Kitchen Stewardship

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You know how buying natural beauty and personal care products often ends up hurting your pocketbook as much as it helps the earth and your health?  A classic Kitchen Stewardship conundrum.  I have just the solution for you:

I was introduced to Natural Momma just this spring, and I couldn’t believe my luck.  Audrey makes a range of natural, 100% organic products, and the prices rival regular store prices for regular items.  Seriously.  And they don’t even touch what you’d pay for a “fancy” product at one of those home parties.  Let me say it again:  You will not break your budget shopping here.

Audrey is a certified Holistic Health Practitioner and Master Herbalist, so these products are the real thing.  I love love love that I can put this stuff on my skin, my largest organ, and not worry one bit about what I’m drinking in, metaphorically…because most of the ingredients could be eaten by mouth anyway (not that you should…no lawsuits, please!).  On the store site, Audrey lists each ingredient and explains why it is in the product, just the kind of thing that jazzes up a wanna-be academe like me!

I’m going to brag about some of my purchases, but you really need to just head on over to Natural Momma’s Etsy store and browse around for yourself.  Here’s what I ended up buying:

Minty Face Wash: A seriously fun scent to use each night, and it gets makeup and other grime off just splendidly. Don’t get it in your eyes while you’re taking your mascara off, though – let’s just say “trust me” on that one!    It does get the eye makeup off, which is always a perk for a face wash.

Honey Wintergreen Lip Balm: For $2 a tube, you can hardly buy the same thing in a store…and you don’t have to worry about the 5 pounds of lipstick and lipbalm that we women are said to EAT in our lifetimes.  Why?  Because you could eat all the ingredients in the lip balm on your vegetables.  I almost can’t wait until winter to see what it can really do with chapped lips…almost.

Healing Clay:  Instead of Neosporin (or the off-brand ointment you might have in your cupboard), you use this dry clay mixture and a little water on the owies, then stick a bandage overtop.  My son, lover of all things new and novel, thinks this is the bomb.  “Does this scrape need the healing clay, Mom?”  I think it’s super, too.  Buddy Boy had a weird spot on his back for a week or so:  you know the kind, when you look at it and watch it and wonder if it’s worth a trip to the doctor just to ask, “What’s this?” or not.  It wasn’t responding to much, and then I remembered my healing clay in the medicine basket.  After a few days under the bandage with healing clay, the weird spot cleared up, and no doc’s appointment for Buddy Boy.  Everyone was happy, thanks to Natural Momma.

Mess Free Baby Bottom Salve (also found in the Welcome to Earth, Baby! Package):  I’d been using coconut oil as diaper cream on Lovey Girl for a few months after reading about it at Passionate Homemaking, but that’s not very practical for a diaper bag.  This little gem is, to the nth degree.  The size is perfect for travel and totally hands-off, great when you don’t want to be covered in cream because there’s no running water nearby.  The best part?  It really works, really powerfully.  Not only does all the redness clear up within a day or so, even Lovey Girl’s very worst diaper rashes, but it calms her down to boot.  This is a girl who is in the throes of the “diaper wrestling” phase, where you practically strap on the protective pads and bring your ref’s whistle just to change the diaper around the flailing legs and arms.  When I break out the Baby Bottom Salve, her legs relax and her face goes completely calm.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Plus, it costs about the same or less than a tube of name brand diaper cream that is packed with chemicals.  Thou must check this item out!

Breathe Deep Balm:  This may be my favorite product from Natural Momma. It’s always a chore to figure out how to naturally, safely treat kids with colds.  Your empathy is through the roof when they’re miserable, and you’d do just about anything to make them feel better.  The fiasco with Dimetapp affecting kids’ ears and the new guidelines that say NO cold meds under six years old really underline the importance of taking extra care with what we give our little ones.  I always fell back on Baby Vick’s and vaporizers as my only line of defense.  My in-laws got us a stocking stuffer off-brand substitute, and when I used it on my son, his whole chest turned red!  I was shocked and frightened.  The second I saw a natural alternative on Natural Mommas site, it went right into my shopping cart without a second thought.  We had a chance to use it on both kids for the final cold of the season, and it smells so good.  You can just feel it working to calm, soothe, and clear passageways, and I am soothed with the knowledge that the carrier of the real-herb healthy smells is also completely natural and safe for my children’s skin.

I decided I had better stop there for my first order, but I made a wish list for later!

• Refreshing Lavender Toner
• Hungary’s Water Astringent
• Ylang Ylang lotion
• Finger and Nail Repair Oil
• Make Your Own Green Cleaner Kit

Now it’s your turn!  Head on over to Natural Momma’s Etsy store and tell me in a comment what you would spend your ten bucks on if you win. (Shipping is free for the winner!)  That will get you one entry in the giveaway.

If you’d like more chances, you can get up to 15 entries by doing the following:  (if you receive KS via email, you will need to click over to the site to leave a comment.)  You may leave all the entries in one comment and I’ll sort them out! (This is different than last time.)

1. Subscribe in a reader or via email to Kitchen Stewardship (or tell me if you already do).
2. TWO entries:  If you have a blog or website, post about this giveaway linking back to this post.
3. Tweet about it.
4. Write about it on Facebook.
5. Stumble or Digg this post.
6. Email 5 friends (who don’t already read Kitchen Stewardship) about the giveaway.
7. Stumble or Digg your favorite post or recipe at Kitchen Stewardship.
8. Put the Analyzing Aluminum in August button in your sidebar.
9. FIVE entries:  Make a purchase from Natural Momma and tell me what you bought.

Be sure to tell me everything you did in your comment.  There are a possible 14 entries!  If you can handle completing all 14, I’ll give you a bonus entry just for being perseverant (but tell me if you do in your comment so I’m not up counting all night).

Bonus 5 entries for the winner of the Analyzing Aluminum in August contest!

Be sure to also visit the Organic Mamas Nursing Bracelet Giveaway HERE.

I still trust the honor system.  Just be honest about what you’ve done – giveaways should be fun!  I will use random.org’s integer generator to choose the commenters who win from my list of commenter emails.  The giveaway is only open to U.S. residents.  Entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, August 12th, and I’ll post the winners the following day.

CONTEST NOW CLOSED!  THANKS FOR ENTERING.

Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money.  If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.

A Sampling of Monday Missions:

• Memorize the Dirty Dozen
• Rethink Plastic Food Storage Containers
• Search Out Trans Fats
• Increase Omega-3 Fats
• Get Rid of Triclosan

Hungry for more? Related posts:

1. Charlie’s Soap Natural Laundry Detergent and All-Purpose Cleaner: A Mixed Review
2. Early Results: Natural Dishwasher Detergent Experiments
3. Natural Kitchen Cleaners: What’s Under my Sink?
4. Advent Daily Dose: A Gift for Baby Jesus