Homemade Deodorant

I had almost the complete last two weeks of December off this past holiday season. Generally I had a decent time away from work, but I know it was a bit too long of a break because the final day, I decided to do all the things.

I accidentally spent too much time on Pinterest last week and came up with a fairly extensive list of things to attempt.

As a quick bit of backstory, my best friend is started working as an independent, amateur apothecarian in the last couple years. She's made me several teas, facial wipes, headache remedies, bath salts, facial cleansers, and body butters (among other things). Most of what she's made for me has been to either lift my mood or help manage my stress levels. She's always encouraging me to try new things or telling me about what she's making (a surprising number of health and beauty products contain gluten, which is bad if you have Celiac disease).

Anyway, the last day of break I finally decided to try making some of the things on my list since they mostly didn't require complex ingredients. I had to go to my local co-op for a few of the items, but most I already had sitting around my home.

The first thing I made was homemade deodorant. It consisted of coconut oil, arrowroot powder, cornstarch, baking soda, and essential oil. It was really simple and quick to make. It's really not glamorous enough for a picture, but I'm including one anyway.

The biggest difference between how mine turned out and the recipe I used is that I used lemon and eucalyptus oils instead of bergamot. I don't have bergamot oil, but the oils I went with helped cover any linger scents from the other ingredients.

So far, I'm really enjoying it. I have it on good authority I don't smell bad.

I've made several more things, which I'll share a bit later.

Literary Video Series

Disclaimer: my undergrad degree was in English. I read (or "read," depending on your interpretation) a lot of literature.


Back in 2012, Hank Green and Bernie Sue reinterpreted Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The video (transmedia) project was called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Here's a list of other similar projects I've enjoyed.


Welcome to Sanditon: based on Jane Austen's unfinished work Sanditon. It's cute enough, especially if you like Gigi Darcy from LBD

Emma Approved: based on Jane Austen's Emma. I dislike this one most of all that I'll recommend here. I felt like the acting was way over the top. Watching as it came out, there were too many hiatuses to keep me enthralled. And I didn't really care about any of the transmedia stuff (blogs, twitter, etc). I know a lot of people liked it, so give it a go.

Frankenstein, MD: You guessed it, based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It's a fun adaptation as told by a young (about to graduate) doctor way too ambitious for her own good. There's an almost distracting amount of shoulder grabbing, though.

The March Family Letters: interpreted from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It's just started at the end of 2014, so this is one to hop on if you want to go for a ride from beginning to end instead of binge watching.

A Tell Tale Vlog: based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. It's short but funny. The channel it's on has been doing some interesting things, so I can recommend watching any of their playlists.

Green Gables Fables: the actress who plays Anne Shirley is great at being over-the-top like the title character from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. It's still an active project as of my writing this. The acting is a bit stilted depending on the actor, but overall it's worth your time for sure.

Classic Alice: a college student decides to break out of her safe life and try living according to classic literature she's (usually) never read. I've enjoyed this one nearly as much as LBD. It was just funded for another season, which is great news for people who love it.

The Autobiography of Jane Eyre: another finished project. Based on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, this video series is pretty good. The first couple episodes gave me a headache due to the way they were filmed, but it got better as it went. I was a bit disappointed in the ending as it didn't feel the same as the book's ending. Still, it's really good.

The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy: based on J.M. Barry's Peter Pan, this series is coming back for another season. That's great news since the first part didn't even come close to finishing the story. It's pretty wacky, and I don't watch much of the extra videos, but I've really been enjoying the story so far.

Jules and Monty: based on Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, this is a great interpretation. It still ends as a tragedy, but it's a bit better than the play ended.

Nick Carraway: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is loved and has been reinterpreted a few times recently. I have to admit, I haven't watched much of this series. I will, eventually, but the acting was too hard for me to sit through when I first discovered it. Plus, I don't love Gatsby the way so many people do.

Kate the Cursed: the second best version of Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare I've seen. (The first best is 10 Things I Hate About You.) No dancing or singing involved (I think).

From Mansfield With Love: the story of Frankie Price (Fanny didn't hold up to the test of time apparently), from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. It's only a few episodes in, so it's another great one to start.



To be perfectly clear, there are many more of these kind of projects out there. I haven't enjoyed them as much. Generally the acting is too distracting. I encourage other people to try them, though.

Also, this is just the list I can think of right now without going on a more in-depth search of my viewing history. If you learn of any series I shouldn't miss, let me know!

Less than Smooth(ie) Going Down

For Christmas, my partner's parents gave me a Magic Bullet Nutribullet. Ever since, we've been trying to determine how best to use it.

We have successfully figured out pretty much any recipe for sweet drinks, especially if they use ice cream. It's pretty hard to mess those up. We're having a harder time figuring out how to make the healthy drinks.

We have a bunch of ingredients, but my partner's preferred green is kale. And our grocery store only sells curly kale. I look forward to months from now when I can go find flat-leaf kale. Curly kale chips are pretty gross.

Here's a picture of a smoothie we tried:

Inside: kale, cucumber, fresh ginger, apple, green pepper, frozen mango, and coconut water.
Conclusion: too much ginger!

The ginger overwhelmed the flavor of anything else. I enjoy ginger, but I'm not a fan of it THIS much.

We've had good success with two kale smoothies.

The first one, a banana and kale smoothie, was pretty good. It had a stronger flavor of cinnamon than I'd prefer. I may try it again with 1/8 tsp of cinnamon instead of 1/4.

The second one we made up. I looked for recipes on the internet. I didn't find anything I wanted (primarily because I dismissed recipes using ingredients I'd forgotten we had). After looking around and comparing recipes, I used about half kale, and half frozen pineapple and mango and half a banana. We used coconut water in it, but as we had so much frozen fruit, I had to put in regular water after initial blending.

That one was good, but had a weirdly fishy flavor. Partner thinks it was from the pineapple. It's possible. Maybe I should have thrown in some almonds or something.


I'll keep trying with different recipes. The book that came with the device is unhelpful because it says use 50% greens (and presents a list), 50% fruit (and presents a list), and maybe a boost (and presents a list). Kale is rough to work with because it needs citrus to balance it out. The book doesn't say that though. We also find kale a bit easier to use than spinach. Despite what the book says, spinach was a harder-to-hide flavor than we've found kale to be.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ... Nails

The winter is really rough on my hands and nails. For about 3 months a year, my nails break regularly (usually at the quick), I have more hangnails than any other time a year, and my hands are quite dry. Compared to my sibling, my hands aren't terrible. Compared to the rest of the year, the cracking and dryness is brutal.

I've been wanting a new nail polish for a little while. Nail polish seems to help my nails last a bit longer, though it chips off in a couple days due to my job. I thought I wanted a nice brown with reddish-maroon tint, but I couldn't find it anywhere. My partner and I went down to the drugstore one night when my extroversion was desperate to be around people and I wanted a walk.

I found a green gel nail polish for $1.99. My partner saw it and suggested I do a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles look.

The light was pretty rough when I took this picture, but that's about what my nails look like.

I painted my nails in kind of descending leadership authority as I saw it when I was three: Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo. The thumb is a dark maroon kind of for Splinter.

For those interested, I used a base of Sally Hanson Nail Nutrition Green Tea + Bamboo Nail Strengthener, the gel nail polish, the tips all have random assortments of nail polish, and I used a top coat of a clear polish. We're several days in now and it's still holding up. 

Maybe my nails will be green all season.

Facials from Kitchen Stuff

Last night as my partner and I were home alone instead of celebrating at a party, I found some facial recipes on Pinterest. To be fair, I found one pin that had already collected 10 recipes. I decided to try two of the recipes.

If the sensitive skin scale is 0 = sensitive as all get-out, don't go outside without layers of protection and 10 = come at me with anything, cement won't phase my skin, I'm probably a 2.5 or 3. To be fair, this scale I just made up smooshes a wide range into not enough numbers.

As a disclaimer, I used honey which had crystallized. I microwaved it first, but in order to dissolve all the crystals, I had to heat it up so it was fairly thin when I measured it.

Coffee & Cocoa facial
This recipe called for coffee, unsweetened cocoa powder, honey, and some kind of dairy product or possibly oil. I looked at the recipe, looked at what I had, and tossed it together using coconut oil instead of a dairy and ground white coffee instead of standard coffee. I even convinced my partner to join me in the facial.

Here we are, waiting for the mask to dry. It never did. I suspect it's because our body temperature kept the honey and coconut oil too warm to ever fully set. We probably left it on for an hour or more before I couldn't handle it on my face any longer.

I don't know if it was because of the oil or the white coffee or because it was on too long or never fully set, but this mask left my face feeling dry and overly exfoliated. Also, the oil made it so you really didn't want to risk it getting in your mouth. The white coffee also made me resistant to getting it in my mouth, plus it didn't smell as great as regular coffee would have.

Conclusion: I won't be using it again.


Cinnamon-Nutmeg-Honey facial
The second mask smelled better. I have to say that equal parts cinnamon and nutmeg left this mask smelling slightly off what I expected. Nutmeg is fairly strong. I also didn't take a picture of this on my face.

This one was easier to put on, but with only honey holding it all together, it dripped pretty bad. I didn't make it 30 minutes because it itched and dripped so bad I thought I'd got nutty. Also, this one got on the collar of the sweatshirt I was wearing. It just wants to move. With gravity. Toward the floor.

After I was done with this, I felt like it had restored my face a bit from the previous mask. Either my face wasn't going to feel any exfoliation after the first or it really wasn't as bad. That coffee was pretty rough. The spice granules, in comparison, were quite lovely.

Conclusion: I'll probably try it again, but I'll wait for the honey to cool down quite a bit before I put it on my face.

After all that, I put lotion on my face. My partner did too. My face feels pretty nice now.


Clean up was kind of special. I didn't clean the excess mask mixture out of their glasses for nearly 2 hours. By the time I did it, the hot water was enough to dilute and send the cinnamon mask down the drain. The coffee-cocoa mask had really solidified the way coconut oil will if it gets cool. I microwaved it for 15 seconds and that plus hot water got it all down the drain. I ran the disposal and the hot water for a bit of extra time, just because I wanted to be sure I wasn't going to clog the drain.


As an extra note, the first facial mask was hard to clean up around my nose stud. The coffee really got around and under the head of the jewel. The second mask I don't remember having problems with at all. I'm fairly certain I cleaned it all up, but I didn't remove the stud all the way for fear of something getting inside the piercing. One day I'll discuss the minor trauma I faced with the piercing when I first got it. It's made me cautious.

Thoughts From a Sort-of Librarian

Even though I earned my masters in library and information science back in 2010, I have a hard time thinking of myself as a librarian.

I work at a state university, but I'm a library assistant. At my work, there is a substantial difference between librarian and library assistant. Primarily it has to do with tenure and faculty vs. staff, but it's also the kinds of tasks you perform. I handle the mail, marking, mending, newspapers, and current periodicals at work. That probably doesn't mean much to you and it shouldn't. What you should take from it is that I'm about as far away from librarian work as I can get an still be employed at a library.

Still, I have my degree, I took the courses, and I definitely act like a librarian when not on the clock. I provide reading suggestions and resource recommendations to pretty much anyone who asks. I research whatever people want info on (including my partner's random queries like "Is this article about the Smithsonian destroying giant bones real?" or "I saw something about a dead professor's estate donating alien artifacts to a museum. Can you find out more about that?" I feel fairly confident stating what he saw were both bogus stories).

Mostly I acquire information. One of my grad instructors told us librarians should acquire random information and squirrel it away. It's a trait of my profession and many people who work in libraries. One year as part of our strategic planning, we all took the StrengthsFinder 2.0 test. A huge majority of people working at the library were "input," which basically means we collect things. In a library, that tends to be knowledge.

Growing up, I learned a lot of random information. I felt a lot like there were things I wasn't allowed to learn, though. I decided I wasn't in the right crowd or social group to know certain things. The best new year resolution I ever made was the year I decided I wasn't going to put up with that. If I wanted to learn about something, I would. No one could tell me I couldn't learn how to fishtail braid. Ever since that year, I've acquired information at a surprising rate. If you ever want a resolution fairly easy to stick to, use mine. Learn whatever you want and don't let some imaginary someone stop you.

Here's some of what I've learned or done.