NEW Super-Awesome Herby Mag!

Happy Cyber Monday, y'all!
There's a lot of shopping happening today online. I've never been a big online shopper, or a big shopper in general (I need some new socks badly and can't bear the thought of having to buy them!). But this new mag really knocked my socks off (hmmm...is there a connection??)!
Subscriptions are now open for the new Plant Healer Magazine! Plant Healer "brings to its readers the indigenous wisdom and historic healing traditions of the Western world, in balance with the latest in clinical research.  Articles are characteristically folk-hearted and grassroots oriented, place based and nature-informed, and in their own ways novel, distinguished or edgy.  A diverse selection of renowned herbalist authors look to this magazine as the venue for their most personal and cutting edge work, a place to encourage working with herbs regardless of title or authorization, to promote the well being of the plants and planet as well as human kind, to challenge assumptions and paradigms, to inspire new ways of thinking and more effective ways of treating and healing."
The magazine covers topics from creating your own herbal medicines, in-depth looks at properties of different plants and a special section just for herby kids. Subscribers also receive other multimedia goodies from well-known, extremely knowledgeable herbalists, including Jim McDonald, my herb guru from White Lake, MI. Issues come out four times a year in a PDF format.
This would make a wonderful gift for a plant lovin' friend or your plant lovin' self. You can subscribe by clicking the lovely pic above or at www.planthealermagazine.com/subscribe.

Handmade Holiday Gifts: Autumn Spice Lip Butter

Photo from flickr by omar_j
Wow! The Holidays are here! It seems like just the other day I was playing in the sand by the beach with my girls.

Have the Holidays crept up on you, too? Are you looking for a fun, affordable handmade gift for the special people in your life?

We made this Autumn Spice Lip Butter at our monthly Mary Jane's Farm Meeting this past Sunday (for more info on what else we did at the meeting and the local Iron Oak Chapter check out the Iron Oak Farm Blog). This lip butter is perfect for anyone you know that has lips. It has a wonderful soft texture and is loaded with fabulously emollient ingredients, such as shea and avocado butter, that help protect your lips from loss of water through the skin tissues into the air (a main cause of chapping in the colder months). It is also free of any of the gnarly ingredients that can be found in some other lip balms, such as petroleum by-products or mineral oil. The addition of orange and clove oils are uplifting, warming and give you that fuzzy Holiday feeling of handmade orange pomanders!

This recipe is an adaptation of the original recipe developed by the amazing Irene Wolansky at Mountain Rose Herbs (click here for her original recipe and other yummy spicy goodies!).

Autumn Orange Spice Lip Butter
2 teaspoons Shea Butter
1 teaspoon Avocado Butter
3 Tablespoons Coconut Oil
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon Beeswax (or Candellila Wax)
15 Drops Sweet Orange Oil (therapeutic grade)
5 Drops Clove Oil (therapeutic grade)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Place wax, butters and oils in a small glass Pyrex measuring cup and gently heat in a pot of hot water. Once melted, remove from the stovetop and add essential oils.  Immediately pour the mixture into lip balm containers. Cool completely before placing caps onto the lip balm containers. If giving as gifts, you can decorate them with stickers and use a lip balm package sealer and heat gun to finish. Makes 10 lip balm tubes.

I purchased my butters, oil, wax and lip balm tubes from Essential Wholesale, one of my favorite sources for natural and organic ingredients (great customer service, too!). I used DoTerra Wild Orange Oil and Organic Clove Oil from Essential Aura. The lip balm tube sealers are from Bramble Berry (although, I'm not sure if they still sell these). If you buy the ingredients and packaging in bulk to make several tubes as gifts, you can get the cost down to around 30 cents a tube. And it is worth every cent!!!

Stay tuned for more fun, easy handmade Holiday gift recipes! Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Juggling Modern Life: Let's Get Back to a Simpler Time

Man, has life been busy lately. Are you all feeling it? Like time is starting to move faster and we are being forced to keep up, like it or not? With juggling work, kids, husband, family, friends, animals and house - I've been feeling a little spent lately and finding it hard to find balance (and keep up with blog posts!).
All of this has been making me contemplate why have we made our lives this way?
In the days of my grandparents and their parents, extended families lived more communally. They often shared a home, or at least shared the same land with more than one home. They shared chores, prepared meals together and helped each other to rear their children. They sustained themselves as a group. When and why did this all change? When did we decide it was a good idea to break off and create the nuclear family? It just makes no sense to me.
Economically, it costs more as everyone is purchasing their own separate needs rather than sharing. Physically, it is definitely more work as everyone is caring for their own individual homes, yards and chores. Emotionally, it seems to me is the hugest impact. While a tight family unit is surely a good thing, many off us have lost the closeness that we used to have with our extended family. Our separation and busy schedules don't allow for it. It's just so sad to me.
Maybe it is for this reason that we are starting to connect more in groups focused on community and sustainability? Perhaps we are moving more toward the old model as more of us realize that the way we are doing it now is not working. I'm hopeful that this is the case. Let's get back to a simpler time. But couldn't we just speed it up a bit? LOL!
How do you find balance in your modern life?

Your Well-Stocked Skin Care Pantry (Part II) - Earthy Additions

This is the second installment in helping you to build your skin care ingredient pantry at home. Building on "The Basics" (See October's Part I post), this post will cover the addition of clays into your handmade skin care product arsenal.
Clays are wonderful, affordable additions to your DIY skin care products, straight from Mother Earth Herself! They come in a wide variety of textures that help to benefit specific concerns. Clays can be added to cleansers and scrubs or used as a mask for face and body (and even hair).
Here are the one's that I recommend adding for your use at home. They are easy to find, either at your local health food store or online. I purchase most of my clays from Essential Wholesale.
  • Kaolin Clay - This is my favorite clay of all! If you were to pick one type of clay to use at home, this would be it. It is a mild clay, typically used for those with sensitive or dry skin, but I find it to be beneficial for all types of skin.
  • French Green Clay - This is the classic clay for facial use. It has a strong action on the skin and is great for drawing out impurities and leaving a tight, clean finish while stimulating circulation and the elimination of waste. I would recommend it for normal to combination skin. It is also a very mineral-rich clay.
  • Bentonite Clay - This is a very strong acting clay and is typically used on only oily, toxic, acneic skins. It has a strong drawing action to assist in pulling out impurities. It can tend to be too drying for already dry or sensitive skins.
You may want to stock only a clay suited to your skin type, or a few, as skin can change from day-to-day and season-to-season. You can always blend clays together, too, and benefit from the different actions. There are several other clays out there - these are just the biggies that I have listed. Experiment and maybe you will find a secret clay that you love most! I've used everything from Sedona mud to Marl of Kohnar, gathered from Lake Beluga in Canada (amazing stuff!).

Here are a few simple ways to use clay in your everyday skin care:
  • Add a sprinkle of dry clay to your current cleanser when cleansing your skin. It will add an additional punch to its cleansing action.
  • Get creative and try mixing your favorite clay with a combination of a few of the following to make a spreadable mask consistency: herbal tea infusions, blended fruit, cream, yogurt, honey, goat's milk, coconut milk, fruit juice or coffee. Apply to freshly cleansed skin and allow to sit for 10 minutes before wiping off thoroughly with a warm cloth. Finish with your favorite toner and moisturizer.
  • Create a facial scrub by mixing equal parts of clay, ground oatmeal and ground almonds. Add your choice of liquid (cream, juice, water, etc.) to make it a spreadable consistency and gently smooth over face in circular motions avoiding eye area. Rinse well with lukewarm water.
Coming next in the "Your Well Stocked Skin Care Pantry" series: Smooth Operators!

Stuff I am Loving Right Now

Just a few things that are rockin' my world these days...

  Snazaroo Face Paints
My daughters and I have spent hours painting each other's faces and bodies with these fun, easy to use paints. They are definitely a hit!
Not only are these face paints super affordable, they are non-toxic, gentle, fragrance-free, water-based and wash off easily leaving no staining on delicate skin. Snazaroo also offers tons of shades, glitter gels, glitter dusts and special effects materials. What you can do with them is only limited to your imagination.

Ready Made Magazine
Want to learn how to make a lamp out of broken bottles? Or goat cheese from scratch? How about a crash course in Curling? They've got it all at Ready Made. I'm not sure how this magazine ever escaped my grasp before, but now that I've found it, I am not letting go! Not only is the content of the magazine and web site amazing, subscriptions are only $6.99!

MaryJanes Farm - Iron Oak Chapter
For three months now, I have had the pleasure of being a member of the MaryJanes Farm local Iron Oak Chapter, headed up by my friend Jennifer (a long-time friend of my brother, who I'm convinced was stolen from our family at birth). It is like a little escape to a simpler time with a beautiful group of like-minded people. Some of them old family friends and some wonderful new souls to sit a spell with and work on some skills that were necessary in our not-so-distant past. We have made and sampled cheese, canned a mean salsa, spun and I finally learned how to knit (Thanks, Jennifer!).
Jennifer and her husband Zach, a blacksmith, run a hobby farm, Iron Oak Farm, with the most amazing positive energy. They have goats, rabbits and a plethora of chickens. They are also foster parents to our chickens, Rainbow and Lula.
If you are in the local Oakland County area, are interested in slowing the pace of life down a bit and communing with a group of wonderful people, check out this chapter.



Coming Soon: SCFYS Product Review Team!



Because we are all beautiful, unique individuals, we all have very different skin. A product that works great for one person may not work for another in the same way. While I can give you my honest thoughts on a product and how it worked for me and my fussy, combination, reactive acne-prone skin, it might not be as relevant as a review from someone with skin more similar to yours.
With that, over the coming weeks, I will begin including product reviews from various individuals hand-selected as participants in the new Skin Care for Your Soul (SCFYS) Product Review team. Reviewers will span age groups from toddlers to mature, various skin types, ethnicities and genders (because you have skin, too, guys!) and perhaps even the occasional pet. I'm excited to offer this additional insight to my readers in hopes that it will help you make a better educated product purchase.
If there are any products that you would like to see reviewed by the SCFYS Product Review Team, please leave a note in the comments section. Blessings!!!

November Mask of the Month: The Great Pumpkin!

Halloween has passed, but the beautiful gourds still linger! I am a huge fan of this time of year for many reasons, but one of them is pumpkin pie (cold, right out of the fridge topped with my husband's homemade whipped cream). Yum! I could eat it all day long and still go back for more! This quick, easy mask is the next best thing to having pumpkin in your belly and will leave you with that warm, fuzzy Holiday feeling.

Pumpkin is loaded with antioxidants, enzymes and nutrients and has an action on the skin that is both exfoliating and anti-aging. The addition of the warming pumpkin pie spices helps to rev up a sluggish complexion and give you a wonderful pre-holiday glow!

Are you a fan of pumpkin pie, too? Post a link in the comments section to your favorite recipe!

The Great Pumpkin Mask

2T Canned Pumpkin (or you can use fresh cooked or fresh raw well-blended pumpkin)
A squirt of honey (yes, I use honey in everything! LOL!)
A small pinch each of the following spices:
  • cinnamon
  • nutmeg
  • allspice
  • ginger
Stir all ingredients together in a small bowl. Apply to freshly cleansed skin and leave on for 10-15 minutes. Rinse with tepid water and finish with your favorite toner and moisturizer.

NOTE: This mask is not recommended for those with ultra-sensitive skin or skin that is easily inflamed (rosacea, etc.) due to the addition of the spices. You can always leave them out, using just the pumpkin and honey and you will still reap the benefits of this mask :)