Ok, so you've heard about essential oils I'm assuming. They can be used for a multitude of different things including bath products, beauty products, cleaning supplies, massage oils, diffuses and many more.
According to The Essential Oil University this is how they define essential oils.
Essential oils are the volatile, aromatic oils obtained by steam or hydrodistillation of botanicals. Most essential oils are primarily composed of terpenes and their oxygenated derivatives. Different parts of the plants can be used to obtain essential oils, including the flowers, leaves, seeds, roots, stems, bark, wood, etc.
Certain cold-pressed oils, such as the oils from various citrus peels, are also considered to be essential oils but these are not to be confused with cold-pressed fixed or carrier oils such as olive, grapeseed, coconut etc. which are non-volatile oils composed mainly of fatty acid triglycerides. Other aromatic, plant-derived oils, which technically aren’t essential oils because they are solvent extracted, include Absolutes(hexane followed by ethanol extraction), CO2’s (liquid carbon dioxide used as the solvent) and Phytols or Florosols (fluoro-hydrocarbon solvent).
Now essential oils aren't even really oils. They don't contain the fatty acids that constitute what we call an oil.
Many oils are high in antibacterial, antiviral and anti-fungal properties. This makes them perfect for adding to your homemade natural cleaning supplies.
The Best Oils for cleaning are: Lemon, grapefruit, eucalyptus, peppermint, tea tree, lavender, and rosemary. My favorites are eucalyptus, tea tree and lavender.
Essential oils can greatly improve your mood as well. Look into what each of them do to achieve your desired result.
As I get older I'm finding myself becoming more "crunchy." For those of you who don't know what that means, in a nutshell it means that I'm trying to make my life more natural and sustainable. I'm cooking from scratch whenever possible, cutting out most all processed foods in my diet and my son's diet, making my own cleaning products, etc.
I've started with laundry detergent and fabric softener. If your interested to see how I made my detergent check out my post on it HERE.
Anyway, back to the oils. I use them for my cleaning products, in old potpourri that I want to revive, bath salts, lotions and the list is endless.
You don't need a lot with the oils. A little goes a long way. With some preparations you only need a few drops. My fabric softener called for 30-40 drops of oil. That's really not a lot. A little .5 oz bottle will last a LONG time.
For a quick reference of oils, definitions and uses click HERE.
I found this great post from Crunchy Betty, "21 Things You Should Know About using Essential Oils"
I could just tell you what she said and plagiarize of just link you to her article like I just did.
Possibilities are endless when it comes to essential oils. All you have to do is to start experimenting!
Showing posts with label personal hygiene. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal hygiene. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Cool Alternative to Waxing Facial Hair
Like many other women I know I've got extra facial hair that is dark. I've been waxing or tweezing for YEARS! And I do mean years, I've been waxing my eyebrows since I was 11, that's 22 years of waxing people! My lip and chin followed not long after.
Years before I had my son, who is 3 now, I had laser hair removal on my lip and chin. Got one of those buy one area get one area deal. It worked great, until I got pregnant. Then the hormones went all whacky and the dark hair started growing back.
Not so fun let me tell you.
Anyway, there's a salon down the road from my apartment that I've had some other services done and I decided to get my eyebrows done there. I used to get them done at my nail salon or at my hair stylist. I could still get them done at my nail salon but I'm currently in the market for another hair stylist again, it's a long story for another blog post.
They are Indian so they thread eyebrows. I never had it done before. It was awesome. SO much faster than waxing. Added bonus is that my skin isn't red or inflamed afterwords, not red at all in fact, and you don't have all that gross wax residue left over from waxing. Another thing is that you don't have to worry about potentially getting burned by the wax being to hot.
I wanted to see if I could find instructions in the Internet to see if I could do my lip and chin at home. I'm more than happy to pay the $6 every few weeks to have my eyebrows done as, quite frankly, I'm not that coordinated when it comes to making sure my eyebrows are even.
There is TONS of info out there. HERE are my favorite instructions I've found.
Now a few notes about getting started.
It says to use 2' of thread. I think that, at least for me, that's to much. Around 18" or so seems to work best for me.
It does take a bit of practice to be able to yank out the hair. Once you do get the hang of it it's certainly faster than tweezing and, in my opinion anyway, faster and easier than waxing. As for the thread I seem to like just a standard all purpose thread. I've got some upholstery thread that works decently as well. The article says that the type doesn't matter so just play around with different types and just pick one that works best for you.
I didn't practice on my leg like they say to in the article as I had just shaved the other day so I didn't have enough hair there to try it out. I did just fine with the mirror on my face once I got the hang of the motion required to pull the hair out.
The big bonus of threading is that you don't have to wait for hair to be a certain length like you do with waxing. You can do it every other day if you feel like it so you never have hair on your eyebrows, lip or chin.
Sure you'll still need tweezers just like with waxing but that part is no worse than before.
Years before I had my son, who is 3 now, I had laser hair removal on my lip and chin. Got one of those buy one area get one area deal. It worked great, until I got pregnant. Then the hormones went all whacky and the dark hair started growing back.
Not so fun let me tell you.
Anyway, there's a salon down the road from my apartment that I've had some other services done and I decided to get my eyebrows done there. I used to get them done at my nail salon or at my hair stylist. I could still get them done at my nail salon but I'm currently in the market for another hair stylist again, it's a long story for another blog post.
They are Indian so they thread eyebrows. I never had it done before. It was awesome. SO much faster than waxing. Added bonus is that my skin isn't red or inflamed afterwords, not red at all in fact, and you don't have all that gross wax residue left over from waxing. Another thing is that you don't have to worry about potentially getting burned by the wax being to hot.
I wanted to see if I could find instructions in the Internet to see if I could do my lip and chin at home. I'm more than happy to pay the $6 every few weeks to have my eyebrows done as, quite frankly, I'm not that coordinated when it comes to making sure my eyebrows are even.
There is TONS of info out there. HERE are my favorite instructions I've found.
Now a few notes about getting started.
It says to use 2' of thread. I think that, at least for me, that's to much. Around 18" or so seems to work best for me.
It does take a bit of practice to be able to yank out the hair. Once you do get the hang of it it's certainly faster than tweezing and, in my opinion anyway, faster and easier than waxing. As for the thread I seem to like just a standard all purpose thread. I've got some upholstery thread that works decently as well. The article says that the type doesn't matter so just play around with different types and just pick one that works best for you.
I didn't practice on my leg like they say to in the article as I had just shaved the other day so I didn't have enough hair there to try it out. I did just fine with the mirror on my face once I got the hang of the motion required to pull the hair out.
The big bonus of threading is that you don't have to wait for hair to be a certain length like you do with waxing. You can do it every other day if you feel like it so you never have hair on your eyebrows, lip or chin.
Sure you'll still need tweezers just like with waxing but that part is no worse than before.
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