Monday, January 27, 2014

DIY: Rinse & Scrubs

Happy New Year! (Is it too late to say that? Happy Current Year then.)

This week/weekend I spent a lot of time cleaning my kitchen and simultaneously messing it up some more. It's a fun game I like to call "Never-ending Dishes" and it's not really that fun. The main reason for this was preparations for my oldest nephew's birthday cake (another story for another post), but while I was at it, I decided to make some things I've been seeing around Pinterest.

The recipes I chose were this hair rinse with rosemary and ACV, this salt scrub inspired by LUSH Ocean Salt, and this lip scrub inspired by LUSH Mint Julips. The rinse I made according to the recipe and I've only used it once, but it did make my hair smell good all day. So the jury is still out on that one. I changed a lot of things in the scrubs though, so here are my altered versions.

Citrusy Salt Scrub
1/2 c. fine sea salt
1 1/2 T. lime-infused vodka
1/4 to 1/2 c. coconut oil, melted
10 drops Lemon essential oil

Salt scrub ingredients! (And reusing an empty LUSH container.)

You basically mix all these things together to a consistency you like, so it's pretty simple. I did infuse the lime vodka myself (1/2 a lime, zested and chopped plus 3 T. vodka, mix and let sit for three days then strain), but you could probably sub in 1:1 citrus juice to vodka, or even all juice if you don't have vodka. If I made it again I would add some orange or grapefruit zest to the scrub itself for more citrusy goodness. (Citrusy is too a word.)

The original recipe calls this a face scrub, but I used it on my feet and it seemed pretty rough to me, so I probably wouldn't use it on my face. But hey, I'm a sensitive little flower. I usually like scrubs for shaving my legs, so we'll see how that works. If it's still too harsh, I'll give it to someone else and just use the rest of my sea salt for something else. Like French fries.

Warm Vanilla Lip Scrub
1 T. vanilla sugar
1/2 t. honey
1 to 2 T. coconut oil, melted
Dash of cinnamon

Once again, mix everything until you have a nice consistency and pack it into little containers. I've seen other recipes for this that call for castor sugar (which is white sugar ground more finely) so I put my sugar in the littlest cup for my Magic Bullet and blitzed it a couple times first. And if you don't have/don't want to buy vanilla sugar, you can use regular sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mine will just look fancier than yours because of the cute little vanilla seeds in there. #opulenceclub

Fancypants sugar scrub! (And reusing more empty LUSH containers!)

I was going to make the mint version in the original post, but then I opened the cupboard and my vanilla sugar was staring at me. In my world, vanilla-cinnamon-honey is in the top three best flavor combinations of all time, so obviously I'm in love with this stuff. Also, it works like magic. My lips were so, so chapped that day but then I used this, licked off the rest (because it's completely edible and totally delicious), and put on the lip balm my sister made me for Christmas. It was the first time I hadn't been mad at my lips in about a week. Since our predicted high temperatures for the next couple days are in the single digits, I'm sure I'll be getting more use out of it soon. That is, if I don't just eat it.

The 2014 Pinterest Success Score (which is a thing I just made up) is now 1 okay, 1 undecided, and 1 love-it-so-much-I-would-marry-it, so I'm declaring this an overall Pinterest-win. I'm planning on keeping that up this year. What about you guys, make anything good from Pinterest lately?