Body Butter Batch #1

I got some cool body butter in Canada from a fellow hostel guest. It had the recipe on the side, so I've been planning to make more. Naturally, my ingredients haven't all arrived at the same time. I picked up some coconut oil at a local health food store, and my shea butter arrived today. Even though my palm oil and new essential oils haven't arrived, I'm almost out of the stuff I got in Canada. On the theory that anything containing Shea Butter and Coconut Oil is probably going to be pretty OK, I'm going to give a partial recipe a try.

Ingredients
100 g	shea butter (solid @ room temp)
65 g	coconut oil (solid @ room temp)
35 g	almond oil (liquid @ room temp)
2 tbsp	cornstarch
	essential oils

Method

I put a pyrex bowl on the base of my scale and set zero. Then I scooped in 100 grams of shea butter (the metric was more finely graduated). I scooped about 50 grams of coconut oil, then a little more. I was worried that too much almond oil would make it too runny at room temp. Then I added almond oil till the total weight was 200 g (I had to thump the counter to get the scale to register).

I put the 200 g of oils in the microwave and cooked on high at 30 second intervals for about 2 minutes (stirring every 30 secs). The shea butter still had a few little lumps in the bottom, but I left it on the counter about 5 minutes and they were all melted when I came back.

I put the bowl in an ice bath and began mixing with my hand mixer. This is *lots* better than sticking the bowl in the freezer!!! I added the cornstarch while the mix was still pretty liquid. I tried to measure by weight for consistency, but it was too light to register, so 2 tbsp it is!

I added essential oils when the mix began to thicken. I used rosemary, tea tree, eucalyptus, and peppermint. Too much eucalyptus -- i thought one of my bottles of eucalyptus was peppermint, and I couldn't figure out why my mix kept smelling like eucalyptus and not mint!

Kept mixing, now on high speed. I scraped the sides with a spoon several times -- the mix would harden because of the ice water bath. Eventually, it seemed colder than room temp, so I stopped. No point trying to cool it further, since it'll just warm up again. I spooned it into two short cream cheese tubs; they're each about 3/4 full.

Result: Fluffy off-white goop. Kind of a whipped frosting consistency, between cold cream and cool whip. It melts quickly on contact with my hands. I feel the cornstarch as a very very fine grittiness when I'm rubbing it into my skin -- it helps it keep from feeling slimy/oily, but I'm not sure how I like it. Though the mix is very strong smelling in the tub, it's not that strong on my skin.

The Gym

So after significant pestering and begging, The Club has allowed Haley to become a gym member. Every week, Tues - Fri, we get up at 5:15 and stagger over to the gym to work out before school. I generally feel pretty miserable while I'm brushing my teeth at 5:30, but after running for half an hour and showering, I feel great :) Haley jogs on a treadmill while I run on an elliptical runner right beside her. Haley's coach noticed a big difference in how much she was able to run during yesterday's game :) :)

Haley's got soccer practice on Monday and Thursday afternoons, and I've got a standing tennis game on Sunday, so we're doing pretty well on the exercise front right now :)

We ♥ Potpie

Potpie is one of the best foods EVER. It has stew inside, so it's good like stew. But it's stew wrapped in *bread*. Meat, potatoes, and bread, all in one beautiful package. Plus the stew has veggies in it (meat flavored veggies -- the best kind!) so you can almost feel virtuous about eating potpie :)


Mom visited this weekend, so I made this potpie with leftover chicken stew. It was the first chicken stew I'd ever made, so I was excited to show it off. Mom said it was pretty good too :)

Soccer Games

Haley is having a good year in soccer! Her coach is great. Lots of positive reinforcement, as well as corrections. Having listened to some of the other coaches screaming at their teams this year, we're feeling pretty lucky.


Haley's ball skills are getting better and better, and she's learning to steal the ball rather than just let her opponents have the shot. Her team is really starting to pull together on the field, which is neat to watch :)

10,000 Miles

Today my new Prius hit 10,000 miles on the odometer :)

First Day of School

Haley was all ready for school :)



Her new teacher is Ms. Weir, and so far Haley *loves* her. All the other teachers I've talked to have good things to say about her, so it's shaping up to be a great school year :)

Labor Day

I promised Haley that if she got her room clean,we would go to the river. Yay bribery -- she got it clean! We went with some friends. Here are Haley, Sierra, Julie, and Sierra's little sister. The girls spent the day catching crawdads and frogs.







Unfortunately, there were also snakes at the river. Huge vicious snakes! They must have been this big:


Although I promised a river trip, I am anti sun. It was too hot to wear my sweatshirt, so I hid as much of myself as possible under light towels for most of the time :)



Finally we got to -- er -- had to leave for soccer practice. While the girls practiced, Cynthia and I walked a couple of blocks to the pier. It's so beautiful here!


The pier is a great place to walk. On nice days there's usually at least one amateur crab pot dangling off the end of the pier.


The view is great. This part of the sea wall is pretty neat looking :)


Cynthia took my photo for me -- proof I didn't just download these photos from a National Geographic or something :)