Home remedies fascinate me, especially when it comes to beauty products! There’s something reassuring about using food on my skin, as opposed to a product with several chemical ingredients that I can’t pronounce. And, with all the emphasis on “going green” these days, it feels good to know the natural ingredients I’m slathering on are safe for the environment!

So in honor of this month’s “Earth Day,” I’m going to find one homemade beauty recipe per week to try, and blog about! There are several great websites with lots of recipes (try Homemade Beauty Recipes and MakeYourCosmetics.com), but I’ve found that many of them require ingredients that I don’t have on hand in my pantry or fridge. Who’s got beeswax or Tincture of Benzoin lying around the house? As a working mother, I need something easy I can make out of typical grocery items.

So, this week’s experiment: Brown Sugar Body Scrub from MakeYourCosmetics.com.

Recipe: 1 ½ cups brown sugar
½ cup olive oil (or canola)
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Pack brown sugar tightly in bowl, mix in olive oil to form paste. Add vanilla extract last for scent. Massage the scrub gently from shoulders to feet and rinse.

Check back next week for the BeautySchool.com official review!