DIY Life

I'm thinking of switching up the holidays this year and gifting presents for Thanksgiving, rather than Christmas. Why not offer up some DIY pumpkin facial masks to a few of your favorite lady friends? The tutorial is simple and easy to do:

Pumpkin Face and Body Mask
* 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
* 1/4 cup bentonite clay (available at health food stores)
* 1 tbsp honey
* 2 tbsp water
* 1 tbsp almond oil
* 2 tsp cinnamon

Mix together and apply evenly to your face or anywhere else you'd like to smooth. Leave on 10 minutes before rinsing. Almond oil moisturizes, clay draws out impurities, honey replenishes collagen and cinnamon improves circulation.

And guess what? "Pumpkin contains antioxidants such as vitamins A and C, as well as phytonutrients that help keep you looking young," says Michelle Schlekewey, spa director at Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego.

An extra serving for me, please!

So, you know you're supposed to pitch that mascara after three months, but what about your body souffle that's been hiding in the back of your cabinet for... oh, a few years. Check the label. Many products have a PAO label, which stands for "period after opening." You can spot the PAO by looking for a number followed by the letter "M", which stands for months (i.e. 36M).

Cool, right? Now if you can only remember when you purchased that souffle in the first place...

Actually, we have a solution for that, too! Simply place a sticker dot with the date of any beauty supply product you've purchased. Keep a few sticker dots in your bathroom to remind you, and you'll never forget another expiration date again.

Try the same trick in your kitchen to combat your son's yogurt-turned-scientific-experiment! Your entire family will consider you a genius, and the food poisoning hotline will happily agree.

Your 'do is getting a bit faded, but you just don't have time to get to the stylist , or you don't want to fork out that much money so soon. You could put off the trip to the salon another three or four weeks if it weren't for your bangs, which are in your eyes and driving you crazy!

What to do?

With this very simple trick from Darla at Chic Critique, you can get yourself those extra days, and you can do it yourself!

You know how it is: gals with straight hair envy their curly-haired friends, and ladies with straight hair wish they could have bouncy ringlets. As a member of the curly-hair club, I've always envied the people I know whose stick-straight hair looks terrific first thing in the morning -- and doesn't go frizzy at the first sign of humidity.

After years (and years, and years) of trying to wrestle my locks into submission, I've learned to embrace the corkscrews and go with the flow. With a little patience, you can learn to love your locks, and here are some of the best tips I've found:

Join me each week as I explore the naturally aromatic side of DIY. Helpful recipes for your "scentual" pleasure: from essential oils, herbs, and other botanicals, to soap-making, body care products, and other useful blends.

You have soft, smooth feet from our pedicure of two weeks ago. Your face is aglow with healthy skin after last week's facial. What about the rest of you?

Get ready to pamper yourself (or a loved one) with the gift of relaxation and cared-for skin -- all over!

After the break, I'll share recipes for relaxing bath salts, a detoxifying body scrub, a gentle hand scrub, and body oil, along with packaging ideas to make lovely gifts of these homemade products.

I only recently learned that tea bags expire. I've always bought new interesting teas and kept them around for company. I have tea in the drawer that has been through more than one move. Go ahead, and have a good laugh at my domestic disability, but this leaves me wondering what else we have hanging around long past its expiry date.

Real Simple to the rescue again, with this list of surprising expiration dates. There were a few consumables that really surprised me. I am always drawn to new kinds of salad dressing, enticing new names, lower fat versions of old favorites and 2 for 1 bargains make my fridge full of barely used bottles of salad dressing. Knowing now that they are only good for 9 months, I'll have to do a little fridge door clean-up. Beer was the other big surprise, learning that it is only good for 4 months unopened. It would be highly unusual for beer to hang around the house for 4 month without being opened, but if it did, I know we wouldn't have hesitated to drink it. Now we'll think twice.

The list doesn't stop with food, they offer expiration dates for household items and beauty products too. These are less likely to have dates printed on them, and you're less likely to go looking for an expiration because they don't seem like products that would need one. Here are a few of the most shocking in the household and beauty categories:

• Tooth whitening strips: 1-3 months
• Perfume: 1-2 years
• Mascara: 3-4 months opened
• Windex and Mr. Clean: 2 years
• Bleach: 3-6 months

There are 77 in total. Have a look through the list. What surprises you most?
[Via: Life hacker]

Got no romantic plans for Valentine's Day? How about staying home for a pamper-yourself evening? In the realm of DIY beauty, we have already tackled some haircare basics. (Check out our posts on cutting your own hair and cutting your baby's hair, for example.) Now let's move onto something equally tricky: plucking your own eyebrows.

According to NZGirl ("NZ" stands for New Zealand, but the site has no connection to this Kiwi), the key to brows that are shapely, yet natural-looking, is to have them echo the shape of your eyes. How, you ask? Here are some tips:
1. Check out photos in magazines and use your favorite examples as your guide.

Do you like Lush? The famous UK retailer has expanded their US business a lot in the last few years, but knockoff products preceded the company's wares onto American shelves: we were familiar with bath bombs long before we could easily purchase a Tisty-Tosty or Avobath.

Two of the major draws of Lush's products, aside from their fabulous scents, are their natural ingredients and the fact that they're handmade. Fans of the company know that their wares aren't exactly cheap, but think they're worth every penny.

But if you like handmade natural bath and body products, it's simple to make your own, or at least to add your own custom scent blends to basic lotions, oils, and soaps. And once you've paid more than $5 for an admittedly divine single-use bath item, you may become even more interested in the concept.

Learn more about it after the break! You'll find links to some great recipes, as well as suggested sources for any supplies you might need. There's still plenty of time to make something for everyone on your holiday gift list.

M.A.C. Cosmetics is known for their glamorous makeup: available in a bewildering array of shades and renowned for quality, many items in the line don't cost much more than their higher-end drug-store counterparts. The line was created for film and photo studio use, but is quite popular with beauty devotees as well.

Now M.A.C. has created a group of Halloween costume makeup ideas, and put it on their site. There's a series of categories: Dark Side has spooky-glam monster makeup, the looks under Graphically are all patterns, the Optical Illusion category is self-explanatory (and would take a lot of skill to replicate), Pretty Things is full of more illusion makeup (feminine "masks" and animals), and Robotniks is all about our shiny metal friends.

The person who suggested this post to CRAFT said that they believed the looks could be replicated with any Halloween makeup. I think that depends on the skill of the artist. You're definitely going to have an easier time getting good results with higher-end products than you will with a $4 greasepaint palette, but these ideas are a good starting point.

However, you might not find it worthwhile to buy all the suggested shades if you only want them for one night; some of these looks require ten different products. Keep in mind that M.A.C. cosmetics have fine textures and are highly pigmented, if you're trying to find substitutes. (L'Oreal's H.I.P. line would probably be a good starting point, along with some theatrical products from Ben Nye that are available at many costume and theatrical supply shops.) Though it's not DIY, you could also always contact your local M.A.C. counter about having one of their artists try to replicate the look you like.

[via CRAFT.]

Uh-oh! What's that on your face? Could it be... the outward sign of a small infection under the surface of your skin... that is, a pimple? A ZIT? The horror!

If you are like me, in your early 30s, you have had way more blemishes in the last decade than you ever did as a teenager. The best non-prescription pimple-targeted remedies all have benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid in them; which one you should use depends on your skin (the effectiveness of each is up for debate, but in general, benzoyl peroxide can be too harsh for some people's skin). Since you may not actually be expecting your skin to go crazy, you may not have an over-the-counter acne medication sitting around the house... let alone something pricey like Proactiv Solution or the Zeno Acne Treatment Device.

Do not despair! You'll find some at-home blemish remedies using common household substances right after the break. These solutions really work, though most don't work quite as well as actual acne medication.