The Good, the Bad and the Glycerin

The Good, the Bad and the Glycerin! As you may already know, vegetable glycerin is odorless, colorless and is sweet to the taste. It dissolves in water and alcohol and it makes hair and skin feel soft and moisturized with its smooth and creamy feeling texture. This is why many hair and skin products use glycerin.

Raise your hands if you use glycerin. Glycerin is probably the most touch and go product for natural hair. Whether you are using it to combat frizz, create the look of smooth hair or to moisturize, you can achieve this with Vegetable Glycerin. Read more to learn about the PROS & CONS of Vegetable Glycerin and how you can use this product.

Hair Essentials - Homemade Moisturizer

Here's the video I promised. I finally finished it last night and my videos are getting progressively better. So just bare with me. The ingredients are noted, as well as other snippets of useful information along the way.
The ingredients are helpful in making a moisturizing conditioner for the hair. This leave-in made my hair feel nice, healthy, strong and soft and bouncy. After all that work, I ended up destroying the effect I created with my hair by washing my hair with AphoGee Protein Shampoo.

Ever find that when you wash your hair you have that feel  as though you are washing glasses. That friction as if your wiping glass/window with windex. That's how my hair felt after washing. It was definitely strong, but the shampoo did strip away the moisture in my hair. The moisture that I had worked so hard to get, so to recover the stripping made, I added moisturizer to my wet hair and after letting the moisture and water soak in, I sealed with extra virgin olive oil. What i plan to do the next time is to create my own shampoo and wash hair with that, then do this homemade moisturizing conditioning treatment. Sometimes you have to make the products that work with your hair. I hope this concoction helps yours! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4lG8O7oy0&feature=channel&list=UL

Hope you enjoyed the video! Live on Purpose! MuAh & CiAo!

Body Essentials - 10 Great Uses for Castile Soap

I absolutely love using my castile soap. There are two companies Castile Soap that I would recommend that is Oregon Soap Company Castile and Dr. Bronner’s, which comes in several different scents, I prefer the baby powder scent because it’s the closest to original. All the peppermint lovers out there, there is a peppermint scent for you too!

*Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap can be purcahsed at Whole Foods in different sizes and scents*

 10 Awesome Uses of Castile Soap:

1. Easy Shampoo- Take one part liquid Castile soap (I use Dr. Bronner’s for this!) and three parts water and put in an old shampoo bottle. You can “customize” your shampoo (this is a great project to do with kids!) by collecting fragrant herbs and plants from your yard, steeping them in the water, straining the water, and then adding to liquid Castile soap. It is also safe for babies whose sensitive skins cannot tolerate strong chemicals in soaps.

2.     All-purpose household cleaning- soap works great for general household cleaning including counter tops, tables, sinks, floors and dishes. For counters, and dishes a small amount on a wet sponge will go a long way. For floors, add a few tablespoons to your bucket of mop water. Try adding 1-5 parts water and 1 part liquid Castile soap to a spray bottle for easy spot cleaning. Experiment until you find the perfect balance!

3.     Laundry Soap- Using Castile soap for laundry not only saves $, but is more environmentally friendly than detergents. Try adding 1/8-cup liquid Castile soap in your laundry instead of regular detergent. Try adding borax if you need “extra” cleaning power.  If you’re really budgeting, try using less, especially if your clothes don’t contain lots of dirt or grease.

4.     Hand Soap- you can refill your foaming hand soap dispenser with 1 part liquid Castile soap and 3-5 parts water. This will stretch your Castile soap a long ways.

5.    Cleaning your eyeglasses!  Take 1 part Castile soap, 4 parts water, mix and store in bottle. To clean your glasses, first rinse all dirt and dust off with tap water, put a small amount of soap on your glasses, suds, rinse with water, and dry with eyeglass cloth

6.         Lather. For men, it can also be used as a lather for shaving and because of its natural ingredients, helps to naturally moisturize the skin after the shave.

7.       You can make an extra moisturizing formula that will add shine to your hair by adding a small amount of olive oil or jojoba oil to this mixture (shake before using!).You can also add essential oils if you like for additional aroma. Start off with 6 drops per 12 oz., and increase until you are happy. Great for dogs as well!

8.       Facial Cleanser – I mix a few drop of Dr. Bronner’s Castille Soap with some brown sugar (add for scrub) and wash my face. If I don’t need the scrub, I use Dr. Bronner’s by itself to take away oils in my skin,e specially in the summer.

9.       WOMEN can use Castille Soap with a couple drops of tea treel oil for that time of the month as well. Use as you would with Summer’s Eve for a fresh start. DO NOT USE MIXTURE AS A DOUCHE.

10.     Automatic dishwasher soap- Recipe below: 1/2 cup liquid Castile soap

1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
3 drops tea tree oil
1/2 cup white vinegar

 Method: Stir all ingredients together until blended. Store in a squirt top bottle. Use 2 tablespoons per load of dishes, shake well before use.

https://www.oregonsoapcompany.com/blog/155