Face Wash Bliss

After reading about using honey as a face wash I started experimenting with it at the gym at work, to help use up my honey while I’m still employed. I’ve also been using honey with brown sugar as a nice scrub/mask. I commented the other day that between my tea rinse and the honey that I never thought a gym shower could be so yummy smelling.

I wasn’t sure it was going to work, so I didn’t fully switch and kept using my old face wash from the health food store and old scrub from LUSH. I can hardly believe it, but I’m totally hooked on the honey. The LUSH scrub was called Ocean Salt while it did a great job at exfoliating not only my face but also the rest of my skin, it tasted awful when it got in my mouth and stung when it got in my eyes. And let’s face it, this happens quite often. So when I finished my face scrub tub, last week I could barely contain myself the next day at work from telling everyone how amazing honey and brown sugar scrubs are (hey I’m already that lesbian hippy child who refuses to where make-up—to my mother’s dismay, freely talks about reusable menstrual solutions—so long as I’m only in female company—in the office, so it really isn’t that far of a stretch for me to go off about a honey face wash, but I restrained myself).

So Sunday night when I finally jumped in the shower after a long weekend of babysitting my youngest nephew (aka Fatty) I was almost shocked to squeeze out my health food store face wash and it practically run out of my hand. I don’t know how I’m gonna use up all that store bought face wash so I can use the honey full time. Here's a picture of Fatty down in Occoquan on Saturday after we went to the Farmer's Market (he just noticed we where next to a dock and there were ducks!).

LUSH and no 'poo

I was introduced to LUSH and their amazing products on vacation almost three years ago. Wow, I can hardly believe it! Anywho, I've been using their shampoo bars ever since. Their small size, lack of packaging, and many amazing smells convinced me to ditch the shampoo bottle. However I wasn't able to stop my bottled conditioner addition. So, despite my love for LUSH, I've decided to give the no 'poo movement a try. Last night was my first attempt at the baking soda wash, and just to ease into it I used the last bit of my bottled conditioner. I can't say I've thrown out my conditioner bottle because I've repurposed the bottle to hold the baking soda and lavender oil mixture. Instead of the traditional apple cider vinegar rinse I've decided on a tea rinse (mostly be cause I've got a ton of tea that's not so tasty sitting around that as a tea lover I just can't throw out, plus if I'm gonna leave the country to work overseas for a year I've got to use or ditch everything in my apartment, why ditch it if I could be using it for something now ). We’ll see how this one goes. I'm going to water only "wash" my hair after my workout in the gym (6.5 miles on the bike today!) and use the baking soda concoction every other day to start out with.

My baking soda wash mix:

• 1/2 cup baking soda
  
• 1 1/2 cups water
  
• 5 drops lavender oil
  

Place ingredients in bottle and shake vigorously before each use.
Follow with a tea rinse (boil a cup of tea, let it cool so you don't scold your head, hop in the shower).

LunaPads

Inspired by how good I started feeling after starting AK I decided to see what other ways I could make me feel better by removing unnecessary chemical from my body and from contact with my body. This included evaluating (with my doctor's help) what medications I was on and what medications where really helping. From there I went to menstruation, hey as a woman it was bound to come up so why no start there. After a reading a friend's LiveJounral entry about the DivaCup I ordered my own. In my DivaCup search I was introduced to a great Canadian company called LunaPads (which just happens to be woman-owned and operated). After doing more research on LunaPads and their company, I completely fell in love with the company and had to place an order for LunaPads before my DivaCup even arrived. Now while I'm still not convinced about the DivaCup, it may just not be for me, I loooooooooooove LunaPads.

But reusable pads are not the only thing LunaPads sell. They package their kits in the bonus mesh bag, MoonPad bags to hold LunaPads in your purse, LunaBalm and LunaBlend for cramp relief, and Lunatic chocolate bars. They also sell other eco-friendly items like the organic cotton hankies and pStyles. The hankies are great; until I got sick last week I never realized just how gross klenex left my skin feeling (the hankies got left at work and I was left with an old box). I've yet to master the pStyle, but I did give it a try when I went camping over Midsummer.

The LunaGals (what the lovely ladies at LunaPads call themselves) had a post about their new product what they where calling family wipes. At first I was like no way, there is just no way are you gonna convince me to give up my toilet paper. But non-the-less I was intrigued and followed their link to Crunchy Chicken's blog and read on, and on and on. Not too long after, I was looking under the sink in the bathroom and found I had three rolls of toilet paper left and decided to make my own wipes since the previously mentioned lack of job security after July (still waiting on offers to start coming in).

Other goals

The other goals of this here blog will be as an outlet for my self-greenification, which for me also encompasses my healthy lifestyle goals. I wouldn't say that western medicine has failed me; it's more like western medicine has reached its limit with me. So in addition to western medicine I've added Applied Kinesiology(AK). I freely admit that when I first heard about it I thought it was just a bunch of hogwash. But what a validation it was to have someone else go, "Your body's telling you something’s wrong and we're gonna listen." So while I've been dealing with acne that never responded to traditional acne treatment, it turns out that I've got a systemic staph infection and what I thought (and was told) was acne was just the staph infection bubbling to the surface. While my face is not 100% yet, the change is pretty convincing and that's just the tip of the iceberg with AK.