Making winter - lip salve and throat lozenges

Mrs Thrifty Household and Silverpebble are holding their Making Winter December week just now and I wanted to join in again.

I've been thinking about what winter means for me.  As I've said before I quite like winter time but I do really dislike dry cold hands and lips and the dreaded sore throats and sniffles that tend to come with the colder months.

So I thought I'd have a go at making some solutions.  I remembered seeing a tutorial on Soulemama for peppermint lip balm - you'll find it in the tutorial section.  

I tracked down all the ingredients::

:: beeswax (I had a little already but needed a bit more) -from Honeyshop

:: honey - I was disorganised and didn't but local honey - which annoys me now

:: coconut oil - from our local whole food shop

:: peppermint essential oil - from our local herbalist (a wonderful place, I love it in there!)

:: containers - from mini food (an etsy seller)

:: labels - from rikyandnina (another etsy seller)

Then I just launched straight into it.  I had intended to make this a family activity with Islay and the boys, if they were interested, but was running short of time (and thought it would be more likely to work, especially first time if I did it without them!).

The tutorial is very straightforward.  Melting beeswax smells delicious, really warm and soothing.  The only part I found a little tricky was cooling the mixture down to the right consistency to get it into my little containers - it very quickly got too thick.....but putting the bowl back over the pan of hot water softened it again so it was easy to fix.

The lip salve really seems to work too so I think I'd mark it down as a success.  I'll be using it as part of teacher presents and so on.  One thing I'd do differently another time is to reduce the amount of peppermint oil.  Its a little too strong I think.  I also wonder if there's another essential oil that would be nice to add, or maybe even a mixture?

I also wanted to try making throat lozenges.  The recipe came from Soulemama again in her latest book The Rythm of Family (it is actually a contribution from Amy Karol - Angry Chicken).  This time I needed to track down::

:: slippery elm powder - from the local herbalist

:: honey -still supermarket stuff I'm afraid

:: mint tea - I had some as I drink it occasionally anyway

The end result isn't very beautiful and since none of us has a sore throat (tempting fate to say that I suspect!) I have no idea if they help.  But I guess they will and they were fun to make.  The recipe suggests rolling the dough out thinly and then cutting little rounds with a small bottle top.  I kept clogging the top with the dough and was getting into a right old mess.  So I just cut little bits off and rolled them into approximate balls - not so pretty but it worked!

Katie (12 weeks)

There was another couple of ingredients to manage that made life easier too...Katie sleeping and my nephew happily occupied with garage and cars!

Katie (13 weeks)

Happy nephew