Today, I get to introduce you to my first guest blogger. I love Nikki's blog and was thrilled when she contacted me about my Laundry Detergent post. Her blog is filled with fantastic ideas and information. She shares yoga poses (something that is fascinating to me, but I have not ventured into yet,) delicious recipes, movie reviews and my favorite thing, Frugal Tip Fridays. Really, you don't want to miss this stuff. Check out her ideas for Simple Living in a Big City.
Hi! I'm Nikki and I'm so excited and grateful to be guest blogging on Tina's blog, The Common Cents Home. Her Do It Yourself tips especially the one on how to make your own laundry detergent are so frugal and simple and work great! She has a beautiful blog full of such useful ideas! While she is guest blogging over at my blog, I'm here to share one of my favorite things for Friday Favorites.
I'm a wife and mom to a furbaby, Lealu:) We live in Brooklyn NYC and while things can get pretty expensive here I always try to keep a level head with spending and paying off bills. Now that I'm married and I know I'll be here in this city for awhile, being frugal and living simple in the big city is teaching me how to survive while still being able to pay for life things, weddings, showers and birthdays, and indulge in those little things like a Starbucks chai every once in awhile. My blog is about my life and how we live frugally and simply in a big city. Stop by and say hi and Simple Living in a Big City!
I don't know what its from, but I'm guessing its the cold snowy weather were having in combination with sweating in double layered socks while wearing my rainboots that is making my feet so horribly dry. They've been dry before but never this bad. The other day I came home from work and walking in the living room with my socks on and my feet started to hurt. I was thinking "Why would my feet be hurting while I'm wearing socks? They're not cold, and its not like I have nails lying around that I could've stepped on". So I went to the bathroom took off my socks and saw it...it was awful...my feet looked like sandpaper (and this is being brutally honest) and what was hurting wasn't that, but as actually a crack in my skin from my feet being so dry! This has never happened to me before so I was mortified. I took out a foot lotion that as kind of expensive 26$ to be exact and lapped it on, put my socks on overtop and slept with the lotion on. Ones that look like these expensive kinds:
The next morning I noticed that the lotion did help the dryness a little but not very much and didn't do anything about the cracking, maybe just softened the skin slightly, but it wasn't enough! I needed full force moisture!! The next night, I remembered that I had gone to the health store and picked up a small bottle of calendula ointment for my face (I like a lot of extra moisture on my face), so I pulled the small bottle out. I took about three fingerfulls (that is all it took) and lapped this stuff onto my feet, pulled my socks back on, and the next morning, the skin on my feet actually resembled skin!! lol. The dryness was completely gone and the cracks were barely there. The next night I used the calendula ointment again, and the cracks were completely gone after that. I thought, its pretty sad that I spent 26$ on a bottle of lotion that really didn't help me too much with dryness, and only 10$ on a bottle of much more potent, much more natural even, ointment that literally healed my dryness overnight! So I thought I'd pass along the info. Since calendula is an herb in an ointment there are a bunch of products with it in it, so whichever you choose, I would just go for the most potent. An example of calendula ointment is below if you'd like to take a look:
The Natural Healing Guide had this to say about calendula "Therapeutic effect
Calendula ointment has two principal effects on skin wounds. First, it act as a natural antibiotic to kill germs, thereby cleaning the wound and helping to prevent infection. Second, it promotes blood-cell growth in regenerating skin tissue, speeding the healing process and helping to minimize thew formation of scars."
Not only does this save you money in the long run, on the amount of lotion you'll end up purchasing, but it will also help you heal faster too! Good Luck in this crazy winter weather!
See you soon!
Nikki
Monday: Carpet Cleaning
