Can I tell you a secret? I love making bath and body products.

Most of the time they’re insanely easy to make. We’re talking easy enough to make with your four year old and not pull out clumps of your hair easy.

Better yet, the pay off can last for weeks! The ladies in this house are suckers for things that smell amazing and make you feel all pampered. We like to make big jars full of scrubs that the girls happily glop all over themselves in the bath tub. And I’m not going to lie to you, I happily glop them all over myself too.

Since they’re so simple and relatively inexpensive to make, homemade bath and body products are perfect for making in large batches and gifting to friends and family for the holidays. I put together a list of 15 DIY skincare products that would make awesome gifts.

Treat Yo Self is a series that focuses on inexpensive indulgences that make you feel good without feeling guilty. Because when momma’s not happy, nobody is happy.

After a few highly-trusted friends raved about the awesomeness of their Birchbox subscriptions, I decided it was high time to treat myself. At just $10 a month for five personalized beauty samples sent to my front step, it seemed too good not to try.

The likelihood of trying out beauty products on my own is tiny because a) I’m cheap as hell b) I hate waste and c) as much as I love the idea of beauty products, I don’t use very many of them. The thought of spending money on a whole tube of something that I might potentially hate and immediately throw out (…or hold onto for three years before I throw it out) makes me itch. But itty bitty sample sizes for a fraction of the cost? Sign. me. up.

Usually, after the Oscars I’m all about the dresses and a healthy dose of snark. And don’t get me wrong, I love both. But as my daughter inches closer and closer to tweendom and the dreaded middle school years and inevitable mean girls, making fun of other women’s looks seems more and more like what it actually is: stupid.

So instead of jumping on the fashion police bandwagon, I teamed up with Melissa Scrofani and Meredith Hayman—two of my favorite local beauty gurus—to celebrate our most loved looks of the night and show you how you can achieve them too.

First up, Melissa is talking about hair…

When I have a question—whether normal like What time does BJs open? or obnoxious, like when I’m trying to prove to my husband that I know all of the things and type Is Chris Hemsworth Australian?!—I usually turn to the magical oracle that is Google. It doesn’t let me down and leaves me feeling like a smug, fancy pants know-it-all (he is, indeed, Australian).

Still, once in awhile, I want the added comfort of speaking to an actual expert on the topic that I’m looking into, rather than a chorus of randos on the internet. I know I’m not alone in this, right? Google is my BFF, but there really is no substitute to an actual trained expert.

That’s why I decided to start a new series called Ask the Expert. I’ll take our burning questions and bring them to trained professionals. My first burning question?

Treat Yo Self is a series that focuses on inexpensive indulgences that make you feel good without feeling guilty. Because when momma’s not happy, nobody is happy.

Lately, I’ve seen facials and all sorts of DIY beauty business on Pinterest that uses honey as an ingredient. I was always intrigued, but I never tried it because… well, because putting honey on my face sounded disgusting.

I mean, how gross would it be all goopy and stuck in my eyebrows? And how hard would it be to get off? Also, why would I want to stick my hand in a jar of honey and smear it all over my face?!

Well, apparently BECAUSE IT’S AWESOME.

I’m one of those people who starts out as a skeptic, thinking that something is absolutely ridiculous and a waste of my time. Then, slowly but surely, I need to know for myself. I need to experience the ridiculousness firsthand. I need to get to the bottom of it (hello, shampoo-free movement).

So I looked into this whole honey-on-your-face thing a little bit more to try and figure out why anyone would want to do it in the first place. Turns out there are a bunch of reasons.