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Detox Drinks Recipes: How to Effectively Control Toxin Buildup

“Because we cannot scrub our inner body we need to learn a few skills to help cleanse our tissues, organs, and mind.” ― Sebastian Pole How do detox drinks recipes matter for your personal growth? They do matter quite a lot because self improvement isn’t just about taking care of your mental health & attitude, but also taking care of the body that helps you do so. With so much stress, pollution, inorganic food, and unwanted toxins from normal things like wall paint & carpet, we’re exposed to toxins on a daily basis. Stress produces unwanted chemicals in our body that piles up to add to our daily dose of toxin buildup. This results in toxic overload, which can cause headaches, mood swings, aches, pains, fatigue and more. The bottom line is, they compromise our physical and mental wellbeing. Including a detox routine in your self-improvement plan will help regain your body’s balance gently. Detox routines like fasting completely or going on a healthy modulated eating plan for a few days have been practiced in different cultures around the world for ages. Related: Self Improvement Tips: 7 Essentials to Excel in Your Personal and Professional Life What does detox mean? In simple terms, it means to remove all the unwanted chemical buildup in our body that you and I collect because of our lifestyle. You’ll have to live a hermit’s life to avoid this. But, as it’s not a very practical solution, the next best thing is to go in for detox – mental, physical and lifestyle. To avoid more toxin buildup in our body from the stress of dealing with such a wide topic, let’s just focus on physical detox today. Fine? Here’s a few simple homemade body cleanse detox drinks recipes to cleanse your body from within, lose excess weight and improve overall wellbeing. Related: How to Stay Healthy & Happy in the Winter 7 Simple Homemade Body Cleanse and Weight Loss Detox Drinks Recipes Green tea banana smoothie: This 3-ingredient smoothie is super simple to whip up but very effective and yum. Detox drinks recipes #1: Brew 1 cup of green tea and let it cool. Pour this in a blender with 1 banana and the juice of half a lemon. Add a few ice-cubes if you like it chilled. Tip: You can add it as a healthy snacking option to your daily diet. Benefits: This drink comes with the dual powers of green tea and lemon. Green tea has loads of antioxidants and is good for gently detoxifying our body. Lemon helps cleanse toxin build-up. Related: How to Get Restful Sleep – Improved Mental and Physical Health Cinnamon detox drink recipe: If not in the mood to use a blender, then this one’s just right for you. Detox drinks recipes #2: In a bottle of water add a few slices of apple and an inch of cinnamon stick. Let it rest for an hour. Tip: Sip it through the day rather than gulping it down in one go. Also, it’s good if you can let it sit overnight before using in the morning. Benefits: Not only will it keep you hydrated but gently drain the toxins away too. Cinnamon is rich in antioxidants and helps balance blood sugar. Apple has so many well–known health benefits plus is tasty too. Related: 7 Interesting Ways to Use Cinnamon for Beauty and Health How to Banish Brittle, Dull, Damaged Hair Naturally – Easy Hair Care Turmeric ginger tea: Did you know that turmeric and ginger together can work wonders for reducing cough, cold, flu and allergy symptoms? So along with doing a body cleanse, this tea can actually help you get better if you’re feeling under the weather. But remember, this is a warming drink and so modulate its frequency based on the weather and how much you can handle. Detox drinks recipes #3: In a cup of hot water add 1/3 teaspoon turmeric powder, juice of half a lemon and that of an inch of ginger. If you think it’s too tangy, try adding a dollop of honey. Tip: Have it every alternate day if you’re using it as a detox drink. Or, you can have it 2-3 times a day if looking for symptom relief. Benefits: The basic ingredient turmeric has so many health benefits that it would be better to class this spice as a medicine. Turmeric helps heal many internal injuries and infections along with being rich in antioxidants. It’ll help detox the liver to boost your body’s power to detoxify chemicals. Each and every ingredient in this turmeric-ginger tea works towards flushing toxins out of your body. Related: 7 Reasons Why You Should Take Turmeric Seriously 10 Ways to Optimised Health and Beauty Using Honey Coconut water detox smoothie: To detoxify your body and get energy boost after workout sessions, have a go at this smoothie. Detox drinks recipes #4: In a glass of coconut water, add a couple handfuls of spinach or kale. To this, add the juice of an orange or a medium-sized banana, whichever is handy. Put all this in a blender with raw cacao (if available) and half an inch of ginger. Blend and enjoy! Tip: If you don’t have coconut water handy, simply replace it with plain water. Don’t worry about the weird taste of spinach or kale because orange and banana have a stronger flavor than those. Benefits: Coconut water hydrates and replenishes electrolytes, which is what you want after sweating at the gym. Kale is rich in protein as well as all the good vitamins like A, B, C, K. These in turn help release energy from food. Orange will help flush toxins out of the body along with boosting your immune system. Banana will give you instant energy. Related: How to Use Hydration for Health – Water (Part 2) Detox ice lolly from detox drinks recipes: The best part is, you can either lick it to your heart’s content as a lolly or drink it

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Acrylic – 6 Easy Steps Boat Art Tutorial

Hey guys, how are you holding up on your New Year’s resolutions? I had fixed up a few artistic goals for 2017 and am glad to say its looking pretty good till now…here comes the smug smile 😛 . Well, on a more serious note, I have been able to keep up with ‘a piece of art a month’. Also, in order to keep the learning curve up, concentrated on learning and trying out things that I am not really comfortable with. So for this month’s art, getting acquainted and comfortable with acrylic paint a bit more seemed to be a daunting yet good idea. Here’s what followed and hopefully it will offer you that little push required to come out of the rut and enjoy your creative side a bit more. Treating Acrylic a Tad Differently Being a self-taught artist, I went through a few tutorials and write-ups on how to use acrylic color. They were really informative. But the upshot was that, though I was quite motivated to create something using this medium, it seemed a bit daunting too. Water color being my favored medium, I am used to applying the least possible layers of color. Also, the luminosity of paper shining through the paint appeals to me. Finally, I decided to have fun with this new medium and treat it like watercolor. After all, sticking to rules or flouting them artistically is everyone’s own prerogative! And you know what? I had fun AND learnt that acrylic works quite well treated like watercolor too! So, here’s a step-by-step peep into how I used acrylic on canvas to paint a simple weather-beaten boat. Exploring acrylic paint fearlessly has offered me quite a bit of insight into the many positives and attractions of this medium.   Tools of the Trade Canvas (pre-stretched and suitable for acrylic color). I am using a 35 x 45 cm cotton canvas board. Acrylic colors (of course!). Try to limit your palette to a few selected hues to maintain a cohesive and neat look.  Using artist grade paints (though might be a tad more expensive) brings out better results. Here’s my palette for this painting. Brushes. Mixing palette. Masking  fluid (optional). Depending on your subject matter or the amount of working freedom you want, this can be optional. Pencil (preferably 2B). Water. 6 Easy Steps to Acrylic Boat Art Step 1: Start off by selecting a not too complicated subject for your painting. I chose to focus on one thing, let it stand out and just provided a bit of context through the background. The boat itself isn’t over-complicated like an 18th century pirate ship. The aim of this artwork was to get a better feel of how acrylic paint works, it’s drying time, luminosity and window of correction work… and this delivered on all those points. Sketch in all the  elements of your drawing lightly with a 2B pencil. The line quality of a 2B is dark enough to follow as base work, yet light enough to be hidden by a thin wash later on. Step 2: Now, this step may be skipped if you are not planning on keeping a few pristine areas safe for work later on. My subject matter required a few patches of light blue to represent original color of the boat. Yet, the weathered effect had to go around it pretty drastically. As I am not so big on patience and working safely around a few untouched areas, I covered those white patches with rubber masking fluid. Its easy to apply, offers great freedom of brush movement and when you are ready to work on that area, just rub it gently and it rolls off like dried PVC glue on skin. Step 3: This is where the fun begins! Put in a light wash of the colors that would serve as base. Remember to use a limited palette and mix ‘n match according to your requirement. Here, I have used cadmium yellow as the base with touches of cadmium red and burnt sienna wherever required. Start working on the background too with light washes if your item in focus is touching considerable amount of elements of the background. Mine is not, so I let it be. Step 4: Start adding colors, overlay washes and details to your item in focus. Work towards bringing out the character of your subject matter and filling in all the areas that need to be covered. This is a good time to work on a relatively removed background if you haven’t started already. However, if your background blends into the subject matter, it would be time to start painting in the second layer of details. I agree it doesn’t look much at this stage, but I promise it will ultimately reach there. I added tints of burnt sienna to sap green and cadmium red to ultramarine at this point for the foreground in order to retain the overall cohesive feel. For the background, a mixture of burnt sienna, ultramarine and cadmium red was used. Step 5: At this stage, I peeled out the masked areas. The light blue original paint and some other details on the bow were added as well as more details to the raised back part and interiors of the boat. Start adding in finer details and working on any pristine areas left for highlighting or special treatment. Step 6: This is the final step where your artwork comes to life. I used a mixture of burnt sienna, ultramarine and cadmium red to create a dark hue for adding in details, demarcating areas and creating shadows working towards pulling all the elements together. Stand back from your painting time to time and add touches that you think would bring out the ‘feel’ better. Adding in finer details like rusty nails and rot on the hull worked for me.   Remember, ultimately its all about what impressions and emotions you want to convey through the artistic manifestation of your ideas. Hope

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Healthy Mind & Body: 8 Quick Breathing Techniques for Relaxation

Does stress or anxiety make you feel a bit tight in the chest or exhausted? Breathing techniques for relaxation prove to be very handy when it comes to stress relief. If meditation, yoga & tai chi don’t sound easy for you, then click to read how modulated breathing exercises can be a good option for you.

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DIY String Art Décor Accent for Kids’ Room

Do you like your décor to be bespoke with personal touches? Creating little design accents that reflect treasured memories and glimpses of our life tend to do exactly that. I usually prefer creating fine art pieces and sprinkling them around the house. But, I also like creating nifty DIY items that require learning a new technique or craft. Keeping the learning curve up while having fun, not bad right? Here’s how the idea for this string art came about. I had been looking for some new craft to learn and found this really cool technique of using strings to create interesting designs. Also, the other day I was going through the baby videos of my son and was really surprised! Because among all the sweat and tears (both mine and the baby’s), feeding, cleaning and lack of sleep, what shone through my memory was his angelic smile and how it made my heart go all mushy and awww. It sparked the idea for a décor accent for my kid’s room that would be a reminder of what actually lies beneath all this ‘why-there-is-no-handbook-for-bringing-up-kids’ mess 🙂 . Which string art are we making: String art nursery/kids’ room accent  What do we need: Rectangular piece of wood about 12 x 24 inches, iron nails, hammer, acrylic or any type of paint (even nail paint would do), strings, scissors, glue, pencil, paper, sticking tape Got everything? Let’s get started then: Clean the wooden board with a dry piece of cloth and decide on the message you want to write. Either use free-hand technique or select some calligraphic font if you are feeling particularly artistic. Make the fonts big enough to be visible from a distance and also manageable with a paintbrush. Go crazy with paint on the letters. I used acrylic paint because it was handy, but you can use any sort of paint that you feel comfortable working with. I also sprayed a protective layer of art-grade spray to protect it from any liquid that decides to get splashed on it later on. After all, it is for the kid’s room where anything can happen, right? However, if you are using water-resistant paint, you can do away with this step. Now, comes the design part. You can either opt for a printable design, which are easily available online or you can create one of your own. Remember to customize these for string art. Which means that make sure they are manageable enough to be filled with stretched string and not too detailed if it is your first attempt. Tape this on to the wooden board. Mark the positions where you would be hammering in the iron nails. Hammer in all the pins and tear the paper off. Remember to tidy up the knotted ends with glue. I decided to shimmer up the edges of the board with silver tape, but you can decide to leave it natural. Starting from one corner, tie the string to one of the nails and make your way through the rest of the design. It would be a nice idea to first make a sort of outline with the string and then fill it up. This would give a clean look to the whole thing. And…you are done. All that remains now is to find the perfect place to show it off!   Involving kids in the project can create new memories adding more personal significance to your décor items. Though I feel the calligraphic writing gives a bit polished and professional feel to the piece, you can also choose to do away with it for smaller projects. String art is versatile and can be placed anywhere in the house created with different themes. Have you tried using string art to express your creativity? Which new craft technique have you recently explored?   This article first appeared as a guest post on April Does That. Follow my blog with Bloglovin    

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