Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to start gathering supplies to make your own pharmacy stuff.

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Level of Commitment: Making Strides

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I’m excited to have the first guest Monday Mission ever, from Renee Harris of MadeOn Skin Care. I’ve always been too Type A in the past to let anyone touch the Monday Missions, but I trust Renee to teach you something that I never could! (And I’m going on vacation – see you next week! Um, other than the scheduled posts I’ve got for the Eat Well, Spend Less series, and more!)

Build your Apothecary: Your Family’s Skin Care Pantry

Apothecary:  /ə-ˈpäth-ə-ˌker-ē/ comes from the Latin apotheca, meaning storehouse. It later became the word to describe the pharmacy, the place where formulations were created for medicinal purposes.

Dear Renee, Hi! I purchased your lotion bar, lip balm, and diaper rash cream about 2 weeks ago and I’m loving them! Thank you! I had a question. It’s kind of a big one but thought I should ask anyway. I made changes to our food about 4 years ago (grind own wheat, make bread, cook from scratch, etc.) but now I’m wanting to make more changes with our skin care but it HAS to be inexpensive. I know I can use food products on our skin and that I can make it but I just don’t know where to begin…

I never imagined I’d have my hands elbow-deep in coconut oil, beeswax and all types of butters but when it comes to family care, caring for your family’s skin needs is an extension of what you already do in the kitchen to feed your family healthy meals. The best part is that it’s incredibly easy to make skin products using pure ingredients and tools in your kitchen.

Six essential ingredients to have in your home apothecary

1. Coconut oil: it will be in most of the products you make. Look for 76 coconut oil (it’s solid at temperatures below 76 degrees; this is different from fractionated coconut oil, which is liquid).
2. Beeswax: acts as a “sealant” to lock in other ingredients, and also as an emulsifier.
3. Shea butter: another skin-nourishing ingredient that comes from a shea nut. It’s thicker and “stickier” than coconut oil. Whether refined or unrefined is better depends on how it was processed and what you prefer. Unrefined will leave your product slightly grainy unless you filter it first.
4. A carrier oil such as apricot kernel oil: simply add some drops of essential oil and you have a massage oil. It’s an excellent carrier to hold tea tree oil when you’re dealing with impetigo on a child’s skin.
5. Essential oils: choose essential oils for personal pleasure, for repelling mosquitoes and other insects, for anti-bacterial and anti-fungal uses and for therapeutic purposes. My personal 5 must-haves are: peppermint (awakens the senses), tea tree (antibacterial), citronella (insect-repelling), eucalyptus (clears the sinuses) and lemongrass (personal pleasure).
6. Zinc oxide powder: I incorporate it into my homemade diaper rash cream and products used as a sunscreen.

A few tools to have on hand

1. measuring spoons
2. food scale
3. pourable Pyrex measuring glass
4. pint-sized jars or other glass jars
5. stick blender
6. empty plastic containers

With the above you can make diaper rash cream, bug repellent, hair butter, sunscreen, lotion, massage oil, and much more. A couple more ingredients and you’re ready to make deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and even soap or a shaving bar (I have yet to do all of those!). You can provide your family products that are safe, most of which are edible, and you no longer need to worry about your 2 year old swiping the Desitin.

Below is a recipe for diaper rash cream. More recipes can be found on the DIY page of my website.

Simply Soothing Diaper Rash Cream Recipe

• ½ oz beeswax (add more if you live in temperatures above 80 degrees)
• 6 – 7 oz coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon zinc oxide

Using a double boiler (a Pyrex measuring glass in a pot of boiling water), melt the beeswax and coconut oil completely. Remove from heat and blend in the zinc oxide with a stick blender. Pour into pint size jars and allow to cool. Clean Pyrex by wiping out with a paper towel first and then scrub with hot, soapy water.

Your Challenge

Make 2011 the year to take charge of your family’s skin care needs. Find out now what works and you’ll be prepared to share your goods with friends and family whenever the occasion comes up. You might even find an additional income by selling at farmers’ markets or holiday craft shows (that’s how I started our family business).

A quick note from Katie (see, I can’t give up total control!): for more recipes for home remedies, Herbal Nurturing by Michele Augur is a must-have resource for the beginner (like me) who needs a little hand-holding. It even includes ways to involve the kids and make good health a family affair!

If you’re not a DIY kind of person at all and would rather pay for someone else to make natural, wholesome, SAFE products for your family, of course you order the lotions and lip balms from Renee and grab the herbal remedies from Trilight Health, an April sponsor of KS. They offer super safe solutions to everything from allergies to sinus infections.

A Giveaway and a Deal

One of the products I have in my MadeOn store is a Do-it-Yourself lotion-making kit with enough ingredients to make 6 large lotion bars and 4 lip balms. You can adapt the recipes and also make hair butter. The kit comes with 4 oz shea butter, 5 oz coconut oil, 4 oz beeswax, a medicine dropper, 4 empty lip balm tubes, a pocket-sized Beesilk lotion bar and instructions.

I’m giving two lucky Kitchen Stewardship readers a DIY kit this week!

If you choose to purchase the kit, for the next four days only, add zinc oxide to your DIY kit for FREE. Add the zinc to your shopping cart and use code “freezinc” at checkout. With the DIY kit you’re able to build your family skin care pantry with ingredients to make hard lotion bars for dry skin, hair butter for coarse hair, diaper rash cream that’s safe for cloth diapers, or a little bit of all three. Or, invent your own sunscreen! Click here to purchase.

ENTER HERE

Two winners will receive a $29.95 Do-it-Yourself lotion-making kit from Renee by following directions to enter:

Giveaways at Kitchen Stewardship are run via a survey, which means comments on this post do not count (and will be deleted). In the long run, this is quicker for you if you go for extra entries.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER GIVEAWAY CONTEST. GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED; THANKS FOR ENTERING!

There are 8 possible entries! Here’s what you can do to win:

1. *Mandatory entry: name one or two skin care products (can be anything!) you wish you could make if you knew how.
2. Subscribe in a reader or via email to Kitchen Stewardship (or tell me if you already do).
3. “Like” Kitchen Stewardship on Facebook.
4. “Like” Hard Lotion on Facebook.
5. Email 5 friends about this giveaway along with the link to it. (Email subscribers can forward their message.)
6. Follow @kitchenstew and @hardlotion on Twitter AND tweet this:
   I’m building a home apothecary with @hardlotion via @kitchenstew! DIY lotion bar kit giveaway: [ENTER URL HERE]
7. Stumble or Digg your favorite post or recipe at Kitchen Stewardship (you can use the button at the top of the post). What is Stumble?
8. If you have a blog or website, post about this giveaway linking back to this post.

Remember, comments here DO NOT COUNT. You must use the survey form.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER GIVEAWAY CONTEST. GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED; THANKS FOR ENTERING!

I will use random.org’s integer generator to choose the winner, who will be announced on the blog and will receive an email.  The giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, April 7th and I’ll post the winners the following week.

If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of MadeOn Lotion but also a friend of Renee’s, so her guest post is a gift to me and the commissions I get from any sales are a beautiful working relationship in action. Same goes for Michele and Herbal Nurturing, a book I’m still using and figuring out. See my full advertising disclosure here.

Official rules and small print stuff: 1) No purchase necessary to win 2) must be 13 or older to enter and have a mailing address within the sponsor’s boundaries (see above) 3) only one survey entry per person 4) odds of winning depend on number of entries 5) employees of Kitchen Stewardship, LLC or sponsoring company not eligible for participation 6) contest sponsored by MadeOn Hard Lotion in California 7) prizes must be accepted as is and are not redeemable for cash Kitchen Stewardship, LLC and sponsoring company are not liable for any injury or damage to persons and/or things as a result of the acceptance of the prize offered.