Martha Stewart Sunday: Body Scrub

  
  I love a good sugar scrub, they make even the most roughest of knees feel silky smooth but I don't love is how expensive they are; my last purchase of one was over 30 dollars. So I was delighted to find that Martha had put up directions on how to make your own. They are great to use for yourself or give away as cute personalized gifts, since you can change the essential oils to match the person. Also, there are tons of variations on the mixture allowing for complete customization. I changed Martha's recipe a bit, since I love the smell of brown sugar.

Basic Body Scrub:

2 cups of Organic Cane Sugar, Epsom Salt and/or Brown Sugar (I used a three part equal mixture)

1 cup oil (Use Sesame oil (Neutrogena makes a great one) and/or Olive oil)

Essential Oils (You can find these at organic sections of groceries or in craft stores, like Michael's, where the soap making ingredients are)

Food Coloring (if you want to dye it, but that really only works if you use only Epsom salt)



My Pom Scrub-

3 part equal mixture of salt and sugars

2/3 cup sesame oil, 1/3 olive oil

3 pipettes full of vanilla pomegranate essential oil



Container-
You can use canning jars, or Tupperware to plain glass jars. I used a leftover plastic container that used to hold my favorite sorbet, Talenti's Roman Raspberry. The sorbet is delicious and the plastic jar it comes in is great to re-purpose for other uses!

Directions:

1. Pour ingredients in container and mix! The consistency should be a bit over oily, you want the scrub to stay together in your hands, not crumble into little pieces.
   
2. Decorate the container- you can print out labels or modpodge paper around the container, just make sure it is waterproof!
   

Here are some other great scrub recipes:

Coffee Scrub
Four Great Sugar Scrub Recipes
Traditional Sugar Scrub with Vitamin E

And here is a link to Martha's readymade clip art template labels.
Scrub Label 1 and Scrub Label 2



Do you have any great homemade beauty recipes?




 

How To Save On: Dishes

     I love to have people over for a meal, it's the perfect opportunity to sit down and actually have a nice conversation with someone uninterrupted by wait staff or bills. Once when I was having a bunch of people over for a Sunday brunch, I realized I didn't have enough matching dishes for everyone. I thought about using mismatched ones but sadly my attempts look mismatched à la anthropologie displays just come off as à la goodwill. So in a desperate search to find affordable pretty everyday dishes, I ventured in to my nearest Dollar Store and Wal-Mart and found some great solutions.

The larger dishes I got a the dollar store for 1 DOLLAR each, so I could easily afford to spend 10 and get 10 pretty dishes

   I purchased the champagne glasses and smaller plates at Wal-Mart, the champagne glasses came in packs of four for about $4.50. The smaller plates were about .97 cent each. The wine glasses were from Target and came in a big pack for $15.99  for 18 glasses.

     So for fewer than $4.50 per setting, I was able to get pretty glassware that can be reused for every time. I made sure to buy simple wares that could be used for every occasion and not to buy a bunch of Christmas dishes that could only be used for about one month per year. These dishes are pretty enough to add some flair to the table but not clash with any theme or occasion!

How To Save On: Lighting

    I needed some more light in my living room, I only had the one light in the ceiling fan and a small lamp from Ikea and it just wasn’t enough. I also have a big blank white wall behind my couch and I hated it. I tried looking for something artsy to put behind it but because it was such a large space, they were all really expensive ideas.

     Then one day, I was wondering aimlessly through Target and probably buying things I did not really need, I found the solution. There were these beautiful vine planters, that looked like wrought ironwork but were about 1/5 of the price, at least and much lighter. For only about 60 dollars, I grabbed three. Then patrolling along the Christmas clearance section, I found these beautiful iridescent Christmas lights on sale for about a dollar per strand. I quickly grabbed a bunch, (I still have leftover strands) and knew I had found my solution.

     I twirled the lights around the vine growers so that the outlets were mostly hidden and then spray painted some small gold wall hooks black. I used four hooks per panel to secure them to the wall.

     As you can see, it gives my couch the light it needed without it being super bright or too confined of an area. I love plugging them in during a party and turning off the overhead lights, it gives this wonderful soft glow to the place and did not cost me an arm or a leg. Not only did I get the lighting I needed, I also was able to cover up the ugly blank wall.

How to save on: Dry Cleaning

For some reason my favorite garments to wear seem to be those ones that are labeled DRY CLEANING ONLY. And though I love to wear them, I hate to have them dry cleaned as it gets quite expensive thus enters one of my favorite finds: DRYEL. This innovative system makes it possible to lightly dry clean at home. Now I am not saying it will have the same results as sending your suit to the cleaners to get starched and cleaned but it works quite well on those every day wear items. Honestly it is worth it alone for just the stain removing pen, which is one of the bests I have ever used.

And the website has $2 off coupons! Can't beat a coupon and not having to pay for dry cleaning!

http://dryel.com/get-free-coupons/?gclid=CML38MDKy6YCFUpJ2goddH8YIw

Where to buy:

-Drugstores

-Grocery Stores

-Target

-Wal-Mart