The House of Coughs and Colds

 
One really shouldn’t bother making plans. One should not take it in to one’s head to say this is the week that I am going to do a Seasonal Scrub and this is the week I am going to release a new download and this is the week I am going to have cwoffee with my bestest friend because I can’t remember the last time I laid eyes on her.
Oh no. One really shouldn’t acknowledge such plans out loud at all. Best to keep them tucked inside your head and hope for the best for anything else is tempting fate and fate frankly takes any opportunity to take advantage of your trusting nature. The betch!
Today Finley is at home sick with a hacking little cough. Ste remains off-colour and I am fighting off the kind of  fierce war with a tickly cough and snuffly cold determined to consume me, with a battery of Vitamin C, Zinc, Echinachea, essential oils and many, many layers of thermal vests and cosy fleecy cardigans.
And I will win Housekeepers. I will win because anything else in unthinkable. Where other people take coughs and colds in their stride I behave abysmally and screech about how no-one else suffers like I do and generally a need a good smack before I can be dragged kicking and screaming out of the kind of self-pity generally reserved for those on their last legs.
I will win because I have coated my entire, overly buxom chest in a mixture of my own devising, that will I hope see off everything from the flu to the plague, a blend that includes cloves, cinnamon bark, rosemary, lemon and Eucalyptus.
While it’s use in my home may have come too late to prevent the arrival of this seasons’s colds, today I am making the most of this so-called Thieves’ blend anti-bacterial properties by adding a few drops of lavender, because I am Alison and I wouldn’t be Alison if I didn’t chuck a little lavender at any given problem now would I?
The Recipe?

Get Better Balm

Six tablespoons of coconut oil
3 drops of Cloves Oil
2 drops of Lemon and Cinnamon Oils
1 drop each of Eucalyptus and Rosemary Oils
Five drops of Lavender Oil
Gently warm the coconut oil in a bain-marie until you can sir it, then add the oil drop by drop and spoon in to a glass container and allow to set.
I have rubbed the oil in to my chest as I said, but for children I would recommend rubbing it into their feet and then popping a pair of warn socks on, or if the cough is particularly hacky, gently massaging it into the back of their neck as I have just done with Finn.
There now.  I feel better already. Although that might just be down to the fact that I am curled up with my lovely boy, watching Scooby Doo and abandoning the remainder of my seasonal scrub until we are all a little better…
It’s any excuse really isn’t it Housekeepers? If I can’t be a good example I am going to have to be a terrible warning.
Further Resources
1 . The Seasonal Scrub. My step-by step guide to conducting your own week or month long seasonal house clean. Get it on Amazon.Com here for $2.99 and on Amazon.Co.Uk here for £1.99
2. Glass containers for aromatherapy: Purely for (silly) aesthetic reasons I prefer the amber glass jars and bottles for all the lotions, balms and potions I mix up. Buy them on Amazon.com here and and on Amazon.Co.uk here.