panaceaherbals

This week i made 500+ lip balms for the CETA National Debate Tournament at Binghamton University! Woohoo, congrats to everyone going and to my hubby Joe for putting it together this year.  We wanted to include something nice for the welcome bags that would have the CETA logo so it could be a fun souvenir.  I thought making the lip balm would be a little stressful, and of course it was, and also a great learning experience.  It was my first big order.

Luckily I decided on buying lip balm trays so i didn’t have to pour the balm liquid into the tubes freehand.  That really helped, but the process of putting the tubes into the trays, taking them out of the trays, and cleaning them a big endevour.  Did I mention cleaning them wasn’t easy? Lip balm is sticky and hard, and dosen’t come off without a dishwasher.  I dont have  a dishwasher.  Props to Mama Schatz for letting me use hers!

So once all the balms are  poured into the containers  and taken out of trays it isnt  over!  Then the excess balm  left on top of the tube (there  is always a little) has to be  taken off of all of them with a  knife, and a paper towel  used to wipe around the  tube.  Mind you lint tries its  hardest to find its way into the lip balm(s) all the while. Then it is time to take the hair dryer to the balms to smooth the top so that it looks shiny and nice and new the first time youopen it.  This is admittedly a time consuming and unneccasary step- if I were making these for friends I probably wouldn’t, but it certainy makes things look more professional.  But the hair dryer makes each balm go over the sides a little again, so they all have to be wiped off again, and sometimes it blows them all over like dominos if you blow them in the wrong direction.

Last (almost) you get to cap them and take the tweesers to them to remove any lint.  Then I designed a pretty cute label and labeling began.  The debate team helped me put the labels on some but I am such a perfectionist I took back control and finished them myself.  The results: peppermint hot chocolate and orange-clove scented balms that are all-natural and partially organic.  I used a new recipe for a harder balm so that the guys would be comfortable using it, and if I do say so myself they turned out pretty good.

But, the name of this post is life lessons and lip balm.  So time for the point.  What did I learn from the lip balm?

1) Not to feel guilty about charging a nice price for my products, AKA, I am SOO not a machine.

and i have been feeling pretty guilty.  I want everyone to be able to have wonderful herbal facial care and fun bath and body toys.  But the lip balms made it painfully clear to me for the first time that I was not a machine.  My products are better but my efficiency is clearly not as good.  It took about 48 hours total to do the balms, just work time.  A machine could have done it in what, under an hour? Probably much less.

2) that the product is more important than the packaging, but packaging is more time consuming.

if it wasn’t a good product noone should want it.  I have great products made with a lot of love, many using herbs i pick myself all summer long.  This is the fun part.  But the not-so-fun part is also the part that takes the most time.  Its the packaging.  For lip balms especially, but for most products, it takes much more time to package that to make.  Im glad I now know how much time I have to budget in for packaging otherwise I might have totally screwed myself the next time.

3) it’s nice to make money, but what I do is a labor of love.

And thats not just because I did it for free.  Its because at the end of the day you only care about the quality, and nothing goes out with low quality ingredients or deformed or unscented because it is a reflection of your work, not because you might lose money.  I end up overspending on my products most of the time because I want the recipient to be thoughly impressed.  In that case, I’ll never get rich (knock on wood), but I will make everybody else very happy with thier purchases.  And that makes me feel happy to know.

Yesterday I spent the day making some delicious massage bars.  After trying 3 different recipes, I finally found one that wasn’t too hard or soft, modeling them after the Lush ones, of course.  And I am happy to say they are 90% organic!  The only ingredient I couldn’t find organic was the beeswax because I ran out and had to get some at Michaels.  They try to charge 18$ a pound!  Thank G-d they are always sending out those 40% coupons to get you into the store.  I used soap molds with embossing stamps for the designs.  Making these babies is pretty easy.  First, add all your beautiful organic oils and butter and melt them up in a double boiler.  The trick is to play with proportions until you get it just right.  The ingredients are organic Shea butter, organic cocoa butter, organic soy oil, and beeswax, plus and scents you might like.  For this batch I used Lavender, Peppermint and Grapefruit.  The cocoa butter adds its own strong scent as well unless you get unscented.  I get mine from Mountain Rose Herbs and they are the beautiful looking morsels you see in the picture.

After all the ingredients are melted on the double boiler EXCEPT for the essential oils (they are extremely volitile and will evaporate), time to put the mixture into the molds.  At this point, I mix in the individual essential oils.

Now let the mixture set.  Once cooled, stick em in the freezer so that they will easily pop out of the mold and you will not have to pry them.  Also, if you are wrapping them or something, if they are just out of the freezer you will be much less likely to scratch or leave fingerprint marks on them while handling.  And remember, these are made to melt at body temperature! So do not send them to your relatives in Las Vegas in the middle of summer.

So , voila, they are done and if I must say so myself they are lovely.  I sell them at my Etsy site, PanaceaHerbals@etsy.com. (Check out my etsy widgit on the sidebar to the right). I can make custom ones in any fragrance you might like if you click the custom order link.  Some call them lotion bars, some call them massage bars.  They are awesome for any use, and the ones Imade here are safe enough to even use on infant skin.  I love them because they are much more concentrated than lotions- most lotions must be atleast 50% water to emulsify correctly- and most drugstore brands are much more.  So I think lotion bars are a much better value and great for especially dry winter skin or baby skin. ButI love Lotion bars the most because they are Green!!! Anytime you choose a solid formulation over a liquid once in your skincare products you are choosing to not contribute a large bottle to a landfill!  I wrap mine simply in thin plastic and offer an optional , reusable tin for gifts or being fancy.  So expect lots of solid products to be highlighted throughout my line.

Wind in our Lives

Although the element of Wind in Traditional Chinese Medicine is historically associated with the springtime, it seems these days with our advanced heating methods Wind diseases are more prevalent than ever in the Winter.  As we go from one extreme temperature to another, we are especially susceptible to the Wind influence.  Wind diseases, like all of the pernicious influences, enter the body causing external symptoms and disease, and if left untreated can penetrate the body, first becoming both internal & external at the same time, and eventually a more serious internal disease. (I am speaking about the levels of disease as they pertain to TCM, not western medicine).  When wind has become an internal disease, the body is marked with dizziness, tremors, vertigo, paralysis and or/ convulsions.  Lucky for us, we usually experience the Wind influence as an External disease diagnosed as the common Flu or Cold.  This post will focus on External Wind disease and treatment.  Look for a bowstring pulse and a normal tongue body to diagnose External Wind.
The essence of wind is movement.   A Wind disease will usually come on very fast, and possibly go just as quick.  The expression of the disease moves though the body.  This is why arthritic symptoms that change location are classified as Wind-bi.  Anytime the body produces symptoms that seem to change location often, you are probably dealing with the presence of Wind.  The expression of External Wind in the body is what we term a “Cold” or “Flu”, often accompanied with headaches, chills, fever, stuffy nose, aches and so forth.  In traditional Chinese Medicine, not all colds are treated equal, however.  After we identify the presence of a Wind Cold//flu, treatment differs dramatically depending on the constitution of the patient and the energetics of the disease.  The Cold we speak of can either be Yin in nature- that is a Wind-Cold cold, or Yang in Nature and marked by excess- a Wind-Heat cold//flu. While diaphoretic or sweat producing herbs are indicated for both energetics, energy of the diaphoretics used to treat them must be very different.

The Wind-Cold Cold/Fever

The Wind-Heat Cold/Fever

A Wind-Heat Cold or Fever will instead be marked by Excess and Heat signs and symptoms.  This is the patient who is moving quite a lot, extremely restless, more red in the face, and has a vigorous appetite.  This patient will be hot, throwing the covers off in bed.  They may be moving from room to room, and trying to attempting to self-medicate.  They are more likely to become agitated from their condition than the Wind-Cold sufferer.  They will probably vocalize the way they are feeling often.  Feeling the pulse will indicate that it is in a hyper state, and the tongue will be red.  Specifically, look for a floating and rapid pulse, with a pale red tongue tip with a white or yellow tongue coat.  The expression of fever will be higher, and have the tendency to come and go through the day and night.  Mucous secretions may be yellow or green and thick.
For a Wind-Heat cold or fever, we would choose cooling diaphoretics.  Like cooling diaphoretics, they are indicated to aid in expelling external diseases, but they work a little differently in that they do not work as much by increasing circulation and “Stirring things up” as relaxing the body while opening the pores.  Wild-Heat symptoms such as high fever with cold intolerance are mitigated by warming diaphoretics such as elder flower, catnip, peppermint, boneset, bupulerum and mulberry leaf.  They are better indicated for Wind-Heat because they will not aggravate the patient by heightening the fever and causing more heat like a warming diaphoretic would, but instead will more gently drive the disease out of the pores while regulating the energetics of the body by decreasing heat.  I would give the patient cooling drink and food, but stay away from external cold treatments that would close the pores, since it is through the pores that we are trying to remove this external disease.  I like to use a traditional 1/2 peppermint, 1/2 elderflower infusion for these symptoms. Boneset is a very strong cooling diaphoretic that takes terrible but is a very effective and strong medicine.  It is best used as an infusion but tinctures are also available if you can’t get anyone to drink it.

Review:  NYC is awesome but it’ll kick your ass trying to drag two kids around it in winter!  Both kids ended up sick, but not before we got to spend a great time.

The day we drove in we hit up MOMA- the Museum of Modern Art.  It is so

much fun to take a 2 year old to a museum and see it through thier eyes.

Seralena for some reason was expecting zombies.  She threw a tantrum on the museum floor SCREAMING for zombies them like she expected them to materialize, and that when they did they’d play with her instead of eating her brains out.  Crazy!  And ezra kept escaping my grasp, unleashing himself onto the museum floor at which point a museum gaurd would quickly inform us that this was unexceptable, ditracting me long enough for Ezra to barely miss rubbing his filthy paws all over a classic Warhol.  Well I can’t blame him, I wanted to rub it too.

Saturday we had a great time.  We took a short but freezing walk to FAOSchwartz and did all the fun stuff there is to do there plus there was a Story Hour in the book section which gave me a well needed break.  I got let the parents who cared more mother my children and sat back and relaxed.

Later Hash and Cooper stopped by, and OMG were they the cutest.  Cooper was throwing

Seralena around our hotel room for atleast an hour.  And they helped me through not one but two incidences of Seranlena becomeing naked in public because she had to “go potty.”  Thats friendship.  You picked a winner, Hashish.

Then me and the kiddies ditched Joe and took off to LI to stop by Rena’s crib and moved on to visit the sister and her kiddies out in Suffolk.  We stayed a

couple of days and had an absolutely wonderful time.  I miss you already Dayna Elaina and Sis!  We basically hung around the house giggiling and baking.  O and me and Dayna made some pottery, which made me very very happy.  I’d post the picture of me and my sister and all our kids, but we just look so awful I can’t.

The fire is roaring, and I’m realizing something:  I  don’t think I hate winter anymore.  Winter in the  country is absolutely beautiful.  The snow dosen’t get  all dirty like it does in the city.  The only time it ever  gets ugly is when we have to call the plow in to do  the driveway and it spits dirt everywhere, which has  only been once so far this year.  I mean this snow looks pleasant, peaceful, pure, and good enough to eat.  Seralena does it all the time.

It does have its drawbacks, however- tonight I tried to close the chickens inthe barn for the night but the door was iced shut in the 12 degree weather.  I had to boil water for hours and throw it over the door to de-ice it.  I did, eventually, and managed to escape any third degree burns.  Sometimes I think the credit we give ourselves out here in the country for being “self sufficient” is just to balance how stupid we feel for doing things to which the city human, would seem insane.

So here we go, I’ve started a Blog!  We’ll see how it goes. I plan on updating it often telling anyone and everyone who will read about my recent escapades in life, herbs, cosmetics, et all.  I might even throw in a cooking recipe or two!  So if I don’t post for a year, someone please bother me about it.

I know have a guaranteed audience from mother 1 and mother 2  because I am baiting them with pictures of my adorable children. Hopefully I can get my brothers-in-laws in and my sister too.  I hope Sara, Lauren Cam, Rena and Mic(kenzee) will stay tuned. (Hey, you guys never had to deal with the bridesmaid thing so this is the least you can do.)  Right?  Right.

Well, time to pick up the kids.

❤ Jackie

ps. come back soon!

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