With the weather quickly turning from pleasant to steamy, I’m always looking for natural beauty products that are moisturizing and refreshing. And, hey, if I can make the beauty aid on my own, even better! DIY is the way to go because I love (love, love) knowing what I’m putting on my bod.

When it comes to natural skincare, you don’t need a bunch of expensive products to look gorgeous. All you need is food. Well, the right foods. When applied topically, certain organic foods can feed your skin, leaving you feeling all over moisturized and refreshed. Some foods can even cure skin irritations, like redness, dryness and eczema. Others can prevent and reduce fine lines and wrinkles. Keep a supply of these five foods on hand for naturally sexy skin.

When it comes to your health, hair products are usually the lesser of your worries, given that the majority of what you put on your hair gets washed out. However, when it comes to leave-in conditioners, gels, and sprays, haircare can go from harmless to dangerous pretty quickly. Try out this homemade, 3-ingredient leave-in hair condition to get soft locks without the toxic baggage.

Have you joined the skin oil revolution that’s taking the beauty world by storm?

We’ve used the basics in skin care for eons: jojoba oil and sweet almond oil are two often-seen players. Coconut oil secured a spot with health lovers across the globe for consumption and topical use as well. Argan oil can now be found in it’s pure form, and as a staple in many highly effective lip balms, moisturizers, serums, shampoos and conditioners, even cosmetics such as foundation, lipstick and mascara. It’s clear that we’ve developed a full fledged love affair with essential fatty acids and nutrient rich oils that our skin just gobbles up. So what’s next? How about barbary fig seed oil.

Avoiding the sun is just as dangerous as excessive exposure, and it’s important that everyone strike their individualized balance, based on their skin tone and environment. If you aren’t comfortable venturing out into a sunny day without protection, nix the toxin-laden over-the-counter sunscreen and make your own natural and safe sunscreen.

In case you’ve missed it, oils are the new love child of healthy skin.

Dwindling are the days when when oil was to be stripped away from the skin with the harshest detergents and alcohol-based products for fear those oils were the root of all evils: breakouts. It turns out, overdrying the skin and removing its natural lipid barrier (those oils) only makes the problem worse, making skin more susceptible to infection by removing it’s natural protection and signalling skin to over produce oils to compensate for what it has lost.

Your smile is one of the first things people notice about you. Fair or not, you are being judged by your appearance, especially if you are female, and bad teeth top the list of beauty factors that can affect your life and your career in a negative way. It doesn’t help that we see images of people with perfect white Chiclet smiles in every magazine, newspaper, movie and television show. The smile standard has been raised, but you don’t have to resort to harsh chemical treatments or fake veneers to get a white smile; you can do it naturally. Use the following tips to brighten your smile and never hesitate to grin and bear it again.

I don’t know about you, but when spring starts to show its bright and sunny face, I like to add a little somethin’-somethin’ to my beauty regimen. One of those somethings that I’m going to give a shot this spring is this nifty DIY hand treatment.

Gee, your hair smells…like nothing?  

For some, fragranced body care products are less than desirable. Whether it's because of an allergy or sensitivity, an aversion, or just because your own darn body smell is superior (am I just assuming, Brad Pitt?), the "unscented" market is huge. Except that it's not. Not unscented, that is.

Better watch out coconut oil. There’s a new oil gaining popularity among natural beauty junkies and it’s just as scrumptious for hair and skin—if not more so. Babassu oil boasts super moisturizing properties that heal dry skin and improve skin’s elasticity. It also contains lauric and myristic acids, fatty acids that are a treat for hair. Turns out babassu oil is one fabulous natural beauty secret.