On the first day of spring, a sunny, warm day, we went to the park and saw blossoms.
We saw tight little buds that will soon be blossoms.
One of us climbed this twisty tree and then could not get down without some parental guidance.
Best of all, everywhere we looked we saw green, lovely, wonderful, not dead brown, not dirty snow, but green!
Did I mention it was warm? That there was perspiration happening? And now we come to the decidedly less attractive part of this post. The journey to a natural deodorant has been a long one for The Simple Man. I've been using some form of the rock or...nothing, since the beginning. When we got married, he was using something that rhymed with Cold Mice. Its scent was so strong that I felt like gagging, but The Simple Man was pretty determined to keep using it because he felt it worked - he wasn't stinky. Well yeah, Cold Mice was so strong it traveled through your armpits up to your nose where it burnt out your olfactory system and continued its way up to your brain, where it disabled your ability to make natural deodorant choices. Finally, since I was the one who actually went shopping, I just stopped buying it. He didn't feel the rock worked for him and neither did any of the other natural deodorants. We came to a compromise with a baking soda brand that didn't have parabens, but contained plenty of other potentially dangerous chemicals. I bought him the "girl" one, because all the ones aimed at men smelled terrible. I'm assuming that the people making these products only come into contact with men that smell like they live in the primate house at the zoo. Well, after reading some scary article about one particular ingredient that I don't remember now, I stopped buying that for him too. This began the saga of sharing my deodorant - despite him complaining that it didn't work, until we ran out. And luckily it was the winter - because we have both been deodorant-less all winter, so if you know me personally, I'm apologizing now.
Anyway, I've sort of been waiting for the moment when running out of deodorant would coincide with The Simple Man finally agreeing to trying homemade deodorant and that time was now. For awhile I'd been eyeing recipes similar to this one, but I was undecided. Then, when Crunchy Chicken tried a version of it and said it worked, I thought I might as well go ahead. Plus I'm copying her great idea of using an old deodorant container, thus giving it more legitimacy in the eyes of The Simple Man. I changed it to suit me, since I pretty much can't stand cocoa butter's smell and it's not easy to find it deodorized. Here's what I used:
3 Tbsp. shea butter
2 Tbsp. coconut oil
2 Tbsp. corn starch
3 Tbsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. glycerin
Vetivert essential oil
I put everything but the essential oil and glycerin together and heated it until the oils were melted, then added the last two ingredients. Poured into containers and put in the freezer. Because I'm impatient. The we had to try it out. Disaster was narrowly averted when The Simple Man insisted it smelled like something he'd already smelled before, then figured out it was a fig scented spray, and was then unsure he wanted armpits that smelled like a "fig bush." By the end of the day he figured it didn't matter. And this really does work. Now that it is getting warmer I'm keeping it in the fridge along with the tiny bit of unscented deodorant left over for me that I put in a baby food jar. I was going to scent it with palmarosa, which smells really nice, but I actually liked just the scent of the shea butter and coconut oil, sort of tropical, but light. Also, coconut oil has antibacterial properties, and that is no bad thing when it comes to armpits.
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