Homemade Hair Detangler

This is the face of a wild child. This is my daughter, and all her curly hair.  I don't have curly hair, so I've had to learn and relearn how to manage this head.  Brushing her hair would always end in tears.  She's an out doorsy, rough housing, climbing trees full of life wild child who won't hold still long.   Particularly if it hurts.

I've tried a couple things to tame these curls over the years.  Here are some of my favorite go to recipes to help ease the tears.

The first recipe is slightly tedious, but I like the way it leaves her hair feeling.  I also am glad to know it's natural.



Ingredients:

• 1 cup of water
• 1/4 cup marshmallow root (get from a natural foods store)
• 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (I use with the mother)
• 1 tablespoon of oil (oils like coconut, olive, or jojoba)
• 5-10 drops of lavender essential oil

Boil the water and the marshmallow root for about 20.  Allow it to cool, then strain the liquid through a cheesecloth, and add in the rest of the ingredients.

This is what I ended up with.  Who knew my crazy girl had such beautiful hair in there.  Now I know what you're thinking.  I don't have time for that.

I hear you, I don't always have time for that either.  So when I don't, here's what I use instead.

In an 8 ounce spray bottle I put in the following:

• A healthy squish of conditioner, like Avalon Organics Lavender Conditioner.
• water

It pretty much ends up 1 part conditioner (or less), 10 parts water.  Shake it up, and spray generously.

Linking back to Holistic Squid

How to make home made organic hand soap...cheap

Lately I've been doing research on what's in our hand soap, and it gets frightening when you start to dig a little deeper.  It encouraged me to find an easy way to make hand soap easily at home with out needing a ton of ingredients and that would be worth the price.

Well, I found it.  I started with a small bottle of castile soap I purchased from the travel section at Target a while back.  It was 89 cents.  Organic castile soap, is very inexpensive.  I'm happily surprised too at the ingredients listed in them.  Here they are:

Ingredients: Water, Saponified Organic Coconut*, Organic Palm* and Organic Olive* Oils (w/Retained Glycerin), Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Essential Oils**, Citric Acid, Vitamin E 

I grabbed an empty bottle of foaming soap and added in 1 part castile soap, 4 parts water.  Gave it a little swirl and was done.  Each push comes out just like the soap that was in it before.  It smells wonderful and does a fantastic job getting your hands clean.

Castile soap is so safe for your skin that you can use it with out diluting it as a shower soap.  I've even heard of some people brushing their teeth with it.  I don't know if I'd go that far.

I probably won't be buying a smaller bottle of castile soap anymore, but I'm hanging onto the little bottle to use for travel, and to make more hand soap when I run out.  The big bottle next to it goes for about 5 dollars.  That's pretty cheap for organic hand soap if you think about how many times you can refill the bottle.