August 3, Lavender

When I decided to live a "more natural lifestyle" several years ago, one of the things I gave up was lotions. My reason for doing this is that they often contain a lot of chemicals and ingredients you can not read.

Now, when you give up your commercial cosmetics and body care, there are two was you can do it: The cheap way, or the expensive way. I have tried both. There are lots of very pricey organic skin care products. To be honest, I still use some of them. Alba, kiss my face, and some other organic cosmetic companies makes some safe alternatives to things like mascara, facial powder and shampoo. But, if I can make something quickly and easily that works just as well as the pricey organics sold in health food stores I do!

Olive oil infused with herbs or essential oils makes skin care oil that keeps my skin healthier than lotions. Granted it takes some time to get used to, but I honestly love my oils. In addition to being good for skin care, they also work for first aid like burns and bites.

I wrote about how to make herbally infused oil on eHow. Basically, you put chopped up herbs or already prepared essential oils in a base of olive oil. If you use fresh herbs, put the herbs and oil in a sunny window for two weeks and shake them up regularly. I made lavender infused oil last week from lavender in my herb garden. It smells like lavender, but a bit cinnamony also. That was a suprise.