Help your sensitive skin by using natural ingredients.

I’ve used all of these homemade concoctions! Love them!

Smashing Glitter

I’ve been sick for days now. When I am sick, my skin becomes very sensitive. I can’t use traditional cleansers to wash my face without my skin feeling dry and irritated. Because of this I normally make my own face washes and masks. The best part about these homemade face products is that the ingredients can easily be found in your kitchen!

Honey – Honey is a natural humectant, which means that it can help retain moisture. Not only does it help to put moisture into your face, but honey can also kill bacteria. It is a great skin softener as well. Apply a teaspoon amount of honey to your face and massage it into your skin. Leave it on your face for ten minutes or so. Not going to lie, I have left honey on my skin for a half hour before! Nothing bad will happen from leaving honey…

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Raw Honey

Honey can vary in taste and color.

What kind of vessel the honey is put into has a huge impact on how the honey will taste. Glass is the best container to put honey in as it helps the honey to retain its original taste. That is my number one choice. I prefer most of my containers especially if it is for food to be in glass containers. Say NO to chemicals leaching into your foods! 😛

If you take that same honey and put it into a metal container or a plastic container, both, will have a different taste. Both metal and plastic leech chemicals into the honey and can affect the flavor and the same goes for the color of the honey. The vessel can cause a reaction and the honey color can change. But to be fair, nature changes the honey color as well. For instance raw honey gets darker as it ages.

Flavor, taste, and color can also be different from season to season as well and where/what flowers the bees are getting the pollen from.

Now let’s talk “raw” honey. The main difference is raw honey is NOT heated. The honey you mostly see in stores; the clear, liquid honey, has been treated with heat through pasteurization. It gets filtered this way. Processing honey this way, kills most of the beneficial enzymes and nutrients.

Raw honey gets some filtration action, but they do it in such a way that the good stuff is still in the honey.  Unprocessed honey will give you the maximum amount of all natural antioxidants and the benefits as a whole food.

What I look for when buying honey is the wording raw and the wording un-pasteurized on the label. But it is not as simple as that; I know annoying! Make sure you know where your honey comes from and you can trust the source. Some honey producers will mix their honey with outside sourced honey. It’s cheaper for them to do this and what you are getting is not a good quality honey. Check it’s source!

Raw honey should look thick and cloudy. (see picture). It is a solid at room temp and of course a liquid when heated. The cloudy look means the honey still contains all the healthy goodness; vitamins, minerals, live enzymes, bee propolis and pollen granules.

Notice how the honey stays on the spoon and the color is not clear.

There are also a variety of unpasteurized honey you may have heard of; there is the raw honey, and buckwheat honey, manuka honey (from New Zealand), wild flower, and a few others.

For the healthiest, best for you honey, go for the raw. You want it unpasteurized, unfiltered, unheated, unprocessed, as it comes straight out of the bees home! Keeping all the goodness in so your body can reap all the benefits!

Go raw!

In awesome health, Koko

Tomatoes; cherry tomatoes!

Cherry tomatoes; picked this morning!

Tomatoes are native to South America but luckily they can be enjoyed most everywhere.  I am thrilled I have them in my garden.  Digging in the dirt on hot days I can just pick them off the vine and enjoy a burst of refreshing goodness.  Not only are they delicious tasting they are packed full of nutrients.  Vitamins A, C, and E, potassium, as well as flavonoids (anti-inflammatory awesomeness!)  Have you heard of lycopene?  The antioxidants found in tomatoes are getting serious looks because they are fighters of damaging free radicals that are constantly attacking our cells in our bodies.  We need that kind of army.  The environment can really be harsh and so we must look for things we can change, do, eat to help our bodies out.  Tomatoes are an easy way to get some help.

Did you know there are studies eating tomatoes regularly can reduce the risk of men getting prostate cancer! Super fantastic; so you men eat up!  Not only can tomatoes be good for prostate cancer, it can help ward against other cancers like stomach and breast cancers.  It can help boost the skins ability to shield against UVA rays; “Sun damaging rays, back off!”  Lycopene = great for skin.

Eat the whole tomato to reap all the benefits.  The redder the better as the lycopene is in the  color.  Cooked tomatoes are said to have more lycopene as the heat releases more of the lycopene.  However cooking reduces the vitamin C content.  What do we do? Eat them raw or cook them?  Eat both is the answer!

You don’t need a lot of space to grow tomatoes; especially cherry tomatoes.  They are becoming my favorite because they are so easy to grow and care for.  You can grow them in a container, a corner of a small yard, and even a hanging basket!

To my readers; eat pizza with thick red tomato sauce, spaghetti topped with chunky tomato sauce, brushetta with fresh garlic and herbs on thick crusty bread, tomatoes on salad, toss a cup worth in your green drink; whatever you do eat them cooked, eat them raw…just eat them!  Peace Koko

Green Tea Face Mister…ahhh feels so nice!

Face Mister

I like the cool feeling of misting my face.  Making them is just as easy as spraying.  I’ve made this with several types of teas.  Green tea and chamomile teas are my go to’s but it’s limitless to what kinds of teas you can use as a face mister.  For this recipe I will use green tea.  Green tea is fab for skin; full of antioxidants, is anti-inflammatory, and a free radical fighter as well!  It’s said to have anti aging properties and helps with skin elasticity…all I know is I love it on my face.  I spray it on my body too.

Brew a cup per directions on the box.  I usually brew mine for three minutes.  Let cool completely.
Pour into a clean spray bottle.
Store in the refrigerator.
Spray as often as you’d like. Pour into a travel size bottle and take it with you. Great to up-lift you especially when you are sleepy. I love it right out of the refrigerator. The burst of cool is invigorating. Spray it on before you put on make up for some extra protection. I also mist over my make-up. It doesn’t melt off the make-up. (though 98% of the time I only wear eye shadow and lip stuffs 😀 )

Keeps in the refrigerator for about 5 days.
I wouldn’t use it more than 2 days outside of the refrigerator. What I’ve done; when I make a cup of tea for myself I save back enough to fill a travel size bottle to take with. I usually use it up by that day or I store it in the refrigerator and use it up by the following day.

FYI: Great for the inside, great on the outside. Since it’s a free radical buster, try spraying it on before putting on sun screen. It can help reduce sun damage! See article on “Let’s Make Some Tea” for more fun facts.

This Clipper green tea is so good.  It’s light and delicious.  Not bitter.  If you are lucky and can find this near you, give it a try!  Make time to check out their web site.  So cute!  http://www.clipper-teas.com/

Let’s Make Some Tea!

Let’s make some tea!
Making tea is really simple. There are three basic steps; Choose it; heat it; steep it! That’s all there’s to it.

Tips: 1. If you want a stronger tasting tea, don’t steep longer, just add more tea. A lot of the times steeping longer only makes for a bitter tea. (I don’t mind it, as I often forget I’m steeping.) 😛

2. Temperature plays a part in the “perfect” cup of tea.

3. Some folks with really discerning tastes may notice a difference in taste depending on what their tea steeped in or what container the water boiled in. The one way I can tell is when my tea is made in anything plastic. And I for one am not crazy about that. My water is boiled in a ceramic pot. My cup is either ceramic or glass.

4. Water can have an effect on taste too. Use the best water you can get your hands on!

Factoid:
1. Tea was discovered in China! Woo hoo! Yippee! Yay for the discovery!
2. Four cups a day is recommended to reap the health benefits.
3. Americans consume over 50 billion servings of tea a year.
4. Black teas are the most popular.
5. Green, oolong, and black tea all come from the same plant. Well whatdoyaknow?!
6. Green tea is not oxidized. It closely resembles the chemical composition of the fresh tea leaf.
7. Black and Oolong tea are oxidized. Black is oxidized for about three hours; oolong gets a shorter oxidation. A natural chemical reaction happens, making for its own distinguishing flavors.
8. Tea is naturally low in caffeine; about 40 milligrams.
9. Tea bags were use to hold samples of tea way back in the day.
10. Tea is a natural antioxidant.
11. Tea contains about half the amount of caffeine than coffee.
12. Black tea helps get rid of bad breath. I find this to be true of a lot of types of teas.
13. Drinking black tea can help reduce risk of heart attacks and strokes.
14. Green tea can help raise your metabolism. Love that factoid! (I can always get help in the metabolism department.)
15. Another weight loss tea is oolong. Oh, oh, good! In China, oolong is known for its fat blasting powers, speeding up that metabolism almost at the speed of light; well not that fast, but hey give it a try, i’m sipping kamiya Papaya oolong tea right now.
16. Tea’s are great for high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart health.
17. Tea’s an immune booster; infection fighter…Bring it on!
18. Oolong means black dragon in Chinese. Roar!
19. Drinking oolong is said to increase your brains functionality, reduce tiredness, and power up focus.
20. Tea: It’s tasty!

Teavana….ahhhhhh, they had me at first sample! I can’t walk past a shop and not sample their latest tea they’re brewing that day. I can’t say what my favorite is, as I’ve really enjoyed so many types and blends. I also can’t say whether I like hot or cold. The same tea tastes different hot or cold, and sometimes, one or the other is what I like better depending on my mood. Oh and of course sweetened or unsweetened will change the flavor, and again depending on my mood, I will have it lightly sweetened with their delicious German rock sugar. If you haven’t had their tea, you really should give it a go. If you can’t find a Teavana near you, they do ship.  (You can also find a plathora of teas right at your nearest grocery store!)

At  http://www.teavana.com  there’s a wealth of knowledge.  If you are just getting started with teas, it’s a perfect way to learn and if you’re a seasoned tea connoisseur, well, there is something there for you too! Pick that tea out, heat some water up, and steep. Sip away! Enjoy!

Iced black tea with fresh crushed mint and a sprig of mint topper 🙂

Teavanna drinker; 10 plus years!