All this farmgirl stuff started spiraling out of control on a plane to Vegas if we really wanted to pinpoint a moment.  Isn’t it amazing how a seemingly small event can make such an impact down the road (a country road in our case)?  I picked up a book on natural beauty to read on the plane.  As an ex-model I was always very concerned about how I looked and I am afraid a bit of my identity was wrapped up in my face (I am better now!) so imagine when in my late twenties acne became my new accessory. Ignorance is truly bliss, but I suppose knowledge is too.  I found out about all the toxic, cancer causing, unidentifiable, petroleum based ingredients in my beauty and bath products, and what I was putting on my young children’s skin!  www.cosmeticsdatabase.com did the rest.  I was done for.

When we got home from our trip, out went a huge trash bag of beauty and body products and in went all organics.  (And another trash bag of cleaning products and pharmaceuticals!)  Well, the organics were pricey and they still had ingredients in them that were not exactly non-toxic.  I started on a mission to make all our own body products.  I made lotion first, which I am still slightly famous for, then came sugar scrub, salts, shampoo, hair spray, deodorant….everything.  Oh, I was on a roll.  A monster had been made.

We started out in a cookie cutter suburban house that cost way too much, in a not very interesting suburb, working ridiculously hard to pay for things we didn’t get to enjoy.  Stressed out and making more money than we ever had, we paid our debts (wealth really is an illusion, isn’t it?) and thought this was a normal life. What saved us was Dave Ramsey University and a farmer’s market.

A farmer’s market where I took all the body products and the ten or so herbal medicines I had learned to make in a Certified Herbalist Course.  We make a lot more medicines than that now but it was those first years of farmer’s markets that allowed us get where we are.  So, when Doug finally had that nervous breakdown over servers that never came back up, we took our cue and left the “normal life.”  It was a risk, but we did 6-8 markets a week and moved to a smaller town not far from where we were.  We cut our bills in half. We found a shop just over two years ago.  The rest is still being written.

As a gift to you for Christmas (and perhaps a gift from you to all your friends!) I want to share my sugar scrub recipe.  So lovely and simple.  Happy Holidays!

SUGAR SCRUB

In a 4 oz canning jar, pour sugar in leaving 1/2 inch head space.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla essential oil and 1 teaspoon of orange essential oil. Only use essential oils!

Then pour rich olive oil up to the very rim and let soak in.  Replace lid and shake vigorously.

Experiment with other essential oils too.  I love this blend for the holidays, it smells like a creamsicle!   This leaves your skin amazingly soft and glowing.