Exfoliating Cleanser

     Daylight savings time has come again.  My body did not recognize this arbitrary change and so I was awake in the wee hours of the morning.  Sometime before 5. Not one clock in my house agrees with another so I am not really sure.  So, with those luxurious quiet hours I made a batch of cleanser.  It is a recipe I adapted of Rosemary Gladstar's miracle grains.  She gives the recipe in her book Rosemary Gladstar's Family Herbal (now published as Rosemary Gladstar's Recipes for Vibrant Health).  What I love is that you could actually eat your cleanser.  It wouldn't taste very good but you could eat it.  That's what I want to put on my skin.  Something safe enough to eat.  Something not filled with ingredients I can not pronounce.  Something that makes my skin look and feel great.

     This cleanser exfoliates with the addition of ground almonds and poppy seeds.  It calms the skin with oatmeal, lavender blossoms and calendula flowers.  It is bound together with kaolin clay.  A little bit mixed with water is a great cleanser.  Letting it dry on the skin makes for a quick mask.  Mix a spoonful with honey and now you have a moisturizing mask.  You don't want to add wet ingredients to the mix until you are ready to use it or it will grow green fuzzy sweaters as my auntie would say.  I use it at night followed by a generous dose of my face & body lotion.  My daughter uses it sporadically depending on her skin.  She finds a light mask helps her when she breaks out.