Six Homemade Personal Care RecipesOur modern world is filled to the brim with toxins and chemicals, more and more of which are being linked to terrible long term effects every day.

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing that you feel much the same why I do - you want to minimize the toxins in your life! And the fact is that homemade personal care items are one of the best ways to reduce your toxic load.

Why? Simply because your skin - the largest organ in your body - is very absorptive, so whatever you put on your body, ends up in your body.

These Six recipes Curated from frugal farmwife.com will help you fight back against our modern tendencies by filling your body with nutrition, instead of toxins.

Homemade Cold Process Soap

Have you ever considered making your own soap? If your the homemade, do-it-yourselfer, or “crafty” in the least, you probably have. But did you know that making your own soap can save you money. Who can say no to a product that’s not only cheaper, but better for your skin?!

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I shied away from soap making for a long time because there have always been small children in my life. As much as I wanted to try my hand at soap making, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to hide the lye ! well enough to keep some child who didn’t know any better out of it.

It wasn’t until after Gabriel and I got married that I decided to give soap making a go. No kids = no worries about the lye.

These days, I keep the lye in a container that I’m sure Garrett wouldn’t be able to open, in a place where I’m sure he won’t be able to get it. I also only make soap when Garrett is out with his dad. But really, soap making isn’t that scary. We’ve only ever had one truly failed batch, and it failed because I put too many additives in it. (Note to self: if the recipe calls for 3 oz. of pumpkin puree, don’t try to put more than that ).

Lye costs about $.25/oz. The oils vary depending on what kind you use, and of course the liquid can be virtually free if you use water. I use goat milk the cost of which seems to average at $.75/cup.

Essential oils! of course drive the cost up if you use them, but for me, the beneficial properties are totally worth it.

Even so, the last time I figured up the cost of a bar of soap, it was under $.50.

Homemade soaps make fantastic, inexpensive gifts as well. We’ve given away many more than we’ve actually used.

Here’s the basic recipe that I’ve always used. It’s a little different from most cold process soap recipes in that it doesn’t call for any of the ingredients to be a certain temperature when they’re mixed. Only that the milk (if you’re using milk) should be very cold. But it’s always worked for me, and it’s very flexible. Techinically, the lye to oil ratio should be slightly different depending on the specific oils you’re using, but I didn’t know this when I first started making soap, and even if I had, my little kitchen scale wasn’t sensitive enough to account for it. So what I’m saying is, soap recipes are surprisingly upnpicky.

Basic Homemade Soap Recipe • 6 oz. cold goat milk or water • 2 oz.Lye ! • 1 pound lard (or other oil) • 1/2 oz. essential oil (more or less depending on your preference)

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In a non-reactive bowl, mix the liquid and lye. When the lye is dissolved, pour in the melted (but not hot) oil and continue mixing. It’s very helpful if you use a stick blender! to mix the soap. Otherwise you end up stirring for 30-40 minutes as opposed to the five-ish minutes it takes with the stick blender.

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Continue blending until the soap reaches the “trace” stage. Basically, that means your soap mixture will get fairly thick like pudding. If you’re unsure what that should look like, see this article: How To Tell When Your Soap Is At A Trace. At this point you can add whatever you want to add to it. Essential oils, herbs, whatever. After you add essential oils, get the soap in the mold(s) as quickly as you can as some oils cause the soap to set up really quickly.

! After you mold the soap, cover it, and set aside for three weeks. After a day or two, you can take the soap out of the molds, but it does need to cure for three weeks before using it. That’s it! See? Homemade soap is easy!

The Best Essential Oil Blend Recipes

I’m honestly not a very imaginative person, so it was really hard to come up with essential oil blends recipes when I first started my homemade soap making journey.

I would group up all my little glass bottles, into bottom, middle, and top tones, and gather up a bunch of q-tips, sit at the table, and try to pairings that smelled amazing together.

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I think I nearly burned out my husband’s nose with all my “smell this!” “now, how about this?” nonsense. One thing’s for sure, we came away from these sessions with clear sinuses! (By the way, you can read my essential oil philosophy here)

Despite my lack of creativity, we eventually came up with some very simple blends that we absolutely loved! And I have to credit our all-time favorite to Gabriel. What can I say? he’s got a good nose.

So if you’re in need of ideas for essential oil blends for soap making, or lotion, or other body products, feel free to pull out your bottles – but read this first! These are our favorites! We love them, and use them every day.

Then come back and let us know in the comments what your favorite blends are!

These measurements are given in “parts” because I can’t tell you how much oil you’ll need in your particular batch of soap. You may like a strong scent, or you may like it a bit more mild. You’ll need more in cold processed soap, because the curing process “eats away” some of your essential oils, or if you’re making hot process soap, you’ll need less, because the curing is done before you add oil. See what I mean?

Essential Oil Blends RecipesSpearmint Patchouli

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If I only had on blend for the rest of my life, this would be it. Spearmint is so sweet, so soothing and mild.

Patchouli is earthy, musky, and gives this blend a slightly more masculine scent than spearmint alone would. I think that’s why we both love it so much.

Orange Vanilla

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• 2 parts orange essential oil • 1 part vanilla oil

I admit that sometimes I like this blend as much as the spearmint-patchouli mix.

It’s so sweet, so clean and homey. It’s orange creamcicle – my favorite ice cream treat ever as a child. (Also, orange essential oil is really cheap as essential oils go, so I like to use it a lot!)

Lavender Peppermint

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• 1 part lavender • 1 part peppermint

Separately, these are two of my favorite scents, and together, they’re just phenomenal! It may seem like an odd pairing, but the calming lavender, and invigorating peppermint go strangely well together.

The Man’s Man

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• 1 part patchouli • 2 parts bergamot • 1 part cedarwood

This blend is very woodsy - 100% masculine. It’s perfect for the boy’s bathroom, or a hunting cabin, and for once, you could even give homemade soap to a guy as a gift and he won’t mind!

Orange-Mint

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• 2 parts orange • 1 part peppermint or spearmint

This is a mild, sweet, clean smelling blend, that’s so inoffensive, it’s a pretty safe bet when you want to gift someone who’s preferences in scent you’re not sure about. Beyond these five delicious smelling essential oil blends, I’m a big fan of keeping things simple by making small batches of soap, and using a single oil in each batch.

One of my favorite things in the world is a strongly scented bar of rosemary soap. Or the deliciously clean smell of lemon. The possibilities of single scents and blends are truly endless. But that’s okay – it just means we get to make more soap!

Homemade Tummy Butter

Homemade Tummy butter isn’t just for tummies! I’ve been using it all winter to protect my skin against the dry cold!

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I think one of the personal care items that I’m most proud of is this tummy butter. Lots of tummy butter and stretch mark creams use things like almond or avocado oil – which are excellent – but you can’t just walk into a local store and pick them up. I also try to keep my supplies as streamlined as possible – that’s the big reason I don’t have a lot of fancy oils – so you can imagine how happy I was when I found out that olive oil works terrifically in their place.

Now, admittedly, you can’t just walk into any old store for cocoa butter!, shea butter!, or bees wax either, but you can get them. Hobby Lobby has them all last time I was there, and believe it or not, Dollar general has pure cocoa butter. With the prevalence of insecticides and chemicals used in bee keeping these days, I went ahead and ordered organic bee’s wax! since I use it a lot.

It’s important to know that stretch mark cream doesn’t actually make stretch marks disappear. Once those deep tissues are torn well – they’re torn. But they can fade, and feeding the collagen along with moisturizing the skin helps with that process. Theoretically, if you consistently use a good stretch mark cream throughout pregnancy before you develop stretch marks, you can actually prevent them from happening.

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Personally, I use it because I find that now, since I’ve had kids, my tummy skin tends to be a little dry (is that TMI?), and this cream really helps keep it moisturized. The main reason I don’t use my super simple baby lotion recipe for this is that it absorbs too quickly. This

cream is thicker, and absorbs over a longer period of time – which is perfect because I like to put it on at night, just before I go to bed. I’ve put mine in a deodorant container (which you can order here !), partly because it’s a twist tube, and is really handy for rubbing directly onto your skin, but mostly because I have a bunch of them since I’ve started making lots of deodorant. I love making deodorant! …but I digress.

You can put your tummy butter in whatever sort of container strikes your fancy, and if you’d rather not have a “bar”, you can omit the bee’s wax for a softer texture. Or if you want a bar, but don’t have any bee’s wax, you can simply store your tummy butter in the fridge.

Homemade Tummy Butter1/4 cup shea butter 1/4 cup coconut oil 2 T. olive oil 1 T. beeswax pellets 2 vitamin E oil capsules 10-15 drops of essential oil (optional) combine first four ingredients in a small sauce pan. Break open capsules and add vitamin E oil. Gently heat on low until just melted. Add essential oil if desired, and place pan into a cold water bath, stirring until lotion begins to set up. Quickly pour into desired container. Use daily, or as needed.

Homemade Sun Lotion

This homemade sun lotion recipe is super easy to make, effective, and good for your skin!

! If you’re like me, you have no interest whatsoever in wearing commercial, chemical sunscreen. It’s just not worth the risk of possible hormone disruption, allergies, or cancer.

But sunburn is no fun either. Last summer on a hot day, I decided to go out blackberry picking wearing a tank top to keep cool. It was really thoughtless. Me, Whiter than sour cream, going out into the sun with bare shoulders. I came in looking like a lobster, and now I make sure to wear sleeves and a hat when I go picking.

That works for me, but my kids are just as white as I am, and burn just as easily. Problem is, they don’t keep hats on very well, and at least one of them has a tendency to come in with fewer clothes than he went out in (what’s up with that?).

So this year, I decided to try making my own homemade natural sunscreen.

It’s amazing what you can do with a few oils and minerals. Really. This is basically a homemade lotion, with the addition of zinc oxide which you can purchase from amazon.com!. The zinc oxide protects the skin against the sun, and while the spf numbers are a little lower, it turns out, spf 30 isn’t twice as effective as spf 15. Spf 15 protects agains 93 percent of UV rays, while 30 protects against 97%.

! Homemade mineral sun lotions tend to be about 20spf, which works very well for me.

If you’re skeptical of homemade sun lotion, try making a really tiny batches using teaspoons where the recipe says tablespoons. Or if you love it, use cups (or half cups) instead of tablespoons!

Homemade Sun Lotion Recipe • 2 Tablespoons shea butter • 2 tablespoons coconut oil • 1 Tablespoon zinc oxide • 4 drops tea tree oil Melt the shea butter and coconut oil over gentle heat. Remove from heat, and stir in the zinc oxide and tea tree oil. Pour into a container and let cool completely before using. To use: apply liberally to exposed skin. Rub in well. I find that it smears on much like commercial sunscreen, but once you’ve rubbed it in, you can barely tell that it’s there.

Itch Relief Spray

Homemade itch relief spray is a must-have for everyone, whether you live in the country, where poison ivy is always a threat, or in the city, where mosquitos are everywhere.

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I worked really hard memorizing poisonous plant and what they look like hoping to avoid getting poison ivy this year.

Aaaand it didn’t work.

Last week I somehow got into it, and I’m blaming the goats. I love my girls, but unfortunately, they love poison ivy the way I love chocolate and peanut butter (which is together, and a lot), and when they get it on their coats, they rub it off on me.

My husband seems to have developed an immunity to poison ivy – lucky him, right? – but I just itch, and itch, and itch. Same thing with mosquito, tick, and chigger bites. The itching makes me crazy!

Naturally, I went looking for ways to control the itching naturally, and to my surprise, found that I already had quite a few of the most highly rated items. Why hadn’t I done this before!

The result is my version of a natural homemade itch relief spray. It works. It really works! And I’m so, so happy.

I highly recommend trying this for your itches that need attention!

Homemade Itch Relief Spray • 1/4 cup aloe vera gel (I love this one!) • 1/4 cup witch hazel • 10-15 drops tea tree oil (I use this brand!) • 10-15 drops lavender, chamomile, or other skin-soothing

essential oil (optional) Add all ingredients into an empty spray bottle, scew on cap, and shake gently to mix. Swirl to mix before each use. Apply as needed. Note: If you use real, natural aloe vera gel, this mix will be only slightly thicker than water, and easily sprayable. If you use the really thick aloe vera gel that you see in Walmart, you way want to just apply this as lotion.

Homemade Lip Balm

Oh y’all! Do your lips get as chapped as mine do as soon as cold weather hits? It’s downright painful! I use to be a professional lip balm buyers in winters past (I kid, but only slightly), but ever since making homemade baby lotion, I’ve wanted to make my own homemade natural lip balm too, and this winter, I finally did it! And I can assure you, it’s ten times better than anything I’ve ever bought!

! No more of this reading ingredients on lip balm tubes and tins, and searching for one that is natural, but works. No more trying to find one that isn’t too waxy, or too oily. It’s so easy to customize your lip balm recipe to make it exactly the way you like it! This is another one of those recipes that make me so happy to live in the modern era of online shopping. It means that ingredients, such as shea butter and bee’s wax, are just a few clicks of

a mouse away! Of course, you can always get them at a nearby Hobby Lobby or JoAnn’s too if you prefer to shop locally. Oh, and did I mention that you can flavor it? My current favorite is spearmint essential oil. It’s such a lovely, sweet flavor. I had a peppermint lip balm one time, and let me tell you – that took some getting use to! But spearmint isn’t harsh as all! Other great essential oil to use for lip balm are orange, lemon, vanilla, or tea tree. You’ll also notice that there is very little different between making homemade lip balm, and other skin conditioning agents such as tummy butter. The ingredients and ratios can vary slightly, but you need very little variety in ingredients to make them all!

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Homemade Natural Lip Balm RecipeIngredients: • Coconut oil • Shea butter • Beeswax

• Essential oil Makes three lip balm tubes. Melt 1 ½ teaspoons of the oil, butter, and wax together in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan.

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Remove from heat as soon as everything is melted.

Stir together and add several drops of essential oil if desired.

If this is your first batch, you might want to let it harden in the pan, to make sure that you like the consistency, then remelt it, adding oil, or wax if you want.

Carefully pour melted, lukewarm lip balm into twist tubes, or other containers.

I used a teaspoon, holding the tube over the pan to catch drip. A syringe, such as one you could get from a feed store would work excellently for this too!

That’s all there is to it! You will love your homemade lip balm! I gave a tube to my mother-in-law, and she loved it as much as I did. (I gave a tube to my 3-year-old who insisted that he needed one, and he lost it – not recommended! )

Have fun making natural lip balm!