Teacher Christmas gifts, the 2011 edition

This year, we decided to mix it up a bit when it came to teacher gifts. The oven was questionable, and I had no desire to try to make enough cookies for four teachers plus the hunting down tins and all that.
But, this year we had a new plan. When we were down at the farm over Thanksgiving, Fran gave me a couple of chunks of beeswax to try making something with it. I looked in her book, and on a few internet sites, and we decided that making a beeswax hand salve was just the thing.
It is SUPER easy. The recipe we settled on only had 3 ingredients.

• 1 part Beeswax
• 5 parts olive oil
• a few drops of essential oil

That's it. Fran also loaned us her double broiler that she uses to melt the beeswax, and Rowan picked out a bottle of lavender oil, and we were in business.

I didn't think to take pictures of every step, but all we did was melt the beeswax, add the olive oil, and keep on stirring until it's all melted together.

 

I'd seen it mentioned a couple of places that we should warm the olive oil before adding it, but I forgot that part. It looked REALLY weird, because when the cold oil hit the warm beeswax, some of the beeswax solidified again and it was all sorts of crazy. But we just kept stirring and hoped for the best.

 

It all worked out and everything got all melty again. I added the lavender oil and we gave it another good stir before I poured it out into the jars.

 

I made sure to put some cardboard down on the counter top first, so I wouldn't have to peel beeswax off the counters. Smart thinking there, because pouring it was a little sloppy.

 

It cooled into a lovely salve for the teachers. We all tried some of the salve the spilled on the cardboard, and it was greasy at first, but melted right into our skin and it smelled really good. I have some beeswax leftover, and I'm going to have to make some more for us to keep!

 

I printed off pictures of each boy and used mod podge to glue them to the lids of the jars. Another coat of mod podge over the top of the picture helps it stay nice. Niall's picture is of him wearing the bee hood, and Rowan's is one of him working the smoker with the great big gloves on.

 

Each jar has a label on it telling what it is, who made it, and where the wax came from. I hope the teachers like it as much as we liked making it!