After reading all the fantastic blogs about doing your daughters hair I felt the need to feel pretty and be pampered myself. I have a few types of face mask left from helping a friend move, and a few face masks from various sales I’ve picked up, so I did two. Hubs noticed a difference, and my face feels better.
I have very dry skin and very sticky face-oil, so what little oil my skin makes does not get pushed onto the surface, like with regular skin, but rather sticks on the inside of the pores and gets dark. On my nose, that goes so far as to create blackheads, and elsewhere I’ve just been getting coarser and coarser pores, which blows. I know the cheap answer to that (aspirin face masks) but ran out of Aspirin a while ago, and when I ask Hubs to get some he keeps returning with ibuprofen, which doesn’t cut it.
To clear your skin up, take one to five of the cheapest aspirin you can get (you want the coating to be thin) and put a few drops of hot water on them. After they start to crumble, you can mix it with aloe gel (it will get watery) and apply it to your face. The gel will form a sticky mask and the aspirin won’t fall off. If you don’t have/like aloe (which I ALWAYS have on hand- between the amount of cooking I do and how easily I get sunburned, I need it regularly) , some people swear by honey but I find it maddeningly itchy.
Wash your face with a flannel washcloth and warm to hot water. Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. Salicylic acid it the ingredient in all the expensive anti acne face goop, it’s a great exfoliant and makes your skin silky soft.
Another cheap treat is to pour some powdered milk into a bathtub with a couple of hand fulls of aspirin tablets. The aspirin and the lactic acid in the milk exfoliate your skin gently, and the natural fat in the milk stops this process from drying your skin out way too much. Soak for as long as you can take it, and then rub yourself all over with a scratchy washcloth. Rinse in a shower and cover yourself with a thin layer of oil- olive oil will work, but I prefer jojoba or grape seed oil. Put a little extra oil on your feet and put on socks and your feet will be lovely that evening. This makes your skin incredibly soft and lush and wonderful, and the last time I did this Hubs kept chasing me around the house to pet me. This was cute at first but after two days I started to get annoyed!
Anyway, those are my favorite cheapy little indulgences that really seem to make a huge difference on my dry, easily irritated skin. A little splash of oil wiped over damp skin is waaay cheaper than the expensive non-scented, anti allergenic lotions I can find (half of which STILL make my skin break out or do something horrible). I think, combined, everything ends up costing less than .20 for this little luxury, which helps me not feel deprived and then spend on something stupid like… um, clay based face masks on sale.
