Homemade Aloe Vera lotion

13 Aug 2019 Leave a comment

by greenzonelife in DIY

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.

Spotted – the game

30 Jul 2019 Leave a comment

by greenzonelife in Miscellaneous

We like to travel, a lot, but sometime long trips in the car can transform any kid into a bored one. I let my girl to play on the tablet or watch cartoons in the car but she doesn’t do it very often. We play all sort of games but in the end, if the trip is too long we all get bored. So I search for something that will keep all of us busy in the car and I found “Spotted” – the game.

I wanted to tell you about this game because we like it very much, is not a payed advertisement, is my opinion.

It’s a family game, even if it’s for 2 persons, everybody in the car can contribute, at least we do so 🙂

It has 2 board where you place 12 tokens from a main bag with lots of images and every time you see something on the road that you have on your board you put that token in your bag and take another token from the main bag. I am not going to explain here the rules of the game, you can find it on the internet.

The most interesting thing is that it has 4 empty tokens that you can customize with images that the author of the game didn’t think of. Well for us 4 were not enough so we made another 8 more and I am sure there are even more to come.

We used some sort of woody-cardboard to make the tokens and stickers with images that we printed.

Is a bit of work to make the tokens to fit exactly into the board, but after a few you got the idea and the work goes smoothly 🙂

The two on the top are the original ones and the two on the bottom are the ones we made, not much of a difference 🙂

Anyway, I recommend this game to everyone who have children and like to travel.

I draw – you cook! challenge

19 Jul 2019 Leave a comment

by greenzonelife in Cooking

Few days ago I saw a show where kids were drawing fantasy foods and some chefs were cooking things to match the kids drawings. I’m not a chef, but a crazy mum who wants to try crazy things. So I put my kid to draw something than to cook it together 🙂

She drew something that I wasn’t expected. I was hoping more of something that could be made out of cookies, fruits or veggies, but she drew a rainbow snowflake 🙂

So it took me a while to figure out how to “cook” this. Finally I decided to make a meringue, colored with natural powders.

I printed the drawing to obtain a more accurate shape and place it under a sheet of baking paper

than I started to mix the powders with the meringue.

I used beetroot powder for red, beetroot and saffron for orange, saffron for yellow, matcha tea for green, blue spirulina for blue, blue spirulina and beetroot for violet and hibiscus for pink.

And I got all those amazing colors using only natural powders.

The final product 🙂

And yes, it was delicious 😀

Next on my list will be a rainbow cake 😛

Blue ice cream

12 Jul 2019 Leave a comment

by greenzonelife in Cooking

We all know that when it comes to food coloring, blue is one color that is hard to get in natural ways. Since I got the ice cream machine, my little girl asked me when will we make blue ice cream. After a tedious search on the internet I found the natural solution to make ice-blue ice cream.

The secret is: blue spirulina.

I use a simple base of cream and white chocolate and added like 1/4 of teaspoon of blue spirulina powder. That’s it! Blue ice cream. Nice and delicious 🙂

Nails and cuticles oil

02 Jul 2019 Leave a comment

by greenzonelife in DIY

In some of my pictures you could see that I have long nails, I just love having them long even sometimes I have to cut them really short because they break so easily. Keeping them long and healthy is a real battle while gardening, cooking and doing daily jobs around the house. So I tried to find a natural way to feed them to maintain them in good shape.

I found the solution that works best for me and is the most convenient and natural way to feed my nails and cuticles, but also good for the skin of my hands which become very dry after a day in the garden or after keeping my hands in water for too long.

A simple mixture of almond oil and vitamin E is all you need. I added 5 drops of vitamin E to every 15 ml of almond oil in a small glass jar and use it to gently massage my cuticles and nails every evening before I go to bed and every morning before I leave the house to go to job.

I am so pleased with the result, so that is why I share it with you in case you might want to try it 🙂

Ice cream cones

27 Jun 2019 Leave a comment

by greenzonelife in Cooking

At some point, when making homemade ice cream you might want to serve it in an ice cream cone, not just in a bowl. So homemade ice cream cones are a good choice to match the homemade ice cream 🙂

icecreamcone

To make the cones I use a special appliance

aparatconuri

and the classic recipe that is in the manual

reteta

I keep them in an airtight container to maintain them crisp and use as needed.

conuri

Ice cream everyday

25 Jun 2019 Leave a comment

by greenzonelife in Cooking

We love ice cream, being summer or winter, sweet or sour, all kind, all day 🙂

I used to buy lots of ice creams, but the so called natural is extremely expensive, and the ones in the market shops are full of chemicals, so I decided to make my own.

I started with an ice cream machine that uses a ball that you keep in the freezer for 24 hours than you can use it to make the ice cream, but the bowl broke after few uses and the other machine that I bought after was at no good, it just did not manage to freeze the ice cream mixture. So I started to make ice cream the classic way, putting the mixture in lolly trays in the freezer or in a bigger container, but this way the ice cream got too frozen and full of ice.

So I decided to make a little investment and buy myself an automatic ice cream machine that uses a compressor to freeze the ice cream in about 30 minutes.

aparat

Now we eat ice cream every day 🙂

The recipe I use is simple, just mix together: fruits, milk and cream and sometime a bit of sugar if the fruits are too sour.

Strawberries ice cream

capsuni

Sweet cherries ice cream

cirese

Almond ice cream (instead of fruits I put almond flour)

migdale

The options are limitless 🙂

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