Wednesday, January 13, 2010

"Egg-sell-ant"

I LOVE having fresh eggs every morning! I don't eat them every morning, but I love when the kiddos bring them in from the hen-house every morning. E-man is in charge of the farm animals (currently there are only chickens!)so he gets up each morning and runs down to "check the chickens." They are collected in an egg basket that I wove myself many years ago, still warm and sometimes have bits of shavings from the nesting boxes stuck to them.

We get several different colors of eggs. White eggs come from our two bantams. Greenish/bluish are layed by the Aracaunas, and the Rhode Islands generously deliver a variety of brown eggs. We get about 10 eggs each day, now that it is winter.

The W Family owns half of our chickens and they keep a couple dozen eggs every week. The rest are usually sold or eaten by our family. I really enjoy selling farm fresh eggs from happy hens! It brings such satisfaction to know that I can contribute to our financial stability - I bring in about $2.00/week! It's not about the money - obviously - but it is fun!

"Ant" another thing I want to mention before I close, I had a mental block on how to work in that last syllable of the title into something clever. Guess it won't happen this time!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Lip Care is da "Balm!"

Biscuit is a budding homemaker. She is my right arm, really. Though only 12 years old, she can cook an entire meal and have it all ready at the same time. I was about 30 by the time I mastered that one!

Lately she has had opportunities to learn to make soap, lotion, laundry soap, hand soap, and Lip Balm.

We are still working on finding recipes that work well for us as far as the laundry and dish soaps. The Lip Balm recipe is wonderful, however! It is also AMAZINGLY simple!

I have always steered clear of lip sticks and gloss because I can "taste" them and I always seemed to end up with a stomach ache. That is not the case with this recipe. We found chapstick tubes at our local health food store for about 32 cents each. These are a little easier to use than "pots" but the pots are easier to pour into.

Recipe:
1 oz beeswax

4 oz oils (you can use any combo of your faves - like olive, canola, even veggie) We use Smart Balance from the grocery store - it contains vitamin E

Several drops of essential oil (so far, we LOVE peppermint, but plan to try lemon soon)

Melt beeswax and oils together over low heat. Once melted, remove from heat and add essential oil. Pour into containers. Mixture sets up in about 10 minutes and will be ready to use!