Making lotion and herbal seasoning blend

It has been so nice outside today but dang it I didn't get out to enjoy it yet. I have been busy with piddly stuff in the house all day. It is getting closer to cold weather and my need for a good lotion for my winter time dry skin. I was all out. I think I gave Amoy the last 2 jars I had to take home with her. So it was time to make more. So that has been my project for today. Not sure why more folks don't make their own lotion so they can avoid all the heavy perfumes and chemicals in the store bought ones. I have tried and made several different lotions with different recipes and this one has to be the best and my favorite. Very rich, nourishing and creamy. It is more like a cream than a lotion I must warn you. But very simple to make. First I make an herbal tea to use in place of the "water" part called for in most recipes for lotion. I like to use soothing healing herbs that I grow or can purchase organically grown.

Make tea with about 2 cups of water and add in round leaf plantain, chamomile, rose petals, comfrey leaf, and golden seal, equal parts of each herb added to the 2 cups of boiling water and let sit about 10 minutes.
Strain the tea and measure out 1 cup and set aside.
In glass bowl or measuring cup measure 1/2 cup oils that are solid at room temp(coconut oil, shea butter, mango butter, avocado butter, cocoa butter) any mix you like, I use a lil of each.
Then measure out 1/2 cup of oil that is liquid at room temp(almond, apricot, castor oils) Measure out 1/3 cup vegetable emulsifier. Heat the oils in the glass bowl with solid butters and vegetable emulsifier till all are melted and smooth. Let oils cool a lil bit, hot but not scalding. Have the tea to about the same temp as the oils and then add the tea to the oils in a steady stream all the time blending with a stick blender. Once all the tea is in let lotion sit for a bit and blend again, repeat this till it has started to get thick. When lotion starts to thicken like gravy add in about 2 tablespoons of liquid germall plus (preservative, natural) and about 2 tablespoons of Hydrovance for stable consistency and also make the lotion feel silky on the skin. Blend well and pour into desired containers. Let cool completely and put lid on. Great stuff. I get most of my lotion making supplies from this place. Not to mention they always send trial size samples of new products with your order. Very reasonable prices too.

I finally remembered to make more of my herbal seasoning blend that we use on everything as well today. I feel like a chemist on days like this. I try not to get too adventurous tho when it comes to the food stuff. But I got out lots of my different dried herbs and used the spice grinder to grind all the ones that I use in the seasoning we use on chicken, venison, most any meats. Its kinda like Ms Dash only my version. You really can make it to suit your own taste buds by adding more or less of the different herbs. Or even leaving some out. But I added a lil more onions flakes to this mix and a bit of brown sugar. I just have to remember that the sugar will make foods brown much quicker whether in a skillet or on the grill. The recipe for the seasoning blend I make is in  this post from the past.

I brought a cast iron skillet home from Jason's house the other day that had some rust in it and was generally a mess. I think it was given to him and not sure at this minute who. Anyway I scrubbed the rust spots really well and used a Brillo pad on em, washed the skillet really good inside and out. Put it on the burner and coated it really good with oil. I let it get really hot but not smoking then turned it off. I will repeat those steps several times each day as long as I think of it and have time, heat up, cool down till it is re-seasoned. It is a nice size skillet and not as heavy as most I own so it might work really good for me. Hope it fixes the skillet but its not like I need another cast iron skillet. But just cant bring myself to see them get destroyed.

Not much else happening around here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

I like to tinker

I am probably the worst person for not following directions or recipes or instructions. Not sure if it my adventurous side or rebellious side coming out. Either way I like to tinker and that is what I have done today. Now that I have this nifty sewing machine that can do most anything but jumping jacks, sewing and altering has been my focus for a week or so. I spent most of today going thru my closet and getting clothes sorted, I guess thas the right term, for winter and summer wear. I also tried on lots of pant to make sure they fit and put them on hangers in order of wear. Such as dressy, casual, jeans, sweats. Tops I did the same way. I loveeee tee-shirts. I live in those things. I have some that fit at the top and sleeves and are just a tad too long. So now that I have those pulled out I think maybe put elastic in the seams vertically on each side so kinda scrunch the sides to make them a lil shorter and more to my liking.Then I have some 3/4 length sleeve long tail button up shirts that are too long as well. Soon I will come up with a plan for those so I can at least get some wear out of them.  Then I found many articles of clothing that is in desperate need of ironing. So add ironing to that list of things to do. Did I mention I had to iron stuff? Well I do. If it ever gets warm enough to be outside during the day I wont have much time to sew and craft and tinker inside. I got lots of beds that will need my attention. Gosh we already have some ornamental things starting to bud out here and the temps are pose to be below 20 tonight an tomorrow night. Damn this global warming stuff. What the hell happened to spring?

I was in the mood to test another lotion recipe today too. Now this is where my tinkering came into play big time. I now have on hand several oils and butters that each add their own great quality to lotions and creams. Not one recipe could I find online that included all the things that I wanted in my lotions. So off I go to create my own. I broke all the cardinal rules of lotion making too by not weighing or measuring the ingredients. The only thing I did was weigh the total of the oils, butters and water so I could get the correct amount of Germall Plus(preservative) in the lotion. This is to make sure the lotion will be shelf stable and not turn into a petre dish after you stick your fingers in there to use the lotion or cream. I had also got a bottle of vanilla essential oil for use in making the lotions and oh my it smelled so nice. If you close your eyes you can smell vanilla cookies with a hint of chocolate in there. Almost smells good enough to eat. But the lotion was great. I put almond, apricot, coconut castor, avocado oils with shea and mango butter and some cocoa butter. I used my homemade herbal tea blend as the liquid or water part. I did use the vegetable emulsifier wax and a bit of stearic acid as an emulsifier and thickener. Turned out perfect, just nice and thick and not greasy. I am a happy camper with my summer supply of lotion made now. Yippee!!!

I am a lil bit concerned after my baby chicks did not arrive today in the mail. The post office always calls me when they come in and no call today and our sweet mail lady didn't deliver them either. So am sure hoping they arrive in the morning. If not tomorrow for sure I will have to refuse the shipment. Baby chicks can live fine for 72 hours after hatching without food or drink but longer than that they will be so very weak and not likely to live or thrive. I got online and tracked the order and it was due to be delivered today. Not sure what happened to em but wont be happy if they someone drops the ball and lets my lil birds die. But I have everything ready for them, a large tote with straw and a feeder, a water jar ready to give them electrolytes and vitamins as soon as they arrive and a heat light for them to keep em warm. Just sure do hope they arrive and are OK.

Once I get the lil ones settled in and happy I need to get my trays from the old greenhouse and get the potting mix in them to start seeds. Rodger don't have my benches in the new greenhouse yet so I will probably just get the soil in the trays and the seeds in and put them in the summer kitchen till the benches are ready. That wont be a problem cause the kitchen is near the new greenhouse. Not to mention I am not starting near as many plants as I have in the past years. (I don't think anyway) But I do get accused of not starting enough, but alas starting toooo many. But my thinkin is , "is better to have em and not need em than to need em an not have em". So I just keep planting .

My 3 lil setting hens are still setting and not a peep yet. I sure hope they at least hatch a few chicks. I like to use the standard breeds for making stock and canned chicken. It is better canned because I can let the chicks free range with their mommas till they are big enough to butcher or when I get time to butcher em and they by then are usually a bit tougher. So much better canned for soup and casseroles and such. But I got to hatch chicks to can chicks, so maybe best not count my chicks before they hatch.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Not sure what season it is yet

Our weather has been a bit wonky the last week. While we were in Vegas it was nice then rained and sleeted and we got back it was nice at 50 degrees. It was just like spring out today but it rained a bit. We even had thunder. They say thunder in February, frost the same day in May. That will not be good to have frost on May 25. Not good a tall. But it will do  what ever it wants no matter what we want. That is all in Gods hands. We are susposed to get snow flurries tonight and tomorrow now. Did I mention I do not like cold weather no more? Well just in case, I dont.

I think I am still tryin to rest up after our trip. We just lounged around all day Saturday. We went to Richmond to Lowes and Walmart on sunday. Rodger wanted to go get the materials to build lil Liam a toy box and I wanted to get some yarn to make a cocoon for the baby. So off we went. My body did not need to be traveling just 2 days after a long trip. I think it made the hurty worse. We picked up a few things at walmart and headed back home. Stopped by to see Rodgers parents in Richmond and came on home. We had stopped to see his sis Tammy on the way down. Her daughter Kim had surgery for gallbladder removal this morning and she is home now doing ok, hurtin a bit an gettin sore. So happy the gallbladder didnt flare up on her while we were all in Vegas. I think she and her momma had a pretty nice time. They got to do some sightseeing while they were there. Its always nice to see other parts of the country. Anyway back at home I ordered stuff to make more lotion. I took Amoy a small jar of the lotion and she loved it. She has really dry skin and she said it helped a lot. I do think I will change the emulsifier that I use to the vegetable wax as it helps emulsify the oils and water much better than beeswax and it is derived from a plant source. I dont use preservatives in my lotion so it has to be refrigerated if it is kept for a longer period of time. I think it would be fine for a month but longer it would need to be kept cold to prevent bacterial growth. I should get my order of supplies later this week.

Before we left for Vegas I ordered my chicks for meat birds. Used Cackle hatchery this time as I do think they have the same blood line that Marti poultry farms had. Not sure when they will arrive but soon I do hope so we can get them raised up and butchered off before we go to Nevada in May when the baby gets here. I dont think Jason and Mary Kay want to babysit 25 lil chickens. Matter of fact, I know they dont. The cornish require more attention than standard breeds to keep the temps just right for them. But we  hope to get the garden in and the greenhouse empty before we leave to. I guess I have to get the greenhouse up before I worry about getting it empty. I am out of plastic so will have to buy a roll to use this year. Maybe next year we can get one made from the polycarbonite panels. I can dream I guess.

Last post when I labeled  the wedding pictures with names I listed the wrong names for Amoy's mom and auntie. Her mom is Paula and her auntie is Pauline. See I tole you I was terrible with names. I do well to know my own name. Sorry Paula and Pauline.
The day after the wedding Matt (Robs best man and best friend) and Rob were going out to drive some fast cars. This was Matt's treat for Rob as a wedding gift. I think they had a blast.
Here are a couple pics of them and some of the cars they got to test run. Expensive fast cars I might add.

Rob in a Lamborghini. Dont he look cool?. I think he said one of the cars got sideways coming out of the parking lot. Imagine that!! Lead foot?

 

This is Rob in the Jaguar XKR-5. Pretty color, but too small and not practical here on the farm. But fun no less.

This is the lil red Ferrari. Now this I really like. But really have no need for one. But would be fun to take for a spin.

This  is Rob on the right and Matt on the left posing with their big boy toys for the day. I am sure these 2 had a blast. It was one of those once in a lifetime chances to do something. And these 2 guys like to hang out together. They have been best friends for 10 years. And Matt is really a great guy.

This is a pic of Amoy's momma Paula at the wedding. Some of these photos I just got from Tammy on Sunday so they didnt get posted on my last blog post. She is a sweet lady for sure.

 

This is Amoy's aunt Pauline with Rob. I got names switched on the last post. They know and understand how my memory is at my age. A really sweet lady.

This pic was from dinner on Wednesday night before the wedding next day. From left to right, Rob, Matt Vanover, lil ole me, and Tammy, Rodger's sister, my sis in law, Rob's aunt. As other family members post and send pics I will post more that I think you all might enjoy. So glad my wonderful readers can share in this special time with us. Thank you all for letting me brag and show off my sweet family.


Not much else happening here on the farm right now except the rain. So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

My best lotion recipe

I have had a decent day today. The weather has been nice out and I have the door open to let in some fresh air. I somehow got motivated today to try a new lotion recipe altered from one I found online. I really altered it a lot and I love it. It was not hard to make. Now I cant wait to shower and try it out. But here is how I did mine. I did use my normal herbal blend to make the tea for this lotion. ALL organic stuff too.

Lotion

2 1/2 cups water (I have good well water)
a blend of herbs (calendula, golden seal, round leaf plantain, rose buds)
3/4 oils that are solid at room temp (coconut, mango butter, Shea butter)
3/4 cup oil that is liquid at room temp(almond, Castor, apricot seed oil)
1/3 cup bees wax pellets

Heat the water to boiling and stir in the herbs, cover and let steep over night. In the morning heat to almost boiling again and set off the heat to steep more.

In a large measuring cup fill to 3/4 with your choice of oils that are solid at room temp. On top of this add your 3/4 cup oils that are liquid at room temp along with bees wax. Melt in microwave till all is melted. Take out and stir often to get things melted together.


Strain 2 cups of the herbal tea into your blender container and put lid on without the hole cover in the middle.
Turn the blender on and stream the oils into the tea. It will emulsify pretty quick. Keep the blender on till all the oil is in and well blended. You may have to turn the blender off and on and scrape down the sides to get it evenly blended. Once it is blended scrape into the containers you want to keep your lotion in and let sit un-capped till it cools completely. Enjoy. The neat thing about this blend  of oils is that it will absorb into the skin well and will keep your skin moist all day with just one application.

 

You can tell from this photo how thick the lotion is after its blended. But not as thick as a creme type moisturizer would be.

My Kefir is growing like crazy. I put this in fresh sugar/molasses water yesterday evening and today it has grown a lot.

The line is the level of the grains yesterday and you can really tell how much they have increased in just 24 hours. Today I strained the grains out, made fresh sugar water for them and added them back and marked the level of grains on the jar again. Not long and I will have some grains to share if someone is interested.
This is very healthy stuff to consume. You can read about the benefits of Kefir here. I am sure hoping that will steady drinking the kefir water that it does make me feel better. So far, so good. If you think you have an over growth of yeast in your body you will want to consume a small amount of kefir water each day and work your way up or you may get a good deal of gas as the kefir kills off the yeast. I do know that just from a couple days of drinking the water kefir my belly don't feel so bloated. I can live with this.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Ok enough of this winter stuff

I have had enough of winter now, its time for spring so I can get my hands in dirt. It is too cold to be outside very long for me. And we are supposed to get rain, snow and sleet the next couple days. Dang I never get bored. I can always find something to do with myself during the day and evenings. Not so for the past few days. I have been restless and got all kinds of ideas and no energy. I wanted to work on Liam's baby quilt but don't have the fabric purchased yet to set it up with. So can do much with that. Wanted to make more lotion and I have all the stuff to do it, but dang I don't know what happened to that idea. Somehow I wanted to do something else instead. I bought some pretty yarn a couple years ago to make a scarf to wear with sweaters. So late last night as I was not feeling good at all I decided to get started on the scarf. I knew it would not take long to do. Not really a scarf for warmth but more of an accessory. I finished it at about 3 am this morning. OK got that out of my system. I got lots of the same yarn left so now am thinkin I might make something for that lil baby. But then again if I do he will be old enough to not need it by time winter gets here again. (sigh) So what to make? Any ideas? I really need to make the cafe curtains to back the sheers in my bedroom. Even though we are in a private place, if someone visits and I am still in bed, the sidewalk is right beside my new bedroom window. Not good!! I guess I just get fidgety when I have been inside too long.

Yesterday at school Miranda said she needed to wear something with 100 on it or 100 of something on it. So when she was getting ready for school she told her momma and momma came up with an ingenious idea. How about 100 lil hair clips in your hair? Miranda agreed and I think it was so cute. Don't you agree?

This lil girl was ready to get home and get all those clips out. She said they made her itch. Love that cute lil face. And her momma..

There is something in here that does not belong. Can you spot the odd critter? Well its a no-brainer, its the Possum that wants to sleep with his foster family tonight as usual. The poor guy wants so bad to live in the chicken house that he just goes in at night  with the chickens and picks his bed and gets comfy. I would let him stay in there but he has a warm spot on the front porch with the momma cat and his lil niece, Possumette. I am worried if I leave him in here that he will want out in the middle of the night and try to climb out thru the top ventilation vents and get stuck and I cant hear him from in the house. So I have to break his lil heart every night and make him get out of his warm straw bed with family and got stay with his grammy and niece. It would upset me greatly if something happens to my Possum. We have never had Siamese cats here but he sure looks like one. He is the baby whose momma got killed and he got orphaned. He is a big fat boy gets his share of the food, as you can tell. 

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Beautiful weather and piddling inside

Our weather this weekend has been beautiful for January weather. Warm and sunny, a little breeze blowing. Nice weather to be out. On Saturday Rodger went to the crib and shelled some corn for the chickens. They do love their corn in cooler weather. He had picked up a bale of straw to put in their building for bedding on Friday. He brought the corn up and put it in the feed barrel and told me he was going to clean out the chicken house before spreading the straw. I went out to help out a lil bit. Dang I had a lot of chickens in there that did a lot of poopin. We took out 3 tractor buckets full to the garden to compost. Thas a lot of poop. I spread the new straw in the building and in the nest boxes. I had one lil hen that sat on a nest in one of the nest boxes and watched us clean all around her. I got straw put in the rest of the boxes and picked her up and set her in a new clean box that I had just fixed. She seemed happy for a minute. Then she got mad and raised a big fuss. The big rooster came to check on her and when he went in the building she calmed down. I guess she was wanting his attention. None the less he alerted all the hens to come check out their new digs. And dig they did in the new straw. They seem to be happy campers for now. I do feel better with them having plenty of straw to keep warm in the cold weather that is coming our way the first part of the coming week. Most nights are supposed to be in the teens and low 20's. Highs in the day around 30. A bit nippy. Tonight when I went to close up the chickens Possum (the cat) was in the building with the chickens. He was sleeping good in the straw beside the big rooster. It is funny to see. Not a likely pair.
We didn't do much today other than eat and nap. Rodger did get some of our tax stuff ready to take to the lady that does our taxes. I tinkered with making shampoo and played with some melt and pour soap that I had won on this site. I love reading the blog on this site too. And when I make soap I use the lye calculator on here as well. If you comment on their blog post they put your name in a drawing on Friday for a goody pack. It can contain samples and partial used products that they have made practice batches with in their lab. So I won a huge chunk of melt and pour soap (white), and a mold, a baggie of rose buds, and calendula petals. I was tickled to death. So I got the soap out today and the mold and decided to make some of the soap and scent it with the lavender essential oil  and some coconut fragrance oil that I had. I think they turned out kinda neat. And they do smell heavenly.

My new fangled soap on an antique doily on an antique dish. I like the simple look of this. Well I guess I am just a simple country girl. By the way this is the same shape as the lotion bars that I made this past week too. They turned out wonderful. I love the moisturizing layer they leave on the skin.
While I was in the piddling mood today I made the shampoo that hopefully will help Rodger's dry hair. I was a little leery of this recipe when it said to mix oil into water and soap mixture. But it did emulsify just fine and stayed emulsified. So when he showered this evening he used the shampoo and so far so good. So here is the simple recipe for shampoo. I know ya have to buy some of the products but you can make your own castile bars and use those I am sure. But this time I bought and used the liquid castile soap.

Shampoo for long dry hair

1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 cup Dr Bonner's castile liquid soap
2 Tablespoons of sweet almond oil
1/4 teaspoon essential oil of choice ( I used orange)

Mix the water and liquid soap in small bowl and stir in oils till well mixed. It will have a milky color. Put in old shampoo bottle and shake before using. Use as you would any other shampoo.

Now what to make next. I think maybe some homemade toothpaste. I am thinkin simple coconut oil and baking soda. Both are good for the teeth and antibacterial. Maybe I make a small amount and try it myself and see how I like it. As of right now we are using Tom's propolis and myrrh toothpaste. I like it really well, no fluoride, cinnamon flavor. Nice!!

Not much else happening around here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Whas up with that?

I have ask myself that question several times in the past few years. I have never had a skin allergy, food allergy, nothing bothers me at all. Well except poison ivy. Now it seems every little things causes me to break out, itch or hurt. Whas up with that? My doc tole me a long time ago that fibro does effect some peoples' skin and cause rashes, hives, dry patches and such. I reckon I got every dang one of the symptoms that a person could possibly have. Or maybe its just age, who knows. But I try to steer clear of artificial ingredients in lotions that I use for a moisturizer. So I got the bright idea, I make my own soap, why not make my own lotions too. So I started reading about the how-to's a few months ago. I finally got my lil mind wrapped around a recipe and decided to give it a whirl. I thought lotion bars would be more convenient as you don't need jars to store the stuff in. I came up with the recipe with healing, moisturizing, soothing lotion that anyone can use, even for babies. None toxic ingredients, so very safe for kids. I decided I wanted to use some herbs in the oil for extra umph. I used goldenseal, calendula, rose petals, and chamomile. I wanted to use coconut oil for its antiviral, anti fungal, antibiotic properties. Also used Castor oil, almond oil, and apricot oil as all of these are very nourishing to the skin. For extra staying power I also added Shea butter and mango butter. I added sweet orange essential oil for a lil fragrance. So now ya have the whys, here's the recipe.

1 T goldenseal, dried
1 T calendula, dried
1 T rose petals, dried
1 T chamomile, dried

1/2 cup coconut oil

half cup measure put equal parts Castor oil, almond oil, apricot oil

in another half cup measure put equal parts Shea butter and mango butter

3/4 cup beeswax

15 drops sweet orange essential oil

I do most of this on the stove top. Use a small pot you wont be needing for anything else as it is super hard to clean up. In this small pot put the herbs, coconut oil and liquid oils. Heat to melt an let macerate for an hour, the longer the better. This gets all the good stuff out of the herbs. Keep heat low at all times and stir often. Strain the oil mixture thru a sieve to remove the herbs, Press the herbs with a spoon to get all the goodness out of them. Put oil back in the small pot and add the Shea and mango butter, and beeswax. Set on low heat and stir to melt well. Let cool for a few minutes and add about 15 drops of essential oil and stir to blend. Pour into molds of your choice and let harden. Use as needed for moisturizing. The lotion will be hard and will melt in your hands and can easily be applied to the body.  Once this sits on the skin for a bit it does not have a greasy feel to it. So now if ya don't like having this you cant pronounce in your body lotions, this is for you. If you get all organic ingredients all the better. Enjoy!! I know I do.

I think my next project will be to make homemade shampoo. As most of you know the skin is the largest organ of the human body. Anything you put on the skin does get absorbed. If it is not good for you to ingest I doubt it would be good on the skin, The same goes for shampoo. And yesterday on the way to the dentist Rodger was complaining about his hair being so dry. He has long hair and in winter he only needs to wash it about every other day. And it still breaks and splits. So we picked up a bottle of Dr Bonner's castille soap. It is pure soap made only from pure vegetable oils. From the things I have read it cleans without stripping all the natural oils from the hair. So I will let ya know how this works for him. My dad said all the old folks used plain lye soap to wash their hair. Lye soap is pH balanced so it should be good for washing hair. I have not tried my homemade soap as mine has been super fatted to add moisture to the skin, so don't think I would want to add those extra oils to my hair.

I got lots of projects to work on and winter time is slipping away. I got to get me busy working on a baby quilt for little Liam. He will be here and I wont have a quilt made. My mind commits me to things my body cant get done these days. We don't have any big things to do tomorrow so maybe I can get started on the quilt. We shall see.
Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella