It’s become a tradition for my group of friends to gather to celebrate New Year’s Eve together. The cool thing about being a grownup is that the potlucks get a lot better. Everybody brings real food, instead of just bread and chips. I brought beef potpie, chips, and carrot cake. We also had two salads, homemade salsa, and roast pork. For dessert there was homemade lemon pie, apple crisp, cookies, and fresh whipped cream. Yummy!

This year a lot of us left before the ball dropped, but Nancy, Cynthia, and I stuck it out. All of our kids managed to stay awake until the big moment. We poured pear cider into plastic champagne flutes, and counted down while watching the ball drop. Then we toasted the new year.

Nancy’s neighbor then set off a lot of fireworks. The kids gathered around the open sliding glass door, cheering for each bottle rocket. I’m sure the neighbors knew exactly how much their unexpected audience enjoyed the show.

So my palm butter and essential oils arrived, so I made another batch of whipped body butter 🙂 This time, I ended up with a much thicker batch.

Method

Just like the last batch. I measured out 100 g of shea butter, 60g of palm butter, and 40g of coconut butter. This time I used a bigger bowl, to make whipping easier. Unfortunately, that meant I had to use my crockpot bowl as my ice bath. It used a lot more water, and I ended up not having as much ice as I needed. Next time, I want to make sure to have 2 trays of ice before beginning.

I added the essential oils and the vitamin E. As I mixed, it didn’t harden as fast as I was expecting. Next time I’ll let it sit for a few minutes and see if that fixes it, but this time I melted another 100g of shea butter and added it (since the shea is the most aggressively solid of the butters). Eventually, it cooled and began whipping properly. I have mixed feelings about the different proportions of shea butter to the last recipe. It’s less creamy, and more solid. However, I think shea butter is the big good ingredient, so having more of it is probably just great as far as the skin is concerned.

The scent ended up bordering on too sweet. Definitely too sweet in the jar, but once on it leaves the skin nicely scented. Haley loves it, of course. Is there a scent too sweet for an 8 year old girl?

Anyhow, the next day I brushed it through Haley’s hair before her shower, and then shampooed it out. After the shower I melted some in my hands and ran it through her wet hair. It’s been 2 days, and her hair is smooth (not greasy!) and feels really moisturized. It’s much less tangly than before 🙂

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.

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.

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 🙂