Coffee Body Scrub

This exotic body scrub is fabulous for helping you wake up in the morning!

Ingredients:
2 cups of coffee grounds
½ cup of sea salt
2/3 tablespoon of almond oil

Directions:
Place the ingredients into a mixing bowl and blend together. Once you are in the bath, or shower place the mixture directly on your skin once it is moist. Rub the scrub into your skin and allow it to be absorbed into the skin for 5-10 minutes. After it has set for the allotted amount of time, rinse off with warm water.
The mix will exfoliate are rejuvenate your skin, not to mention the aroma will awaken your senses.

The Season is changing, Is your skin care regime?

The weather is beginning to warm. Everything around us is changing. Are you ready to change your skin care regime?
As the temperatures rise, the need for heavy moisturizers will cease to exist and in turn you will find that a change to a lighter moisturizer will be necessary. If you really are in love with your current moisturizer you can always dilute it with distilled or plain water to thin it out.
The skin around your eyes and lips will still be effected by the dry air so you should use the thick moisturizer for those areas. Spring brings warmth but also many things that flare up our allergies and other skin rashes become more prevalent. It is important that we remain pro active with our skin care regiment to help keep these new factors at bay to help keep our allergies under control.
Here are some helpful hints you can do right in your own home to help in that battle.
Use neem water as an antiseptic facial cleanser. Take neem leaves and boil them in a covered container. Once the water is down to about 1/3 the amount, the neem water is ready. You should then use a strainer and put the water in a glass bottle and keep it refrigerated. It will be ready for use at all times. If you can’t use neem leaves, use Basil leaves in its place. Basil leaves have the same antiseptic properties that neem leaves have.
The warmth feels good to our skin. The winter months we have spent covering our skin with thick garments to keep warm. It is very easy for us to allow the direct sunlight to damage our skin without realizing the harm. Using a lotion with SPF will help protect us. A couple of other ways to help are to wear a hat and use an umbrella. They will both help keep those harmful ultraviolet rays off of our skin.

Benefits of handmade laundry detergent

Handmade all natural laundry detergent is far better for you and our environment. There are several, very simple and important benefits that we all should keep in mind.
The first and most noticeable is the savings. Comparing store bought commercial detergents and handmade laundry detergent the facts are very clear. A load using store bought commercially manufactured laundry detergent will cost you on average of 32 cents per load. On the other hand, a load using handmade laundry detergent will cost you 10 cents per load. That adds up considering the average laundry detergent costs about $30 for a container that says will give you enough detergent for 96 loads. The same amount of loads can be done with all natural laundry detergent for 1/3 of the cost. That is a huge savings.
When you start reading all the ingredients in commercially made laundry detergent you can start to feel like you have to be a scientist to understand what the ingredients are. There are numerous chemicals and additives that most of us can’t understand. Handmade laundry soap consists of 3 main ingredients and an essential or fragrance oil of your choosing. Borax, soap shavings, and washing soda are those 3 main ingredients. The best option for the soap shavings is to use all natural handmade soap and you have to remember to use washing soda, not baking soda. These ingredients are all safe for us and our environment too.
No matter how well you plan ahead, sometimes something slips through the cracks and you forget something you need. It has happened to all of us at one time or another. With handmade natural laundry detergent you have the ingredients right in your home and whenever you use the last of the detergent you have available, you don’t have to run to the store. You can make more right there in your home

Is Hand Made Natural Skin Care a Better Choice?

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the government organization the regulates what ingredients are used in making skin care items. They have done very little in that aspect. It has been discovered that many of the ingredients that are being used commercially have toxic effects on our bodies. None of the companies or the regulators of the industry have taken the time to properly test these harmful ingredients over a long term to find out what a daily exposure to them can result in.

To better understand the significance of the dangers you should know what is in those commercial products and what you could be putting on your body. Many beautifying essentials contain any of the following; Mercury, Dioxin, Nitrosamines, DEA, Cyclomethicone, Isopropyl Alcohol, and Polyethylene Glycol. All of these components have been shown to have damaging effects and in some cases they can stay in some body parts for very long periods of time. One of the most seriously effected  categories is pregnant women or women in the process of trying to get pregnant.

Knowing about the dangers that are out there makes it easier for you to purchase what is good for your skin, as well as the rest of your body.  One thing the FDA has done right is making it a requirement for manufacturers to list the ingredients they use in the product in order of highest quantity used. The safe assumption we can all make about these labels is that it can be divided into 3 parts. The first part will contain the materials that account for 90-95 percent of the product. These are most commonly emollients, humectants, emulsifiers, surfactants, and preservatives.  Emollients provide moisture, humectants help keep the skin stay moist, emulsifiers bond the ingredients, surfactants bring grime to the surface so that it can be washed away, and the preservatives prevent decay. True natural, organic products contain zero preservatives. If you store them in a refrigerator you can extend their shelf life. All of the materials listed can come in at least 1 natural and 1 synthetic form. Natural is by far the better option of the 2 since many of the synthetic materials contain harmful toxins.

Doing research to find out the best way for you to defend yourself against toxins and chemicals should be your first active step. Another option for you would be to choose “organic” products since these products will contain all natural ingredients. It is also good to find recipes for products online and you can make sure that nothing harmful is part of the process, especially since you can make it yourself. This does take more time, but you can make it in larger quantities that will cost you less in the long run if stored properly.


It is well known that the skin care industry will be undergoing a makeover in the near future. Until that day happens, we have to be aware of all the dangers that some products can have on our bodies and staying with all natural hand made items is definitely the way to go.