Lighten up Research

No pictures today - just a quick update on some of my R&D efforts. And this should come with a long post warning!

Lip gloss - I have a version of this that still isn't quite lip gloss, but it is a very nice lip treatment. It has glycerin (which is a plant oil based goop), Vitamin E oil, Vitamin C oil, Hazelnut oil, and pomegranate. The good news is that it works. The Vitamin C stimulates collagen, so the skin of my lips actually comes out of this smoother and fuller. The bad news is that it still separates- I'm hoping to fix that in the next iteration - and it doesn't stick like I would like. I have to reapply it regularly. It looks like this will be an ongoing experiment! I'll keep you posted.

When I was researching lip gloss, I found some recommendations for skin and eye treatments. I'm washing my face with one now. I removed the castile soap from this recipe, since I'm trying the oil method on my face. I'm not sure if this recipe just needs tweaking for my skin or if my face doesn't really like the oil method, but there is still more work to do before I'm satisfied with my face wash. This also looks like an ongoing thing. It is a good thing that I enjoy research!

The one skin thing that I am quite pleased with at the moment is the eye treatment that I created. This is purely based on a combination of ingredients that I found in other research. The current mix is almond oil, apricot kernel oil, licorice root (for lightening dark circles) and, once again, Vitamin C. My recipe will probably get modified slightly with further iterations, but I'm in no hurry on this one. This combination works for me. I'll just need to add something to "tighten" this skin a bit in the next round.

And now, for something completely different! I'm also experimenting with house cleaning stuff. I have a strange looking spray bottle filled with vinegar, a few drops of tea tree oil and several cinnamon sticks. I've tried it on a bunch of stuff to date and here is what I've found.

Best ever:

1. It is better than anything I've ever tried for dealing with hard water/mineral deposits. I know that this isn't that important for most of you soft water living people, but WOW! It is VERY exciting here. A lot of our kitchen and bathroom "dirt" is either just the deposits or deposits that have dirt embedded in them. This is huge for me!
2. Cleaning the cat water bowl. This deals with a combination of our hard water problem and the slime that naturally builds up when cool water comes in contact with anything else. HTH is really excited about this development because this is very similar to the slime that occurs in ice machines. (If you value the food in your stomach, NEVER look behind the service panel of any ice machine. Trust me on this one!) Current commercial cleaners are so nasty that - despite all the time rinsing the machine after cleaning - the first batch of ice has to be harvested and thrown away just to be safe. Since this is all food grade material, that would not be necessary. And if it works on ice machines? It will work on any slime ever! I'll happily mix up a batch for that test when the time comes!
   

Good enough:

1. Floors - I've been spot cleaning with the spray bottle and using vinegar to mop instead of bleach. The advantage is mostly no longer being careful about mop water near where the carpet touches the tile. Also, with the flu/cold season hitting HTH pretty hard, the vinegar is less irritating than bleach to already annoyed lungs.

Meh - you know, not impressed, not annoyed - just Meh:

1. Glass - I've only done this twice and don't feel very strongly about it either way.
2. Shower walls. I'm thinking about switching to straight vinegar for this one. The tea tree is supposed to be antiseptic and the cinnamon is supposed to add a little more anti-fungal power, but I'm not sure that I need it here. And I think the cinnamon is darkening the grout slightly - not like mold or anything, just turning the white grout to a lovely cinnamon color. This is starting to bug me, so I'll try the vinegar alone and see.
   
3. Tile counter tops - same as the shower walls. But I'm adding a straight peroxide spray after the vinegar based on articles like this for serious antibacterial cleaning.

With the week I foresee at work (loving the President's Day holiday today!), I thought I'd get this all out of my head and into the blog. I hope to be able to update on the herb bed this week, but no promises that I will be able to work on it AND write about it. If nothing else, I should be able to post when I hit New York on the 25th - since I won't be able to do anything about all of this stuff then!