New Stuff

After complaining about the wet and slushy snow on Friday, we got about 6 inches of dry and powdery stuff yesterday. So we went sledging. We finally fitted together the wooden sledge that I bought Oliver for Christmas, and it's a beauty, going faster and further on it's two wooden runners than the plastic tea tray type. Also, it is a lot easier to get on and off for a middle aged woman, who is not as slim as she ought to be.

In between the Family Stuff and the Keeping Warm (that takes up a fair bit of my time and involves doing very little but with large amounts of blankets), I have been experimenting with lip balms and body butters.
The body butter came out fine:

It is fragranced with lavender and geranium oils, with the idea that if you rub it in after a warm bath it will help you sleep.
The lip balm, I have some issues to sort out. The flavours are great, one is natural, one is lemon (not enough lemon to taste properly) and the surprise one is chocolate and vanilla. I don't much like chocolate in things other than chocolates, cakes and biscuits, I don't like chocolate spread or chocolate cereal and think chocolate yoghurt is disgusting, but subtly in lip balm with vanilla as balance, it is delicious.
My first issue, is probably due to the temperature of the oils and the temperature of the jars causing the balm to miscolour on the sides of the jars;

The other issue I have, with both the lip balm and the body butter is that they have set quite hard. The body butter is definitely the texture of butter taken straight from the fridge rather than butter ready to scoop up and spread over a warm body. The lip balm needs to be scraped out of the pot with a finger nail, although it will spread nicely on the lips after that.

However it does occur to me that with the coldness of the weather outside, and the lack of heating inside, the balms are probably colder than they will normally be. The temperature in my kitchen when I came down this morning was only 6 degrees. I am currently in the living room with the fire on full blast trying to get the temperature up to that of a central heated house of about 17 or 18 degrees, to see how the balms are then.
I managed to get it up to about 14 degrees but then Oliver came in leaving the door wide open and letting the heat out.
Will let you know how I get on.