The Green touch

 Hi there, If you stumbled upon this blog, welcome! Even though there are still great resources on here, you should know that this blog hasn't been updated since 2013. I invite you to check out my new blog, thegreentouch.net , about personal finances with an environmental twist. See you there!

Here is the list of the different peeling ingredients I may or may not have mentioned on the blog. The great thing about it, you probably already have them in your kitchen. Face peeling - thin salt in a little bit of oil (olive for example) That's what I use, once a week :) - wheat bran. You can mix it with yoghurt but I guess it's just as fine in olive oil. I would especially recommend this for sensitive skins as it's extremely soft (a bit too soft for my taste though). I bought the wrong type of flour so that was a good way to use the bran after sifting the flour. - coffee grounds. Slightly more abrasive than thin salt but still ok Body peeling - sugar! and honey and olive oil --> See honey sugar scrub here . - coffee grounds Hair Yes, hair, or more precisely, scalp scrub. From what I read, it helps you get rid of dead skin cell and stimulates circulation and hair growth. You can choose any of the ingredients above depending on how sensiti

Yoghurt is another of the dishes I started to make to reduce my own waste. As I like to have dessert after a meal, I was actually collecting more than enough yoghurt pots to make homemade soap ;) (if you don't understand this joke, see "how to make soap" articles ). Making yoghurt is quite simple and cheap. You don't even need a yoghurt-machine, you can use an oven. Regarding the ingredients, just milk, and a yoghurt that will ferment the milk and transform it into yoghurt. And also anything else to flavor it (honey and jam for example). Quality is important here, both for the milk and the yoghurt. Milk Choose full-cream milk. It doesn't need to be cow milk; it can be any other animal milk. Vegetal milk too. I tried with soya milk (Go green, I haven't tried with Alpro) and it works, but I hear that with other vegetal milk you need thickeners. Yoghurt as a "starter" First you will need to buy a yoghurt, and then you can reuse one of

Just because I don't post anything doesn't mean I don't do environmental stuff. Most of the time I must say I'm just lazy: I have an article to write about homemade yogurt for example and I know this one will take time to write... So today I decided to write about small, easy, random (and short to write about) tricks I do all the time. Trick n°1: use reusable shopping bags France is terribly ahead of Norway in that matter. 10 years ago you could also get (free) plastic bags at the supermarkets. Non biodegradable bags were forbidden in 2005, but I discover now that only the law was voted in 2005, and the deadline was fixed in 2010. Free plastic bags actually disappeared from the great majority of supermarkets as early as 2006 it seems. Instead you could buy very solid plastic bags for 0,50 cts (right one on the picture). From then on people got used to carry their own bags when going shopping. But I remember a friend who kept forgetting in the beginning and who ha

Lately I decided to stop buying one of the three things I eat most often and make them myself. The idea was to reduce the amount of waste. One of them is garlic croûton. I like to eat "light" in the evening, especially when I have to get up early (eating beaf doesn't help falling asleep for exemple). I often have a corn and cumcumber salad which I like to eat with croûtons, otherwise it's boring :) But as I eat this dish quite often, I used to buy a lot of croûtons. I had to choose between croûtons emported from the US and overpacked european croûtons, which were, on the top of that, not particularly tasty. Now I make them myself, every two or three weeks. That's very easy, that's cheap, and they're delicious :) The first recipe I tried requested half a baguette, 6 garlic cloves, herbs and 50 cl olive oil, which is waaaaaay too much. The idea was to squeeze the garlic to bring out the taste as much as possible and mix it with oil. Quite a lot of

Ever since I got a job, I don't make as many cosmetic products as before. But this one is very simple to make and so pleasant to use. Smells delicious and you'll understand why. It's a body peeling with only kitchen-ingredients. - 4 table spoons sugar - 2 table spoons honey - 2 table spoons oil Mix everything and...it's ready! --> The more liquid the honey, the better. Mine is slightly hard but is just mix everything with the finger before use. --> Use preferably organic ingredients --> Use any oil, but if you don't have antioxydant, don't use a fragile oil. I chose olive and apricot oil. It leaves the skin really soft but I think sugar would be a bit harsh for a facial peeling. Recipe found on http://www.faitesmaison.com

I know it's a bit late for a Christmas article but I just wanted to tell you about the present for my 9 year old goddaughter. Same principles as last year , homemade, second hand presents or "personal vouchers", except this year I didn't have time at all for homemade. So I went for personal vouchers and it's not too late for you today. It's a great way to find a gift that will truly please your beloved, instead of rushing to the mall and buying whatever you find because you have to. This kind of gifts tend to stay in a drawer, or ends up on ebay... I sent my goddaughter a nice postcard, wrapped in gift paper. The card was saying: this year for Christmas, I take you to the movies! I saw her yesterday, she's really excited :)!