How about a Softlips giveaway?

CLOSED! We have a winner!
How exciting, a giveaway! This is for 3 tubes of softlips. These will all go to same happy home. One of them is a Pure, which is pretty much all natural, 95% organic even. It is Honeydew flavor. YUM. all the ingredients look pretty scrumptious!

The other two are their regular line, one is Spf 15 and has a little touch of color, Bronze, and the other is Spf 20 and the flavor is Vanilla.

I haven’t tried Softlips since highschool. and I honestly don’t remember how I felt about it all the way back then. Oh lets see, nearly 13 years ago. haah! I am a lipbalm junkie and when I got these I was changing over purses and realized I had 4 open balms already in my purse, plus 2 on my nightstand, one in the living room, 2 in my office, and countless in my bathroom. umm, yea, I didn’t really think I needed to trial these. I will pass that along to you lovies. I bet the Pure is amazing! and who doesn’t like a lipbalm with some color!

So I could use a little more traffic to my blog, so lets see if we can make that happen! want to help? Don’t feel pressured. Anyone can win.

Please leave your email in your comment, you can leave it like this karissag at gmail dot com to avoid spam bots.

~Ok first entry tell me your favorite flavor of lip balm. any kind will do, remember the dr. pepper Bonne Bell Lip Smackers? Or those Roller Ball things? (told ya I have always been a junkie!)
~2nd entry sign up for my RSS feed, upper right hand corner, I can check, so dont cheat.
~3rd entry Favorite me on technorati, easy button to do this also in the right side column.
~4th entry Stumble my main page, not this page, my main page. and leave me your stumble name. I will be checking this too!
~5th entry, email 2 friends this contest and cc me at karissag at gmail.com and leave me another comment telling me you did this.
~6th entry follow me on twitter @kagey10 and twitter this contest, and leave me the link, This one you can do daily! make sure you leave me a comment daily!
and remember you don’t have to do all of these, just the first entry is necessary!

make sure you leave a separate entry for each one of these that you do! and don’t forget to leave me your email. This giveaway will end on January 23, 2009 at midnight ET. i will contact the winner by email and they will have 72 hours to contact me back. the item will ship from me, US entries only please. THANKS SO MUCH!!

**edited to add the entries will be picked by random.org and if your email is easily visible in your blog that is fine! Or you can email it to me at the above email address too.

CLOSED! Contest is over, Mommyhood is thanksless won!

Homemade Laundry Soap, Easier then you think!

So basically I was sick of paying out the whazoo for detergent and knowing that I was buying this plastic jug the needed recycled, and there was petroleum and other harmful ingredients in the soap itself. So I decided to make one myself.

Sure there are a few that are probably safe and non toxic, but they are just much more expensive and even then they are least likely to be on sale or to have coupons. So come hop aboard the Prissy Green Frugal Train! Toot toot!

So I started googling. I came across Tipnut.com, here is the LINK to the homemade laundry soap recipes. I used #10 first time around but since then I have modified it, see my take below. I did then because I frankly didn’t see the need for the castille soap.

To be quite frank some of those recipes are just too much trouble and well, sound too gooey and messy for me I don’t really want to keep a bucket in my laundry room and need to stir my soap before each use. Plus, I wasn’t really feeling the grating and melting part, and I have always prefered dry soap. But to each their own! Those othere recipes are great, just not my cup of tea.

Now keep this in mind, you are getting rid of artifical colorants (dyes) fragrances etc. If you have skin allergies, eczema, psoriasis, acne or any other skin inflamation issue. Or if you are just sick of not knowing what is being absorbed by your skin after showering and toweling off, wearing your clothes all day, think undergarments…. EWW! I mean petroleum? we drive our cars on that! Phosphates, sodium lauryl sulfates and Alkyl phenoxy polyethoxy ethanols are a few more.
Trust me when I say they try and hide their ingredient list as best as possible. I am not going to scare you by listing all the evil things these ingredients do, try one, google, phenol…… yes, gross right? now think about how many times you have seen your child sucking on his blanket. Think about the fact that 60% of what goes on our skin is absorbed into your body, 60% people!

I promise this recipe is extremely easy. even easier if you have a blender or a food processor and because it is basically soap it cleans out with hot water. Easy peasy!

1 cup Vinegar (white)
add 10 drops of orange essential oil (also a great cleaner although it is optional)
1 cup Baking Soda
1 cup Washing Soda (meijer or kroger or fabric stores usually have this)

I mix the dry ingredients first, make sure you add the essential oil to the vinegar first. Slowly add the vinegar. I use a masher to mash this mess. it starts to heat and gets crunchy and brittle fast. Then I place it all in a blender or foodprocessor, pulse and add slowly. wham bam, you have laundry soap. so cost effective.

I use about 1/8 cup to a 1/4 cup depending on load size, either hot or cold water. I also always rinse my clothes in vinegar. Just put the Vinegar in the rinse cup like you would have the fabric softener, (don’t even get me started on fabric softener!) I promise they do not come out smelling like a salad, although your laundry room might. But the vinegar helps to disolve any leftover soap residue (so even if you don’t borrow my soap recipe use this vinegar rinse for your health!)
It also makes my clothes and linens nice and soft. if I need anti-static I add an old washcloth, with a little organic hair conditioner to the dryer. this helps tremendously.

FYI, washing soda is basically what Oxy clean is. yea. so if you have been paying $15 or a thing of oxy clean, sorry sucker. My boyfriend did too, until I enlightened him. And don’t jump and Borax it is not Boric acid, Borax is a naturally occuring mineral, people wash baby clothes with it. It is nice and gentle. we have been washing our clothes this way for months and well, we don’t stink, and our clothes are nice and clean and fresh. and well, I am kind of a germaphobe, and I clean my blankets all the time. Trust me, if something wasn’t be cleaned, i would be the first to know.

You can also clean your dishes in the dishwasher with Borax. um, hmm.
use equal parts of Borax and baking soda and add 2 tablespoons to your cleaning compartments. use vinegar as your rinse agent.

do you love me yet?

At Home Microdermabrasion

I know that you have all heard of microdermabrasion, and well if you haven’t, um, well what the heck have you been living under a rock? just kidding. Everyone seems to have tapped into this market. All the major drugstore and beauty counter brands have an at home microdermabrasion kit. but they are not cheap, and from what I hear they are pretty rough on the skin!

I used to do microdermabrasion treatments on patients at the plastic surgery office I worked at. I was the Esthetics manager and I managed 3 Estheticians. Sometimes when someone didn’t show up i would perform the peels and run the microderabrasion machine, basically it is a mini sand blaster. It is pretty gentle though, as long as who is running it knows what they are doing! (thank goodness we all did!) The part that was made easy by the machine is getting a totally even exfoliation of the skins surface. It was like a mini-vacuum, and sent tiny particals out, to blast the skin, then quickly suck them back up, but you could see where you had been. so you would do the amount of passes “prescribed” for said patient and whalla, beautiful healthy skin!
Now this can help with wrinkles, over sun exposure over the years, acne marks, hyperpigmentation, etc.

SO here is the good part. You CAN do this at home. Yes, you do not need to pay someone $150 X ’s 10 treatments in order to have these wonderful results!

Do you know what baking soda is? (man I hope so!) I bet you have some in your kitchen cabinet or your fridge. Can you spare an extra 10 minutes before you go to bed tonight?
This is so simple. Wash your face as usual, do not use a scrub, use a gentle cleanser. keep your face wet, now dab out a little baking soda. using soft circles and your fingers tips and start massaging it into your skin. start with your face and make your way down to your neck and your decollete

Make sure you do this evenly, and don’t miss a spot except for of course your eyes! make sure you get around your nose and above your lip really well! Make sure you don’t just stick to your cheeks and forehead, remember your temples, in between your eyes above your nose, your chin, eyebrows and behind your ears!

Do this for 10 minutes once a week for 10 weeks, and remember to wear your sunscreen! If you notice any redness or are super tender the next day back off the time, maybe go down to 5 minutes and use more water. and of course follow up with your regular night time moisturizer. If you normally use a retinol, skip it this night.

Good luck! you can always use this baking soda scrub after you are done when you are done with your at home microdermabrasion treatment, you just won’t need to do it as long, do the 10 minute treatment once a month!

Ciao!

So Just What Should You Watch Out For?

Ok folks. I know how hard it is when you are at the grocery store and you are trying to read food labels. But you really must start doing this when you are picking out your new make-up and skin care items too. Lotions and hair care too.

Well first you really must decide what you are going natural with first. I honestly don’t recommend doing a complete overhaul all at once.

When I look on the label I keep these #3 things in mind first, usually they are listed and I am able to quickly put it down and start over with another product!

1) Fragrance, 2) Parabens 3) Sodium Lauryl Sulfate or Sodium Laureth Sulfate. another easy one is petroleum, that is a household word. You want products with NONE of these in them.

And you want products with none of the below in them either!

Say Yes to Say Yes to Carrots!!

First, I have to say I have tried a few products from this line, and I have been in contact with Jeremy from their company because I wanted to locate their Say Yes to Tomatoes Facial line. (he totally rawks BTW!) I can’t find the facial line anywhere around me, but Jeremy tells me they will be available on Amazon.com soon.

The Say Yes to Tomatoes hand cream is amazing. it basically has no smell, and sinks right in to your skin, so you can hop right back on the blogoshpere. Which I think is important. When you are working you can’t have greasy hands after you apply a hand cream! Taken from their website,

I LOVE!!! TWO carrots up!

Okay, next let me first tell you I have had a terrible hair year in 2008. I was put on a medication that dried my hair out something terrible. I had no volume, no shine, frayed ends and well it just looked dull. and us brunettes can’t look dull! Say Yes to Carrots shampoo and conditioner literally brought life back to my dried out locks. I am telling you my mane was looking mangy! After one wash I knew i was going to hooked. My hair felt so much better. It didn’t weigh me down (i have a lot of fine hair) but I could run my fingers through it without getting stuck! I had some shine back, and that just got better with a few more washes. I also noticed no build up at all. I think I have been using this for about 2 months now. I sincerely love it! it has no SLS or parabens, so it it UBER healthy too. The shampoo takes a bit too get used to, it is runny at first, but it suds up unlike most shampoos lacking in harmful SLS.

I just tried for the first time New years Eve day, the Carrots Conditioning Mask for hair. HOLY SHCNIKY! my hair was unbelievable. Shiny, manageable, soft, silky, everything they say you will get in the commercials (but they lie!) I don’t!

I have also tried their lip butters, I am kind of a lip butter, balm, gloss etc. junkie. well I am drugstore makeup skin care junkie. CVS and Target love me. Sorry Walgreens, you love me too don’t you?
Their lip butters are awesome!

Please go check out their website, Say Yes to Carrots doesn’t even know I am writing them up here. I just really believe in their products. and that is honestly what my blog is about.
I hope to get some test products eventually for my blog eventually, but I promise you as my readers, if i don’t like something, I will not tell you I do. I will always be honest with you and the companies I review for!
Say Yes to Carrots also has a Carrot Club! You can buy one product and get one for free!!! sign up here

phthalates, will I ever learn to spell it?

phthalates, yeah, say that 5 times fast. I know you have heard a lot about this chemical if you live in the blog world. About how it is in this, or isn’t in that. But have you ever actually taken the time to learn about it? what it is and what it does? Yout might want to take a second and read this short article. it is short and I tell you it is in english too!

Do you know Phthalates have been linked to things as normal as allergies and asthma and as abnormal as reduced testosterone concentrations and abnormal development of reproductive system in baby boys.

Yes you want to read this. thanks for stopping by!

tired of those dern books in October?

Are you like me and don’t even own a home phone? or if you do it is easier to run to the readily available interwebz to search for a phone number then to thumb through the yellow or white pages? Yet every October you get 2 or 3 heavy waste of space books that you are unsure of what to do with? you feel like such a waster throwing me directly in the recycling bin, making it already full for the week! Yet if you let them lay around they just add to the clutter!

well I have the perfect solution for you!!! HOORAY!!!

Sign up and up out! Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org

it is 100% legit and 200% awesome!

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