A Nerdy Farm Wife's All-Natural DIY Projects Using Commonly Found Herbs

Jan Berry's books are well planned, clearly written, thoughtful, and concise. This is not the first book of hers that I have purchased and each one is a gift. Each recipe is tried and true and always work. They are interesting and use ingredients that are readily available, or give more common suggestions if more exotic ingredients are listed. Generous book.

This book is an excellent investment and worth every penny! Step by step instructions accompany every recipe and instructions are clearly worded. The resource section directs you to other helpful sites as well.

REMEMBER! Do Not put ANYTHING on your SKIN that you cannot eat! We are porous, like rocks. When you put chemical concoctions on your skin, it soaks INSIDE our systems! EVEN SUNSCREEN! MAKE YOUR OWN! Zinc Powder and Coconut oil is the BEST SUNSCREEN you will ever use and it's NOT TOXIC! Most sunscreens CAUSE SKIN CANCERS, folks! I DID NOT LEARN THIS IN THIS BOOK...BUT I LOVE THIS BOOK!

"101 Easy Homemade Products for Your Skin, Health & Home" is written by blogger Jan Berry. When I first opened this book, I was in love! It is quite a beauty......but then when I actually got into the book and began reading and looking through the chapters and pages, I was really impressed.

This book covers a variety of topics including....

~Getting Started (which is always a nice place to begin!)

~Skin Care

~ Salves and Balms

~Body Butters and Lip Balms (super excited about this section!!)

~ Creams and Lotions

~ Bath Soaks and Salts

~Bath Melts and Scrubs

~Lip Care (also very interested in this chapter!!)

~Hair Care (been looking for some natural hair recipes!)

~Homemade Soaps

~ Home Remedies (a personal favorite of mine!)

~Nontoxic Solutions for Home (a HUGE plus!!)

~Pet Care (who would've expected this in a book?!?!)

As you can tell, this book does NOT lack in variety. Just about every topic I can think of is in this book. The recipes are easy to follow, simple to understand, and not complicated to complete, even if you are a beginner in this area. There are so many different recipes in this book that I want to try, I don't know where to begin.

I'm not going to lie...I have incredibly HIGH expectations for books like this one. This one meets, and even exceeds, those expectations. There are photos for every single recipe, and there is even a section in the back which tells you some different places to find the special ingredients. That is such a help {{smiles}}

I have absolutely no complaints with this book and truly look forward to using this book for many years to come.

Over the past couple of years I have been educating myself through different resources on natural living. Removing chemicals from the home and replacing them with natural products; purging my beauty and body products and really reading the labels and finding healthy, natural solutions...those are things which I have enjoyed learning about, and it is such a joy to have such a wonderful resource to add to my library.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you are concerned with the products in your home and in your cupboards.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher, Page Street Publishing, in return for an honest review. I was not required to share a positive review, I just really, really loved this book. All thoughts, opinions, and ramblings in this post are my own.**

101 Easy Homemade Products is the cumulation of all the years Jan has spent on her blog, her ebooks, pictures and growing in her knowledge of all things plant. It is full color, full of beautiful pictures of easy to make beauty and skin care products. The recipes she has created for this book use natural ingredients and you may have most of them already in your home. From calendula to rose petals, lavender to orange essential oils, in just about an hour, you can create your OWN lotions, soaps, and bars for yourself or as gifts. (Let’s think Mother’s Day here).
What I liked about this book
besides the fact that she is “scientifically” correct in the different usages of herbs and carrier oils, is that she explains things very thoroughly. For example, in her carrier oil chapter, she writes:
"Castor oil-a thick oil that lends a glossy shine to homemade lip balms, protects skin and has mild antifungal properties. It’s low comedogenic status means that it’s unlikely to clog pores. In soap recipes, it helps boost lather."
Wasn’t that easy to understand and full of valuable information? That’s what I love about this book. It’s information is easily broken down into manageable, memorable bits. The ultimate DIY, herbalist or home crafter handbook. 101 Easy Homemade Products has something for everyone in it!

I have recently started making my own soap, and I also tend to make my own cleaning products. So it was a short trip from that to looking for other things to make at home. This book is full of products to make at home, from lotions, to cleaners, to soaps, to everything in between. And what I particularly enjoyed about this is that 95% of the ingredients are reasonably easy to find. In fact, one of the ingredients was a dandelion-infused oil, and, well....you just go pick some dandelions (and who among us doesn't have plenty of THOSE?).

The recipes are very well written and easy to follow, complete with beautiful full-color photos of the finished products. I tried a couple of the cleansers, and now I'm getting ready to make the stain-removal stick. Overall, I'm very pleased and impressed with this book, and I look forward to trying many more recipes out of it!

This is a great little herbal book! We were excited to finally find a book on how to use herbs that didn't get into them being "soul healing" or "spiritual healing" as Catholics we believe only Jesus Christ can heal the soul and so this was a real treasure of a book! Its very simple and easy to use and understand starting the reader right off with the basics but giving enough detail that this book may be used to assist with basic ailments. It deals a lot with herbs that can be grown right in your own yard and basic oils that are simple to find making all these items fairly easy to get ingredients for. If there was one herbal book to have this is the one I would recommend. Jan did a wonderful job and is super knowledgeable. We look forward to reviewing this book in more detail on our homestead website[...]

The book offers easy homemade recipes using herbs and flowers that are often found in your back yard. I've made scrubs, salves, lip balms, and soaps with success using Ms. Berry's instructions. She obviously has the knowledge, skill, and experience that, to me, makes this a professional, easy to read and use guide to herbal remedies and cosmetics.

I initially received a digital (PDF, not Kindle) copy to review, and fell in love right away. The photos are gorgeous, the design and organization clean and logical and the font, graphics and color palette are perfect for a book on DIY natural products.

The print copy did not disappoint! It is a high quality book that feels great too. The pages are stitched, not just glued, and the book easily lays flat when open.

There is a ton of information on common herbs and flowers, plus other ingredients such as oils, beeswax, natural colorants and preservatives.

The recipes are easy to follow and include substation options (or noted that a substitution can't be made) if an ingredient is hard to come by or too pricey for your budget. I love the photos included for making soap, it's very helpful to see how each stage of the process should look.

There are recipes for every area of your life - skin, hair, bath time, laundry, cleaning the house and even for your pets!

I'm thrilled to have a copy of this book in my library and can't wait for my herbs and flowers to grow so I can make some great natural products!

When I first flipped through the pages, I felt like I was in homemaking, homeschooling and homesteading heaven! With such a variety of herbal recipes for your skin, health and home, there is something for everyone here! No only that, this book is filled with gorgeous photographs which makes for a very enjoyable read. Homemakers will be enchanted with the beautiful all-natural recipes to prepare a healthy home environment. Homesteaders will feel more self-sufficient with the plethora of inspiration for making more products from nature and buying less! And homeschooling mothers can enjoy dabbling into these easy recipes with their children and creating an herbal course of sorts! Not only are recipes shared, but the properties of the herbs and teachings on how to create your own herbal concoctions. A wonderful and creative resource for your home library!

101 Easy Homemade Products for Your Skin, Health & Home takes a wonderful approach to DIY body and home care products in that there is a heavy focus on using fresh and dried herbal and floral elements. I appreciate this as a gardener and avid forager who is always looking for new and practical ways to use my harvests and the shelves of dried items I put up each year. Too often, in my opinion, DIY books focus on heavy use of expensive and uncommon essential oils. Don’t get me wrong, essential oils have their place in a handmade life but I appreciated that for the most part the recipes in this book skipped heavy essential oil use in favor of using the whole plant more often.

For the beginner, the book gives all the basic steps necessary for infusing oil, includes substitution tips, and includes detailed instructions. For the more advanced there are plenty of ideas to get the creative juices flowing as well as projects for soaps using lye and much more. Projects included in the book include everything needed to wash and soften skin, ways to make baths more luxurious, herbal home remedy needs, solutions for homemaking, and even a section on taking care of those pets naturally. Truly it’s a book for every body and every home interested in doing more of ‘it’ themselves. It’s a great way to be using up the summer garden for amazing homemade gifts for birthdays, holidays, and more.

Jan is the QUEEN of homemade concoctions and this book does NOT disappoint. It is completely full of recipe after recipe using natural materials. The work is detailed and exact, the photography is beautiful and I am SO inspired to MAKE MAKE MAKE. This should absolutely go on the shelf of any maker, creative type or even preppers looking for natural alternatives. FIVE STARS!

101 Easy Homemade Products for Your Skin, Health & Home: A Nerdy Farm Wife's All-Natural DIY Projects Using Commonly Found Herbs, Flowers & Other Plants

I'm "liking" this book, although have not read it yet. I am cautiously optimistic about it because I have enjoyed others that she has written and from my own perspective, the recipes I have tried have been very good. I have read many times that wild-crafting takes a level of expertise, knowing what you are harvesting and knowing how to preserve. I too, am very cautious about giving something to someone who may have a reaction to it. I like the fact that minimal ingredients are usually used and to a person who has sensitivity to certain products, it's easy to let them know what is in them. I want to believe that for the majority of people who are reading this book and making products in it already know the precautions of pesticides and how to scoop something out of a container, as to not contaminate.
I wish you much success on this book and look forward to getting my hands on it. God bless...