How To Create Homemade Beauty Treatments:

I'm always on the lookout for a new affordable beauty product/treatment, lately I tend to prefer the all-natural homemade sort; you know, straight from the kitchen. Homemade spa treatments are my solution to store price gauging. Besides, women have been doing the natural beauty treatment thing since the beginning of time, and it seems to have worked out for them.

The pricey store bought products may offer advertising and a celebrity spokes model, but neither of those speak to the efficacy or quality of a given product. The best beauty treatments are often times, the $2 or $3 grocery store purchases you were already planning on for the evening's dinner or house cleaning. Give me a homemade beauty treatment using affordable and all-natural, inexpensive products straight from the kitchen cupboard, and I'm happy.

Here are a few of my favorite cheaply-made home spa treatments: affordable and all-natural beauty treatments straight from the kitchen cupboard...

Coffee Body Scrub

This beauty treatment is easy as pie and convenient because many women have coffee on-hand at all times. The next time you brew yourself a pot of coffee, save that used filter full of coffee grounds and put it in an air tight container until ready for use as a coffee ground body scrub.

When you have a couple of free hours for pampering beauty treatments, get out your handy dandy container of used coffee grounds and take it to the shower with you.

Once you've showered, apply the coffee grounds (mixed with a little water as needed) to your thighs or anywhere you might have cellulite, and rub the coffee grounds in for a good three minutes or so.

This skin massage stimulates circulation and blood flow and the coarse coffee grounds provide a natural skin exfoliant, polishing the skin by sloughing off dead layers, and preventing / minimizing cellulite.

Finally, rinse thoroughly.

Voila, there you have a quick and easy coffee ground body scrub.

Tip: Coffee can also be used in the hair to bring out natural highlights. This is a clever way to get double duty out of one product.

Sugar Skin Polisher

I have long since been using sugar as an exfoliant, rather than the absurdly priced store exfoliating products. Sugar is inexpensive, a basic $1.50 grocery store bag of Domino's Sugar will do you just fine, and it's oh-so easy to create this inexpensive sugar skin polisher.

Following a shower, dry your skin off, and take a handful or so of sugar mixed with roughly a teaspoon of water (you'll need to eyeball it to get a measurement that affords the right consistency). Once you've got the mixture at the right consistency (it should be grainy and a little thick, not runny), then begin rubbing it all over the body. Let the sugar dry on the body for two to three minutes, then rinse thoroughly.

Now, that was easy, wasn't it? And much cheaper than those $15 exfoliating products from Bath and Body Works. You just made yourself a sugar skin polisher, and it cost under $5.

Tip: Add a little clove, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and nutmeg to the sugar water mixture to warm and soothe aching muscles while exfoliating at the same time.

Rose Water Complexion Tonic

You only need a few ingredients to prepare this rose water complexion tonic.

You can prepare it a pitcher at a time or in single servings; I prefer preparing a pitcher at a time, but the choice is yours.

Here are simple instructions for single serving preparation of the rose water complexion tonic:

First, boil some water in a kettle on the stove. When kettle is steaming and ready, pour the water into a mug as you would when preparing a cup of hot tea. Add a few drops of rose water, ¼ cup or so of juice from one orange, and a few drops of peppermint oil.

The ingredients in this rose water complexion tonic flush out toxins in the skin, provide the body with needed antioxidants, restore Ph balance levels, and boost blood flow and circulation, giving the skin a healthy tone.

Source: I actually picked this beauty tip up from the movie Le Divorce (though in the movie it is listed as being a treatment for something else...) and it has worked wonders on my skin.

Give these homedade beauty treatments a try the next time you want to pamper yourself, I think you'll find you'll be giving your bank account a much needed spa treatment as well.