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Home Remedies for Sunburns
With the long 4th of July weekend behind us we are all reminiscing of the time we had and perhaps nursing some battle wounds from the long weekend. Of course, I’m talking in particular to sun burns. Sun burns are a sure sign that you had a good time and are now paying for it. Here a few home remedies to help ease the pain and promote healing of your rosy skin.
Milk - The milk should be at or close to room temperature. Take cotton gauze and dip it into the milk. Apply it to the sunburn and allow it to sit for 20 minutes or so. After this time, remove the milk compress and gently rinse your skin to remove any milk residue. If you do not rinse your skin, the milk residue will develop a sour odor and so will you.
Vegetables - a bag of frozen vegetables inside a clean towel and placing it gently upon the sunburned area can offer some minor and temporary relief to an individual. This home remedy helps to cool down the sunburn.
Thinly slice a raw cucumber, potato, or apple. Gently place the pieces on your sunburn. Not only is the coolness of the vegetables soothing to your skin, but also, it is possible that they will help to reduce any inflammation occurring from your sunburn.
Vitamin E - Eating foods that are rich in vitamin E can help to reduce the inflammation caused by sunburn.
Pain reliever – Tylenol or Advil will help relieve pain
Soak yourself in diluted vinegar - Pour one cup of white cider kitchen vinegar into a tub of tepid water and soak yourself in it. It’s very soothing to your skin and helps relieve the pain of sunburn.
Baking soda and cornstarch. - Another recipe for relief, also from the kitchen cabinet: Mix 1/4 cup of baking soda and 1/4 cup of cornstarch into a tub of tepid water and soak yourself.
Oatmeal - If you find the smell of vinegar or milk too intense, you can wrap dry oatmeal in some gauze or cheesecloth and run cool water through it. Wring out the excess water and apply the cloth for 20 minutes every two to four hours.
Make a paste of one Bayer-type aspirin (crushed), aloe vera gel, and vitamin A & D cream from a tube. Mix it together crushing up the aspirin as much as possible to have the large pieces crushed into small grains, as smooth a paste as you can make. I use the back part of a spoon to crush and smooth paste. Place on sunburn and cover up with old clothing. It will make the blisters go down and absorb the redness and the pain goes away also.
Pure Aloe Vera Gel - Squirt some on your hand a rub into the burn. Takes away some of the pain and helps prevent skin cancer.
Noxema – cools skin and provides relief
Cheap Nutritional Treats for Summer
It seems like we are bombarded with sugar filled frozen treats during the summer and like most parents I am constantly trying to limit my children’s sugar intake. Here are a few cheap nutritional frozen treat options for you and your family.
Frozen Grapes: I buy grapes in bulk when I find them on sale ($.99 or less). I will wash them (fruit and veggie cleaner) and divide some up for eating fresh and the rest goes into the freezer. They freeze beautifully and taste like fruit sorbet. Everyone loves these! I cut them into little pieces for my 1 year old and this is a tasty snack that gives him some relief with teething.
Frozen Yogurt: I buy the lite fruit yogurt and freeze it. It makes a yummy after dinner treat. My 4 year old thinks she’s having ice-cream and provides some relief for my teething 1 year old.
Fruit Smoothies - Again, I buy whatever fruit is on sale in the bulk. What I don’t use immediately I freeze for later. I just blend fruit with yogurt and/or milk and ice.
For other bargains for your family check out:
Kid’s Eat Free
8 Cheap to Free Childcare Options When You Need a Little “me time”
Cheap Tricks My Mother Taught Me
FREE DVD Rentals
Going Green: Before it was cool
Going Green - How to make your own non-toxic cleaners
Budget Family Vacations by Exploring Your Own Backyard
Recycle, Reuse, and Replace Bad Plastic Containers
Cheap and Easy Baby-Proofing Solution
Budget Family Vacations by Exploring Your Own Backyard
With the cost of fuel, food and everything else this summer going up you may think you can’t afford to take your family on vacation. If you haven’t considered it before you should take a good look now because there are great family vacations right in your own backyard.
We live in an amazing country with thousands of State parks and rivers to explore. One of the cheapest places to visit that that houses more miles of untouched rivers and more square miles of public land than any State in the U.S. besides Alaska is Idaho.
Rafting trips provide the ultimate outdoor experience by combining all your favorite activities into one. Camping, fishing, hiking, visits to natural history sites, swimming, kayaking, and star gazing, along with some Class III & IV white water on the side. Guided excursions allow you the luxury to just show up with your clothes and toothbrush. They bring the food, drinks, tents, pads, chairs, and all that gear that you normally would spend 2 days packing into the car and a month cleaning up later. First class food and service, all on the bank of a river. You will be just a swim away from escaping the heat, and no more than a couple steps away from a cold beverage. So many families that do these trips go back for more year after year and won’t hesitate to tell you it’s the best family vacation they’ve ever taken.
“The families that join us on the river come in all shapes and sizes,” says owner/guide of North Star River Expeditions, Tricia Warren, “In the last few years we’ve seen the patriarchs and matriarchs of the family (in their 70’s & 80’s) join their sons, daughters and grandkids on a family vacation on the river. These trips allow the less adventurous family members the opportunity to witness the action–while the more adventurous are in the middle of the wave train, or hauling in a champion small-mouth bass in full view of the rest of the group. No one misses out, and yet there is no end to levels of participation in everything from the white water to the side hikes. Even the little kids can get down and dirty. Everyone has a first hand account to share at the end of the day over dinner.”
It may be time to get our families outside and get started on our kids’ education in the art of the outdoors. Build some memories, do it without the stress of hectic travel schedules, and do it safely with an experienced outfitter. These rivers are in our own back yard.
North Star River Expeditions is a small owner operated rafting company based out of McCall, Idaho. They run 3 to 6 day trips on the Snake River in Hells Canyon and the Lower Main Salmon River. Youth prices are available for kids 18 and under. Group discounts are available as well. Visit their website at www.northstar-rafting.com or call Tricia or Jacob Warren toll free at 877-610-3200 for pricing, available dates, and more information.
Its not too late to book your family vacation this year and there are last minutes deals to snag all you have to do is just take a look in your own backyard. For other vacation deals in Idaho visit http://www.visitidaho.org/vacationideas/
Cheap and Easy Baby-Proofing Solution
My husband and I have made an honest effort in getting our house baby-proofed however as much effort as you put into making your home safe there is still the unknown of visiting other places. I have a couple cheap and easy solutions for baby-proofing on the go.
Rubberbands - Cheap and easy solution for baby-proofing cabinets. I even use this for rooms that are rarely visited by my toddler.
Painter’s Tape - It makes a great impromptu electrical outlet cover. Use it to ’re-seal’ packages of crackers and boxes and bags of all kinds; you can also use it to keep diapers closed if the tabs break. Put it over the speakers on musical children’s toys and it magically lowers the volume.
Going Green: Before it was cool
Since today is Earth Day I decided I would dedicate this blog to the person that taught me the most about recycling, reusing and re-purposing, my mother. The reason my mom had a black belt in recycling, reusing and re-purposing was not because she lived through the depression nor was it because she is a tree-hugging ex-hippie; she was simply trying to support a family of 6 on a teachers salary. In the past she had been accused of being cheap but I would like to suggest that in reality she was just going green before it was cool.
Here are a few tips you can use straight from my mother’s book of recycling, reusing, and repurposing.
Wax paper from your cereal box: Once you finish the cereal from the wax paper bag it was contained in then you can re-purpose the wax paper for cooking or other uses. Simply pull the bag apart until its flat and you have a perfectly good piece of wax paper.
Welfare Gore-Tex: My parents couldn’t afford to buy special winter gear for us so if we didn’t get it second-hand then we would have to make do. This is where the “Welfare Gore-Tex” (nickname my brothers gave it) came into play. My mother would save bread sacks and we would layer socks and bread sacks to form a warm water-proof barrier for our feet and legs. Our Welfare Gore-Tex would enable us to play for hours in the snow.
Butter/Margarine wrappers: Once you have unwrapped your sticks of butter or margarine fold the wrappers and keep them in your refrigerator. These wrappers have little bits of butter/margarine stuck to them so the wrappers are great for greasing cookie sheets or frying pans.
Toilet paper CAN be recycled: Growing up my brother’s and I were in sports so usually during Homecoming our house would be toilet-papered. Most people would look at this as a big mess to clean up. My mother saw this as free toilet paper. We would have to gather up all the bits of paper off the trees and bushes and then this would be our every day toilet paper for the bathroom. There would be little bits of twig on some of the paper so you would take caution in wiping.
Expiration dates are just a suggestion: My mom never believed in expiration dates. If the food looked ok, smelled ok, then it was ok for consuming. *To her credit none of us went to the hospital for food poisoning.
All grease/oil is reusable: My mom kept a container on the stove for storing any sort of excess grease or oil from cooking. This was especially useful when cooking bacon since there is always lots of excess grease. This bucket-o-grease was then handy for the next time you needed some sort of cooking lubricant. Besides being VERY bad for you the only down side to this was that everything my mom cooked had a slight bacon taste to it.
Tin foil, plastic wrap, and plastic bags are all washable: I think this one is self explanatory.
Recycling dinner: My mother was a firm believer in leftover’s. If one night we had bean soup, the next night we would have bean soup tacos and then perhaps the next night we would have some sort of bean soup taco dip.
Plastic ware: This includes plastic forks, knives, spoons, plates and cups. If you have the luxury of buying plastic ware you can get months use out of them by simply washing and reusing.
You can freeze everything: If my mom found something on sale at the grocery store she would buy several months supply. This would include food items that wouldn’t normally keep several months like bread, cheese, meat, etc. All of this food would be placed in our large freezer for use at a later date.