Cheap Chic! Body Lotion!

My fave bloggers are all about living on the cheap these days; to wit: Bake Like a Ninja and Half-Assed Kitchen. They also happen to be hilarious and lovely people, too.

I work with a sassy and charitable and funny woman named Katie. Over lunch the other day, we lamented that our high-power friends who ALWAYS make money are scratching around for work. Our sort-of employed creative type friends (the class to which I usually belong) are having a REALLY tough time of it. What we realized that in this time of roller-coaster economics, we're kind of like bonds. We're not in the sexy or exciting job. We tell people we work at the power company and they're all, like, "eh." But what we traded for is stability, and the good feeling we get when we can take our friends who need it the most to lunch.

Which leads me to a new feature on 40licious called "Cheap Chic!" with a cost-cutting measure so that you can still live your fabulous glam life, but without spending a lot of dough. Today's entry: Body Lotion!

Body Lotion!
Assemble all the creamy lotiony stuff people have given you over the past couple years that you never quite took to, or products that you bought for your face but didn't work out. Now empty them into a large measuring cup, and whisk them around for a while. Add some olive oil, drop by drop, to increase viscosity. Then add a drop of essential oil or two, or maybe some vanilla extract, and put it all back in the most decent bottle you have from the bunch, maybe with a new label. Voila! New life for old lotion! More space on the shelves! No perfectly good stuff in the landfill! No having to hassle with the overly made up woman in a lab coat at Macy's!

DUDES: You can also use this as a thoughtful, homemade gift for your lady. She won't even notice her stuff is missing. HOWEVER: MAKE SURE that you are not using her Creme de la Mer or similar expensive face cream that she relies on every morning to make her feel human. Your gesture will backfire and you will feel bad, and then she will feel bad because she knows you were trying to do something nice, but damn, that stuff costs $119 at the Duty Free place and, well, just never mind. Thank you, honey.