Zeo's Thoughts and Wanderings

Okay, so my lotion/balm/butter obsession isn't dying down yet.  I recently purchased a bottle of avocado oil to add to my teeny supply stash.  I've been using one of my tubes of cocoa honey lip balm almost obsessively all week (yet surprisingly, not at all yesterday....).  And today, I made body butter bars. 

What I made isn't _quite_ exact; I was about half an ounce short on the cocoa butter, because the jar I bought last week was exactly 4 ounces, and I used some of it in last week's lip balm.  Which means I'm now out of cocoa butter.  :-(  Also, I have learned from this not to buy a one-pound block of beeswax.  It's too hard for me to cut it to size, and then getting it into smaller pieces to melt quicker.  I thought today, "Hey!  I have a spare grater!"  But damn, grating four ounces of beeswax takes a long time.  I also learned that while the one-cup Pyrex measuring cup may be a fine size for lip balm batches (small lip balm batches), it's too small for this recipe.  I instead used a small glass mixing bowl and the microwave.

I don't have any molds, so instead, I'm using the silicone food cups I bought for my lunch boxes, set in a muffin tray to keep their shape.  I keep wandering out to the kitchen to see how the bars are solidifying.  It's strangely fascinating.

Playing around at Mystic Mountain Sage, I put together an order of basic supplies.  It's over $100 before shipping.  But, if I cut out the lip balm tubes, caps, and lotion tubes, it'll be...no, it'll still be over $100, but _just_ over $100.  Matt's supposed to be allotting me $100 "play money" out of his next paycheck, which is in two weeks.  So I guess we'll see what I feel like then.  I could always cut the sizes of most of the supplies in half, 8 ounces rather than 16, see what that totals to. 

Then again, in two weeks, I may have a totally different obsession.  :-)