Sidenote

I just wanted to mention something that I think is really interesting. Over the fall and winter, I started making an effort to cut out skin care products that have bad chemicals in them. There are more and more studies about the dangers of the various chemicals that we voluntarily expose ourselves to several times per day with every cosmetic product we use. As women, we use much more than men, and these chemicals negatively affect us at different times in our lives. This includes antiperspirant with aluminum (Interesting article at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/stealth-shopper-sneaks-toxic-lables-on-deodorant.php).

To be proactive, as a project for the holidays, I made friends little homemade skin care packages that included lotion bars and homemade lavender bath-salts.

During this whole DIY trip I got into, I was introduced to a recipe for deodorant. Now, I tend to be somewhat skeptical about these things, especially since I feel that I need something quite efficient. I must say, having finished the deodorant towards the end of my trip... it was amazing. I'm making more and I encourage everyone to try it. It is sooooo easy to do!

It is all natural and works better than anything I've ever used.

This is the recipe:
5 Tablespoons shea or cocoa butter or mixed (I just used cocoa butter)
3 Tablespoons baking soda
2 Tablespoons corn starch
* optional: 2 vitamin E oil gel caps (puncture and squeeze out the oil)
* optional: Essential Oil (ex. peppermint, lavender... basically whatever you want to smell like)
                                -I think it smells great without the essential oils... like chocolate!-

Basically, all you have to do is melt the butter and stir in the powders. The website I found this on (http://angrychicken.typepad.com/angry_chicken/2008/07/homemade-deodor.html) suggests pouring it into a little pot, but what I did was reused an old deodorant stick and poured the melted mix into an old Tom's of Maine container and put it in the fridge to harden for an hour.

It lasted me four months of use. And was amazingly effective.

The lotion bars were also really well received, and all of the research I've been doing on traditional medicines has shown me how incredible bee related products are. I used beeswax in these bars and someone I know who has terrible skin said that this bar cleared up his problems.

The recipe for the bars is also really simple, just use equal parts:
Beeswax
Cocoa butter
Sunflower oil (may substitute sweet almond, jojoba, etc.)
* optional: essential oil or fragrance oil
Basically, you melt the butter and the beeswax together in a double boiler, you add the oil, mix it and then you pour the mix into a mold and let it harden. Super simple.

p.s. I got my raw ingredients from here http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/

Here are some interesting sites that could be useful:
http://storyofstuff.org/cosmetics/
http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/