Balchik Palace and Botanical Garden

One of my biggest dream is to visit as many gardens as possible around the Europe. This year on my list was the Balchik Palace and Botanical Garden constructed for Queen Marie of Romania between 1926 and 1937 . A magical place I could say now after my visit there. Is a place where you find peace and harmony, simple but in the same time majestic, a place that I cannot describe in words, is a must see place to truly understand its beauty.

One of the botanical garden’s main attraction is the outdoors collection of large-sized cactus species arranged on 1,000 square metres, the second of its kind in Europe.

There is also an indoors cactus collection

The Palace garden left me speechless, so I let some of the pictures I took there to show you what I cannot describe 🙂

In one word – a must see place !

Homemade Aloe Vera lotion

I realized that no matter how natural are my shop bought skin care products they are far from the homemade ones.

As summer is that time of year when my skin is exposed the most to the sun, garden plants that can cause allergies or scratches, bugs bites, dust and dirt that clog the pores and cause acne issues, I had to come up with a recipe that suits my skin and solve all these skin issues in no time 🙂

So I made myself an Aloe Vera skin lotion.

I cut a big leaf from the base of my plant

Wash it well

Peel it off from one side to expose the gel

Scoop the gel into a bowl

Mash it with a fork

Until the pulp release the liquid

Cover and let it sit in fridge for few hours. It will oxidize into a beautiful pink

Strain the liquid, pressing down the remaining pulp to get as much liquid as possible

Put the liquid into a small glass bottle and add few drops of tea tree essential oil, vitamin E and sweet almond oil

I am not going to explain here the benefit of each ingredient, you can find their benefits over the internet

The oils will float on top of the aloe liquid

So it needs to be shake well before each use

I put my lotion into two different type of bottles, one with a roll-on to use for sunburns, allergies or scratches and bugs bites on my body

And one with a normal lid to use on my face for acne issues. To not contaminate the lotion I use a cotton swab to apply the lotion and than drop it and use a clean one each time

This is my Aloe Vera homemade lotion and it works miracles on my skin.

I keep them in the fridge and use as needed.