coffee honey sugar scrub

e're coffee drinkers in my house, which means we end up with a lot of used coffee grounds.  I've been using a lavender coconut sugar scrub lately, but it's running low, so I thought I'd make one up using my excess coffee grounds!  A lot of people claim that coffee scrubs will reduce or eliminate cellulite, but I'm inclined to call bullshit on that.  Maybe, just

maybe

, it

slightly

reduces the appearance of cellulite, but I have no reason to believe that it does.  Also, for my thoughts on people who think we all need to remove every dimple of cellulite from it's existence on our bodies, just read

this

, because Amy pretty much summed it up.  But I digress.  I like coffee.  I like the smell of coffee.  Hence, I thought a coffee scrub sounded like a lovely and invigorating addition to my showers.

Even if coffee won't magically banish your dimply (glorious) thighs, it is awesome in other ways!  

 Coffee (obviously) contains caffeine which has anti-inflammatory properties that can help to heal skin and is also has lots of powerful antioxidants.  The abrasive texture of the coffee grounds and sugar sloughs off dead skin cells and gives your skin a fresh, radiant glow.  The coconut oil in this recipe is all kinds of awesome.  It has anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, anti-septic qualities, and can also soothe skin irritations and aid the healing process.  Adding essential oils is optional, but I wanted to throw some Tea Tree oil in mine because tea tree oil is pretty crazy awesome.  It's known for its antiseptic, anti-fungal, and infection-reducing benefits, has antibiotic properties

and

can help aid against ailments such as skin infections, rashes, burns, dandruff, the list goes on.  Seemed like an obvious choice to put in a skin scrub.  Lavender is also a great essential oil to use on the skin, but I was skeptical of how lavender and coffee would smell together.  But, hey!  I didn't try so maybe they'd be great!

Ingredients:

1 c coffee grounds

1 c sugar (for a more coarse scrub, use raw sugar)

1/2 c coconut oil

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

2 tbsp raw honey

10-15 drops essential oil (optional, I used

Tea Tree Oil

)

Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly.  Scrub on to the skin in the shower and then rinse  If you're worried about your shower drain clogging, cover it with a coffee filter to catch the grounds.  Store in an airtight container, like a mason jar, and keep in a cool, dry place.  Makes about 16oz of scrub.

natural perfume workshop!

ey guys!  If you're local to the Seattle area, I have a super fun event coming up!  On Monday, July 28th, I'll be hosting an essential oil perfume making class at Moorea Seal's flagship store in Seattle!  I've been making my own perfumes lately and It's so much fun seeing how the scents play off of one another, how they integrate into one another, and how they change with your personal body chemistry once you apply them.  I've never liked perfume, in fact I kind of hate most perfumes.  Normal perfume is so strong and unrelenting and it often will give me a headache.  I love perfumes made with essential oils because not only are they natural, they don't stay super strong for hours after you put them on.  They're stronger when you sniff them straight out of the bottle and right when you put it on, but they mellow out while you wear them and have a pleasant smell that doesn't intoxicate a room for minutes after you leave, like I've found many typical perfumes to do (I always feel like Spongebob running through the perfume department after someone walks by with strong perfume or cologne).  
I also have a really hard time finding scents that I love.  I enjoy maybe 1% of the perfumes I've smelled at a perfume counter.  I enjoy scents that are spicier and citrusy, or more woodsy, and a bit masculine.  Most perfumes I've encountered tend to be super heavy on the florals and have more of a chemical smell than anything I'd prefer.  The great thing about making your own perfume is that you get to choose your own scent profile when you make your own!  My favorite scents right now are woodsy ones, so I made a perfume with Cedarwood, Pine, and Sandalwood essential oils!  I just got some Balsam Fir essential oil and it might be my new favorite.  If I could smell like I'm walking through a forest at all times, that'd be great.  
The other awesome thing about using essential oils for your perfume?  You can craft your perfume to support your health!  Essential oils can be an amazing way to stay healthy, balance hormones, and regulate emotions, so you're doing the body good and smelling awesome too.


There are only a few spots available in the class, so if you'd like to sign up, head over to MooreaSeal.com!  You'll learn all about essential oils, their various uses, AND create your own vial of perfume to take home with you.  I'll have tons of different essential oil scents to choose from and teach you how to create a great scent profile for your signature perfume!  If you haven't been to Moorea's store in Seattle yet, that's reason alone to come, it's such and inspiring space and there are so many lovely things, I kind of want to buy everything.
Date:  Monday, July 28th.
Time:   7:00-8:30pm
Location:  The Moorea Seal store.  2523 3rd Ave. Seattle WA, 98121
What You Will Learn:
You will have the opportunity to play with layering different notes and scents to decide what essential oils blend best for you.  Students will also learn the other elements to creating perfume beyond the essential oils themselves.  Beyond perfume making, students will also learn how to integrate essential oils into other uses for home and health.

What You Will Take Away:
A 10mm vial of your custom essential oil perfume.

What to Bring:
Yourself!  With an excitement to learn a new skill and make a few new friends :)  All supplies, plus a glass of champagne and/or wine, will be provided for you.

diy deodorant

When I was at our local natural food store a few weeks ago I wandered into the deodorant section and found some Schmidt's natural deodorant.  I loved the scents and upon looking at the ingredients I decided I would do some research and try my hand at making my own.  I fell in love with the Cedarwood + Juniper scent and the Bergamot and Lime scent.  I had just ran out of Cedarwood essential oil, but I had Bergamot, so I decided to try making one that had a similar scent profile to Bergamot and Lime.  I didn't have lime so I substituted lemon and grapefruit (though I think lime is such a perfect pair with Bergamot).

If you don't want to use any scents, you can totally omit the essential oils.  I really want to make a cedarwood and/or spruce version to emulate the Schmidt's Cedarwood + Juniper scent.  I should probably wait until I use up all of my Bergamot batch though!  I really don't like any of the scents that women's deodorant comes in, it all smells overly flowery or like baby powder, I don't know.  I've always hated women's deodorant, so I love that I can customize my own deodorant to the kind of scents that I prefer.  Strong enough for a man, made for a woman?  What does that even mean?  Deodorant that smells "girly?"  So over the gender divide in products.  Can we just made deodorant for humans and razor blades for humans and stop assuming that every female of the species likes pink and floral scents?



Before making my own deodorant I was using mens Old Spice, which has a pretty strong smell, and this homemade deodorant has much more subtle aroma.  I figured Old Spice was mostly covering odors with the strong scent, so I was curious as to how well the homemade stuff would work.  I wore it to both my yoga classes and on the plane, two places I find usually cause more need for deodorant, and was pretty pleased with the results!

You should be able to find the ingredients at health food type stores, but if not I linked to each item on amazon.

(recipe adapted slightly from scratch mommy)
What you'll need
Double Boiler
4oz+ jar or container
1 oz Coconut oil 
3/4 oz Shea butter 
1/3 oz Oil (I used sweet almond oil, but avocado, jojoba, etc. work well too)
1/3 oz Beeswax
1/2 oz Arrowroot powder 
1/2 oz Diatomaceous Earth (Food Grade)
5 drops of Vitamin E 
25-30 drops of essential oils (I get mine here.  I used grapefruit, lemon, and bergamot)



In your double boiler, add the oils, shea butter, and beeswax.  I use a glass pyrex measuring cup over a pot of water as a makeshift double boiler and it works just fine.  Melt on low heat until everything is melted.

Turn off the heat and let the mixture cool for a few minutes, then add the Arrowroot powder, Diatomaceous Earth, Vitamin E, and Essential Oils and whisk everything until it's completely combined.

Pour into your container and place somewhere safe so it can set up, I just set mine in the fridge for like 15 minutes.

To use, just pull a bit out of the jar and rub between your fingers until it warms up and smooths into a spreadable consistency,  then just rub into your underarms!  This recipe is solid enough that you could also pour it into a twist-up deodorant container and apply it like you would normal deodorant, if you don't like the idea of rubbing it on with your fingers.

diy laundry detergent

Yesterday Kristi and I were hanging out in the kitchen making dinner and pie, talking about making household and body products and we were amazed at how many things you can make yourself.  We felt silly being amazed because of course you can make them yourself, at some point, before the big companies fed us the lie that we need them to make all our products, people all over were hand making their soaps, deodorants, detergents, make up, and more!  And the cool part is that you don't have to wonder what's in your products when you make them yourself, you just made it!  While I haven't personally dealt with allergies from store bought soaps and detergents, I know that plenty of people have had problems with skin irritation and allergies due to chemicals in home products.  Commercially made detergents contain many synthetic chemicals such as chlorine bleach and EDTA that are harmful.

It's awesome how easy it is to make your own detergent, and another bonus?  It's cheap!  If you make a large batch it comes out to about 19 cups of detergent, and since you use 1 tablespoon of detergent per load, that means you get over 300 loads of laundry out of your detergent!  After researching different price per load break downs comparing homemade vs. store bought I was pretty happy about saving money on top of everything else:

Arm & Hammer® liquid 100 ounce detergent – $6.79 = $0.21 per load

Ultra Tide powder 143 oz. detergent = $17.97 = $0.12 per load

Tide with Bleach powder 267 ounce detergent – $20.32  = $0.21 per load

Homemade powder 32 ounce detergent – $2.98 = $0.05 per load



Ingredients:
2.5 cups Borax
2.5 cups Super Washing Soda
1 5.5oz bar Fels Naptha, grated
30 drops essential oils (I get mine here)

Using a cheese grater, grate the Fels Naptha bar.  Once you grate the Fels Naptha, you can either mix all the ingredients together, or if you want a finer texture, throw it in a food processor.  I only have a small food processor so I did mine in batches.

Once everything was processed and mixed I put in my essential oils.  I wanted a zesty, fresh scent so I used Lemon and Orange, and then Purification (an essential oil blend of citronella, lemongrass, rosemary, melaleuca, lavandin, and myrtle.  It helps remove odors and freshen your clothes).  You could also use other oils depending on the scents you enjoy, such as lavender, cedar, pine, geranium, jasmine, or peppermint.  I'm not big into floral scents, but I do love woodsy scents so for my next batch I might try using some cedar, pine, and spruce oils!

Use 1 Tbsp per load (or 2 -3 Tbsp for large or heavily soiled loads).

This recipe makes about 6-ish cups, but you could also make a large batch using the entire box of borax and super washing soda and a few bars of Fels Naptha.  I want to try some different scents, though, so I just made a small batch for this first time.  I tested it on a load of laundry and it seemed to work great!  I haven't tried it on a load of really dirty laundry yet, but after reading other people's reviews of their homemade laundry soap, I'm pretty confident I'll have no desire to go back to the store bought stuff.

Since this soap is a low-suds type of detergent it can also work in HE front loading washers, so you don't need to buy fancy soap for those washers either!

It's really easy to make your own detergent (and if you prefer liquid detergent there are plenty of recipes for that as well, if you do a quick google search), but if you're not up to it, you can always buy an unscented organic, non-toxic detergent and add your own essential oils for a personalized scent!

natural curl routine

A couple months ago I was contacted by Original Moxie to see if I was interested in trying their hair products.  I've had a pretty natural hair routine for quite a while, so I was excited to see a company making natural products specifically designed for curly hair.  They use essential oils in their products too, which obviously was exciting as I was already adding Cedarwood essential oil to my conditioner to help with hair growth. I've been trying to be extra nice to my hair these days because I lost a ton of volume from being on birth control, and I think some of my curl as well.  As silly as it sounds, I have a ton of my identity wrapped up in my big hair, so losing some of that has been frustrating.  My hair stopped falling out once I stopped the pill, but about two weeks ago it started coming out in droves.  It was like I was 14 all over again, pulling handfuls of hair out when I'd rake my fingers through my hair.  I'd like to kindly recommend to my hormones that they stop messing with my hair.  My hair feels about half as thick as it did 2 - 3 years ago, so hopefully things will stop freaking out on the hormone front. Part of me hates that I have so much of my identity tied up in my big hair.  It never occurred to me that I could lose it.  I've always had big curly hair.  In a way it's a security blanket.  When I cut my hair off a couple years ago I felt so not myself, I couldn't wait for it to be long and big again.  It took so many years of fighting the big poofy hair as a kid and teen that now that I'm finally in love with it, it's hard to deal with having it just fall out.  Boo hiss, hormones.  I've been doing all I can to keep my hair happy, so I was excited to try some natural products that are made for curly girls.
These three products are my standard shower routine products.  I've been avoiding regular shampoos for quite a while now, since shampoo strips hair of its natural oils, so I usually only wash with shampoo on occasion, but I was interested in seeing how the no-foam shampoo worked.  It doesn't lather at all (as you can probably assume from the name), so it's a bit harder to work it through the hair, but it definitely doesn't make my hair feel stripped at all.  In the past when I've used other normal shampoos my hair feels so dry and stripped out after I shampoo, and I feel like I have to condition like crazy to get it back to feeling right.  Right now I'm kind of going half and half with the no-poo thing.  For days when I have lots of product in my hair I like to have a little help getting that gunk out, so the Get Clean! no foam shampoo is nice.

I always always always always condition.  Mostly because I can't get a brush through my hair any other time than when there is conditioner.  I like to put conditioner on and let it hang out while I shave, then brush the tangles out of my hair and rinse.  I usually like using their Intense Quench conditioner, but when I don't feel like I need a ton of conditioning power I use the Featherweight conditioner, which is a lot lighter.  Their conditioners aren't quite as "slippery" as other conditioners I've used, which is because they use butters, oils, and other nutrients to condition, rather than chemicals which give that slippery feel.  It makes it slightly more difficult to comb tangles out, but I much prefer having my hair conditioned naturally than having a bunch of weird chemicals that only make my hair feel slippery, not actually condition it.  I've also been preferring the Intense Quench because my hair is currently colored, so I like to give it as much conditioning love as possible to keep it happy. After I get out of the shower I spritz a bit of Twist Mist in my hair and diffuse to dry.  The other day I forgot that this is 100% natural oil and my brain decided to spray it on my hair like it was hair spray and holy cow my hair was SO oily.  Whoops!  It's amazing for getting a bit of shine, but because it's all oil, it's definitely better used in moderation.  
These are a few products I use, but not all the time.  I actually love the Sweet Poof spray.  It's perfect for the 2nd or 3rd day when the curls have been slept on and are a little flat and sad.  I actually decided to test it to see if it really did volumize, by using it on one side of my head and not the other and it was really funny how lopsided I looked.  Definitely works to boost curls up and re-volumize.   Another couple products I occasionally use before blow drying are the Oasis moisture gel and the Everyday Leave-in conditioner.  The leave in conditioner is also nice for applying to second-day hair to give it a little boost, and the Oasis moisture gel is another great one to apply before I blow dry to give my curls some buoyancy.  
These two products I've only used a little bit.  I really like the Lux Locks for adding some shine to the ends of my curls.  I used the Emollience Pre-Treatment overnight (they recommend applying overnight or at least 15 minutes before washing), and it took me two showers to get it out of my hair, haha.  Super penetrating moisture.  I think next time I do it I'll just do it for 15 minutes instead of overnight.  I liked it though!  I'm always on the lookout for good deep treatments to occasionally give my hair some love.  These are the only products I've been using for the past couple months, and it's been nice to have products that are designed to work together and on my specific hair type.  Before that I was just using random stuff I found at the health food store, and old tressemme products I've had for about 8 years.   If you have any questions about my hair routine that I forgot or skipped, let me know and I'll try to answer them in the comments! 
Original Moxie is celebrating Earth Day this weekend with a sale, so you can get 30% off any order over $30 using the code EDAYOM14.  I'm also doing a fun giveaway next week with Original Moxie, too, so stay tuned!
This post is sponsored by Original Moxie and I received products to try and use. All opinions and thoughts are my own. Thanks for supporting those companies which keep Delightfully Tacky alive and kicking.