1,354 Miles: Home Remedies

Recently I've been getting into skin and beauty products more. I never used to care about what I had branded "girly stuff," but it has become a sudden project for me.

I bought a few fun products that I'd like to try to make on my own. There are TONS of recipes on pinterest for scrubs, lotions, shampoos, everything. I started small: aloe vera for sunburns and cuts, and a sugary lip scrub to keep my lips soft. ^_^

Brandon got us an aloe plant a while back, and he's been taking care of it. It lives on our porch, and it requires very little care, since we live in Texas and this is very close to its natural environment. But we don't want to start cutting leaves from it until it gets a little bigger, so for a quick test run of the procedure, I bought a piece of aloe at the grocery store.

I read a recipe online that says you need vitamins C & E to stabilize the aloe if you're going to be keeping it for an extended period. In the past, I've always just cut a tiny slice of the plant and used it immediately for sunburns, but this is the first time I've made a home-remedy that is meant to stay on the shelf, so I bought some vitamin E gelpacks and I opened up a few of the vitamin C capsules my dad gave us to take with breakfast.

First you have to carve it open, which is quite messy, then you scoop the guts out and measure them so you know how much of the vitamins to add.

Brandon got a billion pictures of this part mainly because it was so silly. It was goopy, messy, weird...

But finally I got it all in the blender and it was time for the vitamins. For the vitamin E, all we could find were little gel packs.

I emptied the vitamin C capsules in first, since they were easier to empty. Then I cut the vitamin E gel packs with a very sharp knife and a steady hand.

Then I squeezed them into the blender. It was a silly way of doing it, but this way I knew the dosage I was adding.

Halfway through I noticed there were some vitamin bits sticking to the side of the blender, so I pushed them down, but other than that, I just blended until it was smooth.

It's not much to look at, or smell for that matter, it just smells like nothing. But I put it in the fridge, and now, when Brandon inevitably gets sun-burned, we'll be ready!

Next I made a delicious lip scrub for my pretty pout ^_^

This is another recipe I found online. it calls for raw sugar, cinnamon-infused olive oil, brown sugar, and just a drop of vanilla extract. I started that olive oil infusing in cinnamon months ago. It's been sitting on our window sill, I think it's more than ready.

Our brown sugar was apparently getting very old...

Something I've noticed with scrubs is that the sugar or salt tends to sink to the bottom and become hard. When you use it, you have to stir it up again every single time. But that's part of the point, you don't want the solids dissolving. I like scrubs; the oils freshen up and moisturize your skin while the salt or sugar scrapes away the dead skin and reveals the fresh, new skin underneath.