Homemade Beauty Recipes

Aspirin Mask

Aspirin has salicylic acid in it, which comes from trees, and is good for drying up any acne outbreaks you may have. It is commonly used in face care products. The best aspirin to use is the inexpensive, uncoated aspirin. Once you find some, you need to grind it into as fine a powder as possible. (Natalie: A mortar and pestle are perfect for this) I keep my crushed aspirin in a mini-tupperware type container in the bathroom so it's handy. The aspirin is the dry portion of your mask.

Spoon a little of your powdered aspirin into a bowl. I never measure, but I guess for a whole face, I use about 3/4 to 1 tsp. of the powder. After you do it a few times, you will figure out just how much you need. For that amount of aspirin, mix in two drops of pure 100% aloe gel, one large drop of honey, and drop or two each of lavender and tea tree essential oils. Mix that together thoroughly with your spoon, and it's all ready. You should wash your face with warm water before using any mask, because it helps your pores open up so the mask can work deeply. Leave your mask on for at least 15 minutes, and then rinse with warm water.

I wouldn't do the mask more than two time a week for the first couple of weeks until your skin adjusts to it. Then you can work up to probably doing it every other day if you want. On the in-between days (especially at first when you're only doing the mask a couple of times a week), you can do a plain honey mask. Do that by just smearing plain honey on your face (and stay away from any bears or insects!) after washing, and again, leave it on for 15 minutes or more. The honey really helps to calm your skin, reduce any redness/inflammation, and make you glow. :smile:

Natalie: Wal-Mart's pharmacy will order lavender essential oil for you. Total cost: $3.50. We found 100% aloe vera gel at Target and a mortar and pestle at the local health food/nutrition store. If you can, get local honey from a beekeeper!

Conditioning Mixture

For hair, your aloe and honey are your best friends. I keep a plastic bowl in the bathroom, and I like to squirt my conditioner in the bowl, and then mix in some honey and aloe with it. I'd say I do about two parts conditioner to one part aloe and one part honey.

The honey and aloe are great humectants, which means they help your hair absorb moisture. About once a week, I like to do an apple cider vinegar rinse after shampooing (blondes should use white vinegar, as ACV has a tendency to darken light hair), and then use my conditioner mixture. I think the ACV really helps strip up any buildup that has accumulated on my hair shaft over the week, and then the super-charged conditioner mixture can really soak in.

- by April Hala

YLCF Team member reunion

You'd think it would have happened before now. After all, we've been friends for years, are both pastor's kids, missionary kids, homeschool graduates, have lived in Japan....and on and on the list goes. I tried to meet her when I lived in Okinawa but the ticket prices prevented. :sigh: I did enjoy my first phone conversations with her then.

She tried to meet me a year ago when she was in the States for a few weeks. I don't remember all the details but I know I was in Israel part of that time. It didn't work. And I was sad.

I was jealous when I heard she and Ashleigh got to meet. Two of my favorite people...I wanted to see them too. Then I had 48 hours notice that I was going to California. Turns out I have a 4 hour layover in Denver. Finally!!

It is easy to think of one word to describe April. Beautiful. She's such a dear. I just wish we had more time together. It was not enough.

We only had a couple hours so we found a table overlooking the Denver Airport fountains and talked. And talked and talked and talked. It didn't feel like I'd just "met" her. Instead, I was sure I was being reunited with an old friend: comfortable, and just nice. I think we covered pretty near every topic under the sun.

My best girlfriends all live hundreds of miles from me. That does not make them any less precious.

The Nativity Story, Part Two

Among the comments on April's review of The Nativity Story, there was the following observation:

I was a bit disapointed with some of the extra things they slipped in- I don't recall the Bible ever mentioning that Mary didn't want to marry Joseph, and Mary seemed somewhat sulky at the beginning of the movie.

Here's what April had to say:

This was exactly how I felt at the beginning of the movie. Righteous indignation welled up in me..."Mary wasn't like that! God chose her to be the mother of Jesus because He knew she was and would be the most godly woman to ever live and was the only woman in all of human history worthy enough to be the mother of the Savior! She would never have engaged in a wrestling match, no matter how playful! She would never sulk or run out of the house when forced to marry Joseph!"

But is that true?

The Bible doesn't say that she did those things (and therefore I agree that it was "creative license" that inserted those events), nor does it say she didn't do those things. Actually, it says very little about Mary's character. If you think about it, we're actually told more about Joseph's character than Mary's - that he was a righteous man (Matthew 1:19). All we are told about Mary is that she found favor with God (Luke 1:30), but we aren't told why. Was it because she was more godly than anyone who had ever or would ever live? Maybe, but the Scripture doesn't say that. Could it have been that God, in His sovereignty, rather chose to use a flawed young girl who would be submissive to His plans?

Luke shows us Mary was godly and knew the scriptures (Luke 1:46-55), but it doesn't say that she was perfect, always decorous, always respectful to authority. I think we get that picture into our minds, especially at this time of year. In our mind's eye, Mary is a figure dressed in blue silk with hands folded and a halo around her head.

In reality, Mary, and indeed all the people God used who are recorded in the Bible, were flesh and blood humans just like us. God didn't choose to only use perfect people, because there have never been and never will be perfect people. He uses people who, through no other virtue of their own, are willing to be used for His glory. That is a lesson The Nativity Story drove hard home to me. I have no excuse to look at the people of the Bible and sigh because I will never be as good as they were - good enough to be used by God. God chooses imperfect people like Mary, and yes, even like me, to accomplish His purposes in this world, and I am so thankful for that.

The Nativity Story

The Nativity Story is the first Biblically-based movie to be produced by a major film company since the epic Ben-Hur (1959). Epic The Nativity Story is not, at least not on the grand scale of Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments (1956), with lavish sets and thousands of extras. No, the strength of The Nativity Story lies in giving us a glimpse of the real lives and real emotions of real people.

Mary, a young girl forced into marriage to an older man she barely knows. Joseph, who chooses this girl because he sees in her a rare purity. Elizabeth, the godly older woman who understands Mary when no one else does. Joseph’s raw agony when he sees, in front of the entire city of Nazareth, that his bride has been unfaithful, and then his unbending commitment to his wife when he learns the truth. Mary, learning to love and trust and respect this man who is willing to share and posses her lifelong humiliation and ostracism from the people who were once her friends.

The film is simply and realistically set, and is supported by a strong historical context. The music in many places contains haunting reminiscences of well-loved Christmas carols.

As Christians, we believe “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but we have heard the story so many times, it has become flat. The Nativity Story reminds us that the people God chose to take the most important roles in the birth of Christ were ordinary people like us with dreams, disappointments, hopes, and fears.

- by April Hala

For the World Magazine review, click here.

Criteria for a spouse--good or bad? Part One

There has been much discussion on this topic. I decided to go ahead and share a conversation some friends of mine had a few months back. This is one of three posts...

April, a dear friend of mine from Japan, posed this question recently: What are your ideas about "husband lists"? No, no, not a list of guys you wouldn't mind marrying, I mean like a list of qualifications...your "must haves." (Of course, always taking into consideration that men are fallen creatures just like we are and won't always be perfect or godly.) I'm kind of torn in my feelings, and I'd like to know what thoughts the rest of you might have.

Do you have a list? What was your reason for making it? If you have a list, does it only include spiritual qualities, or does it have other things like entertainment preferences, eating likes/dislikes, certain abilities, etc.?

Chantel, another friend had this to say: I kept a mental list of things that I knew any person I considered must have. These were spiritual things, mostly. I kept away from being too "idealistic" because I've seen so many girls hopes shattered when their now husband isn't "perfect" according to their lists. There are a few things I consider vital- like being a true hearted Christain, which doesn't mean perfect, but striving, holding similar convictions as me- it'd be hard if he was totally against natural health or homeschool, since that's such a part of me, I'm not sure I'd be able to do anything else, and there's other things, I'm sure. Is a spiritual leader- I believe that's the husband's role, and I'm willing to sacrifice to help him be a strong leader.

Those are a few. Then there's things that would be nice, but don't really matter, and things that are kind of crazy, but we girls tend to think of things like "Has to have Blonde Hair and Blue eyes and be 6' 4'' and..." so on. Those things, I just don't feel right about. What if the one God has for me is totally opposite, and I close my heart because of what I want?

Lanier, as always, had great comments: I made a very detailed list the summer before I met Philip...it was shortly after seeing the movie 'Emma', and I'm afraid that the man of my list bore more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Knightly! I really don't remember much of what I wrote down, and I'm too lazy to run upstairs and hunt down my journal :)--plus the dinner to be considered--but there's one thing that the movie really pointed out to me that I just loved, and I recorded it something like "he should love me enough to want to help me become a better person, but too much to change me"--in essence, that I would become a more Christ-like person with him than without him. Well, that year held a series of disappointments, and by the next summer I was so jaded that I cried myself to sleep one night saying, "Lord, I don't care about any of my so-called requirements...just bring me the Godliest man You can find."

When I met Philip a few months later, I was actually extra-guarded simply because he already manifested so many of the things on that original list. The more I got to know him, the more it scared me! :) All that to say, God so overly-abundantly answered that latter prayer of mine in bringing me a man whose walk with God challenges and inspires me like nothing has ever done before...but he truly has the very personal traits that I always dreamed of. Someone mentioned earlier about not letting our 'requirements' become an idol, and that's what I had done. But that didn't mean that they weren't some of the very things that God really wanted to give me. Does that make any sense? I wasn't until I gave them up that I could fully receive the precious man of my dreams.