Spa At Home
Maple Syrup Sea Salt Scrub
Turn your bathroom into an oasis of calm. It’s amazing how taking a half hour to yourself can rejuvenate your mind and spirit.
A great pick-me-up is a sea salt scrub. I recently tried a new recipe with Canadian Maple Syrup and loved it. This sea salt scrub fills the air with a fresh aroma that lasts throughout the shower, but won’t linger on the skin. The gentle scrub left my skin feeling soft and moisturized.
Ingredients: 4 cups of finely ground sea salt, 1 cup of maple syrup, 1/2 cup of honey, 1 cup organic olive oil, and 1/2 cup of sweet almond oil.
Directions: Mix all the ingredients together and apply scrub in circular motions avoiding the face and eyes. Rinse and pat dry.
Coffee Body Scrub
Don’t throw away those old coffee grounds. This homemade body treatment blends them with cocoa and shea butter to create an aromatic and soothing body scrub.
Ingredients: 1/4 cup of coffee grounds, 1/3 cup of shea butter, 1-2 tsp of dark schocolate cocoa powder, 2-3 dropf of cherry extract.
Directions: Mix all the ingredients together and add a small amount of water to get a creamy consistency. In a steamy shower appl scrub in circular motions avoiding the face and eyes. Rinse and pat dry.
Exfoliating Tips:
1. Always start at your feet and work up toward the torso. Once you reach the waist, work from the wrists up toward the shoulders. Moving toward the heart increases circulation, which brings more nutrients to the skin’s surface.
2. Focus on each section of the body for about 2 minutes.
3. Don’t scrub the same day you shave. Both process are exfoliating , and exfoliating too often can cause irritation and dry skin. You don’t need to exfoliate more than 2-3 times per week.
4. Use pure Argon Oil after you are finished showering and while your skin is still damp. My favorite products to moisturize after exfoliation are by a Santa Barbara based company called ACTIVAROMA. These products are by far the best that I have come across. http://www.activaroma.com/argan-oil/