Beauty, Health and Living

I love drinking cold peppermint tea in the summer. Especially after being in the hot sun. I also love using peppermint handmade soap made with peppermint essential oil.  It’s a very cooling and refreshing scent!

These poppy peppermint guest soaps are ready to use. Actually I made it with the hot process method so it’s perfectly fine to us within a couple of days. But it didn’t turn out so nice early on - the bar was too soft.

But after a few more weeks they have harden up and make great guest or travel soap. Perfect as face soap too. The poppy seeds is good for exfoliation.

After I removed it from the heart shaped mold, it was still rough around the edges. Definitely not as smooth looking as cold process soap. Yet it’s still good soap made with all good stuff.

Ingredients: Oils of coconut, palm, soybean, rice bran, grape seed, and wheat germ. Distilled water, sodium hydroxide, French green clay, Peppermint essential oils, poppy seeds.

For my summer soap shop special, I’ll be adding 2 FREE poppy peppermint guest soap with each order. Something nice to stay extra COOL this summer!

Note: I got bite by the soapmaking bug this month… and have more new soaps on the curing rack. So stay tuned!


I’ve been searching for natural deodorant that works well and have never found one that did what it claimed.

I’ve even tried one from Trader Joe’s made with cotton. They all seem to work for the first couple of hours but then left me stranded the rest of the day. So I started experimenting with making my own natural deodorant.

naturalstick

I whipped this one up. The container was taken from a store bought deodorant that failed to work. The reason I don’t like commercial deodorant is because they contain aluminum.

To make your own natural home made deodorant, gather these ingredients: baking soda, cornstarch, extra virgin coconut oil, tea tree essential oil, peppermint essential oil, and grapefruit seed extract.

There are no real measurements here. I just started mixing things together. But next time around I’ll use measuring tools for those that would like a recipe. In the meantime, you can still whip one up for yourself.

Just add equal amounts of baking soda and cornstarch into a mixing bowl. Then add a little bit of coconut oil into the mixture until it starts to bind together.

Finish up by adding a few drops of tea tree oil and peppermint essential oil. The tea tree is anti-bacterial. And the peppermint oil is uplifting and perky.

Tea tree alone smells very strong and many people don’t like it. But the combination of tea tree and peppermint gives a lovely scent. Other scent I would recommend is lime or citrus.


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Here is my latest handmade soap: Peppermint Poppy. Because I wanted to use it within a couple of days, I went with hot process soap making. With traditional cold process, the cure time would have been at least three weeks or longer.

hempmilk

When I was pouring hemp milk into my cereal, I immediately thought about making hemp milk soap. Hemp oil seem to be more common for soap making then with hemp milk. To make sure I didn’t mess up, I also added equal amounts of goat milk.

The hemp milk I got was from a natural health food store. Hemp milk taste a little like soy milk, but creamier and nuttier. It is naturally rich in omega 3, 6 and 9. It also contains minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, high in vitamins A and E.

Besides the hemp milk, I also added other stuff to this batch. There is fine Brazilian sea salt, peppermint essential oil, and poppy seeds. It’s going to be one difficult to name soap. So I just decided on “Peppermint Poppy Soap”.


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