"You Made What?!"

Justin comes home from work and says, "What is this? What are you doing?"

He laughs his silly laugh and says, "Oh my, here we go again." ha!

He never knows what I am making next. I like to keep things exciting and interesting around our house. Keeps everyone on their toes! :)

On our counter were these...

And these...

Homemade lip balm and lotion. Crazy. I know.

Seriously though, I have good reason for making it!! Since we moved here I have periods of very dry chapped lips, they hurt so bad! The only lip balm that remotely helps is the Burts Bees brand and they cost about $3.99 per tube!! YIKES! I decided there had to be a cheap way to make my own. Sure enough, it is easy and cheap, about 40cents a tube. In my quest to find a recipe for the lip balm I came across some lotion recipes that had similar ingredients. The lotion looks bubbly in the picture, but it's really not. I took the picture right after I poured it, once I mixed it around after it set up it looks like beautiful lotion. In a matter of 20 minutes I made 13 tubes of lip balm and 4 containers of lotion. Super easy. Super cheap. I couldn't believe it. And neither could Justin!

The lotion is very nice, creamy, and works much better on our dry skin than any of the expensive stuff we buy at the store. And has a lovely, subtle lavender smell.

This beautiful beeswax I got at a local store downtown, where I get my honey, inspired me to find recipes with beeswax. The lip balm doesn't have any scent in it, because I was afraid that is what was irritating my lips, so it just smells like beeswax. Next time I make some I think I will add a vanilla essential oil. We've been using the lip balm for over a month now, during the driest part of the year, and my lips have never felt better. I don't have to apply as often and have not had any problems with them getting really dry.

Also in my package of supplies was a bag of these beautiful dried Calendula flowers.

Get ready for a Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman episode right now...

I am going to make my own Calendula salve to use for cuts, burns, skin irritations and rashes. Right now I'm just waiting for my Calendula infused oil to finish infusing, it takes a few weeks.

I also want to make a few other salves for other ailments. It is really amazing all of the wonders of simple herbs you can grow in your garden. And yes, you can guess, I ordered some Calendula seeds to plant this summer so I can have my own dried flowers. :) God provided some truly amazing plants on our earth for us to use. He is so creative!

Here is a link to recipes for lip balms. It is not the specific recipe I used, but I am going to use the Herbal Healing Lip Balm recipe next time.

This is the link to the recipe I used for the lip balm. It doesn't have as many ingredients in it as the others.

Here is a link to the recipe for the lotion recipe I used. I might make a different recipe next time that uses shea butter and coconut oil instead of olive oil. But using olive oil makes it cheaper since olive oil is cheaper than coconut oil. And if you decide to make this, use distilled water, you can add 1 Vitamin E capsule to it (this acts as a preservative), and refrigerate any unused portion until you are ready to use it.

I bought all of my ingredients from Mountain Rose Herbs. All except the beeswax which is local.

If you would like any lip balm ( I have plenty!), leave me a comment or send me an email/facebook me and I will mail you some!