Beauty Review: The Holy Mud Company – Facial Masks

The Holy Mud Company several different facial masks that work wonders for a variety of skin types. I currently got the opportunity to try three of their facial masks.

The first one being The Dead Sea Mud Mask, this one was by far my favorite of the three I tested. The Dead Sea Mud Mask is black in color with a bit of a silver sparkle to it. I loved that I could actually see the minerals in the mask. This mud has a gritty texture and a pleasant smell. Once I washed this mask off it gave my skin a nice healthy glow.

The second mask was the Dmae Mask, it is a pink clay mask, designed to help firm your skin. I only tried this mask once so I didn’t really get to notice a substantial change to my skins firmness. This mask did have a nice texture and an ok smell to it. When I washed this mask off it did leave my face a pretty rosy glow.

The third mask I tried I didn’t like at all and it took all my will power to even test it. This one was The Pumpkin Glycolic Mask. I found I had many issues with this mask ranging from the smell to the texture. This mask had a weird fresh pumpkin smell, with a slimy texture, that only gets worse when you’re washing it off. With that said my face looked amazing after I used it but it just isn’t my cup of tea.

All in all The Holy Mud Company makes an amazing product and is worth the price!

Craft- Home Made Soap

Good Clean FunMake your own natural bar soaps for the perfect holiday gift. By Sara Snow

After years of taking a backseat to liquid pump options, bar soaps are finally making a comeback. Browse any specialty or gift shop and you’ll find a multitude of cleansing bars that are both beautiful and eco-friendly. Pump soaps require a lot more packaging—plastic bottle, plastic tube, plastic pump—than their old-fashioned friends, which usually come wrapped in a single layer of plastic or paper.

With the holidays approaching, now is the perfect time to jump on the bar-soap bandwagon and create your own fragrant works of art. Not only are bars of soap a good green choice for the home, but they also make special gifts when wrapped in brown or decorative paper and tied with a bow. Plus, by making your own soaps you can control the ingredients and keep the product natural for your friends and family.

For the soap recipes below, start with a basic soap and add ingredients from there. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can start from scratch and make your soap the traditional way, with fats, water and lye. Or you can do it easier (and perhaps safer) with our melt-mix-pour method. This will allow you and your kids to personalize the soaps you make by simply mixing your favorite essential oils, exfoliators, moisturizers, herbs and flowers into a basic store-bought soap.

Stellar Suds To create natural, gift-worthy soaps, choose one of our three recipes (below) and follow these instructions.

1. Start with a fragrance-free soap: glycerin, white or olive oil. (We used glycerin soaps in our recipes.)2. Have your child help you cut 8 oz. of the soap into small pieces, using a plastic knife or other safe utensil. Melt the pieces down in either a double boiler over low heat or in a microwave (take care to keep little hands away from the heat). Stir frequently. If using a microwave, heat on medium power in short time segments to avoid a mess.3. Once the soap has melted, allow it to cool slightly while stirring frequently. Help your child mix in ingredients and pour into the mold of your choice. Cupcake or loaf pans work well—a small loaf pan allows you to cut your soap into rectangular pieces, while a tube or a pipe (such as a piece of PVC pipe) creates beautiful rounds. A cupcake mold (mini or large) produces perfectly sized individual patties.4. Allow your soap to sit overnight. Once it has set, remove from the mold and slice (if necessary). For gifts, your child can wrap one or more soaps in recycled paper and tie with a ribbon. As an added touch, include a note explaining the benefits of each herbal ingredient.

Recipes

Lavender Soother8 oz. melted soap1/2 tsp. lavender essential oil 1 Tbsp. dried lavender flowers
Lavender helps calm achy muscles, soothe colic and guarantee a good night’s rest. We mixed lavender essential oil with dried flowers for an effective and beautiful bar of soap.

Nori Cleansing Soap8 oz. melted soap 1/2 tsp. tea tree oil 1 sheet nori, cut into slivers
Nori is an extremely nourishing sea vegetable that can help with cell regeneration. Tea tree oil is naturally antifungal, antibacterial and antimicrobial. The combination of these ingredients makes this soap perfect for acne-prone skin.

Softening Oat Scrub8 oz. melted soap 2 Tbsp. quick oats (the pieces will be smaller than regular oats) 1/4 tsp. cedarwood oil 1 Tbsp. honey

The oats act as gentle exfoliators, while the honey soothes and softens skin. Once finished, this soap will be honey-brown in color. Since the honey and cedarwood oil are both gentle antiseptics, they’re great for oily skin. Also, try swapping cedarwood for birch sweet oil, another mild-scented essential oil.

Sara Snow is the host of Get Fresh with Sara Snow and Living Fresh, both on the Discovery networks. Sara also writes for CNN.com and Treehugger.com.

Online Store Review: Kidbean.com

I don’t know about you but I’m not always sure about online shopping. I have the same worries that most of you have am I really going to get the top of the line organic item I am buying. Although it takes a lot of that worry out to just to drive to the store, it’s just easier sometimes to buy online.

One online store that offers you fantastic products is Kidbean.com. At Kidbean you are able to buy safe organic items without worrying about the quality. I was lucky enough to try a Sachi Organics, organic buckwheat pillow.

The pillow is like a little piece of heaven! I always have to be so careful because of my allergies with pillows but I had a great night sleep with this pillow. One might this that since it makes a slight crinkling noise when you move the pillow around that it would bother you during the night, let me ashore you it doesn’t. This pillow is completely organic, the pillow casing is cotton with a pleasant buckwheat filling.

This pillow is worth every cent. Most people buy cotton pillows that lose their shape after a while but since this pillow is filled with buckwheat it will last a lot longer than your standard cotton filled pillow. So even though you are spending more on buckwheat you’ll be saving in the long run.

Even if buckwheat pillows aren’t your thing you should defiantly check out Kidbean for other high end organic products.

Did you know?

That one of the number one needed items in homeless shelters are socks? That right a clean dry pair of socks something most of us take for granted is something that the homeless shelters need the most. The reason is most people think to donate coats and canned goods but most never think of something as simple as socks.

There are several things you can do to help! If you have homeless shelters where you live, take them some socks. If you don't have shelters near you, you can contact a church to see if they do work with any shelters or you can contact organizations such as the United Way.

There is a third option I found online today! Hanes is working with the United Way to help. If your on Facebook you can go to this link Send Socks and send some of your friends virtual socks and for every pair you send Hanes will donate a real pair to someone in need!

I know it's the Holidays and everyone is so busy, but also remember this is a time for giving! Lets not forget the true meaning of the holidays when we get sucked into buy mode by the retailers!

Puppy Mills Need To Stop!

Puppy mills are a disgusting problem that we need to encourage the government to give the people that run them harsher punishments.

There is a big difference between dog breeders and puppy mills! Dog breeders love their animals and take very good care of them. They don’t over breed their dogs or mistreat them in anyway. Dog breeders also care about were their puppies go. Puppy mills on the other hand only care about one thing the all mighty dollar!

Their breeder animals live in poor conditions such as small cages and only get the basic needs they need to keep these cash cows alive. These poor animals spend their entire lives either pregnant or nursing. They don’t get the proper time needed in between pregnancies to heal properly!

The puppy mills just keep them going until they breed them to death! Just so they can make a fortune on over priced pure breed dogs. Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with pure breed dogs, I have one at home. Bruiser is a silky terrier that I bought from a private breeder that loved her dogs very much.

If you want to pay top dollar for a pure breed by all means do so but do your research and make sure that you are not buying your dog from a puppy mill!

Toy Review: Green Toys Inc. – Indoor Gardening Kit

Being someone that loves to garden I thought this was an amazing product. It’s also good for kids as well as adults. This gardening kit comes with 3 flower pots, a trowel, soil, 3 packets of organic seeds (sunflower, basil, zinnia), and a pea pod shaped planter tray.

Once I opened the package I found simple instructions on how to set up my indoor garden. I really enjoyed putting it together. Even though I don’t live in an area where I suffer with the harsh weather that other people do I love being able to bring spring indoors anytime.

This indoor gardening kit is very eco friendly as well, not only is it always good for the environment to plant flowers but this product is made for 100% recycled plastic. These green toys are actually made from recycled milk jugs, but make no mistake this is a high quality product. All of the plastic pieces are a nice thick heavy plastic, with a nice texture.

This indoor gardening kit makes a very attractive addition to your kitchen or it’s great for a child just starting to get into gardening or the perfect gift for someone that just loves flowers.
This is a product you can feel good about buying. It’s completely eco friendly down to its recycled cardboard box. It’s safe and non toxic. Green Toys Inc. takes the worry out of toy shopping.

Craft: Cd Case Picture Frames

The clever Jennifer of the tongue-in-cheek blog Ramblings of a Crazy Woman asks, "What mother would not want pictures of her children for Mother's Day?" Good point Jennifer! She has shared with us this wonderful tutorial for how to turn regular jewel cases (CD cases) into a hanging picture frame. This is a great way to recycle spare CD cases and is an inexpensive craft gift for Mother's Day, Father's Day or any other occasion.

Materials:
1 or 2 slim jewel cases (CD cases)
ribbon
craft glue
scissors
packaging tape
pictures of child 4x6
anything to decorate your frames such as flowers or buttons

Steps:
Cut ribbon into 4 pieces that are 5 inches long.
Dab a little glue in each corner on the inside of the cover of the case.
Slide ribbon under the inside tabs (and on top of the glue) of the case making a border.
Place picture on top of ribbon and secure with tape. You could stop there and make it a standing frame.
For the double picture frame hanger, repeat steps 1-4 on a second jewel case.
Cut 2 pieces of ribbon equal lengths to use to connect the two frames.
Secure both ribbons to the back of the jewel cases with tape. Make sure there is equal space between both cases so your picture frames hang straight.
Cut another piece of ribbon for the hanger. Loop from one side of the top frame to the other. Secure with tape.
Now decorate the front of the frames.

Note: It would be cute if one of the pictures the child was holding a sign that said," Happy Mother's Day ! I Love You !"

Now I think this is such a cute idea!! I don't think it is just a great mothers day gift but anytime you need a gift!!