Plants are friends too
We have a lot of plants around the house. I'm really happy to have them, they contribute so much to my experience of our home. Apart from giving them water, I often talk to our plants or even pet them. I don't know if they like it, especially the petting part. But I do. So our plants feel a bit like friends to me.
When it's time to say goodbye
We have (had) an aloe vera plant which was falling over and out of its pot regularly. And it's loosing leaves now and then. And because of its size, its not so easy to move around but we had it on top of the lid of a chest so we moved it around a lot. Bottom line - this plant wasn't ideal anymore.
Even with this picture, I still feel it is a beautiful plant. However, we have another aloe vera plant which seems much happier, is growing super fast and seems more balanced. We decided to keep only the one below:
A slimy mess
I didn't enjoy cutting the leaves off the plant. Also, I've read those research reports telling that plants do respond to other plants being hurt. I looked up how to take the gel from the leaves, so after cutting them off I cut them over the length also and scooped out the gel part, then blended it in the mixer. This really made a mess. In the blog post I read about it, the pictures looked OK. But my kitchen really turned into a slimy chaos, so no pictures of that part. Cleaning up was easier than I expected, the gel is easy to remove with water.
Hair treatment and ice cubes
The fresh gel doesn't keep so long, just a few days in the fridge. So I put about half of the gel in an ice cube container for later use - in the freezer you can keep it much longer. The other half I mixed with a bit of almond oil and put a whole lot of it in my hair. Where it is sitting right now. Apparently aloe vera is great for energising and revitalising your hair.
I still had a lot of gel left, so I did a complete body treatment. The gel had a cooling and soothing effect, which is probably even more wonderful in summer time. On the other hand, in winter my skin tends to be more dry, and right now it feels super super soft. This aloe vera almond oil mixture was really one of the best things I ever put on my skin. I also put as much as I could fit on my face, feels amazing.
Do's and don'ts
Using fresh aloe vera gel for skin or hair treatment is really nice. I never did it before. Having these days as a holiday I always really like messing around in the kitchen making food or making natural cosmetics and such. The aloe vera was very slimy and ended up everywhere but it was easy to clean after. So if you have an aloe vera plant around the house, I'd definitely recommend you sometimes use the plant's gel for your beauty products.
You really don't need to use a whole plant, the way I did. You could take 2 or 3 leaves and have enough gel for a hair treatment and some left for your skin. Especially since it isn't so easy to keep the gel, unless you store it in the freezer.
Long story short - don't kill your plant, but enjoy the gel from 2 or 3 leaves and you'll have an amazing, repeatable experience!
Thanks for reading, enjoy the last days of the year!
