My Natural Skin Care Regiment

I've been wanting to write this post for a little while now, but just haven't gotten it done.  I also wanted to wait until I had done this for a few months to see if it really worked and liked it.  Do I have your curiosity tapped yet?

If you hadn't noticed, 2012 and maybe even a year or so earlier, the newest rage is to eat more healthy (whole foods, less processed foods, etc) - what are you putting INTO your body?  Another area is what are you putting ON your body?  We really don't think about that as much, but it's true.  What you put on your skin soaks into you and can (potentially) cause damage - even if it claims to be a good thing.

I think this all started early this summer when Allyson started breaking out after putting on sunscreen.  After a post on Facebook to get some advice, a friend (and you should now who you are) got me thinking how bad sunscreen can really be.  I did some research and found a great, more natural, sunscreen for the girls, and Allyson did not have any other problems the rest of the summer.

This friend also posted later on FB that she started using organic, cold pressed, extra virgin coconut oil as her new moisturizer.  I decided I'd give it a try.  To be honest, it was just ok.  It did it's job, but I thought it was just a touch bit "greasy" looking/feeling, so what I did was just use it at night before bed.  I continued to use my normal moisturizer in the morning thinking that using the coconut oil part of the time is better than not at all.  :o)

A month or so later as my face cleanser was getting low, I decided I would look online to see what kinds of natural skin cleansers are out there.  I very quickly found a great blog article on one and decided once again I was going to try something new.  I was a bit skeptical about it but thought what would it hurt to try it.  Want to know why I was skeptical?  Here are the ingredients of my new facial cleaner:  castor oil and grapeseed oil!  And when I want to have a scrub, I add sugar to the mix.  Yes you heard right - oil and sugar!  :o)

Here is a link to the article that I found.  I encourage you to click on it and read it for yourself.  click here

I basically do as the article says but instead of the EVOO, I decided to use the grapeseed oil as I have always tended towards oily skin.  I also started out with a three part castor oil ratio to the one grapeseed oil, but I think my ratio is now one to one.  To get started, I went to Walmart and purchased a small travel size bottle, funnel and the oils.

I only do this routine in the evening, so in the morning I only "scrub" my face with my hands while in the shower.  That's it!  Here are a couple of things I've noticed since starting this.  First, I haven't had to use a lot of moisturizer anymore (or should I say coconut oil).  Since winter and dry skin season has set in, I've had to use a bit more, but still it only averages to maybe twice or three times a week.  The second thing I've noticed is that before I switched to this routine, I was ALWAYS oily by the end of the day and actually even earlier in the day.  But now I can honestly say that the shine of oil is far from what it had been!  Yes, I'm still a touch oily, but nothing like before.  Who'd have ever thought that by using oil to clean your face would actually reduce the oil on your face!  But it does for me.

To make a twice a week scrub, all I do is put about one or two teaspoons of the oil in my palm and then add about one teaspoon of sugar and mix it around.  I then spread it on my face in small, slow circles for about one minute.  Then you rinse with warm water.

There you have it!  What a great and natural way to cleanse your face without all the chemicals and junk that most everything out there has in it.

Christmas Clothes

I said I'd post a picture of Allyson wearing her new Christmas clothes . . . well, here she is!

Church Christmas Program

On Sunday, the children were part of a Christmas program.  All of the girls were angels, and the boys were shepards.  Allyson had a speaking part reading some paragraphs of the Christmas story, which she said she really enjoyed doing.

Here are a few pictures of the kids before singing one of their songs.  The things they are holding are chimes, and it sounded beautiful when they used them.

Not quite a happy angel, but Janae did a terrific job singing :o)

I can't believe I actually can do this AND figured out how to, but here is a video of the song they sang along with the chimes.

Fun in the Snow

We didn't have a white Christmas, but I think the girls are still happy even though it was a day late.

Christmas

This year for Christmas we spent Christmas Eve Day with Rodney's family, had our own little family time Christmas morning, and then headed to my parent's house for lunch and the afternoon.

Here are a few of the pictures from that time.

I thought this was a good picture of all three of them.

 Allyson got a CD by one of her favorite singers - Britt Nicole.

The girls recently got one of Veggie Tales latest videos "The League of Incredible Vegetables" and they love it.  Do you think Janae is excited?

I had to put this picture in because for some reason when asked what she wanted for Christmas, Janae said a penguin.  Fortunately for me I found one.  :o)

More Veggie Tales toys!

I got the girls each a new outfit.  Since Allyson isn't wearing it, I'll post a picture once she does.

One of the new shirts and new jeans.

Isn't she adorable?!

Some Updates

I know it's been a while since I've updated my blog (Uncle Dan), so here are a few pictures from the past month.

Several weeks ago Kaycie sat down with her doodle pad and wrote all of the ABC's.  This was the first time she did it without asking "what comes next?"  :o)

Thanksgiving weekend we were invited to my aunt and uncle's house out in central Illinois.  We had a lot of fun seeing family we don't get to see very often.  Here are the girls enjoying the tractors out in the garage.  This was soon after we got there, so they were quite ready to expend some energy.

Today Allyson received the honor or distinction of "Model Citizen".  This honor is given to four students in each grade 1-5 during the course of the school year.  Each teacher nominates kids who demonstrate the requirements in order to receive this honor: 

                                                 M - make positive comments

                                                 O - organized

                                                 D - do my personal best

                                                 E - effort in academics

                                                 L - lifelong learner

I knew she was going to get this about a month ago as her teacher called wanting to know her shirt size, but, of course, I had to keep it a secret :o)  Yesterday, Allyson came home saying that today was the Model Citizen reveal day.  She was all excited clearly thinking/knowing that she would get a t-shirt.  Why?  Because she's been nominated every grade.  This makes the third shirt now - her shirt colors are red (1st grade), black (2nd grade) and now light blue (3rd grade).  I even had to go downstairs and get her too small shirt from 1st grade out of storage so she could have it up in her room.  It's actually been kinda hard for me to get her to wear these shirts after she gotten them, but according to her now, she is going to wear it a lot more now :o)  

Field Trip Fun

Today was the kindergartners field trip to a dairy/pumpkin farm.  The weather wasn't perfect, but it was a whole lot better than the day they were originally going to go (Wednesday).

The owners of the farm split the kids into 3 groups.  Our group got to see the dairy cows first.  Here are some interesting cow facts we learned:  the brown guernsey cow's milk is best used in ice cream, cheese and yogurt.  The holstein cow's milk is best for drinking.  Cow's eat 70lbs of food per day and drink a bath tub full of water (approx. 40-55 gal) per day.

Our next stop was the pumpkin patch.  Since the farm was closing to the public in a couple of days, the kids were allowed to have two big sized pumpkins (meaning no larger than your head) and as many little pumpkins as you wanted.  The only catch was that you had to be able to carry them :o)

After that was the hayride!  And then we were able to walk around their corn maze.

Class picture while waiting for our turn on the hayride.

Our last stop was to pet the new calves.

It was then lunch time and then finally play time!  They had about 7 different areas to play in.  One area they had for the kids was this slide.  It took a bit for the kids to start going to it, but once they noticed it, they flocked to it.

Fortunately Janae wanted to try it out before the big rush :o)

Another area was the big trike race track.  She had to wait for a trike that she could ride, but it was definitely worth the wait for her as she loved it!

The other play areas were swings (which Janae loved - I pushed her and some friends for quite a while), a sand box, a hay bale maze, a big sling shot where you could shoot little pumpkins and gourds into a pond and a duck race track.

It was a great day overall.  I loved seeing Janae interact with her classmates and to get to know the kids instead of just hearing their names.  Another interesting thing I noticed on the way to the farm was that a bus full of kindergartners is a whole lot quieter than a bus load of 2nd graders!  Yes they were noisy, but not near as loud as when I went on a field trip with Allyson last year.  Now that was loud!  When I told Janae's teacher this, her response was "they just don't know any better yet." ;o)

Here are the girls posing with the pumpkins Janae and I brought home.