lemon juice

Another homemade gift item. I made these for my step-mom and my aunt.

This one began as an attempt to make these bath bombs, but it turned out to just be salts.

Here is our story. I adjusted the directions to what we did, so if you want the “bomb” part, you need to follow her recipe.

Ingredients:

3 c cornstarch
3 c baking soda
4-5 c lavender epsom salt
1 c lemon juice
blue and red food coloring
muffin tins

Directions:

Combine all ingredients (except food coloring) in a bowl and mix
Add several drops of food coloring to get desired coloring
Press firmly into a muffin tins
Let dry several hours or overnight

Supplies were all purchased at Walmart.

Perfect and ready to be set.

So here is where we went wrong. I scoured several of these bath bomb recipes, and many said you could substitute lemon juice for citric acid. Well my pea brain didn’t translate that lemon juice is a liquid whereas the citric acid is a solid. So that liquid made a dramatic difference on the mold and how it stuck things together. For future reference, if you do substitute lemon juice, dramatically cut the amount. We added more of the dry ingredients to compensate. I estimated how much we put in there since we kind of guessed to make the consistency stick. (And I was in slight panic mode at this point, so I wasn’t thinking clearly about the documenting the measurements…)

Even after sitting for more than 24 hours, the molds did not stay as a mold.

They were like mush.

Sooo, we decided to just keep them as mush and put them in the jars as salts. I will prevail!

I added a scoop to each one so the recipients can easily get enough out for a relaxing bath.

This “recipe” made two of these large jars as salts.

Things to know if you attempt these:

1. Make sure you know what you are doing when you make substitutions.

2. Use silicone molds. Fortunately for this part, we could scoop them out with a spoon, but if they had hardened I am not sure they would have come out as nicely.

3. You will make a big mess and your kitchen will be overwhelmed with the smell of lavender. (Maybe the mess is just me…)

4. You should probably use someone else’s recipe. Just saying.

I will say that these do work though, so if you want bath salts, have at this recipe!

I hope you enjoyed another round of Pinterest vs. Stephanie.

My husband works out every day, sometimes two or three times a day. So with all these sweat sessions, he gets a pretty large appetite.

Tom-Part of me wants to eat healthy and have a small piece of cake. And part of me wants a big piece of cake because I don’t care.

Me-What part did you get?

Tom showed me the plate. He practically had half of the cheesecake on his plate, but into two distinct pieces-one large and one small.

Tom-I got a big piece and a little piece so both parts would be happy.

Me-The best part is that you have a little piece on your nose.

This weekend I was under the weather. I woke up several days last week with a sore throat and it just progressively got worse throughout the weekend. So I went to Pinterest to see if I could find a home remedy.

I saw one with ingredients we had in our pantry. It called for:

3 tbs lemon juice

1/4 cup raw honey

2 tbs coconut oil

We got this honey at the local farmer’s market. Local honey is always better for you than store bought. It can also help with allergies.

Anyway, back to the sore throat remedy. I mixed it all together. And the product made me want to gag just looking at it.

So I added some regular tea and then put it in the microwave for a few minutes to smooth out the coconut oil and honey. The tea also helped lessen the acidic taste.

It was still very very tart and acidic. It wasn’t too horrible but you have to drink it fairly fast because the coconut oil will harden back up.

So did it work?

Initially maybe it did soften up the harsh scratchiness. However the sugar and lemon juice made me a little more nauseous than I was before. So if you can get paste the taste maybe it will work.

But I still have a sore throat so you be the judge, and it is even worse today. Ok maybe I would need to use it more to test it out, but I just couldn’t get past the taste and wanting vomit.

So I just went back to my other home remedy of putting hydrogen peroxide drops in my ears. That seems to work after a few days much better!

Hope you all had a much more luxurious weekend than I did with my raspy voice and phlegm. I definitely have the man voice going. Although, Tom and I started season 8 of The Office and had online Chinese and Chipotle galore, which is exactly my idea of a perfect weekend.

What are you favorite home remedies for sickness?