Archive for the ‘HOW TO.....’ Category

You have some time on your hands Mom/Dad?  Here is a great recipe for Sweet Dreams Organic Baby Lotion.

Submitted By:
Karen of Dunnellon, FL

Summary:

Soothing baby lotion for baby’s skin and lightly scented for calming
Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. aloe vera gel
1 1/2 tsp. lanolin
1 1/2 tsp. Vitamin E oil
1/3 c. virgin coconut oil
1 oz. pure beeswax (white),filtered
3/4 c. camelina oil
1 1/2 tsp. essential oil (optional) 2 tbsp. lavender powder
1 1/2 tsp. chamomile powder
Instructions:

In a blender, mix aloe gel,lanolin,vitamin E oil. Using a glass container, melt coconut oil and beeswax until fully melted. Gently stir in camelina oil. Slowly pour oils into blender on low. At this point oils will thicken and turn white. Stop blender and add essential oil,if used. Blend gently in short bursts. Do NOT over blend. Add lavender and chamomile powders, blend gently until incorporated. While mixture is still warm, pour into containers. This mixture will thicken quickly as it cools. This lotion doesn’t leave oily feeling to skin and absorbs well. Great as a massage lotion for baby. Makes approximately 2 1/2 cups.

Please let us know how it turns out.  We are going to make a batch and we will let you know how it stacks up to our Mama Rose’s Naturals Organic Baby Lullaby Lotion.

Hope you enjoy,

MOBS

Making your own soap is not very hard and can be allot of fun.  Natural soap can be made using the cold process, the melt and pour and the hot process, all of which are surprisingly easy to do. It may take some experimentation to come up with the right formulation. All you need is the willingness to learn and the patience to keep on trying to get the best formulation for your skin

Cold Process Soap:

Called Grandma made soap it’s made by combining fatty acids and sodium hydroxide (lye) together.  The condensed version of this type of soapmaking is that there is a certain proportion of lye (sodium hydroxide) and water to fatty acids that forms a chemical reaction called “saponifaction.” During saponification, the oils and lye mix and become soap – the process takes approximately six weeks to fully complete.

When making soap, you will need the right tools and supplies to get everything right. The tools you use will depend largely on the method you will use. However, most of these tools can be found in your kitchen, while some are very accessible (available in your local supermarket).

All you need are containers, a mixing bowl, a wooden spoon, a boiling pot, molding trays and clean cloths.

Let’s get a beginner 4.5 pound soap recipe

16oz Canola Oil
16oz Coconut Oil
16oz Palm Oil
6.9oz Lye (5% superfatted)
15.8oz Water

General Instructions:

If you make your very own organic handmade soap, you will be providing your skin with the best luxury it can ever experience. Natural, pure soap will give your skin the healthiest and the most natural nourishing effect that it deserves.

MOBS

Good Clean Fun
Make your own natural bar soaps for the perfect holiday gift.
By Sara Snow

After years of taking a backseat to liquid pump options, bar soaps are finally making a comeback. Browse any specialty or gift shop and you’ll find a multitude of cleansing bars that are both beautiful and eco-friendly. Pump soaps require a lot more packaging—plastic bottle, plastic tube, plastic pump—than their old-fashioned friends, which usually come wrapped in a single layer of plastic or paper.

With the holidays approaching, now is the perfect time to jump on the bar-soap bandwagon and create your own fragrant works of art. Not only are bars of soap a good green choice for the home, but they also make special gifts when wrapped in brown or decorative paper and tied with a bow. Plus, by making your own soaps you can control the ingredients and keep the product natural for your friends and family.

For the soap recipes below, start with a basic soap and add ingredients from there. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can start from scratch and make your soap the traditional way, with fats, water and lye. Or you can do it easier (and perhaps safer) with our melt-mix-pour method. This will allow you and your kids to personalize the soaps you make by simply mixing your favorite essential oils, exfoliators, moisturizers, herbs and flowers into a basic store-bought soap.
Stellar Suds
To create natural, gift-worthy soaps, choose one of our three recipes (below) and follow these instructions.

1. Start with a fragrance-free soap: glycerin, white or olive oil. (We used glycerin soaps in our recipes.)
2. Have your child help you cut 8 oz. of the soap into small pieces, using a plastic knife or other safe utensil. Melt the pieces down in either a double boiler over low heat or in a microwave (take care to keep little hands away from the heat). Stir frequently. If using a microwave, heat on medium power in short time segments to avoid a mess.
3. Once the soap has melted, allow it to cool slightly while stirring frequently. Help your child mix in ingredients and pour into the mold of your choice. Cupcake or loaf pans work well—a small loaf pan allows you to cut your soap into rectangular pieces, while a tube or a pipe (such as a piece of PVC pipe) creates beautiful rounds. A cupcake mold (mini or large) produces perfectly sized individual patties.
4. Allow your soap to sit overnight. Once it has set, remove from the mold and slice (if necessary). For gifts, your child can wrap one or more soaps in recycled paper and tie with a ribbon. As an added touch, include a note explaining the benefits of each herbal ingredient.
Recipes

Lavender Soother
8 oz. melted soap
1/2 tsp. lavender essential oil
1 Tbsp. dried lavender flowers

Lavender helps calm achy muscles, soothe colic and guarantee a good night’s rest. We mixed lavender essential oil with dried flowers for an effective and beautiful bar of soap.

Nori Cleansing Soap
8 oz. melted soap
1/2 tsp. tea tree oil
1 sheet nori, cut into slivers

Nori is an extremely nourishing sea vegetable that can help with cell regeneration. Tea tree oil is naturally antifungal, antibacterial and antimicrobial. The combination of these ingredients makes this soap perfect for acne-prone skin.

Softening Oat Scrub
8 oz. melted soap
2 Tbsp. quick oats (the pieces will be smaller than regular oats)
1/4 tsp. cedarwood oil
1 Tbsp. honey

The oats act as gentle exfoliators, while the honey soothes and softens skin. Once finished, this soap will be honey-brown in color. Since the honey and cedarwood oil are both gentle antiseptics, they’re great for oily skin. Also, try swapping cedarwood for birch sweet oil, another mild-scented essential oil.

Sara Snow is the host of Get Fresh with Sara Snow and Living Fresh, both on the Discovery networks. Sara also writes for CNN.com and Treehugger.com.

Hi everyone thought I would share this article on how to make your own Organic Shampoo.  Check out the ingredients of our Our Organic Baby Shampoo’s here.

First of all let’s go through what Organic means on a label.  100% =  only Organic ingredients are used.  When something is labeled Organic it means 90% Organic ingredients are used.  And when something is labeled “made with organic” it mean 70% is Organic ingredients.

When you make your own hair products you can pretty much dictate what and what doesn’t go into your hair.  You are going to have to play around and act as your own chemist when it comes to your hair as your hair is just as unique as you are.  Try adding a bit more of this and a bit less of that and see what results you get.  As the ingredients are all readily available and the products easy to prepare, every member of the household can have their own special organic hair care program.

As no chemicals have been used to make the products, homemade hair care will be kind to your hair, skin and to the environment. There are no fears of introducing chemically derived products such as Sodium Lauryl Sulphate to the hair and skin. Such chemicals are reported to cause skin irritation and many people try to avoid them.

INGREDIENTS:

No special ingredients are required to make your own organic hair products. Many of the items can be found in your store cupboard right now! Eggs, honey, cider vinegar and olive oil not only make a wonderful salad dressing, but also are great for use on hair to give you smooth, silky locks.

The most important thing to remember is that the better quality the ingredients, the better the end result will be. Therefore use the freshest of ingredients wherever possible. The benefit of using certified organic ingredients is that you have the reassurance that the ingredients you are using have been grown without the use of harmful chemicals or chemically derived substances.

Some of the most common ingredients used in homemade hair products are:

• Eggs
• Yogurt
• Fruit
• Avocado
• Honey
• Coconut Oil

Useful Websites

• Longlocks.com – a wide range of recipes.
• PioneerThinking.com – many recipes and ideas.
• KidzWorld.com – a children’s website, but it contains lots of useful information.

In general, the ingredients are mixed together and then applied to the hair and scalp. As there are no chemicals that have been added to speed the process along, better results are reported after leaving the ingredients on the hair for a couple of hours before rinsing well. This depends, of course, on the type of recipe or treatment.

As homemade hair care is completely natural, it also contains no preservatives. Therefore new mixes should be made each time, and any leftovers refrigerated in an airtight container.

• Cider Vinegar
• Chamomile
• Oils

These organic products are readily available from regular grocery stores and organic markets.

Hope this Helps,

Mark

This article I found interesting on www.organicauthority.com/ so I thought I would share with you.

How would you like to save around $30 a week while feeding your baby the highest-quality organic foods?

You can make a week’s supply of baby food in only 30 minutes with an innovative new kit that contains all of the supplies you need to create fresh cuisine for your pride and joy.

Designed for infants 4-6 months old, the So Easy Baby Food Kit preserves foods’ natural color, ensures your baby will not be exposed to harmful pesticides or additives (including sugar and salt) and allows great flexibility in choosing seasonal produce.

The kit, which contains a workbook, 22-minute educational video, nutrition reference cards and freezer trays, is one of the best-selling items at Inventive Parent, a Hampton, New Hampshire-based company that offers parenting tips and distinctive products.

“New parents appreciate the easy-to-follow instructions, recipes, and simple, reassuring nature,” says company founder Sharon Mullen.

“This kit takes all of the guesswork out of making your own baby food,” she tells OrganicAuthority.com. “It is a popular gift because it is thoughtful and unique. Customers who have been making their own food often purchase additional trays to let them make larger or more batches of food at a time.”

New moms are deciding to make their own baby food for several reasons, Mullen notes.

“They want to know what’s in the food they feed their baby,” she explains, “and this is the best way to control it. This increased involvement in your child’s diet is a natural progression from breastfeeding. It is an act of love to prepare a meal, and when you can combine this love with better nutrition, more convenience and less expense, you have a sure winner!

“Too often, the food made for older babies is a combination of several items,” she adds. “When you make your own food, you can control what goes on the plate and save these ‘casseroles’ for later.”

The do-it-yourself approach is also far less expensive than jarred alternatives, including the organic brands, she says.

“It’s nice to pull freshly made food out of your freezer, already divided into 1-oz. portions, rather than scooping food from countless bottles,” Mullen says. “You have an awful lot less recycling to take out every week!”

Important Health Note

Be sure to follow the directions enclosed in any baby food kit, as certain vegetables-particularly greens, spinach, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, celery, radishes, beets, carrots, cauliflower, French beans, parsnips, peas, potatoes and turnips-should never be used. They contain nitrates, naturally occurring chemicals that can lead to a potentially fatal condition known as “blue baby syndrome”-a type of anemia that causes infants to turn blue (hence, the name).

Infants younger than 6 months lack the stomach acids required to digest nitrates, so avoid these vegetables when going the make-it-yourself route. To be safe, physicians recommend waiting until your baby is 8-10 months old before using high-nitrate vegetables in homemade foods. It’s perfectly fine to buy jarred organic baby food that contains these vegetables, as the manufacturing process effectively eliminates nitrates.

Be advised that some organic-food proponents assert that organically grown produce does not contain nitrates. This is incorrect, as the nitrates come from within the vegetables-not just the soil in which they are grown. The So Easy Baby Food Kit includes a list of safe vegetables, based on infant age, so you can rest easy. With proper education, there’s no reason to postpone rolling up your sleeves to puree!

Okay we love our Organic Wipes that we sell but we thought we would post this in case you have time mommy to make your own.  (of course you have time right : )

Natural baby wipes made with flannel or terry cloth “towels” that can be washed and re-used rather than added to the land dump.

What you will need

For cloth you can go to your local Organic Cloth store.. . wait what.. there’s not one near you yet you say?  Okay well you can sneak and go get some non-organic (shame on you) at a regular craft store or you can order organic cloth online at http://www.nearseanaturals.com/ or                                                       http://www.organiccottonplus.com/Fabrics.html

Both sites are great and you should have everything you need from both of those.

Once you have have your flannel or alternate material here we go:

1.  Depending on the size go ahead and cut each sized flannel material into four strips from top-to-bottom. Try marking out the lines with a pencil and ruler to make them evenly sized.

2. Cut each strip of flannel into three blocks, from left-to-right. Again, you’ll find your efforts much more worthwhile if you measure the strip evenly before you cut.

3. You should have 12 squares now, measuring about 7″ x 7″ (possible a bit thinner if you used flannel material rather than receiving blankets). Now, take two squares and set them together. If you sew by hand, trim the
edges with pinking shears to avoid fraying. Otherwise, machine-sew them with a tight, even zig-zag stitch.

4. Repeat this process until you have about 24 wipes.

The Wipes Cleaning Solution

While herbal products are a safe, natural way of care, you shouldn’t use any skin product until your baby is at least 48 hours old. During this time, a clean cloth and warm water are best – definitely do not use any commercial, chemically-created products at this time.

The all-natural ingredients in this baby wipe wash, including lavender, aloe, and rosewater, will nourish your baby’s skin while effectively preventing and healing diaper rash.

1. Fold your cloth wipes in thirds length-wise and place in a “shoe box” sized plastic container with tightly securing lid.

2. Gather the following ingredients: lavender essential oil (not fragrance oil!), rosewater & glycerin, aloe vera gel, and castor oil.

3. In a bowl, place about 1 cup’s amount of aloe vera gel. Add to this the lavender oil, about 7 drops, and about 1/2 cup of rosewater & glycerin. Mix very well with a wooden spoon. When well mixed, add about 3 tablespoons of castor oil, and mix again. If the solution is still “thick”, add 1 tablespoon of water at a time until you have a liquid solution that can be poured.

4. Pour the cleaning solution over the cloth wipes in the plastic container, and place the lid. The solution will make its way through the layers of cloth within a few hours and be ready for use.

Alternative: Instead of combining the solution over the cloth wipes, you can store each separately. Place the cleaning solution in a 4-8 oz. bottle and when ready to use, mix 1/4 cup wash with 1/4 cup warm water to
cleanse baby using the cloth wipes.

Hope this Helps,

Mark