Night-time Body Balm

Y’all know sleep eludes me most of time and I’m always trying to find something that might help.

Last weekend, I stumbled upon a magnesium based recipe for body balm. Magnesium is what is in bath salts (which I use most nights) and is thought to improve sleep.

I had been so impressed by the homemade lip balm I’d made at the beginning of the year, I decided to give it a go.

There were two problems with this idea.

The first is that I am absolutely and completely incapable of following recipes. When I say this, I don’t mean I always go off at a tangent thinking I know best. No, I earnestly try to follow any recipe but always seem to make a mistake along the way.

The second is that as I’ve got older, the whole ‘multitasking’ thing I used to find fairly simple now alludes me. Having children who like to share every single part of their lives, means it’s rare for me to find ten minutes without a chatting human beside me.

And so it was.

I did attempt to follow Leah’s instructions but alas, my stick blender broke, I forgot to put in the essential oils (so had to remelt and remix) and was being talked at to the whole time so that by the end I wasn’t sure what went in, what didn’t and whether I had got any measurements right.

The result was surprisingly good. It stung to put on my hands for the first few seconds, which I think was the badly-mixed-in essential oils. It didn’t sting any other part of my body.

That night I rubbed it all over my legs and feet. Note to self: menopausal (and therefore burning hot) feet should not be moisturised – it’s the equivalent to putting oil in a frying pan…and feet are no place to be saute-ing onions.

However, it went on well and my skin felt really nice the next morning.

Did I think it helped me to sleep? I suspect a few nights is not long enough to say definitively. So I guess the answer is that I’ll let you know once I’ve used it for a couple of weeks.

Note – I used the same essential oils that I use in my bath salts: Pure World Sleep (Blend of Essential Oils. Rose, Lavender, Chamomile, Peppermint, Ylang Ylang and Lemon) which I get from Amazon.