Make and Learn

It's so funny how life works sometimes. I think I am learning a lot about myself, and how sometimes, even though I feel like I'm so slow to act, it's actually the right pace, the right timing. It's a good lesson in forgiving yourself for not being the person you think you're supposed to be right at this moment.

I had this idea to do small, friendly, fun classes at my house for probably six months now, maybe more. I kept thinking about all the little details that hadn't come together, or all of the supplies that I hadn't ordered yet. I also kept thinking (throughout last fall) that I should just send out the email, and the rest would fall into place. There's always that balance between pushing myself to just act, and slowly plotting everything out so that I can truly do something well. Now that I've had the second class--that I'm calling a "Make and Learn", I feel like my slow pace is actually just the right timing.

I have received such enthusiasm and support from the people who have come so far, (and also from those who couldn't come) that I've been energized and excited by it. I never thought that this could become something more than a random gathering, but my mind is definitely shifting in a new direction about it. How amazing would it be if I could turn something I truly enjoy doing, believe in, and want to share, into part of how I make a living? It's kind of a revelation to me.

So, slowly but surely, I have picked a name for the business, I'm having my friend design a label for my products, and I'm getting lots of great ideas and directions I could go and services I could offer. I'm still taking it a bit slow as I am in the middle of transition to some new jobs. And this spring in particular it occurs to me, do we all crave some kind of new direction in the springtime? Winter is coming to an end and the few warm days we've had, the tiny budding plants, everything is pointing to new growth and changing directions. Even that thought, that hope is a refresher.

Yes, here's to more blog posts, more ideas put into action, and lots of fresh growing plants in all of our lives! Next post will be on the homemade deodorant we made at the class this weekend. I've been using it since the fall, and it's the only deodorant I've EVER used that's worked for me :) Now that's saying something! More news of this side-business fun forthcoming as well!

I am so grateful for the support of friends and family in all of these new endeavors. Blessings to all of you.

Lotion and Lip Balm

Here are the photos and the recipes...okay there are no photos of the lip balm...see the post below. The one thing I would add is that if I didn't have distilled water on hand, I just boiled some tap water to get some of the bacteria out. And one thing to watch for is when you remove the melted oils from the double boiler, there will be beads of water and condensation on the bottom of your pan. Be sure to wipe it off before pouring into the blender or you will get water into your oil before you really meant to. Enjoy!

Rosemary’s Perfect Cream

From Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health copyright 2001

Waters

2/3 cup distilled water (or rose water)

1/3 cup aloe vera gel

1 or 2 essential oil of choice

vitamins A and E as desired

Oils

3/4 cup apricot, almond, or grapeseed oil

1/3 cup coconut oil or cocoa butter

1/4 teaspoon lanolin

1/2 to 1 ounce grated beeswax

1. Combine the waters in a glass measuring cup. (Tap water can be used instead of distilled water, but it will sometimes introduce bacteria and encourage the growth of mold.) Set Aside.
2. In a double boiler over low heat, combine the oils. Heat them just enough to melt.
3. Pour the oils into a blender and let them cool to room temperature. The mixture should become thick, creamy, semisolid, and cream colored. This cooling process can be hastened in the refrigerator, but keep an eye on it so it doesn’t become too hard.
4. When the mixture has cooked, turn on the blender at its highest speed. In a slow, thin drizzle, pour the water mixture into the center vortex of the whirling oil mixture.
5. When most of the water mixture has been added to the oils, listen to the blender and watch the cream. When the blender coughs and chokes and the cream looks thick and white, like buttercream frosting, turn off the blender. You can slowly add more water, beating it in by hand with a spoon, but don’t overbeat! The cream will thicken as it sets.
6. Pour into cream or lotion jars. Store in a cool location.

Moirin’s Lip Balm

(Larger Batch- to make smaller batch, turn tablespoons to teaspoons!)

2 1/2 Tablespoons of Jojoba oil

2 Tablespoons of coconut oil

1/2 Tablespoon of lanolin

2 Tablespoons of beeswax

Melt the oils in a double boiler and pour into containers while still hot. If reusing old containers, be sure to clean and sterilize them first. As an added bonus, boiling them to sterilize removes any excess wax left in the container.

How I spent my winter vacation

Okay, not really. I had to finish these before my vacation so I could give them as presents! Strange to me that I have starting making body care products, because those are always the booths that I walk right by at craft fairs, really, I barely glance at them. I think what got me thinking about making my own, was Rosemary Gladstar's book "Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health". I got it towards the end of the summer. The book itself is great, and also encouraged me to place a very large order with Mountain Rose herbs this fall. Maybe what drew me in was the use of herbs, and the blending and experimenting with what works for you, either for specific ailments, or for general health and happiness. These things always take me such a long time. It was probably a month after I decided that I wanted to try to make lotion using her recipe that I had finally gathered all the ingredients and set out to try it. Previously, I had been using straight coconut oil as a moisturizer, but after I made this stuff I was hooked! It is thick and luscious and creamy and smells like honey because of the beeswax in it. You could literally eat it...there's nothing artificial, or chemical in this one!

I also made my own lip balm recipe...loosely based on the ingredients of the Dr. Bronner's lip balm that I had and liked, and with ideas from Janice Cox's book "Natural Beauty at Home". This is another great book if you just want to try some fun beauty treatments from things you may have in your kitchen. I don't love all of her ingredients though. She doesn't mind throwing petroleum jelly into things, which I prefer to steer clear of, but she's got tons of recipes and is very thorough with the range of products she lists. Everything from scrubs, cleansers, hair, nail, lip treatments, men's products, soap-making, hair styling products, the list goes on...I don't think I've read them all, it's amazing what she fit in one book.

The third product I made was a healing salve from a recipe in Rosemary's book. It says it's for any type of bumps, bruises, rash, scars, etc. can even be used for diaper rash. I hadn't really tried it until a week or two ago when I went sledding. I kept trying to run and jump on the sled and I kept missing and slamming my knee right into the edge of the sled. I'm sure it was comical to see, but I blame my giant moon boots tripping me up. I was sure I was going to wake up with a swollen and bruised knee, but right before bed I remembered the salve, so I massaged it into and around the area that was hurt. It wasn't a miracle, I still got a bruise, but it wasn't really swollen and the bruise has healed fast and was not as painful as I had expected given the repeated beating. The three herbs in the salve, are comfrey, calendula, and st. john's wort. Calendula has been known to promote cell repair, comfrey can encourage healing of tissues, and St. John's wort is known for its treatment of damaged nerve endings (hypericum, its latin name is also the homeopathic remedy made from the plant).

So yes, perhaps I'm hooked on all three. Despite not wanting to really market and sell the stuff, (though I'm happy to sell it to people who want it) I do want to spread the word about how great and easy this is to do. To that end, I recently had a make-and-learn session at my house for the lotion and the lip balm. It was a great turnout, 9 lovely ladies and everyone got to take some of our concoctions home. I'm hoping to have at least a monthly event like this, and possibly travel with it, as my sister in Ohio promises me she could get her crunchy friends to come if we planned a date. Fun!

I'll post the recipes in a separate post so I can add the rest of the photos. And I think I'll do the salve separately, as it was probably the most time consuming...although it doesn't have to be if you plan ahead. Enjoy!

Vanilla Extract update

Well, more than two weeks later, it's nice and dark, but man, the alcohol smell almost knocked me out when I took a whiff! I guess I should still try and take a taste.

If it still seems mostly alcohol, I think I'm going to strain, and add at least another four chopped up beans, and I might need to water it down a bit more. Another two weeks of shaking, and perhaps it will be ready for fall baking season! The funny part is I don't actually like vanilla flavoring in much, but I'd be willing to gift it to the right cause. Fun experimenting!

Shampoo, or not

In an effort to cut out some of the chemicals in my life, I decided to try going shampoo-less. Other ulterior motives include: wanting the natural oils in my hair to stay put, and being sick of paying people to strip my hair down to nothing and then add back in "moisturizers"(And by this I mean, buying shampoo and conditioner). This reminds me of how it was such a good idea to start processing whole wheat to get white flour by taking out all the good stuff, and then putting back a few vitamins and minerals to make up for it. But we don't have to take it!

Some background info on my hair specifically...when it's shorter, as it is now, I don't usually wash it everyday. This is part laziness, and partly because it's easier to style when it's not squeaky clean (or squeaky shampoo clean anyway). From what I've read, once you get off the shampoo routine (and you do replace it with a "wash and rinse" which I'll get to in a moment), then your natural oils come back and are there all the time. Reports include volume/texture/shine you never knew you had, without greasiness or feeling gross.

So basically you just use baking soda, as the wash, and vinegar as the rinse. I know, you're thinking, "Hey, that's how I made a miniature volcano in elementary school" ...or perhaps if your family was like mine, you used those two substances to clear a clogged drain...Don't worry as long as you use them separately there should be no bubbly volcano head that happens.

I looked at this blog a bunch to make sure I understood what to do (click here ) and then I was off! It's pretty simple, you just add 1Tbl of baking soda to a cup of warm water for the wash. And 1 Tbls of Apple Cider Vinegar to a cup of warm water for the rinse. I also added a few drops of essential oils to the vinegar mix because I was slightly concerned about the smell, which I definitely couldn't smell after I rinsed it off with water, and the added benefit of the essential oils was that any time my hair got wet, I could smell them again (it rained that day).

First day: I went swimming in a chlorinated pool, so my hair was feeling pretty icky, kind of dry and stringy. So I had my doubts about this actually working well the first day, but I was pleasantly surprised. I probably did less than a tablespoon of baking soda and vinegar in each of my jars, so they looked like water, but I could tell when I was pouring them on my hair that they each felt a little more slippery than water. As my hair dried it felt light and clean and had a bit of volume to it too.

Second day: I went to Kennywood, and went on the raging rapids, and got soaked. Again chlorinated water, but this stuff felt much dirtier than pool water. As it dried from the raging rapid water, my hair felt like a thick tangly mess. It mentioned on that blog that you probably don't have to use the vinegar rinse every time, so this time I just did the baking soda. This was NOT a good idea. Maybe it's just my hair, or maybe it's because I have leftover shampoo head, or maybe the raging rapid water was too gross, but my hair felt relatively clean, but not silky or soft at all. I went to bed with it wet and I woke up looking like I stuck my finger in a socket. I should have taken a picture, it was ridiculous. I was forced to hairpin it down and wrap some ribbons around its unrulyness so I could go to work without scaring little children. Another thing I noticed was that normally hair pins fall right out of my hair unless I put a ton in. Not this day, I could just twist a whole bunch of hair and stick one pin in, with no danger of it even moving, that's how texturous my hair had become...in a bad way.

Day three: After the no rinse debacle, I did both the "wash' and the "rinse" and my hair felt good again. Clean and kind of silky/soft feeling. I went to bed with it wet again, but woke up with it much more "ruly" (opposite of unruly?) and manageable.

So, I think I'm hooked. Price-wise it's a steal. Baking soda is cheap and even though I'm using the Eden Organic ACV (Apple cider vinegar) it's still much less than even a bottle of just shampoo. Chemical free is good for me, and I'm even happy with the actual hair results. I encourage everyone to try it out, I'd be interested in hearing what works for whom!

Tinctures.

I'll start by saying, I never quite saw the use for making my own tinctures, they are certainly easy to find in health food stores, and I probably would trust the consistency and potency of a store bought one, more than I'd trust my own...but all that aside, not only is it very easy to do, it is kind of satisfying to know that in a pinch, you would know how to use the plants around you to help heal yourself. With everything up in the air with the healthcare debates, and the idea always being thrown around to more strictly regulate vitamins and herbs and supplements in general, it's nice to know that you could provide for yourself and your family if things started getting crazy...and the things you were used to depending on, became scarce.

Certain plants lend themselves to just making simple infusions (think "tea": putting the fresh or dried plant in boiled water), or decoctions (boiling the plant in the water for varying amounts of time, depending on the plant)...but if it's a plant you can ingest, you may want to tincture it to have a highly concentrated and stable form of it on hand for when the fresh plant isn't readily available (think winter, or when you're traveling).

So basically, all you need are some sterilized jars, some 100 proof alcohol (which means it's a 50/50 mix of alcohol and water--keep that one out of reach otherwise, it could do some damage to 'ya), and the plant material you would like to tincture (it can be fresh or dried).

I used the leaves of some first year Mullein plants (helpful for respiratory ailments, among other things), and some Lemon Balm (calming for anxiety, depression, insomnia), to make two separate tinctures.

I collected the plants, using only healthy looking plant parts, (in this case the leaves of the plants), cleaned them, finely chopped them, put them in the previously sterilized jar, and added twice the amount of alcohol, as plant solids. Then, I have been shaking them twice a day, while leaving them in the sunlight (a windowsill) and will continue to do so, for two weeks. Some say they will be more potent if you start them on the new moon (which I did) and end them on the full moon (which I plan to). It's also not a bad idea to think about the ways they can help heal as you shake them...I know, it sounds wacky, but it can't hurt. At the end of the two weeks, I will strain them through some clean muslin, and transfer them to dark bottles, filling them as full as possible to avoid oxygen breaking them down, and store them in a cool dark place.