tomatoes. I never saw hide nor hair (not that tomatoes have hides and hairs, but you catch my drift…) of one kind I planted, and my heirloom Brandywines produced about 6-8 total all summer, only one of which I actually got to eat (not typical for them, and they are one of my absolute favorite tomatoes ever).

Sadly, Johnny’s was sold out of the Juliet’s when I place my order, so I replaced them with a similar, but this time, organic seed for a plum, the Granadero.  I hope they do as well and taste as good! Most of the Juliet’s never got cooked with, as they were so good for snacking on right out of the garden, or sprinkled with a little sea salt.

I’m doing more perennial flowers this year as I want a lower maintenance garden, and next year, when Eli’s bigger, we’ll expand the garden and re-up our quotient of veggies, but since I was wanting to add some beds for cut flowers anyway, it seemed like good timing.

Change is in the air as my belly expands and Eli gets ready to emerge into the world, swelling me and pushing at his boundaries already, even though he still has almost two months left to develop.

It’s considerably warmer this week, though a temporary warmth as I’m sure it will frost again several times before our frost free date the second half of April, and yet the year has turned and it’s time to prepare anew for the growing season.  Did I mention I love this cycle? It feeds my soul somehow. I highly recommend growing something this year, even if you just want to start with some herbs in pots on a window sill.  I dare you to try it and see if it doesn’t feed your soul somehow to grow just even a small part of your food.