Do It Yourself: June 2009 Archives
I don't know about you but the price of potions and notions to keep your body fresh, nice smelling and glowing disgusts me to no end. I walk through Bath and Body Works, Victorias Secret, mall departments stores, Target and even Walmart and find the prices on many products to be startling.Buy Me for a New You! Buy Me to make yourself feel prettier than you ever will be! Throw your cash at our big corporation and we will reward you with chemicals "known to the state of California to be carcinogenic". (Have you seen those lables?????)
Let's be disgusted together and vow not to make those corporations and the CEO and Board of Directors richer than they already are. I am very serious. I never buy a product without asking myself if my purchase is actually going to make someone else richer while it makes us poorer.*
I pinkie swear I will not throw away my money on something I can make in ten minutes or less from things I have in my kitchen. BTW, if you can eat it there is a 99% chance there is a way to use it to care for your body and skin in the bath.
Go to your kitchen and take stock of what you have in your pantry. See that canister of sugar? How about some brown sugar? Oilive oil? Honey? That's all you need to make a sugar scrub for the shower.
You can even get a little fancy and purchase a food grade or cosmetic grade fragrance oil or essential oil to jazz it up and have your own signature scent. There are hundreds of companies online that sell fragrance oils for soap makers for use in scrubs, lotions, body sprays, etc. You can get excellent quailty duplicate scents for most any fragrance in well know hygeine products. I give most of my business to Wholesale Supply Plus. I have yet to order a product they don't stand behind. Most everything I have ordered by way of frgrance or essential oils has been fabulous to my senses.
When I mixed up my batch of sugar scrub I used coconut lime verbena fragrance oil. It is a delicious scent for summer time and is rather sensual to my nose. I would even hedge to use the word erotic. Mmmm Hmmm. Smells that good.
How are we going to make this erotic shower scrub that makes us want to melt? Also might make your husband/boyfriend/significant other/ random guy at the office come sniffing around, too. Easy.
Recipe for Sugar Body Scrub
1 medium sized clean jar to store your sugar scrub in.
1 mixing bowl for the actual mixing of your concoction (you can mix it in the jar if it is large enough)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tbsp honeyMix it all together very well. If you use fragrance oils or essential oils put those in the olive oil first and mix them well then add to the sugar and honey. Store it in your sealed jar in the refrigerator until needed. Take out a little at a time when you shower if you use a larger glass jar. Accidents can happen and we want no glass shards in the shower. Be safe!
You could also spend a little time on a saturday afternoon and make several small jars of scrub in different scents so that you have a choice of scrubs. Just remember to lable the jars in the fridge so no one tops their toast thinking it is a new marmalade or jam.
If you don't want to wait and have to order scents you can check Michael's in the melt and pour aisle for essential oils. Make sure they are manufactured for skin products! Again - be safe! No pimples or rashes or burns from oils not made to be used in bath products.
Also, if you don't care for a scent the brown sugar and honey is yummy on its own.
That's it. You're done. Hit the shower.
$12 - $45 jar of sugar scrub for low price of $2 or less.
How easy was that? Go make some and let me know how it goes. I also want to know if you step out on the edge and use fragrance oils.
I do not buy CD's, DVD's for this very reason. I don't let my kids buy them either. 12 songs that cost $14- $20 and they only really want to hear one song. They can find it online for .88 cents or less. It may add pennies some artists pocket but it won't subtract dollars from mine.
From time to time I get emails or comments from very nice ladies (Hi, Ladies!) who often tell me they live vicariously through my life on my blog. Be it gardening, milk goats, baking, sewing, spinning, etc or all of the above so many of you out there express similar desires to do some of the same things I do but feel you can't because of your current living arrangements.I am here today to tell you to stop that and to encourage you to participate with me. Make it happen for yourself wherever you are. You can do it on a small scale and have wonderful results right now.
Right now! Don't wait.
You don't have to spend alot of money. In your apartment or townhouse you can grow herbs and other fresh food! Even in a HOA subdivision you can have it all. There is always a work around.
Let's start with growing herbs. In a pot. On your balcony or your stoop or your front steps or out back in your tiny postage stamp townhouse yard.
You can scavange around for a planter or a pot. You can be creative and use other decorative items for your planting container. You can spend a little money and invest in something that makes a statement about your decorative tastes. Whatever it takes get a pot or some sort of planter. A nice sized one 16 inch diameter or larger if you have a place for it will hold lots of herbs. If not think about a window box that you could set along a step, or on a sunny spot on your balcony. I know some apartment complexs don't allow things to hang or be on the railing but very pretty plants and hanging baskets are most commonly allowed. If you can't set a pot try hanging a basket.
I have two of these terra cotta clay pots on my front porch.For the past couple of years they have held pineapple tops that I rooted. Only the pineapple tops died last fall due to my forgetting to drag them in when we had our first frost. Ooops! So the pots have been sitting empty for a while.
For a pot this size I needed some fresh potting soil and some herbs. I chose basil, curley parsley, tri-color sage, chocolate peppermint and golden thyme. I chose these because I like them but also the variety of color pleased me. You could also plant seeds in your pot(s) and though it will take longer for them to grow and produce it is a huge money saver and you can reseed as needed.
These small herb cups where $1.29 each at my local plant center. I could have started them from seed but I wanted instant gratification so I bought the already well established little plants. Into the pot. Lots of fresh soil packed in around them. A good watering and time in the sun. Voile! An instant herb garden.
If you are starting from scratch you will need some rocks in the bottom of your pot for drainage. If you are using a pot that isn't meant to be a pot to plant directly into you will also need to punch some holes in the bottom to let the water drain out as needed.
You can also plant in a cheap plastic pot and later when you have found a decorative pot you can simply sit your plastic pot into your more decorative planter.
With a little TLC, weekly feeding and water (daily watering when the temps are scorching) and there will be plenty of fresh herbs for most any dish for supper.
These pots are heavy when filled with rocks for drainage, potting soil, plants and water. I put them on casters for ease of movement. Here where we are the summer temps will climb to one hundred and above by the time late August rolls around. The sun is a scorcher and no amount of water will keep the tender leaves from burning. With the pots on wheels I can move them in out of the sun as needed. The morning sun is most desired and by the time the midday sun comes around I can move them back a bit where they don't take the full brunt of the sizzling rays.
I labled this photo so you can see which plants are which. I chose 3 taller plants for the middle of my pot (basil, sage, parsley) and low growing, creeping type plants for the outer ring (thyme and chocolate mint). You can see how the thyme and mint are growing down the sides of the pots now. It took barely a week for these pots to take off and the newly planted look to disappear.
I want to encourage you to make yourself smile. If you can't do a big pot maybe you could do a grouping of a few small pots each with one type of herb. One small pot on each step with lovely foliage is an attractive look. You can do it. So get busy. That's an order. When you finish come back and tell me about it. I would like to see what you are doing.
