Our friends Marcus and Kelly Daly's new business. A beautiful idea. Read the article linked below:

An Island man finds his calling, creating simple wood coffins

Summer Lotion in the Fall

When we moved to this property 2 years ago, we were delighted by the blooming of roses scattered around the acrege and chamomile coming up in the area that used to be the vegetable garden. Amelia and I infused both flowers, separately, in pomice olive oil and have since mostly forgotten about them this year. Today, because it is "H for Honeybee and St. Helen" week in our homeschool, we decided to finally turn some of our summer scented rose and chamomile oil into hand and face lotion with beeswax as one ingredient.

We mixed together and heated in a pyrex glass measuring cup set in a small pot of heated water:
4 oz chamomile infused oil
2 oz rose infused oil
4 loose Tbs fragrant beeswax
a forkful of raw honey (just because it's Honey week and it's going in everything)

When the wax melted, we took it off the heat and measured in:
2 tsp Bulgarian Rose Water

And then we stirred until it was cool and the water was incorporated into the oil-based lotion.

Now we have our family's daily lotion to last through the winter and to remind us of the sweetness of summer through the upcoming dark months.

For more information about homemade herbal oil infusions and medicines, check out Nature's Children or Common Herbs for Natural Health both by Juliette de Bairacli Levy, Opening our Wild Hearts to the Healing Herbs by Gail Faith Edwards, or Healing Wise by Susun Weed.

We are carving pumpkins today thanks to Janet Bishop for the plants starts and good neighbors James and Nan for the extra orange squashes. We're also baking and pureeing pumpkins for the freezer to use in breads and pies, and sauteing them for dinner with white wine and bay. For our mid-morning snack we had pumpkin bread with chocolate chips from Vanessa Burgess. Last night we also had pumpkin soup for dinner (Thanks again to Vanessa). It's pumpkin week!