March 2010

Enhancing Your Hair Color the Natural Way

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Although heading to the salon for a pedicure, manicure, facial, and full-on clip and color can make you feel and look absolutely marvelous, it’s nice to be able to take care of your hair and beauty needs at home, without the use of chemicals or a Visa. I would say that 50% of the women I know color their hair at least a little bit, whether to hide the gray, add a hint of blonde, get some deeper undertones, or to get a little more Va-va-va-voom from their natural red-hair.

Between salon visits, there are a few ways to give your hair a little help in the color department without taking out a second mortgage on your home for the “processing” or using chemical treatments on your hair.

Brunettes:

Exfoliating Coffee Face & Body Scrub

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For today’s beauty project, I chose to make an exfoliating body scrub out of coffee grounds. Coffee is a secret ingredient used in many spas throughout the world, and after making my Coffee Body Scrub and using it to exfoliate with in the shower, I can definitely see the allure.

First, I brewed some organic coffee for myself, and two cups later, was awake enough to get started on “my creation”. I saved the coffee grounds and put them into a bowl. I added about a table spoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of vanilla, some brown sugar and a little bit of cinnamon to make the scent a little spicier. I then added sea salt, which is also used to exfoliate the skin.

Save Money by Making Your Own Masque

I can’t afford a facial, a chemical peel, or any other professional exfoliating skin care to give my skin up a leg up, so I’ve decided to try a few “home skin remedies”. For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I found some recipes on the net, substituted many ingredients and make absolutely no claims whatsoever about how effective my “skin-care treatments” are.

Let me know if they work, and who knows- maybe I’ll have my own natural skin-care line in a few years, but don’t count on it.

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For the first Masque, I tried a strange mixture of Yoghurt, Honey, and Quinoa. (Most recipes I saw called for Oatmeal and not Quinoa, but I went out on a limb and made a substitution without consulting a single skin care expert or the Internet.)

Redheads Have More Sex (And Other Facts)

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My red hair was the bane of my existence throughout my entire childhood. Classmates would tease me about my “orange” hair (it’s exactly the color of a penny, really; not new or old but in-between), and strangers would rub it for “good luck.” One particularly awful moment occurred when Ronald McDonald singled me out during a parade—I was four or five—and shouted, “Look, red hair, like me!” He blew me a kiss and mortified me, a very shy and easily-embarrassed kid.

Is Your Sunscreen Actually Harmful?

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Using sunscreen is supposed to be the best thing for you to prevent skin cancer and premature aging, but over the past two or three years, there has been a lot of negative information coming out about sunscreen. Mostly, the information says that like other products full of chemicals that you smear across your face, sunscreen is actually bad for you.

Problems that can occur include bad skin irritations such as skin dryness and acne to the very serious problem of cancer. Of course, it’s dependent on your own skin’s sensitivities and which chemicals the sunscreens have.