First try at making lotion

First, a confession.  I do not truly have a "black thumb," (as opposed to Mom's green thumb) but perhaps just a brown thumb.  The one species of plant I have always been able to not only keep alive, but have it thrive, is the aloe.  Yup, the burn plant has always done well for me ... okay, except when I had Twilight the indoor Terrorist Kitty who actually ate aloe plants.  She was quite strange even before she came back to me as a goat (now Chocolate, my blue-eyed Little Monster).

So, with a large number of aloe plants my mother-in-law gave me, and more peeking up around those plants, I have been researching things to do with aloe.  I have the stuff I need to make soap, just waiting on a day my back is more inclined to tolerate standing at the stove for the long stirring step in hot process soapmaking.  I also have the stuff needed to make my own lotion, and found a small batch recipe here.

So, I just gave it a try.  It will need some tweaking, but my first attempt was:
1 oz (by weight) olive oil
3 oz (by weight) coconut oil - solid at current room temp
30 g wax (clear cheese wax, I used a vegetable peeler to slice it off the block)
35 g aloe gel - one large fat leaf's worth

first batch of aloe lotion

I melted the wax and oils together, giving it a short zap in the microwave (30 seconds per zap) to heat it.  I probably should have measured out the aloe gel first, since it was trying to congeal as I was still scraping the leaf.  No fragrance, and definitely no colorant used, as I am not trying for anything fancy, just useful.

We're supposed to be riding the weather roller coaster ... a couple days in the 80sF, then rain, then chance of frost immediately behind the rain.  This has been the pattern the previous winters, and from listening to the locals it's perfectly normal.  When the cold hits, and hubby lights the wood-burning stove, the new lotion will get its stress test as that is when my skin gets SO dry and itchy.

Even if I end up not liking the "feel" of this first lotion, it will still make excellent udder balm for the goats.  It even looks like Udder Balm.