Homemade Body Butter

Getting back from BC this week made my body go into a bit of shock from how dry it is! It was so nice not needing lotion for a week, and when we got back to Saskatchewan, I needed it with a vengeance!

So I decided to treat myself, and make a nice thick, moisture retaining balm. I found this simple recipe on Wellness Mama, and made my own adjustments to it, to really beef it up.

This is what I came up with:

In a double boiler, I melted:

100g cocoa butter
15g beeswax
30g shea butter
90g coconut oil
25g grape seed oil

I stuck that in the fridge to set a bit*, then added:

A splash of glycerin
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Cocoa butter is ultra moisturizing and is great for treating dry and chapped skin and can also be used to reduce the appearance of stretch marks. It is also high in antioxidants, and so helps heal damaged skin, and protect it from environmental factors.

Shea butter contains a ton of fatty acids that help the skin retain moisture and it's natural elasticity. It also heals dry and chapped skin, and can be used to treat eczema.

Beeswax, my new favourite material, is also incredibly moisturizing. It softens the skin and provides a long-lasting barrier against the elements. Beeswax is also anti-bacterial and aids in cell regeneration, making it a great ingredient for dry, damaged skin.

Coconut oil is another favourite of mine, for everything from food to hair to skin care. It is highly nourishing and softening, it soothes dry skin and even helps to heal and clean wounds as it is high in antioxidants and is also antimicrobial and antiseptic. It also has an SPF of about 7!

Grape Seed Oil is a great moisturizer for your whole body, because it won't clog pores! It's also a great addition to thick lotions to make them a bit more spreadable.

Glycerin actually attracts moisture from the air to your skin, so it is a great additive to lotion. However, you only want to add a very small amount, because it can make your lotion sticky if you put too much in - just a splash is all you need to do the trick!
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After that, I split it into two batches, because I wanted two different scents.

In one batch, I put 10 drops of vanilla 10-fold.

In the other, I added 10 drops of bergamot essential oil and 11 drops of lavender essential oil.

I tried whipping this recipe, as the recipe says to do on Wellness Mama, and I just couldn't get it to whip. I'm not sure if I just didn't let it cool enough before attempting this, or if it's because of the ratio of my ingredients. I tend to think it's the latter, and next time i'll try adding more shea butter to see if that allows me to whip it into fluffy goodness!

Since I had the blender out anyway, I ended up whipping in the essential oils and then pouring the batches into sanitized containers to set completely in the fridge.

This butter is nice and soft and goes on fairly oily, because of the coconut and grape seed oils. Personally, I like this, especially where we're living, because I feel that it leaves a nice barrier on my skin to the dry elements! If, however, you don't like that feeling, skip the grape seed oil (or whichever liquid oil you would normally use). Despite it's oily start, I do find that this stuff absorbs into my skin very quickly!

I've been using it for just a couple days now, and i've noticed a huge difference in the feel of my skin. It's super soft and moisturized! As i've mentioned in earlier posts, I believe the key ingredient for this result is beeswax! I'm in love with it!

*a note on cooling your lotion: I have been doing some reading, because a couple of things I have made, with shea and cocoa butter, have gone grainy when they've cooled completely. Apparently, this is because the fatty butters both heat and cool at different rates, and so end up crystallizing in a way. To fix this, you want to heat the butters up slowly (a double boiler does the trick, especially if you add the ingredients one at a time, starting with the one that will take the longest to melt) and then cool them rapidly (ie. stick them in the fridge right away!). I word of caution with cooling them in the fridge: do not cover them or you'll get condensation in your container and that will reduce the shelf life of your lotion! I have found that blending them (I use a milk frother like the one in the picture above) once they've cooled a bit helps mix the butters better and I end up with a nice creamy lotion!

Pregnancy-Belly Balm!

Since I found out that my friend from Salt Spring Island, Freddie, was pregnant, I have been DYING to test out my own recipe for a pregnancy-belly balm!

Freddie got married on the 20th of March, and we headed out to BC to attend. Since they had a wedding registry, and I figured they'd be getting lots of things for their home, and we won't be there for their baby shower; I decided I wanted to make her baby-related stuff! So Adrian and I started brainstorming ideas that we could afford, and got talking about things that we had when we got pregnant, or really wanted to have. We came up with a fairly sizeable list and then from that, I picked a couple of things that I really wanted to give her. To be cost effective, and because I feel it really comes from the heart, I decided to make everything!

In my third trimester, I made myself (with the help of my wonderful mum) a nursing cover, and I decided to make Freddie one of those as well, because they're really quite easy. We used this pattern, with a couple changes: we made it a little bigger, and added in a second row of boning to keep the fabric off baby's precious face. My grandma, who was up for the weekend, even got excited about this and pitched in!

I also gave them a couple of my homemade lotion bars and some beeswax tea lights so they could have a romantic night to reconnect with each other. This is something that both Adrian and I really needed post delivery, because Jaxson took everything out of us and we started to neglect our relationship.

Homemade lotion bars, set in a muffin cup!

The last thing I made, and this is what I was most excited about it, was a pregnancy-belly balm of my own creation.

Naturally, I did some reading beforehand, but just to see what ingredients were safe for and beneficial during pregnancy. I already knew, from the little bit that i've dabbled with my raw ingredients, what consistency I wanted, and roughly how to get it. I had also bought myself a natural belly balm months ago and really liked the consistency of that, so I looked at the ingredients to get an idea of how they did it.

So I was confident that I could create a balm on my own, without following someone else's recipe. Every ingredient I used was well researched and used for a specific purpose in this balm.

This is what I came up with, and why:

60g Cocoa Butter
50g Shea Butter
20g Beeswax pellets
1 tbsp Coconut Oil
1 tbsp Grape Seed Oil
1 tsp Sweet Almond Oil
1 tbsp Vegetable Glycerin
1 tbsp Aloe
12 drops Tamanu Oil
1 tsp Vitamin E
30 drops Lavender Essential Oil
10 drops Lemon Essential Oil

I melted the butters, beeswax and coconut oil in a double boiler, then removed it from the heat and added the grape seed and almond oil, tamanu oil, aloe, glycerin and vitamin e. I found that the glycerin and aloe caused the oil to start solidifying immediately, because they were more watery and cooler than the rest of the balm. Because of this, I really had to mix it up before I added the essential oils. The essential oils I added bit by bit, and by smell - I added them slowly, smelling along the way, until I felt it was scented well enough (but not so much as to offend a pregnant lady's sensitive nose!).

I stuck it in the fridge, in a sanitized tin to solidify.

Benefits of the Ingredients:

Both Cocoa and Shea Butter are ultra hydrating and healing for the skin. Cocoa butter is supposed to be amazing for stretch marks and both help lock in moisture. Shea butter is ideal for damaged skin and it helps to retail moisture and improve skin elasticity - perfect for a rapidly growing belly! I love both of these butters - shea is much more malleable and liquifies better than cocoa butter. I also find that it absorbs quicker into the skin, but I love the feel of both of them!

Beeswax is also very healing for the skin and I really like it in the lotions i've made as I find it adds extra oomph to the lotion. It's super moisturizing and provides a protective barrier to the skin, locking in moisture. I like beeswax because it really thickens lotions up, helps them solidify faster (for all you impatient people out there, like me) and I can feel the protective barrier on my skin, locking in all the moisture-y goodness!

Coconut oil is also very hydrating, healing and softening, but on top of that, it is supposed to be great for preventing stretch marks during pregnancy. It is also antimicrobial and antibacterial. Coconut oil is a wonder oil in my opinion. It's good for everything, internally and externally. I use it straight as a hair mask and lotion, and I cook with it often. I couldn't even think of not adding it to this!

Grape Seed and Almond Oil I added to liquify the solution a bit and make it more malleable. Both are also super moisturizing. Almond oil in particular is quite viscous and greasy, but that's exactly why I wanted to add it - I wanted that texture in this balm.

Tamanu Oil is a miracle oil that i've just recently discovered and use on my face. It smells mildly of curry, but I found that it blended in very well with everything else, and you can't smell it at all! It's wonderful for dry skin, promotes the formation of new tissue (ultra-healing!) and fades scars. It is also antiviral/septic/bacterial/biotic and is apparently hypoallergenic! I'm obsessed with this oil right now. I love what it does to my face, and I knew right away that it was something I wanted in this balm for its healing powers.

Vegetable Glycerin helps to attract and lock in moisture to the skin. It's also great for dry and damaged skin as well. Glycerin is a wonderful additive to lotions to add a moisturizing boost and help with the itching of dry skin.

Aloe is ultra soothing to the skin, and I used it in this mostly to thin out the consistency and help to make it more spreadable.

Vitamin E helps heal and fade scars and it's also a natural preservative.

Lavender Essential Oil is antiseptic, analgesic, healing, relaxing, promotes cell renewal, and is also one of the safest essential oils - it's good for everything and everyone, including babies! This is my all-time favourite essential oil. I use it every day, directly on my face, in baking soda to freshen our bed, in my baths... everywhere. It's a wonderful, uplifting scent with a myriad of uses and benefits.

I read a lot of mixed reviews about the use of Lemon Essential Oil during pregnancy. Many people say it's safe, some say it isn't. However, the only thing I could find regarding it's safety is that some people may have a bit of skin sensitivity to it, and as it's a citrus oil, it's best not to apply it right before spending time in the sun. With that knowledge, I decided to add just a little bit to this balm. Lemon oil is uplifting. It's antiseptic/fungal/microbial/bacterial as well. It also boosts the immune system, improves circulation, relieves headaches and reduces blood pressure. In my opinion, especially in small quantities, it's a safe oil to use. I also wanted to use this, because Freddie wanted a citrus-y scent, and I know when I was pregnant, one of the only things that helped with my morning sickness was cutting a lemon in half and smelling it! It cut through all the other odours around me and helped block them out.

So there you have it: my well researched, home-made pregnancy-belly balm!

I was very excited that this batch made just a bit too much to fit in the container I was using for Freddie, so I got to keep some for myself! I love it - it's a little greasy, but perfect for a belly balm. It's still just a tiny bit harder than I wanted it to be, but it melts really nicely.

One thing I will say about this is I used aloe juice, and I won't use that in this kind of balm again. It's just too much of a different consistency, and as I used mine, I noticed the balm 'sweat' a bit and so by the time I got to the bottom of the jar, it was really hard and didn't even melt as nicely. I think as I used it, the aloe got pushed out of the butters and evaporated. If I do want to use aloe, I think i'll try experimenting with aloe gel instead. Another change I would make to it is to put in a bit more liquid oils to counteract the hardness of the cocoa butter, in particular.

It does smell amazing though - citrus-y, uplifting... Like liquidy sunshine!

Easy, Silky Lotion Bars

I've been experimenting with lotion of late, and have found myself at both ends of the spectrum in terms of consistency on the skin. The massage butter that I made is amazing, but too oily for a daily lotion. And Jaxson's body butter is gorgeous, but just a little too hard to have in a container - it's difficult to dig it out and it doesn't melt quite as quickly as i'd like it to.

I decided, just for fun, to try making a lotion bar that I read about on Wellness Mama, another blog I really enjoy.

I chose these mostly because I wanted to make something else for my friend, Freddie, for her wedding as a nice way for her and her husband-to-be to reconnect for a romantic night. They're pregnant and I know that reconnecting with Adrian when I was pregnant, and after delivery, was both very difficult and very important. I also thought that these would be easy and transportable, since we're flying back to BC for the wedding.

To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of lotion bars, but after making these, i'm a convert!

I love them! I made the basic recipe and only used a single essential oil, so they would be baby and pregnancy-safe as well (I'm all for multi-use items!).

I tried to find silicone molds, as the blog suggests, but couldn't find them anywhere, so instead I just lined a cupcake tray with paper cupcake liners and that worked beautifully! Not as environmentally friendly, because I can't reuse the paper, but for now and until I find silicone molds, this will do!

Here's the recipe I made:

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup shea butter
1/4 cup cocoa butter
1/2 cup beeswax pellets
1 tsp vitamin e oil
25 drops lavender essential oil

I melted the coconut oil, shea butter, cocoa butter and beeswax in a double boiler, then removed it from the heat and added the vitamin e. I let it cool just a little bit, then added the essential oil, mixed it well and poured it into my cupcake tin. This recipe made 6 good-sized bars!

To help these set, I stuck the tray in the fridge. It didn't take long at all - because of the beeswax, it started setting almost as soon as I poured it into these cups! I left it till the morning, though, and then popped them out and gave one a try! I'm so impressed with it. It's not oily or greasy, but it's really nice and thick and I can still feel it on my skin, an hour later. Very moisturizing, they smell amazing and melt nicely - not too much, but enough to get a nice thin layer on your skin!

I know I say this a lot (I think it's a good sign of good recipes), but I'm going to be trying this again, for sure, and experimenting with different scents.

My Conclusion on the 2-Step Deodorant

So, i'm back from my trip to BC for the wedding and to see Jaxson's grandparents and great-grandparents, and this deodorant met the travel stink challenge with gusto!

I am so incredibly impressed with it. It works as well as... or better than... any non-natural antiperspirant deodorant, it smells amazing, it's great for sensitive skin (I had zero issues after shaving, and I always get those painful red bumps).

It stood up to walks through the disc golf course, the wedding, multiple plane rides (including a terrible overnight layover in Calgary.... points are great, but the choice of flights is just horrendous!). That's actually more than I can say of Lady Speed Stick (and that stuff has been tested to the moon and back!)

I also really like the feel of this deodorant. The cream is a little bit grainy at first, but it melts very nicely as you rub it in. It's so softening and silky - I love it! The powder is really nice too. I'm still getting used to the feel of arrowroot powder - it's very fine. The powder goes on really nicely though - the cream soaks it up and I had no residue issues (including on the dark purple dress I wore to the wedding)

Day 1: this stuff worked very well - I applied it without showering in the morning, for a lazy day out walking the dog with my family. No issues what-so-ever! And I even sweat a little on the walk because it was actually above zero!

Day 2: after showering the night before, I applied this and went to bed. This morning, I woke up and furiously cleaned the house - vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen, did a couple loads of laundry. Again, no issues at all with stink! I was pleasantly surprised actually.

Day 3: again, I applied it the night before and did not need to reapply in the morning. I did yoga with a friend and there was no change at all - it held up really nicely!

Day 4: I shaved last night and applied the deodorant immediately (as opposed to waiting almost half an hour with the Hugo Naturals stuff), and had no issues all day long today! No ouchies, no nothing! It was also a busy day, helping my mum clean her house for the arrival of her parents (she always gets like that when they come into town). At the end of a long, productive, entertaining day, there was zero odour, zero discomfort!

Day 5: spent the day at my mum's and aunt's with the great grandparents. I got pretty sweaty, just moving around! We traveled this evening too - took an evening flight that was delayed, and again, sweat a lot. This was the only day I had a bit of b.o, but it still wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be!

Day 6: another day of travel as we made our way from Vancouver to Salt Spring Island. This deodorant held up so so well through all of this! I was amazed, once again.

Day 7: spent the day hanging out on Salt Spring and then attended a bridal shower, which was a lot of fun. I woke up a little stinky after yesterday's travel - the most stinky so far and it was definitely manageable.

Day 8: we didn't do much today, so no issues.

Day 9: today was the wedding. It was a beautiful barn wedding and then a fun reception with great food, loud music, lots of dancing and zero b.o. issues by the end of the day.

Day 10: I didn't have the energy to shower last night, so I did wake up stinky today, but expected that. I was super lazy so all I did was reapply a bit instead of showering right away and I was able to get through the whole day just fine! So reapplication really does work well with this stuff.

Day 11: an uneventful day, lounged for a bit and then made our way over to Victoria to catch our flight back home.

Day 12: arrived back in Saskatoon after an awfully long trip back. We had a 6.5 hour layover in the Calgary airport, overnight. That was the real test for this deodorant, and it was AMAZING! I've done a lot of 12 hour trips growing up overseas, and even with Lady Speed Stick, I always arrived reeking and needing to reapply like mad. With this stuff, I didn't even need to do that!

I am so impressed with this deodorant. It is completely non-irritating, even through shaving twice (once without shave cream too).

I highly recommend this deo! I sweat a lot, I stink a lot, and this stuff works so well, better than anything I've tried - it gives bad-for-you antiperspirants a run for their money!

Rhassoul Hair Mask

This clay is my new favourite thing. It's amazing! I have used it a few times now as a face mask, and last night, I decided to try it as a repairing hair mask. Spring is on it's way here, and I guess i'm getting excited for that! Unfortunately, the dry wind here has severely damaged my hair, so I thought i'd give this a go!

I waited till Jaxson went down for the night - this kind of thing is just too hard to do while chasing after a little one!

It took me quite a while to find a recipe for a hair mask that I liked... I don't know why it was so hard! Everything I read was for face or body masks, or for using the clay as shampoo (this will be the next thing I try), and that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted something I could leave in for 30 minutes or so. I finally found this recipe:

• 1/2 c. rhassoul clay
• 1/2 c. warm coconut milk
• 1/4 c. rose water or herbal water (make your own infusion by pouring 2 c. boiling water over 2 tbsp. herbs or flower petals. Allow to steep for 30 minutes and strain.)
• 1/4 c. distilled water (double this amount if no herbal or rose water is used)
• 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, or jojoba oil

 Source: momsAWARE

*important note: in the reading that I did last night, I read that you aren't supposed to mix clays with metal.

For simplicity sake, and because I wanted to use it on my face too, I used just mixed the clay with warm coconut milk. I was originally going to do it with just water, but then read that if left on for a long time (which I wanted to do), it can dry out the hair. So coconut milk it was, for extra moisturizing in this cold, dry, Saskatchewan winter!

I changed the recipe above a bit, just to make it more simple. For one thing, I didn't measure anything - I just went by feel. I also didn't use any herbal water - just tap water, coconut milk and olive oil. I think next time i'll try coconut oil, because I love what that does to my hair on it's own, and it's a lighter oil than coconut oil.

So I warmed up 1/2 cup coconut milk and mixed it into the clay. It formed a really nice paste and I applied this to my face and neck. I like using other liquids than water for these face masks, i've decided. With water, it just tightened up too much and was quite painful. With milk and now coconut milk, it's softer and gentler. Beautiful!

I then added about a tbsp of olive oil and enough water to make it quite running and poured this into my hair.

It needed to be watered down so I could get it through my hair!

I massaged that in and spread it right down to the ends and then tied it up. Honestly, I ended up needing Adrian's help with this, because it was really messy and I couldn't get it all over my head without making an awful mess!

Then Adrian and I sat down and watched an episode of Heroes while it dried. I was surprised at how wet the clay still was at the end of the episode, but I think that's a good thing - I think it's better to keep it wet so you can wash it out easier.

I didn't shampoo my hair afterwards, though with this recipe, I think I would next time, just because of the olive oil. My hair feels amazing, but it is pretty greasy today. Immediately, though, I noticed a difference in the feel of my hair! It felt extremely soft and detangled, and had quite a bit of volume! It was lovely. It still feels that way today, even though it is a little oily. I'm really excited to try shampooing with this stuff!

Light Bulb Moment #1

After having trouble sticking to a yoga routine since finishing my 40 day challenge two months ago (i'm still not doing yoga every day), I came to a sudden realization the other day, a light bulb moment, if you will.

I realized that my personality is such that if I do not have small, surmountable goals, I do not get things done. Unlike my friend, Brittany, who feels that setting a goal makes it a chore (which I totally understand), I need small goals to move myself forward! I guess this makes me a master procrastinator! haha

In having this realization, I finally understood my lifelong affinity to... no.... need for lists! I absolutely love crossing things off lists. It's just about my favourite past-time! There's just such an amazing sense of accomplishment when you can cross something off physically!

I write lists almost daily for things I need or want to do. I often even include things i've already done that day, just so I can cross them off! Weird? Sightly obsessive compulsive? I know. I accept that. This is how I do things, how I get things done. And I find so much joy in it!

This whole thing was a real eye opener for me, though. I've always known understood my lists as a way to keep my very over-active brain organized, but this whole light bulb moment made me realize that for me to get things done, or stay in a routine, I need to have small goals.

So i've been doing that lately, with yoga, because that's the thing i'm having trouble sticking with at the moment.

A couple weeks ago, I decided to set a small goal that I would do yoga regularly until we went to BC for a friend's wedding (next week!). It really helped! Having this goal forced me to set aside time every day for myself in this way (well, I was good until this past weekend when I got a virus and felt like the top of my head was throbbing up and outwards in the shape of a light bulb!). I found that doing this made it easier for me to stick with it!

I do think that New Years Resolutions are hard because setting a year long goal is virtually impossible to maintain. But setting small, monthly goals is not!

So that's my new goal now. I'm going to set small, achievable, monthly goals for yoga, and anything else I want to do. This month, my goal was until this weekend - up until we leave for wedding on March 20th.

When we get back from BC, my new goal will be to do yoga (or some sort of activity as it's FINALLY starting to turn into Spring! Yay sun and plus weather!) every day until Jaxson's birthday on the 27th of April. After that, we'll see. I'll take it as it comes.

How do you stay motivated?

Homemade, All Natural 2-Step Deodorant

In the past year or so, I have gone on a rampage looking for a natural deodorant that actually works. To be honest, I haven't tried very many, because natural deodorant tends to be very expensive, and I even reverted back to terrible Lady Speed Stick for a while, because I got so fed up. I decided after Jaxson was born, though, that I really needed to find a good, natural alternative. I'm, unfortunately, not in a position to go gallivanting around buying up all the natural deodorants I can find. It's just not cost effective when nothing I have tried so far works.

I have, however, tried 4:

Tom's of Maine: I actually found that this stuff didn't work very well for me. I had to reapply it constantly, and it still didn't contend with my b.o by the end of the day!

JASON: This is the stuff I used for the longest time, and I like it, but I found I had to carry it with me to reapply throughout the day.

Me&You.: My husband uses this deodorant and absolutely loves it! It's actually one of the few that he doesn't react to (he has very sensitive skin). I, on the other hand, didn't like it at all. It actually managed to make me smell worse than if I was wearing nothing! I also reacted pretty badly too it.

Hugo Naturals: This has been my latest trial, and I liked it for a little over a week, though I did have to apply it a couple times a day. However, recently, it has just stopped working, no matter how often I wash and reapply.

So the other day, I just got fed up with this. I didn't want to buy any more and discover that they also do not work.

So as usual, I did some reading about what I could to, on a couple of my favourite blogs, and some random ones too. I started off by looking up some natural deodorant reviews and then from there decided the most cost effective thing for me to do would be to just try make my own. I could make a small amount and if it didn't work, i'd try something new!

Years ago, I tried making a basic coconut oil, essential oil, baking soda and cornstarch deodorant, but it didn't work for me at all, and I reacted pretty painfully to it too. Unfortunately, that put me off experimenting with this..... until now!

Crunchy Betty has a couple of recipes for homemade deodorant that look amazing, and she also links to a couple other recipes that she has found. That's where I started my search. I cruised around the blog and found another post about a more complicated deodorant that I just didn't want to get into (and can't, because I don't have all the ingredients).

On this page, she mentions that it's better to use arrowroot powder instead of cornstarch, so that there's less chance of a reaction. I stored this little nugget away, as I believe that that's what I reacted to in both my own attempt at making deodorant and the Me&You. deodorant.

It wasn't the recipe that Crunchy Betty uses on her blog that interested me, though. It was another link that she posted at the bottom of her post. A two-step deodorant that's supposed to really work!

Now, the reason I was attracted to this one, is that in my desperation to rid myself of b.o. for a day out with my family, I did some reading about things that could help and one girl said just straight up baking soda would! I tried it, and it actually did! Even the next morning, without a shower, i'm still relatively odour-less! I was pretty shocked, to be honest. I was not expecting that at all.

So when I saw this two-step recipe, I decided to give it a try.

What it is is a cream and then a powder that you apply on top of the cream.

The cream is nice and soothing, and also antibacterial. The powder, which is held on your skin with the help of the cream (!), helps to absorb moisture and odour.

For the cream, I changed the recipe a little bit because of the reading I had done about other deodorant recipes. I know that both shea and cocoa butter are great for smoothing and soothing irritated skin and i'm loving it in my lotions, so I did:

15g coconut oil
20g shea butter
10g cocoa butter
1 drop tea tree essential oil
6 drops lavender essential oil
3 drops lemon essential oil

I melted the coconut oil, shea butter and cocoa butter in a double boiler and then removed it from the heat. After letting it cool down a little bit, I added the essential oils, mixing well, and poured it into my sanitized container.

For the powder, taking Crunchy Betty's advice, I replaced the cornstarch for arrowroot powder:

1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup arrowroot powder
2 drop tea tree essential oil
10 drops lavender essential oil
6 drops lemon essential oil

The cream cooling and the powder nice and mixed and smelling amazing!

Today is the first day i'm going to try it, and this deodorant is really going to be put to the test next week when we head to BC for a wedding! I anticipate travel b.o. (yes, it's a real thing), sweaty hikes and much dancing at the wedding! I will report back at the end of our trip to see how well this stuff actually works!

UPDATE: check out my thoughts on how this deodorant held up for multiple days of travel, a wedding, and nature walks!

Yoga-ing with an Infant

I absolutely love yoga. I found it relatively late in my life- only a few years ago, and its benefits are uncountable! It gives you both physical and mental strength, it teaches you to breathe and the importance of breath, and it grounds you and centres you. Yoga can heal all parts of your body, and I have seen an experienced that first hand!

Yoga is challenging. It's meant to be. So naturally, it's challenging to do with a baby, or an infant. But one of the things I love about yoga is that whatever you do, it's your practice. Zen, yogic calm, the groundedness…. all of that is whatever you make it to be in the moment.

Zen is not perfect calm and silence for me. It just can't be. I have to find my own calm in the shitstorm that is being a mum of a very active infant! Heck, I barely even close my eyes during a practice, because that wouldn't help me relax into it.

On the contrary, as a mum, my yogic calm is having an awareness of where Jaxson is so i'm not stressing that he's getting into something he's not supposed to.

My yogic calm is fitting my practice around him, whether that means stopping to feed him or change him and then coming back to it, or maneuvering my poses around him as he crawls beneath me and behind me, or is sitting in front of me as I try to go through a chataranga! And honestly, I don't always miss him!

I have most definitely kicked Jaxson in the head as I lift my foot and find that he is at that exact moment crawling behind me! And Jaxson has most definitely pushed me out of balancing poses, because he's decided that now is the time that he wants up and starts climbing up my leg!

I admit too that I don't always stop my practice. Sometimes, I need the flow more than I know he needs me, so i've breathed through my poses and his screaming.

This is yoga with an infant: WHATEVER YOU MAKE OF IT!

That's the beauty of yoga! Find your centre, your calm, and breathe into it. Yoga truly is for everyone.

I actually love doing yoga with Jaxson, because it has become a completely different practice for me than it used to be. My yoga practice has evolved, and with it, so have I.

I used to have a hard time finding my centre, my calm in a quiet, focused class. Now I find it with a little one pulling on my pant legs while i'm in tadasana or half moon pose, crawling under me when i'm in downward dog, pulling my hair when i'm in child's pose…. For me, this is quite an accomplishment. After pregnancy, labour and delivery, and these past 10+ months, I am more equipped to breathe through challenges and uncomfortable-ness than I ever was before. And as I yogini mum, I believe that all of that prepared me and turned me into a better yoga practitioner.

The key is to stay focused on your breath, if nothing else. Just breathe! Breathe through everything, every frustration, every muscle ache and pain, every unbalance.

And laugh. Yoga is not meant to be so serious. Have fun with it, laugh at the difficulties and pain, laugh when your kid knocks you over or suddenly wants your attention when you're in a difficult pose, or are just getting into the flow.

Laugh and breathe.

That is my life, and if I want to do yoga, I just need to find it wherever I can, every day. Yoga is in everything we do, and by starting with a practice like this, I can bring it into all aspects of my life.

Jaxson is my son, my sun. I couldn't imagine my life, my practice without him. He is a vital part of it all, and he is my centre.

Witch Hazel and Thyme for Breakouts

In hand with the oil moisturizer I started using about a month ago, I decided to try another acne "cure" I read about on Crunchy Betty - thyme infused witch hazel. Apparently, thyme is better at killing bacteria than benzoyl peroxide, which is the main ingredient in prescription acne creams. Thyme, a common and inexpensive herb found in practically every kitchen everywhere, is more effective (not to mention better for you) than medical prescriptions? A) sweet! B) why am I surprised? The beauty and strength of nature! Gotta love it!

Naturally, I had to try this! I use witch hazel and rosewater as a toner anyway, so the first time I tried this, I just added 3 tbsp of dried thyme to my witch hazel and let it steep for 36 hours before straining it. It turned a beautiful golden brown within minutes and by the end of the second day, was a dark earthy brown. I strained it through a coffee filter, and really wrung out the thyme to get as much of the liquid-y goodness as I could! 

At the end of 2 days, this is how dark the infusion gets!

Fully strained. Lovely!

One thing I will say about it is I originally made up a relatively large amount, and I believe it went bad after a couple weeks, so I had to toss it. So this time around, I made a smaller batch (5 tbsp witch hazel and 2 tbsp of thyme). I'm also storing it in the fridge from now on, so it'll keep longer. Plus, this way it's so nice and refreshing when I use it! I would recommend either doing this, or making small batches that you can use up in a week or so to avoid it from spoiling.

I absolutely love it! I noticed a difference in my skin after just 2 days of using this in conjunction with my oil moisturizer! So I can safely say that it works very very well! It's kind of funny, though, because I smell like a curry, what with the tamanu oil in my moisturizer and the very thyme-y witch hazel! It works though, and I don't mind the smell, it's just different than any other, unnatural products, I've used in the past!

Homemade Body Butter for Jaxson's Dry Skin

It being winter in the prairies, my whole family suffers from dry skin. Not bad, though eczema does run in the family. Just dry skin. But dry skin of any kind sucks!

I've been looking for months for something that would help Jaxson. I was unwilling to buy any baby lotions, because they are either very bad (ie. Johnson and Johnson, which is chock full of chemicals, fragrances, etc which rate very poorly on the EWG) or very expensive (ie. Earth Mama). Plus, since my little bug came along, I've been more conscious about what I put on my body, and his, so I've been wanting to make my own lotion for him for ages. 

I've been using coconut oil since he was born, and I love it, but it's not moisturizing enough, for any of us, for the winter months! I finally indulged and bought some cocoa butter and shea butter from an organic market here in Saskatoon. The unfortunate thing is it's really expensive, so I had to wait to till my order from New Directions Aromatics (NDA) arrived. Since it finally has, I plan on experimenting a bit with my original recipe (below) to make a more moisturizing cream.

Because it was so expensive at the market in Saskatoon (50g for $16! :-O), I was very hesitant about using it, so this recipe didn't turn out as thick and moisturizing as I wanted it to; I still ended up using mostly coconut oil. However, it's a lovely lotion and in a DAY I noticed a difference with Jaxson's skin! It's softer, smoother, way less dry and chapped. I love what this does to his skin! I'm excited to try making it again with more cocoa and shea butters, and to try it out for myself, with essential oils!

My original recipe:

1 tbsp shea butter
1 tbsp cocoa butter
A bit more than ¼ cup coconut oil
7 drops lavender oil

I melted all these in a double boiler, stirring often, until they were just melted. Then I took it off the heat and added the essential oils, stirring well after each so I could smell it and make sure I didn't add too much. While it was still liquid, I poured it into the sanitized jar I planned on keeping it in, and stuck it in the fridge till it had solidified.

I know that small changes in the ingredients will have huge changes in the consistency of this lotion, and I'd prefer it to be a bit thicker, but this batch is actually quite nice- it's soft and buttery, oily, spreads well and I don't need much to cover Jaxson's whole body! It also soaks in much quicker than I expected it too, so it's not too oily!

Now that I have my order from NDA, and have finally run out of the batch I made (above), i've changed the recipe a bit. As I said, I wanted something thicker, and so I did some reading about the safety of beeswax on babies, since I know honey is not supposed to be introduced till they're a year old due to botulism risks in spores. Honestly, I read very mixed reviews, but apparently a lot of natural baby lotions and nipple creams do contain beeswax. My conclusion is that it's very subjective (as most things are, I find, when it comes to babies)... Most babies are fine, some are not, so use your own discretion. I decided to add just a bit to my new recipe; just enough to really thicken it up and help lock in moisture. 

So my new recipe is:

8 g beeswax pellets

30 g shea butter

45 g cocoa butter

25 g coconut oil

10 drops lavender essential oil

Again, I melted everything in a double boiler, starting with the cocoa butter and then beeswax, because those take the longest to melt. When all the ingredients had fully melted, I removed the bowl from the heat and let it cool a bit before adding the essential oil. The oil smelled amazing on its own, so I only added a little lavender- more for its healing properties than for smell. I really didn't want to take away from the sweet, warm smell of the cocoa butter and beeswax!

One thing I've come to absolutely love about beeswax is how quickly it starts to thicken and solidify! The last batch I made took so long to cool and solidify. This batch started to harden within 10 minutes, and it was a beautiful, thick, though still pourable consistency by the time I poured it into the jar.

I love the colour!

The consistency feels a bit oiler on the skin than the last batch, but still soaks in beautifully! I really like it more than the first batch I made. Surprisingly, though it goes on more oily (which is nice for rubbing it on), it soaks in much faster than the first batch. It smells absolutely divine, and I want it for myself!

I've so far been so pleased with everything i've made - and it's giving me more confidence to try more things! I'm so excited to experiment even more!

My First Home Cooked Meal in a While

I don't cook as often as i'd like to. A) Adrian's the chef. He's good at it… really good…. so I don't tend to do much cooking. B) Adrian's more often than not working through dinner, so I end up eating noodle soup or perogies or something similarly as easy and unhealthy. This is something i'm really wanting to change, however. I personally want to start eating better, but it's also more convenient as Jaxson's appetite grows and he can start eating what we are.

I was recently shown a blog that has tons of easy to make crock pot meals. This lady has actually done an excellent job of laying it out! She's got a couple of posts, so I took recipes from a couple of them, but she also writes up master shopping lists to go along with the blog post about her recipes! It's a lot of work, and it's pretty impressive. I wasn't a huge fan of all of the recipes, so I just chose a few that looked good to me. I also tried to make them a bit more healthy by using homemade or fresh ingredients where I could (she uses a lot of soy sauce, bbq sauce, packaged apple sauce etc). The other great thing about this is you make up a few recipes all at once and freeze them to be pulled out and defrosted as you need them! It's awesome for a stay at home mum! I got Adrian's help and made 8 of them.

Tonight, I put one of these recipes in the crock pot around noon - the Honey Garlic Chicken. It's one of the easiest ones, and after about 3 hours, it smelled so good I almost couldn't wait till Adrian got home! I served this with some leftover Mexican rice from earlier this week. I know, I know, very different taste profiles, but that's how we ro'!

Honey Garlic Chicken:

Chicken - I used 6 thighs, and for this recipe, I probably should have used more!
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp oregano
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 cup bbq sauce
1/3 cup honey
salt
pepper

Throw everything in the crock pot!

Source: Who Needs a Cape

I had him text me when he was on his way so that I could get broccoli going, so we had a green. This is another problem with our diet at the moment. We just do not eat enough fruit and veggies, so i'm trying hard to incorporate this into our meals. Jaxson, on the other hand, eats unbelievably well and balanced!

Adrian surprised me by coming home with some sparkling wine, just for fun!

For desert, I made an almost vegan chocolate avocado pudding! This turned out surprisingly well! I didn't know what to expect, because i've never done this before, but the avocados actually do make it pudding-y! The original recipe wasn't sweet enough for my (or, I knew, Adrian's taste), so I added an extra 2 tbsp of honey (hence almost vegan), and that was all it needed!

Chocolate-Avocado Pudding:

2 ripe avocados
6 tbsp unsweetened cocoa power
5 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 to 1/3 cup liquid (I used coconut milk)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of sea salt

Throw everything in a food processor and blend until smooth.

Source: Janet and Greta

I didn't tell Adrian what this pudding was, and it was pretty funny having him try to guess. He didn't get it, but he sure tried! I know it wasn't as sweet as he would have liked it (he's got the biggest sweet tooth i've ever seen!), but I loved it!

Girl's Night with Mum

I get together with my mum often, every weekend at least and more often than not, multiple nights a week when Adrian's at work. I love my mum. She's fun, easy to talk to, she's a friend… And she loves her grandson! hahah So it's also nice for me to get a bit of a break and be able to relax a bit.

Last night, I brought over all my New Directions Aromatics order so I could show her all the essential oils and butters I bought. Fun for me mostly, i'm sure. However, I did bring over the Rhassoul clay as well so we could try it out together! It had been a week since i'd done it myself, and so I was dying to try it again (i'm not too sure yet how often you can do it). I was hoping we'd get around to doing it when Jaxson was napping, but he had a rough day of teething and so things didn't go as I had hoped. It ended up working out even better, though, because we waited until the evening, fed Jaxson, helped ourselves to a glass of wine, and then indulged! It was pretty hilarious how Jaxson reacted to us with the clay on our faces - he was so unsure! hahah

This time around, we decided to try mixing the clay with milk instead of water. Milk is an awesome face mask ingredient. The lactic acid in milk acts as a natural microdermabrasion for your skin, sloughing away dead skin cells as a gentle exfoliator. It also apparently helps the skin look more radiant, prevents premature aging, shrinks pores, reduces irritation, helps heal wounds and nourishes and softens. Source: Beautiful Skin with Milk. I've used milk, or yogurt, a couple times in masks and I absolutely love it.

I used 2 tablespoons of clay (which, again, ended up being way too much), because I read that the ratio for a mask, with any liquid with this clay is 1 part clay, 1/2 part liquid. Boy, was that wrong! I ended up using a 3:1 ratio milk:clay! This made a beautiful paste, but it was way thicker than when I did it with water. I actually liked this, because it was a bit easier to apply.

As before, the clay went on beautifully, and we both immediately commented on how soft and smooth it was. One thing I instantly loved about this with milk is it didn't start drying as quickly, and took way longer to dry, so it didn't get painfully tight.

Jaxson gave us the most hilarious looks when we came out of the bathroom with our faces covered in this. He didn't know what to think. I think he was a little freaked out, but all he did was stare at us.

Jaxson's first look at us. WTF?

Almost 10 minutes later, and he still has no idea what's going on!

Gramma trying to put him at ease by showing him she's still under that mud!

Something we both noticed, and I believe it was the lactic acid in the milk, because I didn't have this sensation with water, is that after 5 minutes or so, it started to sting/itch a bit. Not in a painful way, but noticeable. I kind of liked it!

We sat for about 20 minutes before washing it off, and it hadn't completely dried like it did with water, but interestingly, it sort of fell off in small clumps. I also noticed that it didn't rehydrate the same way it did with water. It took more water to hydrate it and rub it off, and it came off in bigger chunks as opposed to almost dissolving off.

Stretching our faces and cracking the mask! Felt so good!

Mum immediately commented on how soft and radiant her skin looked. She loved it!! Success!

I enjoyed it just as much this time around, and felt like my skin was just glowing!

Glowing!

It was a fun night, with lots of laughs because of Jaxson's reactions. These things are fun and so easy to do at home by yourself, but I always feel they're way more fun to do with good company!

Warming, Relaxing Massage Butter

Since getting my order from New Directions Aromatics, I have been putting off making anything, because it's been so hard for me to decide what to make! I'm nervous about wasting my product, and I want to make sure it all goes to good use!

Today, I decided to try making a massage lotion to surprised Adrian, since we've both been stiff lately and needing free massages! I wanted something thicker than an oil, because it's so dry here that both Adrian and I just soak up coconut oil, so after some research, I decided to make a melting massage bar using shea butter, cocoa butter, jojoba oil and even a bit of beeswax! I also wanted this to be a warming lotion to use at night, so I used cinnamon bark essential oil, birch essential oil, and vanilla 10 fold.

Both cinnamon and birch can be irritating for the skin, and should be used with caution, in small quantities, so I was very careful about the amount of drops I used of each. The recommended starting concentration of both of these oils is 1 drop per 3 tsp of carrier oil, and then to go from there. Cinnamon bark oil is a great antidepressant, antibacterial/fungal/microbial, and is also an antiviral and antiseptic! It stimulates the immune system, purifies the body and is warming and also an aphrodisiac. It is beneficial for self acceptance and grounding and supports healthy relationships. Birch oil is a wonderful oil for aches and pains, for muscles and joints and bones. It is a natural analgesic, is anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic and anti-rheumatic. This is because it contains methyl salicylate, which has cortisone like properies, acting similarly to aspirin. It is also a wonderful oil for finding inner strength. Vanilla is an antioxidant, aphrodisiac, anti carcinogen, antidepressant and is also tranquillizing/relaxing. It also smells absolutely incredible, and I knew it would smell amazing with the cinnamon and birch!

Source: Sustainable Baby Steps, Organic Facts

To keep things simple, I didn't want a whipped lotion, but I also didn't want a solid bar, so I decided to try a variation on this recipe:

1 part beeswax
1 part cocoa butter
1 part liquid oil
essential oils, as desired

Source: Humblebee and Me

I didn't want mine quite as hard as this would turn out, so this is how I adapted the recipe:

50g cocoa butter
15g beeswax
50g of shea
15ml of jojoba oil
4 x drops of cinnamon bark
2 x drops of birch (a very little goes a very long way!)
5 x drops of vanilla 10 fold

Cocoa butter takes the longest to melt, so I put that in my double boiler until it was almost fully melted, and then added the beeswax. This mix alone smelled so amazing!

Cocoa butter and beeswax

When the beeswax had almost completely melted, I added the shea butter and let that melt fully.

Shea butter in the cocoa butter and beeswax

I then took it off the heat and added the jojoba oil.

Started to solidify after 8 minutes!

When this had cooled to the point where it was starting to solidify around the edges, I added the essential oils, so they wouldn't simply evaporate off of it. To add the essential oils, I started off with just a single drop of each, mixing fully and smelling to decide if I should add more. I added just enough to give this oil a nice, subtle, warm and spicy scent. I'm not a fan of overly scented products, and I think this turned out beautifully. It set very quickly because of the beeswax, and I actually had to put the bowl back on the still warm burner so I could fully incorporate the essential oils!

Essential oils added, ready to cool in the fridge.

After that, I poured it into my sterilized mold/container and stuck it in the fridge with the lid off to solidify completely.

Not too much of a colour change, but you can tell that this is more solid than before! 

Once it had solidified completely (about 30 minutes, thought it didn't even need that long), I took it out of the fridge to see what the consistency was like. I love it! It's definitely solid, but the minute my finger touched it, it started to melt a bit - it's exactly what I wanted. I cut it into little cubes to store in the same container, so that all I'd need to do is pull out a cube and melt it in my hands - way easier than trying to gouge out a chunk whenever I wanted to use it.

It smells amazing - subtle, just like I wanted. This was absolutely perfect. Thick, and moisturizing, it took a long time to soak in, and so lasted for the whole massage! It was a great consistency for massaging, and smelled absolutely incredible as it warmed into the skin. I am so happy with this massage butter! Definitely going to be making more of this, and experimenting with different scents!