Flaxseed natural hair gel with lavender, rosemary and grapefruit extract

Hello! I have so many things to write about, but I’m going to start with this little note on a hair gel I just prepared.

Flaxseed and lavender soaking

My husband has been asking me to make natural hair gel for quite a while. Just today I remembered and started working. The hair gel is basically made from flaxseed and you can do it just with that, but I added some nice goodies to it to give the hair a little extra boost 🙂

For it I used:

1/2 cup of flaxseeds
1/4 cup of dried lavender flowers
2 cups of water
1 teaspoon of honey
Skin of a grapefruit
Wild rosemary (as much as you like)

Cooking

The flaxseed need to be soaked for at least 6 hours before the preparation. The original recipe I worked from said this was optional, but I feel it isn’t. I soaked the flaxseed along with some dried lavender flowers for six hours, stirring every couple of minutes at the beginning. You can just leave it alone after you see that the flowers and flax seeds are well mixed.

Ready! It wouldn’t leave the spoon

In a pot I boiled together the skin of a grapefruit and some wild rosemary my husband and I gathered around the Hollywood trail (I owe you a post and pictures on that one) in two cups of water until I was left with around half a cup. Removed the grapefruit and rosemary and added the soaked flaxseed+lavender.

Cooked over high heat, stirring occasionally. Some people add epsom salts here. I didn’t 🙂 But I did add about a teaspoon of honey. When it started to boil I stirred very constantly and reduced the heat to medium until it looked like thin jelly with some foam. Kept on cooking. How do you know when it’s ready? You’ll start to see gel texture in the borders of the pan. Cook for a little while longer and there you go. Ready! It should have the consistency of egg whites.

PRESS!!!

Now the hard part.

I put the jellyish mixture in panty house (I just bought those $1 ones that are knee high and come in a tiny cap – you can also use a cheesecloth) and then I pressed my life away to get the gel out of the flax seeds. Not an easy task! It also looked eww, but smells nice and it’s full of good things for the hair! In contrast with commercial hair gels that are full of chemical stuff. Not nice.

You can add essential oils if you like (lavender or rosemary are nice) and even some oil or butters (I actually added a little bit of macadamia oil for moisture). You can also add a preservative after it cools a little bit.

Store it in the refrigerator for longer shelf life.

TA-DA!

How to use?

I haven’t used it yet, but other recipes say you use use more than you would with a commercial product. Saturate your hair and let it air dry. This makes it great for curly or wavy hairs , soft with no crunchiness or stickiness and nice, defined curls. If you have a bit of crunchiness you can always scrunch it out with your hands 🙂

I think I’m even trying this for myself! But I need a new haircut first!

This recipe (besides the water and flaxseeds) was made up by me, so go crazy and make your own mixtures and experiments! Let me know if you find anything interesting and enjoy 🙂

Lavender + coconut oil bath

I’m back! YES, I am! Between the crazy days of the holiday that does not end yet and a mild away-from-nature depression, I couldn’t find time or inspiration to sit down and write. And I have a lot to write about! I did a lot of reading though, and I’m very happy for that.

I decided to start with the latest, the amazing lavender and coconut oil bath I just took. I’m still recovering from the deliciousness (I wish I didn’t).

The ingredients

I just felt like having a warm (as hot as possible) bath, and coconut oil has been dancing in my mind for a while, so a coconut oil bath seemed to be just what I needed. But it couldn’t be so simple, just coconut oil and that’s it. I remembered  that handful of dry lavender flowers that were left from the lavender soap batch and I decided to use them too. And then…! I thought of that yummy organic apple cider vinegar sitting in my kitchen and… why not?

So it went a little like this: 1/2 cup of cider vinegar, 1/4 cup of coconut oil (don’t get too excited, I might have used too much and turned out a bit oily -my intention was not to shower after- but I didn’t mind the extra moisture, coconut oil absorbs easily), and around a cup of lavender flowers or maybe less. And that, my friends, is the recipe for heaven.

Bruno, my kitty, was so nervous because he had no idea of what was happening. He was looking at me like asking “What on Earth are you doing, mommy?”

You can’t smell the vinegar at all, but it brings a whole lot of deep moisturizing effect to the skin. In my case, the hair also. I ended up with a lot of little flowers in between the hairs, but it was absolutely worth it. Vinegar is a powerful health tool, inside and outside the body. For what concerns us here, it moisturizes, it’s antiseptic and it’s acidity establishes your skin’s pH back to perfect.

Coconut oil is anti fungal, anti microbial and highly moisturizing, besides all the other great benefits this delicious, smelly oil can give you. It can get rid of nail fungus, skin fungus and other skin problems and irritations. In my case, I have a recent small wound in my hand as a result of climbing trees and I’ve applied coconut oil a couple of times a day. After this last bath, the wound is completely healed. It took three days. Just three 🙂

Lavender

And lavender… Lovely lavender. I picked up the flowers and used them as an exfoliating agent, while crushing them against my skin and getting it’s lovely aroma and essence. Lavender is a cell regenerator and a tranquilizer of the mind and spirit. It would also have something to do with my wound healing because of it’s regenerating power. Crushing the small flowers in my hands was also very stimulating, like putting your hands inside a big ball of raw rice or beans 🙂  Ever watched the movie Amèlie? One of my favorites.

Oh, and the bathroom… Smells amazing after! What else could you possibly ask for!

Lavender and coconut oil bath

So there you have, a wonderful cocktail of not only relaxing and calming effects, but also full of healing benefits that will let you running like new. A nice bath of natural things, just like our ancestors. When, oh when, did humans start ruining everything with chemicals and artificial, harmful things when we can find everything we need in nature? I guess the moment we started abusing from it and thinking we are superior beings that do not belong to Earth. Let’s go back to basics and realize that Earth is exactly were we belong.

In case you want to give someone the best gift you could ever give (well, besides life) which is some pampering, you can contact me for the preparation of a nice bath package for your loved ones, enriched with essential oils and herbs.

Enjoy!

Caramelized organic raw honey soap: Success!

They say third time is a charm. Luckily for me, second time was! After my first soap fiasco trying to make a honey soap in a rush, I decided to try again. Yes, it was scary. What if the rush wasn’t what went wrong and I was bound to step into my second soap fiasco of the year? But oh, the honey was so spectacular I needed to create soap with it!

Caramelized organic raw honey soap

I did vary the recipe a little bit, mainly because I used my last avocado oil in the failed batch 😦  But it turned out even better. So this delicious soap is made with 50% olive oil and the other 50% of cocoa butter, apricot kernel oil and palm kernel oil (kernel means “core”, in case you didn’t know; I sure didn’t!). It has a very good amount of organic raw honey and mesquite dessert honey, and some extra cocoa butter for extra moisture. And smells absolutely delicious! What a treat! Has a strong, delicious smell of honey cake and the lovely color of caramel.

I tried it this morning and was surprised with what an amazing lather it makes! It is not as moisturizing as I expected (It’s not drying at all either, I’m just a moisture crazy lady and I always expect to create soaps with crazy moisturizing effect. It’s definitely way more moisturizing than a regular soap). And my hair, my hair! Was left with such a great volume! I have very fine hair and I need a lot of volume, this really made the trick! Looks like I have twice the amount of hair I actually have.

Caramelized organic raw honey soap

I’m really happy, I think this might be one of my favorite soaps so far 🙂

WARNING: Not suitable for people on a diet. It might make you crave sweets!

You can find this and my other products in my Etsy shop here 🙂

First soap fiasco!

There’s a first time for everything, and two days ago was mine with a bad soap batch 😦

I got some organic raw honey at Trader Joe’s and since it is very thick I thought it would make a perfect raw honey soap. I was very excited. So I sat down, thought of a recipe for this new honey soap that was supposed to be mild and moisturizing and just perfect, wrote it down and started to work. The only problem is that I was leaving to a concert in less than an hour so I didn’t have much time. But what the heck, I’m so excited I want to start anyway!

So I measured everything, melted my oils, put everything together and started to mix it. But wait! We are leaving in half an hour, I need to get ready! So I left the mixer on the crockpot and left. When I came back, the soap still was very liquid, didn’t get to the stage called “trace” when it looks like pudding. But I had to go, so I added the honey very quickly, left the crockpot on and left to one of the best concerts of my life! André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orquestra celebrating their 25 year anniversary. Oh, my! Totally worth a bad batch of soap.

When we got back I came running to see my new beautiful soap and I discovered… An awful pool of oil with some crumbled things in the bottom. What is this?! But it smells delicious. Maybe it needs to cook more, so I left it over night. But in the morning it was the same thing. So I kept on cooking. Cooked for about 18 hours when finally it kind of blended together (it usually takes 1 – 1.5 hours to cook) and I was able to put it in the mold. And there it was, this black, stinky puree of whatever it was, but not soap! Looks like the thing never saponified. So sad! I thought about putting it back in the crockpot and add more lye since there hadn’t been a reaction yet, but I think I might just let it go and start a new batch.

I don’t know what happened, if it was the honey, the soy milk, the lack of mixing because I had to go or too little lye, but this was my first failed batch of soap and even though I know we are humans and supposed to make mistakes, I’m really NOT HAPPY about this one in particular. If it wasn’t for the amazing show I had just seen I’d be pretty upset. Now I’m just sad of losing all that delicious honey. Oh, my raw honey!

Getting up on our feet again, I’m carefully repeating this batch with a few modifications. It smelled just amazing and, in theory, it should make a great soap! So sit tight and wait for the soap bee to find her way home  🙂