DIY: Hairspray & Live Young’s Youtube Channel

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to make your own hairspray.

*If you like your hairspray to have fragrance, you can add in 1/4 cup rose water to your cooled hairspray mixture or boil down 2 tangerines, strain, and add the tangerine water into your cooled hairspray mixture.

*Do Not add alcohol to your hairspray mixture! Not only is it not good for your hair, it is also not good to inhale when sprayed.  Alcohol in typical hairsprays dries out hair, thus causing the hair shafts to weaken to the point of breakage.

 

Earth’s Berries Giveaway! CLOSED

In honor of the holiday season, I’ve decided to give away one 500g bag of Earth’s Berries!

If you haven’t heard about these, check out my review on them here.

Holiday Gift Guide (Sustainable) 2011

Sustainable Holiday Gift List for 2011

All of the gifts I’ve selected are perfect for the conscious consumer. I would encourage you to shop local and support your hometown businesses as well; hey, have you ever been into an antique or vintage shop? So much cool stuff! But if you can’t find what you need in your town or if like me, you don’t care for malls or retail/outlet stores due to overpricing, lack of socially responsible products, or you don’t want to join the crowed of shoppers who think it’s acceptable to pepper spray each other, then this list is for you.

What makes these gifts sustainably responsible?  They each have one or more of these traits:

• Made using renewable energy which helps reduce dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power, thereby reducing energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions.
• Made cruelty-free.
• Chemical & toxin-free.
• Made from recycled or renewable materials.
• Good for the earth: buying this product instead of something else will help reduce your use of energy or reduce your carbon footprint.
• The product is made by a company that has strict labor or environmental laws that protect people and the earth or are Fair Trade.

-Still need more help shopping? Green America has an awesome site with a product+store locater. Just go here,

click on whatever you’re looking for under ‘Browse by Category’, and it will pull up a list of places and stores to find it.

If the store is not in your state, check out their website link (on the right-hand side).

-If you don’t care for anything on this list, follow some of the outbound links to the gifts I’ve listed below. Maybe you’ll find something on one of these ethical company’s websites.

Ditch It: Your Bad Habit,You Didn’t Know Was Bad…

Ahh, Smart Water…

it tastes so refreshing, and like Jennifer Aniston believes, the name says it all: drinking bottled water is a smart choice, right? Wrong. Here’s why, 

Clean Anything. DIY: Make Your Own Cleaning Solutions At Home

There’s a lot of reasons why it makes sense to make your own cleaning ‘products’ at home:

-The Safety of you, your family, and pets.

Read the warning labels on the products you buy, they caution about safety when using. Common sense may tell you that if the directions say “do not inhale” or that you should “open a window to let air in while using product”, that perhaps the product your using imposes risks to the safety of your health. The use of these products with ingredients like formaldehyde, triclosan, fragrances, ammonia, can cause illness, allergies, skin problems, etc. Products (like bleach) not only kill the germs on your counter, but they kill the cells in your body too. Your immune system can manage the everyday germs in your household. But your body can’t always protect itself from the effects of dangerous chemicals in the long run.

Ditch your toxic cleaners for good.

-Save Money. By using ingredients you already have in your own home/kitchen, you won’t have to go to the store to spend extra money on product.

-Sustainability. Using natural/food products in your cleaning means the environment isn’t being harmed (because your ingredients in your cleaning supplies come from nature). So  you don’t have to worry about disposing of bottles/containers that once held your toxic cleaning chemical. Or dumping out excess cleaning product down your drain or into your local water supply.

Here are recipes and solutions for you to clean your home safely with. (Remember, if you have a food allergy or are allergic to oil ingredients, you obviously wouldn’t want to use those ingredients, but you can always substitute ingredients).

Here’s my Shopping List~

These are basically all/the main ingredients I use in all my home, car, or outside cleaning:

-Essential Oils: Jasmine, Rosebud, Lavender, Almond, Lemongrass oil, Tangerine oil (whichever scents you want your home to smell like).

[*Note: Be sure you're buying certified Organic, Essential Oils.

There's a lot of watered-down, commercialized products on the market. For oils, I love Thieves, Young Living Brand, but I can rarely afford to buy this brand, so I buy mine locally at my Food Co-Op. You can find essential oils in the health market section of your grocery store, at health food stores, or online.

Also, be a conscious consumer. Look for certifications like USDA, Fair Trade Certified, or made in the USA].

- Tea Tree Oil. Tea Tree contains terpenes and other phytochemicals that are naturally powerful antiseptic and fungal killers. Tee Tree oil is often added to natural soaps because it is considered a safe germ killer.

-Lemon Juice from Lemons.

- Baking Soda

- Tap Water

- 1 Bottle Club Soda

- Dr.Bronner’s Liquid Soap

- Table Salt

- Distilled Vinegar

- Recycled Newspaper for polishing away smudges and cleaning glass surfaces.

- Rags from old tshirts or repurposed clothes.

- Recycled Pouring Containers, glass bottles or Spray Bottles to hold your cleaning solutions. Here’s how I mix mine:

If you have a few of these ingredients on hand, now you too can learn How to Make Your Own Green Cleaning Supplies; read how after the jump

Earth’s Berries: Laundry Review

Introducing,

Earth’s Berries, Soap Berries.

If you’re searching for an environmentally-friendly or healthy & safe laundry line, search no longer. You can’t get much closer to nature than Earth Berries. Earth’s Berries successfully clean your clothes all while helping people across the world.

Economical, Eco-Friendly, and Humanitarian, it washes my clothes over and over again beautifully~

I have no reason to go back to using commercial laundry detergent. Earth’s Berries remove scents and stains from my clothes and allow my clothing to hold its color longer. One bag of Earth’s Berries lasts me months longer than a standard bottle of [Tide] laundry detergent. Not only do laundry detergents have ingredients that aren’t good for you or your children’s health, they also pollute our water systems. Using Earth’s Berries means I don’t have to worry about detergent on my skin or allergies. Plus, I’m not contributing to filling up the landfills or polluting water supplies.

Earth’s Berries has such a nice website explaining their story & philanthropy, I wanted you to see for yourself:

“I am loving the Soap Nuts! Economical, ecological, village building, planet saving, people saving! Karen’s story about a whole village being employed touched my heartstrings – a small change in my habits could mean a huge change in someone else’s life. My clothes come out clean, soft and with no fragrance and a family is able to put food on their table – it’s a win-win situation.”
-Jan

“I was amazed to discover that those natural little nuts where able to take the stink out of our our workout clothes. I have noticed that our clothes are softer without having to use a softener and keeping one more bottle of chemicals out of our home is wonderful. It’s a very cost effective way to do laundry especially with our HE washer the commercial detergent is expensive, plus no big plastic bottle to throw out every month, and it’s earth and body friendly. Everyone should try them.”
Sarah