In the online world, people usually only see names and rarely faces, so as you can imagine there are often mix-ups. I can’t tell you how often readers and colleagues alike have gotten Katie at Wellness Mama and I mixed up.
Same first name, write about real food and natural living, have a bunch of kids…I’m sure you can see why!
I always take it as a compliment, because Katie’s work is so thorough and well-researched, she’s a great writer with a passion, and she has actually become a great friend too. I’ve been on her podcast (4 times), her kids have done our online cooking class, and not all the kids carrying the tree in this post are hers, although she does have six – my kids were helping with that endeavor! 😉 Katie is a go-to source for many health topics, and I trust her judgment before most other people’s.
In fact, when something comes up that I haven’t written about, I often send people over to her, just as I’m going to do today!
Katie is one of those super-powered moms who not only makes healthy food for her kids and raises independent, smart, and sweet little ones, she also does a lot of DIY personal products and home care options that I just can’t find time for. If anyone wants to know where the extra hours are in the day, I’m fairly certain she has discovered them!
In her free time, she wrote a best-selling cookbook and has just published another one, this time about avoiding toxins in the world and creating a detox lifestyle.
She’s graciously allowed me to share a recipe here at Kitchen Stewardship® right from the book, which is great because as I mentioned, I don’t do a lot of DIY personal products. This one, however, actually sounds like something I might be able to handle! And I know my daughter would love to help me, especially when she hears the household it’s from since even our kids are all really good friends. 🙂
Katie’s new book is a complete DIY guide for beauty, health, and home: featuring over 100 detox recipes for medicinal remedies, skincare, and hair care formulas, and natural cleaning recipes. These recipes include
- Herbal Throat Spray
- Spicy Cider Immune Boost
- Green Tea Antioxidant Mask
- Silky Smooth Detangling Spray
- Homemade Lemon-powdered Laundry Detergent.
Katie’s mission is to provide sustainable and affordable solutions for natural living, and her 5-Step Lifestyle Detox neatly wraps all of her best tips and recipes in one package.
The Wellness Mama 5-Step Lifestyle Detox will teach you how to:
- Boost your immune system naturally
- Implement essential oil blends in your beauty regimen (ex: stimulate hair growth)
- Whiten your teeth naturally
- Make your own makeup—from blush to bronzer
- Choose the best detox foods for your diet
Here’s a sample recipe you can use to wash your face, without harsh chemicals, fake suds or hormone-disrupting fragrances!
Argan Lavender Oil Cleansing Blend for Combination Skin
Argan and lavender help balance the skin’s natural oils in this combination blend.
Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon castor oil
- ¼ cup sunflower oil or olive oil
- 1 teaspoon argan oil (optional)
- 10 drops lavender essential oil (optional)
Directions:
Pour the castor oil, sunflower oil, and (if using) the argan oil and lavender essential oil into a small glass dropper bottle (also available at Plant Therapy).
How to use the oil:
- Pour a dime-sized amount of the oil blend in your hand and massage into your face.
- Use circular strokes. Let this be a gentle facial, too.
- Massage for at least a minute or up to ten minutes to deep clean your pores.
- Wet a clean washcloth with very hot tap water and quickly wring out. Open it and place over your face. This will create steam against the skin to remove the oils and any impurities in the skin. Leave the washcloth on for about 1 minute, or until it cools.
- Repeat if needed with the other side of the washcloth and fresh hot water to gently remove any remaining oil. There will still be a thin layer of oil on your skin, but this is beneficial.
Bonus: This will also remove makeup very effectively, even stubborn mascara! I (Katie…Kimball!) use coconut oil alone to remove mascara, but if you wash your face with oil, it’s one less thing to do!
More About The Wellness Mama 5-Step Lifestyle Detox
We all want to live healthier lives, but with all the conflicting advice that exists in the health and diet industries, where do you even begin? When we’re up against harmful food additives, chemical-laden cosmetics, and indoor and outdoor pollutants, the best way to truly ensure the long-term health of ourselves and our families is to go back to the basics—with all-natural foods and ingredients.
Katie Wells, creator of the largely popular Wellness Mama blog, built her thriving online community by promoting clean living. In her new book, THE WELLNESS MAMA 5-STEP LIFESTYLE DETOX, the wife, mother, and real-food crusader invites readers to adopt the system that she and her family live by, to effectively flush toxins from your diet, create homemade remedies and cosmetics, banish chemicals from your home, and free yourself from toxic stress.
THE WELLNESS MAMA 5-STEP LIFESTYLE DETOX is the ultimate DIY guide for healthy living in a busy household. Katie identifies toxins in the home, in our food, and in our beauty and cleaning products, and she provides sustainable and affordable solutions to banish them all with more than 100 clean recipes.
First, she lays out the guidelines for a nutritional detox, including a sample meal plan and a breakdown of foods to ditch from our diets. Next, she tackles the medicine cabinet, formulating simple home remedies to treat a multitude of ailments from congestion to eczema (plus an added bonus: a glossary of uses for medicinal herbs).
A beauty overhaul follows, as she describes how to achieve radiant hair, skin, and teeth naturally. We learn that even home cleaning products can be swapped with effective, non-toxic substitutes.
The last step is a stress detox, with mindful practices and habits that improve sleep, mood, and overall peacefulness.
With each step, Katie proves that it is possible, even for a large family, to make real-food and natural living doable.
Some of the 100+ Wellness Mama lifestyle detox recipes include:
- Citrus Fresh All-Purpose Cleaner
- Unscented Liquid Laundry Detergent
- Lavender and Honey Face Wash
- Powdered Mineral Foundation
- Chai Latte Sugar Scrub
With THE WELLNESS MAMA 5-STEP LIFESTYLE DETOX, Katie has codified the rules and recipes of her life and work in one neat package. Packed with tools, tips, and tricks, it is the perfect guide to show how little changes made in the name of health create ripples that can have a massive impact.
Katie Wells, CTNC, MCHC, Founder and CEO of Wellness Mama, has a background in research, journalism, and nutrition. As a mom of six, she turned to research and took health into her own hands to find answers to her health problems and has become an award-winning blogger, author, podcaster, and real-food crusader. Her mission with WellnessMama.com is to provide simple answers for creating healthier families through practical tips, real-food recipes, beauty and cleaning tutorials, natural remedies, and more. As a mom, Katie offers advice for living a Wellness Lifestyle with a family and on a budget. Katie’s first book is the best-selling The Wellness Mama Cookbook, which has a special place among our favorite cookbooks!
