Review & Giveaway : Babushka's Beauty Secrets: Old World Tips For A Glamorous New You book by Raisa Ruder and Susan Campos (6/30)

Babushka's Beauty Secrets is a cute "how-to" guide for concocting safe, effective beauty products from ingredients that most of us having lying around the house. The 193-page book is chock full of "recipes" for common beauty concerns... everything from acne to hair removal to self tanners to dry hair and much, much more. Each recipe only requires a few common ingredients (such as olive oil, milk, green tea bags and honey) making them super inexpensive to make. Additionally, these products don't contain the harsh, possibly harmful chemicals found in many conventional products. Cheap and safe... definitely a win-win situation! The book is divided into chapters that typically correspond to a certain part of the body. For example, there's a chapter on lips ("Lip Service") and a chapter on eyes ("Open Your Eyes").

What I liked most about this book is that the author explains why each ingredient is useful and its benefit, also adding a bit of personal insight or comic relief along the way. It's not a flat recipe book, but an entertaining read as well. The one problem I had with this book is that several of the most commonly used ingredients in the book are things I don't purchase, honey and milk for example. Unfortunately, the things I don't/won't buy renders roughly half of the recipes useless for me. This is not a vegan friendly guide! For most people this wouldn't be an issue and I can definitely see the majority of recipes in the book being effective and useful. Although I certainly won't use these recipes often, its a nice book to have handy (for example, in the case of a sunburn). Then again, these types of home remedies can probably be found in a split second by a simple internet search. What makes this book nice to own is that the design and layout is really cute and it comes in a nice hardcover... its something that you might like to have around to browse for inspiration, to use during a prep for a big event or maybe to give as a gift.

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Hachette Book Group was generous enough to offer THREE of my readers their very own copy of Babuska's Beauty Secrets: Old World Tips For A Glamorous New You!

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This giveaway will end on June 30, 2010 at 11:59 PM PST. Open to US readers only. Good luck!

Giveaway winners: Historical Writer/Editor, missrantsypants, Hotsnotty2

**I was sent a copy of Babushka's Beauty Secrets: Old World Tips For A Glamorous New You for review purposes and allowed to post my thoughts at my discretion. I did not receive any monetary compensation for this post. All opinions expressed here are mine.**