Citronella and Alcohol Free Bug Spray

Sorry for the low quality ugly pic on my ugly counter,  I should take pics on my table, I'm that lazy I guess.. but it gives a visual of the brands of products I used to make my own bug spray.  The skeetos, as my 3 year old calls them, have been bad this summer because of all the rain we have gotten.  I've looked over a couple bug spray recipes that I had pinned and ended up tweaking them and forming my own.  The field testing has been limited to just this weekend.  I sprayed my son who was getting bit and afterwards he said nothing was biting him.  And my husband who usually get attacked while mowing, said he was left alone except for one on his ankle at the very end of the long job of mowing and he said that's because he probably sweat it off.  Very humid.  So yes after a while of being outside if you are sweating it off you will want to reapply.  A lot of recipes call for citronella essential oil but I opted for other bug repelling oils as I read citronella can be cancer causing.  Didn't research it for myself it's just what I was reading as I was going over recipes online.  And there are so many anti bug oils to choose from it really wasn't a big deal.  I chose lemongrass, clove, peppermint, and eucalyptus oil, all around 5$ or so.  A sidenote, I believe clove is also an anti fungal, so if you're like me and struggled with ,what I self diagnosed myself with, candidal sweat rash this summer, you get that added benefit.  So here is the recipe, it makes 4 ounces and I used my old bug spray bottle, but in an ideal world, this would be better in a blue or amber glass spray bottle, because light deteriorates the essentials and essential oils can break down plastic.  So I keep it in the cabinet when we aren't using it.

Recipe:

2 TBS Witchhazel <alcohol free if you prefer.

1 TBS Aloe vera gel, the kind you can drink.

20 drops of Eucalyptus oil

10 drops Clove oil

10 drops Lemongrass oil

10 drops of Peppermint

Water.

I used my pirex cup so I could see the ounces,  I put in all the ingredients except the water, then filled the cup with water up to the 4 oz mark.  Shake before applying. ( I ordered all this from iherb)

Of course you can google all the different kinds of essential oils that repel bugs, these are what I landed on personally.

Tip: works for the 3 year old.  Bentonite clay for itchy bug bites.  (I keep a jar with clay mixed with enough water to make a mask-like consistency) 

I'm still here.

School is just around the corner and I plan to get back to blogging, not just for the sake of blogging but because my skin has been doing so good over all and I want to share about that. AND I made my own deodorant that WORKS!!  I've made my own toothepaste, astringent and foot fungus treatment.  All of which I am very happy with.  The toothepaste I may tweak to be a powder but really, I'm happy with it... and I'll be back. ;)

A Word About Phytic Acid

Click on the picture to read the whole article about why grains are a natural part of our diet but you should avoid wheat and gluten.  Two things I have yet to do.... and I do not believe evolution is correct at all.  With that said, this about phytic acid was interesting:

"Some arguments against grains lament the presence of phytic acid, something that is said to block the body’s ability to use zinc and calcium. Not only does some research show that phytic acid serves a purpose in the human body (it works as an antioxidant, helping to protect against heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other diseases according to EarthSave), but once the grains are leavened, the phytic acid’s negative effects no longer apply.
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, whole grain consumption “substantially lowers total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad) cholesterol, triglycerides, and insulin levels.” That means a decreased risk of heart disease. The fiber triggers anticoagulant production which then prevents blood clots, and the antioxidants interfere with an interaction between LDL cholesterol and oxygen, an introduction that could contribute to the clogging of the arteries. In addition, Harvard points out that the fiber decreases the likelihood of experiencing constipation and helps sweep toxic residue out of the body"

No Poo I Think I Hate You

 Argh, I have to say it, one, blogger screwed me out of what I just typed grrrrr. And I also have to say, no pooing, it poo crapped on my hair. I hate it. Ever since I colored my hair I can't get it to breakdown the build up. I had to rewash my hair before I could go somewhere yesterday cause I had no pooed just the night before and it looked so GROSS. Powdery junk and greasy awful. Why WHy WHY does the chemcially laden conditioner they give you with your box of haircolor have to make your hair so darned silky soft??? :( If I were rich I'd buy some all natural awesome stuff. So my next try will be using my kids Everday Shea Shampoo.  And see how it performs.  to be continued....

How I Beat My Child's Ear Infection Naturally

I meant to get to this post done a couple weeks ago while the whole deal was fresh in my mind but here goes anyway.  My son who is now 7 would get an ear infection about once a year, (none in his first year of life though)  Usually when he would get infections it would be him running 102.9 temp and one cough would make him lose everything in his stomach.  Once he puked 7 times in a morning and also at the dr's.  The ear infection before this last one I'm sure burst his ear drum because it drained for days once we got him on antibiotics and he was up crying in the night from the severe pain even while on ibuprofen (more often than he should have been).  And he has a high pain tolerance, as in, not even two and wouldn't cry for his flu shots.   Yes yes flu shots, this may have been our last year from what I've been reading lately.  Back to the point, a friend told me a while ago about Wally's Ear Oil, it's all natural with anti bacterial essential oils, you could use it even if your ears are just itching.  On his ear drum bursting infection, I got the oil in the mail too late in the game.  Let me back track a moment, LAST winter my son didn't have any ear infections, he seemed to grow out of them!! But then last spring he had another, and another this fall, and ANOTHER a few weeks ago.  Why?  Snot sniffing, constant packing of snot from a cold back in his ears of his own doing.  We have had LOTS of talks with him about this. 

Anyway, another cold, most of us got, but he ends up with an earache. I believe it was Tuesday late afternoon.  So we do some drops... no fever... yet.  The next day, low grade fever maybe 99.5 and ear pain, we keep up on the drops every 3 hours or so.  I also heat up a rice pack for him and make him rest on the couch, one thing I did differently this time around was refuse to let him play the wii, so he wasn't tempted to sniff, and use up energy, and also didn't give him tylenol unless he couldn't find relief with the drops and the heatpack and PBS. :)  I wanted to let the fever burn the infection as much as we could and let the fever make him feel tired enough to lay low. His fever got higher as the day went ( I did give him tylenol once inthe afternoon to sleep, and then he woke me in the night hurting so I gave him some then)  I really thought we were headed for the dr. I kept thinking I need to call the dr, antibiotics are the only way to kick this, but I thought, just wait another day.  Tuesday night and Wednesday night were rougher nights, the tylenol and ricepacks seemed to help him not be completely miserable and sleep  and we kept on the ear drops but I would do every four hours or more if he was sleeping and I did BOTH EARS because I think the infection can shift as it did in his ear draining infection.  We got up with him at 1a.m. on Thursday morning, he was hurting and I took his temp, 101.6.  I thought that's it, calling the dr in the morning.  Well, he gets up Thursday morning and says his ear feels a lot better!  I say, reallly?? let me touch your ear, usually he won't let me NEAR it.  He let me pull on it gentley.  I took his temp, 97.9.  Thank you Lord.  And he continued to improve the fever did not return, not even a little. I did do the drops a couple times a day for day or two, then just did them at night for a couple more days.  I have never had this happen so I was so encouraged to not have to spend the money, and put the antibiotics in his body!

Recap what I learned from this:

1. Wally's Ear drops, use them at the first ache in the ear, or if your child is prone to ear infections use them during the initial cold to prevent infection.  I used 2-3 drops every 3 hours, but don't wake the kid to the do it, I did not make him stay long with it sitting in there, about a minute then let it drain out.  Do BOTH ears.

2.Elevate the head with pillows so the ears can drain.

3.  Use a humidifier to thin mucus.

4. Hydrate with water, and eat healthy, he ate lots of fruit and we avoided crap foods and unnatural sugars.  Eat organic yogurt or something probioticy. ;)

5.  Rice packs ( so easy to make yourself, sew a rectangle, dump a bag of long grain rice in, sew it up, heat in the microwave for a few minutes) use as often as needed.

6. Rest and Sleep, make your child take a break from all tv and see if he falls asleep in his bed.  Sleep is critical to healing.

7.Tyelnol only when pain is too much or it's keeping patient from sleep.  Otherwise, let that fever burn.

8.  Know when to fold, if the pain becomes severe, fever gets high, ear is draining or puking is involved time to call the dr.

9. Do not put anything in a draining ear

10.  Go with your Mommy gut, don't have a hippie spaz freakout if your kid needs antibiotics, we do our best and that's all we can do right?  Right.

No Poo, for You.

I do a lot of dumb things.  I research stuff, I do things my own way and sometimes it backfires... I have rubbed oil on my scalp and expected water and vinegar to wash it out.  Wow that looked great.  I've put straight powdered baking soda on my scalp, ineffective.  Back to my title, No Poo, it's all over the green living hippiville blogs online.


What is no pooage?  It's washing your hair with the following:

1 tbsp of baking soda dissolved in 8 oz of water.

Rinse with 1 tbs of vinegar mixed in 8 oz of water.

Let me tell you about my hair, more TMI but hey that's me.  Scalp= scummy, build up no matter WHAT or how much I wash my hair, oh I can do clarifying shampoos but then my hair ends up oilier.  Ends, dry, fly away, some of my hair is fine, my childhood hair, that never mutated with most of hair through puberty to coarse thick and curly, looser curls I guess you could say.  And I have plenty of grays so I color, which I hate that I do but I do and I have to because I hate grays.  Lately I have been trying to train my hair to go longer between pooing.  I could go 5 days.  Before shampooing I started rubbing castor oil on my scalp and then vinegar and letting sit for a few minutes, it did seem to licquify my scummy nasty build up and help some.  But like I say no matter what I would get some measure of white waxy gunk if I scraped my nails even right after shampooing and I was really scrubbing.  So, two times last week I no pooed  so I haven't used shampoo for over a week.  I am still working out the kinks but as far as step 1 goes, I'm a believer.

10 oz of water, 1 tablespoon of baking soda, a couple drops of tea tree oil and my nalgene bottle.  It will all dissolve into clear water. ( we do not have a working water soften btw) Shook up and carefully poured on my already wet head in the shower. I made sure to get every segment of my scalp soaked.  I then proceeded to scrub a few minutes, yes minutes, and some crazy cool happened just like one blogger said, I could see a very fine lather on my fingers, it's got something to do with how soap is made, one of the components of how soap is made with animal fats and how your own sebum acts a component in your no pooing and a tiny lather forms, so my relaying is as lay person and probably erroneous as it gets but all I know is, my hair oil mixed with the b.s. ;) made some lather. 

Scalp results?? I could FEEL water hitting my head, I guess I forgot what that felt like, gross and weird, I could feel the temp of the water.  My scalp shined, I could no longer scrape scum.  It was amazing!!!

No mind you that was only the first half, the second half is a work in progress.  I then sprayed my hair with my bottle of half water half vinegar.  The result was straw like awful frizzy poopy crappy hair.  my roots were swell and that was it.  Two days later, I did step one, step two and after vinegar put truckloads of Nature's Gate Hemp Conditioner in my hair. < not exactly green but a lesser evil.  I was very happy with my hair then.  One thing though that is just status quo with my hair is, it gets flyaway frizzy as the day goes and that still happened even with my "product" in it < which is also a lesser evil for sure, I'll post that sometime I can't remember the name.  So, 3 days later THIS is what I did, after the vinegar, I put a little of my OCM mix in the ends and rinsed it, then put much less conditioner in.  THEN when I got out, on the bottm half of my hair hairs ends I used my beloved grapeseed oil.  It was a gamble, church was the next morning.  I woke up with softer hair and it looked like I had product in it to make it look a little wet and it was really curly.  I curled my hair as usual and used no product at ALL. This pic is my hair 12 hours after I did it  I've slept on it and fried catfish, usually it's much more frizzy and way ward at this point in the day.

  And now check out the root of the hair... no shampoo for over a week, just no pooing.

Bottomline, I am on the right track I do believe, the next thing I am going to try is to actually just do the one cup of water to tbs of vinegar, and then do some leave in grapeseed oil and see how that goes.

(why the angle makes my head look like the Queen of Hearts from the new Alice and Wonderland I do not know and good gravy my eyeballs look HUGE here...)And while you're here, a pic of also my face so you can see how it's doing with the OCM, sure it's at the end of a long day, complete with like I said, some catfish frying and my makeup has been on 12 hours.  no touching up, no more powder, no dabbing of oil. perhaps a small amount of shine but 12 hours of make up, with my face that would have normally had little oil rigs bobbing up and down on it.  Another thing I'm trying... seeing if I can make it without my serum and just use some grapeseed oil mixed with my tea tree oil and see the same results.

Stupid Sebum Plugs

 

Whilest my skin has been doing pretty well lately, I was having this annoying problem which I had before I started OCM of sebum plugs on my chin and on the sides of my nose, SO annoying, nothing was getting them out!!  I even thought I would try my microdermabrasion scrub and that didn't even seem to help and it broke my face out.<idiot.  Dang, I can't believe how many products I am finding are obsolite in my quest for more natural skin care.  So I did a lot of running about on the web and had read before about baking soda for microdermabrasion.  sure... I thought, but I had nothing to lose so I just made a paste of it with some water and after I oil cleansed spent a couple minutes rubbing it on my face and paying special attention to my stupid pluggy areas.  Once I felt some tingling I decided it was time to stop, I rinsed my face with water, and checked my pores.  Smooth!! no pluggies!!  And my skin felt nice and resurfaced.  It was wonderful and surprising!! My best friend tried it too and it worked for her as well.  Now keep in mind the plugs do return and you have use your scrub every few days or so, but it's so nice to find something that worked, better than my 20+dollar microderm scrub.  So nice to put on makeup and not have it show off stupid plugs even more!! Thanks baking soda!