This is the first year that I’ve decided to try an organic garden and I’m really excited. Of course, since I’m so new at this, any tips or advice would be very welcome! Part of the garden (to the right) is just for flowers, but the rest contains many wonderful foods:

• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Beans
• Dill
• Zucchini
• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Tomatoes
• Marigolds
• Cucumbers

I started mostly with seeds, but also with a few tomato and cucumber plants that my mom had left over from starting her garden. I’m going to have to learn as I go a little bit with organic pest control, but hopefully some straw or grass clippings will help with the weeds.

I’m also crossing my fingers that there will be enough to eat and some left over to preserve. There’s nothing like eating homegrown food even in the winter!

Have you started a garden this year? I’d love to hear about it!

I came across a homemade lotion recipe today and amazingly enough had all of the ingredients to try it out! It is really easy to make and the finished product (without essential oils added) has the most wonderfully natural smell of honey and cocoa butter. I also yielded a good half cup, but if you want more be sure to double it.

I couldn’t measure everything in ounces, but the below ingredients were approximately what I used:

• 2 Tbsp beeswax (sliced as thin as I could- about 1/4″)
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 2 Tbsp cocoa butter
• 2 Tbsp tap water
• 1 Tbsp sweet almond oil
• 3 drops Grapefruit Seed Extract

Looking back at the original recipe, I probably should have decreased the amount of beeswax and cocoa butter (adding a little more coconut oil), but I’m really happy with the creamy consistency (like a very soft body butter) so it just depends on how creamy you want it to be.

I added all ingredients but the water to a small stainless steel pan. Stirring constantly on the very lowest heat setting, I waited for everything to melt (the beeswax definitely takes the longest, but no more than 5-10 minutes). Once all of the oils were blended, I grabbed a whisk and vigorously stirred in the water.

Once the water was well blended, I removed the mixture from heat and continued stirring with a spoon as it cooled. To move the cooling process along, I poured it into a glass bowl. Once mostly cooled, I stirred in the 3 drops of GSE as a preservative. I have had great luck with preserving both my homemade flax hair gel and homemade honey lip balm with it so I’m thinking it will work just fine for this lotion, too.

At this time, I also could have added some essential oils to enhance the smell, but the honey smell was just too darn good for me to cover it up in this manner. Again, it just depends on what you like! Overall, I’m really happy with this moisturizing lotion and hope you enjoy it if you give it a try.

If you’re looking for a fun and easy craft for kids, why not have them make a homemade pine cone bird feeder? The natural ingredients are good snack foods for us, but will also attract birds (and maybe even squirrels!). All you need is a few pine cones, peanut butter, dried cranberries, and sunflower seeds.

Simply have the kids spread peanut butter liberally onto a pine cone and then gently press sunflower seeds and cranberries so that they stick well to the peanut butter coating. There’s no wrong way to do this part and the more ingredients the better! Maybe if it’s warm enough, do this part outside on a deck so there’s no mess in the house. Once finished, carefully tie a piece of twine to the top of the pine cone and let the kids pick out a branch to tie and hang their feeder on.

Kids will have fun checking back to see if there are any visitors on the feeder and how much of the snacks have been eaten. If you decide to try this out, let me know how it goes!

Project Resource: Better Homes & Garden Magazines, August 2010

I’ve tried a new homemade face mask that I came across a while back in a random comment on acne.org. It is actually one of the best masks I’ve ever used and has great ingredients, most of which are probably in your kitchen right now. It is very easy to whip up in a food processor or in my case the Magic Bullet (which I think is handier for this small task). My favorite part of making this mask is knowing that every ingredient is natural and offers specific benefits to my skin.

The ingredients for the full recipe are below (as well as how the natural ingredients work), but I usually cut it in half and still have plenty enough to cover my face and neck. I usually leave it on for 15-20 minutes and then rinse off well with my hands or a wash cloth.

• 1/4 uncooked oatmeal - gently provides a deep pore cleaning and helps replenish moisture to the skin
• 2 Tbsp aloe vera juice (fresh from plant if possible) – naturally helps to fight blemishes as it contains salicylic acid and works to remove dead skin cells
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice (also fresh if possible) – helps to lighten dark spots and even out skin tone. Lemon juice may also help with acne by getting rid of bacteria and extra oils from the skin
• 1 Tbsp honey (raw if possible) – contains many nutrients, is moisturizing, and also has anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties
• 1 Tbsp sea salt – offers a great amount of minerals and helps to pull toxins from the skin while promoting cell growth

To make the mask, I just combine everything and blend, adding just a little water if necessary to mix easily. While the mask itself should be pretty thick, the finer the oatmeal is ground up the less messy it will be to apply. If you’re interested in an even more detoxifying mask, there’s another type that I want to try soon which actually uses apples and activated charcoal. I’ll definitely have to report back on that one!

UPDATE: If you would like an oatmeal face mask, but don’t necessarily want to make it yourself, check out this Aubrey Organics oatmeal mask

I had come across this recipe a while ago for a homemade flax hair gel and finally decided to give it a try today. I love that it only takes a couple ingredients (no chemicals at all!) and that I can quickly make more if I ever run out. Overall, the gel was not too hard to make (although a little messy since this was my first try) and I’m hoping that it will keep in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks.

To start, I added 1 cup filtered water and 1/4 cup flax seeds to a small saucepan. I heated them to boiling on low-medium heat, stirring most of the time. Once the seeds boiled, the water started thickening into a slightly foaming gel. I stirred the gel for a couple more minutes (some recipes say to simmer for 10 minutes more), but I didn’t think this was necessary with the thickness I already had.

Next came the messy part. The seeds are extremely well embedded in the gel and a strainer did not work to separate them at all. After a little brainstorming, I cut a big piece of cheesecloth that the seeds could not escape from and poured the whole mixture into the middle of it. I pulled the rest of the cloth up and held it with one hand. With the other hand, I squeezed the gel out by basically wringing out the part of the cloth cloth containing the seeds.

I ended up with about 1/3 to 1/2 cup gel and at this point stirred in 4 drops of GSE to help preserve it. I could have also added a few drops of essential oil (such as lavender), but I didn’t mind the light nutty smell of the gel and it seemed to disappear anyway once it dried in my hair. So far I really like the gel as it gave my hair a nice shine and held back a little bit of frizz that was trying to escape my ponytail. I also noticed that the gel did not flake and leaves a really smooth look.

I think that next time I make this (by the way the same seeds can be used again!) I will use slightly less seeds (perhaps 1 Tbsp seeds to 1 cup water) in the hope that the seeds will be able to separate easily in the strainer. If you decide to make this, let me know how yours turns out! And one last quick tip, to help clean the gel off your dishes and utensils, add a couple of good splashes of white vinegar to your dishwater- it will make a big difference!

It might be the case that my car is currently smelling, well, a little stale after the long winter. While I know that a thorough cleaning is needed (including the mats) if the weather permits this weekend, it would also be nice to just have a regular air freshener to use in the meantime or for any other smell situation (like leftovers sitting in the car after dinner and so on).

Since I normally do a big fall cleaning and big spring cleaning (refusing to spend any time in the winter outside cleaning my car), it could really use a bit of freshening once in a while. However, since my journey into health and natural smells, anything fake (like your common spray air fresheners and regular hanging car ones which really contain dangerous chemicals to breathe) are a complete turn-off to my nose. But what I hadn’t found was a replacement- until now.

Today I came across this really cute and easy idea to make my own homemade car air freshener. I used scrap material to cut out hearts, lint filler from the dryer (instead of cotton balls), organic lavender essential oil, thread, a bit of ribbon, and hot glue. It really took hardly any time at all to make, but Felix decided to stop by and see what was going on!

Of course, with this homemade air freshener I could make any smell I wanted- citrus, earthy, relaxing- that is the beauty of making your own. And if the filler ever needs a refresher, an eyedropper with more oil will fit fine between the stitches. Plus I made mine in the shape of a heart- nothing wrong with having a little love in the air, right? ;)

Today I came across the idea for homemade reusable cleaning wipes (with disinfecting power!) and am officially sold. I’m making my own based on this recipe and am so excited to try them out. Sometimes it’s necessary to wipe up a mess quickly and I like the idea of storing these right in my kitchen (since I always seem to make a huge mess no matter what I am doing), soaked in a cleaning solution and ready to go.

Not only will they be reusable and thus eco-friendly, but I am thrilled that I get to use wipes without any mystery chemicals or unnecessary ingredients. They are super convenient and I probably won’t even feel the need to wash my hands right after using them like I would with regular wipes from the store. I can choose what goes into the solution and feel good about what I am using to clean.

To start, I cut up an old Fruit of the Loom T-shirt made with heavy cotton that I think will make for tough, long-lasting wipes. I made a surprising amount of wipes from this medium shirt, but left some of the pieces quite large in case I decide to cut them down a bit later depending on what works best for me after I try them out.

I didn’t have any old wipe containers, but a big glass jar that I think housed Christmas nuts a long time ago, so I added about 3 cups water to it due to the large size. 1/2 cup vinegar, 3 good squirts of Dr. Bronner’s baby-mild liquid castile soap, and about 10 drops tea tree essential oil.

I overestimated the liquid amount needed with the number of cleaning wipes I had, but at least I have room at the top to wring out any extra liquid before leaving the jar. Also, after I wash the cleaning cloths once they are used they can go straight back in the jar to soak up more solution and be used again.

I love, love, love Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap and it seems that I am constantly finding new uses for it. I have read about people using it for shampoo, face/body wash, use it for cleaning myself, and now I hear that it can be used for pest control on plants and gardens, indoor or outdoor.

Since one of my goals for this spring is to get (and keep alive hopefully) at least a few plants in my house, I think I’ll have to try out this simple recipe for a natural pest control spray using Dr. Bronner’s liquid castile soap (I prefer to keep the baby-mild kind on hand since it’s unscented). The recipe calls for 1 quart water to 1-2 Tbsp liquid castile soap transferred into a spray bottle.

The spray won’t harm most plants unless it contains too much soap (but it’s a good idea to test on a few leaves and check back a few times before spraying whole plants). A comment also stated that the salts in the soap will dehydrate a number of pests such as mites, aphids, and mealybugs, but won’t affect your honeybees or lady bugs. This person also recommended spraying the base of the plant and underneath the leaves where these pests hang out.

I am already thinking of spraying this on some of my hostas in the backyard that get pretty well attacked in the summer and I’ll post back with how it works. If you use this and have feedback, or have your own natural pest control remedy, please feel free to share with us!

I first shared a post for homemade foaming hand wash back in ’09 and I still make and use it all the time. However, I’ve recently come across a great tip that makes it an even better product. I still use one part liquid castile soap (Dr. Bronner’s unscented baby-mild) and 5 parts water, but I also now add a good squirt of pure vegetable glycerin. The glycerin has wonderful moisturizing properties and will help to leave your hands smooth and soft instead of feeling dry. I also still add essential oils for extra cleaning power and a delightful smell and voilà! my homemade foam handwash is ready to use.

Due to the cold weather the last couple of months, I started off the new year with some pretty chapped lips. And no product that I tried was really making them a whole lot better. I decided it was time to try making my own balm when I came across this easy recipe (for which I already had all the ingredients)!

Admittedly, I thought the lip balm would not take much time at all to make, but really it ended up taking about a full hour (so if you decide to try it, you  may want to have at least this much time or you could be left in a bit of a mess). To start, I gathered all of my wonderfully natural ingredients (cutting the recipe in half for this first try):

• 2 Tbsp beeswax which I had bought at the farmers market this summer
• 1 Tbsp shea butter (NOW brand)
• 1 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 tsp raw honey
• 2 drops Grapefruit Seed Extract which acts as a natural preservative in this balm

I could have added some essential oils for flavor, but I actually really enjoy the honey smell and taste and didn’t have an oil flavor on hand that sounded good to use. You could add a drop or two of essential oil or flavor oil if you wanted to, you could likely find these at your local health store.

The first thing I did was combine the beeswax, shea butter, and coconut oil. I don’t have  a double boiler and instead used a hot pad to hold a pint mason in a small pan of boiling water, stirring as I melted these three ingredients. Once this was complete, I transferred them to a mixing bowl and used hand beaters to further mix the balm. This proved to be the toughest task as the oils firmed up in the cooling process and stuck to the beaters and any utensil I used to try to get the balm back to the middle of the bowl.

If I hadn’t cut the recipe in half, I think this part would have been easier with more balm to work with. I probably used the beaters for about 5 minutes (most of this involved scraping them off) and then it was pretty much cooled and I added the honey. You just don’t want to add the honey while it’s warm or it may separate back out in your finished product.

I used the beaters one last time with the honey added (whip as long as you can, for me this was probably 5 more minutes). I then added the drops of GSE and used a spoon to lightly stir this in. At this point you could also add the essential oil if desired.

Overall, the longer you whip the balm and the more beeswax you use, the thicker your balm will turn out. If you prefer it to be less thick, you can increase the amount of oils in your recipe. I was really happy with how my balm thickened up; it is not runny and melts easily on my fingers.

It made about 1/2 cup and seems to keep my lips moist for a really long time, longer than any other balm or lip treatment I have tried, and it is definitely improving my chapped lips. In my desperation this winter, I had even tried medicated Blistex. I like this way better, it tastes and feels so natural!

*This post is part of Delighting in the Day’s Handmade Mother’s Day Link-Up