Salve-ation

 I have hard skin on my feet. Well, thanks for sharing - but I do, and so do many others and it's summer, therefore sandal time. I find summer never sits easily with me, too hot, too many itchy things and not enough money to enjoy the extra day light - and so summer shoes are a bit of an issue with me. Though hard underneath, my feet seem to have the tensile strength of wet tissue paper, and so will break out in blisters and rawness almost the moment the temperature gets above 25 degrees.
However, there's nothing much I can do about that, but I can make an organic salve to help soften my poor old plates when they've had a rough day.

 What I like about this is that a) it's one of those satisfying 3 easy part recipes, you just need the same quantity of three things to get the basic mix, which you're at liberty to add to when you get a bit more bold and b) it's kind of one of those 'all purpose' numbers - so it will work as a great hand cream if you're a gardener and you need a bit of t.l.c after a hard day's weeding, and it's great for your cuticles if you suffer from dry hands.

You either use your swanky double boiler, or you stand a glass jar in a small pan of simmering water - and into this you put one part coconut oil, one part cocoa butter (or mango butter or shea butter) and one part bees wax. You can even go crazy use all three butters, 1/3 of a part each, but hey, that's up to you.
What you can also do, while the three parts are slowly melting together on your stove, is consider essential oils.

If you have a selection of essential oils, or money, I'd suggest rosemary and lavender, which both have healing proprieties good for gardeners hands. If like me you've been making a coffee cake for your husband's birthday and you have a bottle labeled 'coffee essence' in front of you, you'll do what I did and pour in a healthy slug when your oils have melted, been mixed and taken off the heat.
This actually turned out rather well - as the main parts of this are coconut and cocoa butter the scent of coffee is nothing but delicious when mixed in with these. It's even more delicious when you throw caution to the wind and chuck in a teaspoon of cocoa powder, when it just smells like pudding.
But the proof of this pudding is in the rubbing on the feet, and this is doing the trick on my summer heels. I'd suggest applying at bedtime and then popping on some socks so that they have a chance to soften over night.
The other option is to spread the salve over your shins too, as the coffee gives your skin a lightly tanned effect into the bargain. Delicious!