~ WIC TRICK #3 ~

Today's trip to the pretty nail salon made me think of a new WIC trick - my nail artists were cute little Vietnamesian kindred spirits. When I walked in I noticed one reading an ad for Dr. Shulze's Herb Doc products, and a while later while the greenish bathsalty water jacuzzi'd around my horribly neglected feet (motherrealtors seldom find time for this kind of pampering, and this one hasn't had a Pedicure since before being preggers with Jack) I noticed another nail engineer popping Formula #1 digestion aid pills. So a little chatting later, not only do we discover that we are all fans-in-common of the Herb Doc's products, but also in using CHEAP and effective natural products not only for good health, but also for beauty regimens.
I have for years, for example, been keen to using nice sea salts, typically used in cooking, in my shower routine instead. I think it sounded nice to me to practice exfoliation regularly, but a lot of the products I found had things like crushed walnut shells in them, among a long list of other things, not necessarily found in nature, and not often pronounceable. To my thinking, walnut shells sounded like a horrible thing to scrub one's delicate face with - even on a microscopic basis, it seems like it would just shred tissue and eventually not to any nice result. Plus, those products, more often than not, were pretty spendy! I always loved the feeling of my skin after a swim in the ocean, however, the salt in the water being key to that equation. So i keep a giant shaker of Trader Joe's Mediterranean Sea Salts on the shower ledge. I use it for dental hygiene, insect-bite relief, the rim of my mid-bath salty dog glass, and of course, as a facial scrub. I figure the salt crystals give and dissolve in the water before they can slice away at any level of my epidermis, so it's difficult to over-scrub or irritate my skin, but actually, quite the opposite. I like to finish the facial off with a good splash of witch hazel and it feels amazing. Elbows, knees, and rough spots on your feet like it, too --- it is a very multi-useful and super effective/affordable thing. Mama like. Very much.
So getting back to my new bestie at the nail salon, Ms. Nguyen offered up a similar plan for affordable, effective natural beauty, and it segues perfectly into this week's WIC trick. She says a fresh, juicy strawberry cut in half and dipped in sugar and then rubbed over the face makes for an excellent "spa" treatment, and it makes great sense that it would. Alpha Hydroxy Acids are supposed to be tops in natural exfoliation, great on scars and dark spots, and the sugar no doubt adds that little extra bit of scrub for sloughing off dead skin cells and deep-pore dirt.

Most WIC recipients receive between $6 and $16 each month in fruit and veggie coupons, so what could be more affordable than snaking just one of those seasonal strawbs (chawbooties as baby Jack calls them) and going to work? I haven't tried it yet, but I will--- I just plan on giving the fruit a thorough cleaning first. I used the old cucumbers-on-the-eyes trick once and wound up looking not unlike this gentleman shown above. I have heard from more than one source that strawberries are among the worst as far as being sprayed with chemicals, pesticides, and other naughtiness, and I suspect that something along those lines was to blame with the cucumber incident because i was swollen up like a... something super swollen.
So use your WIC wisely. Nourish from the inside, nourish from the outside! Take a sweet salon maid's secret and try a natural fruit facial or a soothing cucumber treatment, save a buck, and maybe make a smoothie with the leftovers for you and the babes to enjoy!