We had a plan...

We got a set of bantams fairly soon after moving house. We've always wanted chickens, and luckily our new housemate did too!
Bantams are great- relatively friendly, cute as a button and easy to keep. Out of 5 bantams, only one of them currently lays eggs though... Its the wrong season, of course, but what we really want are some hens to lay us some beautiful free range eggs.
Bantams are apparently really good mothers and get broody really quickly. Same with a hen we were given too. But as luck had it, none of them have had the inclination so far.

So what did we do? Well, we got some fertile eggs anyway. Luck would have it that Kel's brother's hen was broody, so we gave them to him and his wee hen sat on them for 21 days.
The time arrived, and so did one chick, but no more. And then that chick died.
Sad times indeed.

Instead of wondering what to do next, we took the plunge and bought 6 three day old chicks off Trademe. (off a great breeder based in Helensville) Hopefully they will be all hens and will be our good layers, but we wont know for a while yet!

Having chickens has been a good learning curve- even more so with the babies. Its so lovely having them in our back garden, eating all our wandering jew, talking away to themselves.

We'll update their progress soon

Easy DIY Lip Balm

Using this recipe HERE I went ahead and made some lip balm of my own! I adjusted the recipe and have included it for you below.

This recipe makes a more chapstick texture balm and would be perfect in a recycled chapstick tube.

This makes about ~30 mls (give or take...), though I did use 2 recycled containers. Here is how I did it.

Lip Balm
1/8 cup beeswax
1 1/2 TB shea butter (you could substitute cocoa or another vegetable butter)
1 TB coconut oil (or other carrier oil- The original recipe suggests Safflower oil. I used coconut as its quite solid and it is a great moisturiser)
2 drops essential oil of your choice (I used Lavender)
optional: a teeny shaving of lipstick to give it colour.

Gently heat the beeswax, shea butter and coconut oil in a double boiler.
Once it has melted, mix in the essential oil and colour if so desired.
Pour quickly into your containers and let set.

See? Easy! For a more spreadable, melt-able balm, add and extra tablespoon of butter or oil (whichever's cheaper haha!). You can experiment with other butters and oils to get something more suited to your needs.

Aside from being quite hard, it seems to work really well and lasts nicely on my lips.

I sourced the beeswax, butter and coconut oil from Lotus Oils though you might be able to find it cheaper elsewhere. Two thumbs up to Lotus Oils for delivering less than 48 hours after my order!

Please do let me know if you give this a go.
Kudos to Gweneth at Yours Truly, G for the original recipe and idea.