Food For Your Face - Oatmeal Facial Scrub

"The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight,
When one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy."

~Persian proverb~



This is a food post in a sense that it is food and it is completely edible but it is very good for your face as well. It's a facial scrub.

I have been making this after having read a book on organic beauty. A book that gives recipes for a totally natural way to glowing skin and good health.

I remember very well in my early twenties at having purchased a rather expensive oatmeal facial scrub that cost me a large chunk of my salary. After using it a few times I found that my skin felt fresher, looked brighter and had a nice clean feel, probably very much the way a man feels after a shave I suppose. I loved that scrub and purchased it a few times after that until it deprived me of food and water.

But somehow after some disruption in my life I never bought that scrub again. And because I also had a short memory and a short attention span I never did manage to buy that scrub again because after a long hiatus I couldn't for the life of me remember what the brand was.

But I never forgot what it was made of and how it felt. So I recreated it with some guide and hints from an Organic Beauty book by Josephine Fairley and I have been using it twice a week or at least once a week. It makes my complexion clearer, smoother and it certainly gets rid of the dead cells and allows my skin to breathe. Of course you can use it all over your body but I have never tried that simply because I don't need to. I use steel wool for my body. Ok I'm just joking.

The honey moisturizes your skin. The olive oil also moisturizes your skin and the oatmeal acts as a scrub to get those dead cells off your face so that new, younger skin cells can replace them.

Besides costing me next to nothing to care for my skin making my own scrub gives me total confidence that whatever is in it is safe and not harmful unlike the long list of chemicals in a purchased jar of a skin care product. But best of all it works.

This little bit can last you two to three weeks but make sure you store it in an airtight glass jar and keep it in the fridge. If you still have some left over throw it away or give it to the neighbour's cat/dog and make a new batch or halve the recipe. It's very economical.

Here it is for the sake of health and beauty :

4 tablespoons of organic oatmeal (rolled oats), ground in a grinder till fine
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of honey

Mix all three ingrdients with a fork and store in a small glass jar in the fridge.

To use :

Wet face with water. Put a little, about half a teaspoon of the scrub on the palm of your hand and with the other hand scoop some up and apply to your face rubbing it all over and putting on some more as you go along. Use it over your neck as well. Wash off with lukewarm water.

Admire yourself.

ANOTHER RECIPE

This following recipe is taken directly from the Organic Beauty book by Josephine Fairley. It's a mask for normal to dry skin and it's really good too. My skin felt soft and moisturized after I used it.

The egg and avocado blended beautifully and according to Fairley are highly moisturizing since they both have a high fat content. The recipe also uses mayonnaise which is well known to tone and smooth skin. Sometimes though when I'm lazy I just slap on some mayonnaise and scare my husband.

Honey and Avocado Mask

1 egg
1/2 avocado (peeled, with the stone taken out)
1 tsp organic mayonnaise
1 tsp honey
1 tsp baking soda
2 drops orange essential oil (I did not use this but I guess you can use orange zest which contains the oil)

Puree the avocado, egg, mayonnaise in a blender, then add honey and remaining ingredients. Alternatively you can beat it by hand and add teh baking soda last. This mask needs to be used al at once, so apply any extra to the chest and neck areas.