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From Fertility Struggles to My Dream House in Sweden: The Real Story Behind Following Your Heart
Hi, if you’re new here, my name is Sarine, and I want to share something deeply personal with you today. This past winter, after a fertility treatment, I found myself in a life crisis.
That experience made me question everything. I went on a retreat where I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t living the life I truly wanted. I had no choice left but to make the decisions I had been avoiding for years.
One of those choices led me to buying my dream house in Sweden.
I’m sharing my story because I want you to know: yes, you can create the life you want. But it’s not as easy as social media sometimes makes it look. There will be pain. You need to understand that so you won’t question yourself when things get hard.
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Why I Went on the Retreat
In the fall, I went through a fertility treatment. It wasn’t how I had imagined it. I chose it, yes—but it felt wrong. The first round didn’t work, and I was left with a nagging feeling that something deeper was going on.
Part of me thought: Maybe there’s unresolved childhood trauma stopping me from wanting to be a mother.
Another part whispered: Maybe motherhood just isn’t right for you.I felt torn. Some days I desperately wanted to align myself with moving forward with treatment. Other days, my entire life felt wrong.
I had trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. I had no excitement about my life, nothing to look forward to.
I realized I was avoiding something important. I’d been following Teal Swan for a while, especially her workshops where she helps people see what they’ve been avoiding in themselves. Her approach resonated with me because she doesn’t sugarcoat reality. She talks about the real pain and difficulty of choosing your truth.
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Making the Leap
When I saw she was holding a retreat called “Curveball,” I knew I had to go—even though it was a lot of money for me. It meant selling some stock options, but the investment felt worth it.
I thought maybe I’d attend in the spring. But then I found out there was one in February… in Costa Rica. I didn’t care about the location. If that’s where the truth was waiting for me, that’s where I would go.
On the very first day, I saw it clearly: I was being fake.
Most of my life choices were about making other people like me, not about what I truly wanted. I rarely asked myself: Do I even like this person? Do I want this?
That realization was painful because I knew it meant I’d lose many relationships. Some people would leave me. Others I would have to walk away from because staying connected hurt too much.
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The Sweden Connection
One of the biggest truths that surfaced was my longing for Sweden.
I’m originally from Germany but lived in Sweden from 2011 to 2017. When my relationship ended and my job contract wasn’t renewed, I took it as a sign to leave. But I’d missed Sweden ever since.
Even when I traveled to beautiful places, I’d think: This is nice… but it’s not Sweden.
On the retreat, I admitted it: I already knew exactly where I wanted to live. Not “somewhere in Sweden,” but the exact area I had left years before.
I had been eyeing a particular house online for weeks, telling myself it was just a “future vacation home idea.” But I knew the truth—it was the house I wanted to live in. Now.
When I returned from Costa Rica, I booked a flight to Sweden immediately. There was a viewing that Sunday.
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The Price of Following Your Dream
Following your heart sounds romantic, but it often comes with loss.
In my case, it meant breaking up with my partner over the phone—something I never wanted to do. I also quit my job. Not just because I was moving, but because I didn’t want to stay in a system where it’s normal to spend five days a week in an office, and then “treat yourself” to expensive things and outing to compensate for the lack of meaning in my life. I wanted more time to do the things I love. Like expressing myself creatively (through YouTube videos, blog posts such as this one, and photography), and for my coaching sessions, where I help others build trust in their own vision for their dream life and find very specific action steps that are actually managable for them in their current life situation. And also just for being in nature, being with my feelings and just dilly-dallying and playing around.
I decided to buy the house in cash. That meant using all my savings and taking on some debt for renovations. I used to fear loans, but I reframed it as a bet on myself. The bet being very simply that I would always be able to repay the relatively small sum I borrowed. I wasn’t planning on doing this without ever having an income again after all, so … not really a huge gamble.
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The House as a Teacher
Now that I’m here, I’m enjoying having time for my coaching clients and my creativity. But the house also comes with challenges and choices.
For example: Do I take on another loan to install a modern heating system, or do I live with some physical discomfort by heating with wood?
Each choice comes with its own pressure. A loan might push me to make money faster but could create stress (which would lead to me breaking down and not making said money). Living simply might keep me comfortable financially but it might be … well, pretty uncomfortable physically. Which might also lead to my motivation for creativity to take a hit.
The deeper question is the same: Do I believe in the value of my work enough to do it consistently—whether I “have to” or not?
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Why This Matters
This house represents more than a physical space. It’s a mirror for my growth.
Keeping it warm, safe, and alive requires me to keep showing up for my work, to believe in my value, and to stay aligned with what I want—not what others expect.
It’s not easy. But it’s alive.
And I’ve learned that comfort without alignment will make you miserable. That’s what I had before—safety, stability, and constant people-pleasing. It made me ill.
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You Can Do This Too
If you take one thing from my story, let it be this:
What you feel inside is possible.For me, the moment of clarity about my house came in February. By July I owned it and moved in.
Things align when you take steps. Opportunities appear. For example, I negotiated a lower price because of a fungus problem—saving far more than expected. In the long run I will obviously need that saved money for the renovation but this still bought me some time not having to do everything at once. New income streams are appearing as I write this, so everything is working out.
You don’t have to do it alone. I couldn’t. I got help from retreats and coaching. And it fulfills me with deep gratitude that I can offer that to others as well in my personal life coaching sessions.
If you’d like my perspective on your situation, you can book a free discovery call through this link.
If you’d like to hear about actual clients’ results, check out the highlight “client wins” in my instagram profile.
Remember: You are always loved. You deserve the life you want. You already have what it takes inside you to create it.
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Vegan Peanutbutter Oatmeal Spelt Cookies | Recipe
When I moved into my house here in the Swedish countryside, one of the many charming details was the stove in the kitchen. As it turned out, however, the oven function wasn’t working. I only discovered this, of course, after a dear friend, who was visiting here, took the trouble to clean the oven…
Since I can’t do without sweet pastries, and while I love making and eating American pancakes or chokladbollar very often, but would like a bit more variety, I came up with the idea of looking into whether there were any cookies that could be made in a pan. There are.
It started as a skillet cookie fail.
For some other reason I can’t quite fathom, I decided not to follow the recipe (oh wait, I do know the reason: it’s always like that with me… I just can’t stick to recipes, I always have to make my own). Instead, I took a regular cookie recipe that sounded delicious to me (vegan peanutbutter oatmeal cookies) and fried them in a pan.
Of course, I “had” to adapt this recipe as well. And for some reason, the pan-cooked version wasn’t a success (although the cookie in the photo above suggests otherwise). If you follow me on YouTube, you may have seen my short video with the pan-cookie experiment:
The cookies simply crumbled. But at least: since the main ingredients are peanut butter, oats, and sugar, the cookie crumbs were delicious. And the dough was definitely too good to throw in the compost. So I saved it, intending to take it to a friend’s house where I’m currently doing laundry and showering while there’s no water in the house. In exchange, I cook for him on these “laundry days.” Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately, as it turned out), I left the cookie dough at home for this occasion.
My kitchen mishap became a new favorite recipe.
The next weekend, I had the idea at breakfast, which is practically a mandatory pancake meal for me on the weekends: I baked pieces of cookie dough into the pancake batter. And it was just as delicious as you’d imagine!
There was also a short video about this on my YouTube channel:
You can find the pancake recipe here on my blog. Here’s the recipe (my version) for the vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies. It’s based on this recipe “Vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies” by lovingitvegan.
Vegan Peanut Butter Oat Cookies
Ingredients
½ cup (112g) melted coconut oil
¾ cup (150g) cane sugar
½ cup (125g) peanut butter (I prefer crunchy)
¾ cup (94g) spelt flour
1 cup (100g) rolled oats
½ tsp baking soda
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp saltMix the dry ingredients first, then add the rest.
Use about two tablespoons of batter per cookie.
Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 12-15 minutes.
Pancakes with Vegan Peanut Butter Oat Cookie Dough
As I said, this was a clear hit for me, and proof of the theory that the best recipes come from accidents and mishaps in the kitchen.
To do this, simply pour the pancake batter into the pan as usual and sprinkle pieces of cookie dough over the top. You have to be a little careful, because cookie dough will brown faster than pancake batter. So flip it a few times to make sure the cookie dough doesn’t get too dark.
If you have any delicious baking or cooking creations that started out as mishaps, I’d love to read about them in the comments. And if you try this version with peanut butter and oat cookies in pancake batter, I’d also love to hear how it went for you.
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Our experience reflects the reality of the past – not the future
Our experience does not reflect the totality of reality. It reflects the reality of what we have experienced in the past.
If you use your experience as a measure of reality, then you limit life’s ability to give you a different future. And thus, you limit yourself.
You don’t do this consciously.
That you do this isn’t a bad thing; it’s very human.
You do it to protect yourself from the pain you experienced in the past.Don’t use your experience as a reason to close yourself off to life.
Yet, this very avoidance—not wanting to open yourself up to experiencing pain again—is also what closes you off to life.
Thus, you choose a different kind of pain: the pain of an unlived life.
Life is desire and pursuing desire through decisions.
Desire calls to us in the form of longing.
The longings whose call we don’t follow and/or whose fulfillment we close ourselves off to at the crucial moment create the pain of the unlived life.
The pain of the unlived life is bearable. That’s why so many choose it.
This pain is less stinging, less vivid than a painful experience.
It is dull and lies over you like a lid.
It is bearable.
There are good reasons to choose the pain of avoiding life. For every time we act on a desire, there is a possibility that we will be hurt. That our desire will not be fulfilled. That we will be rejected. That we will fail.
Most people remain stuck with this pain. They perceive it as absolute.
They don’t understand that rejection, failure, non-realization actually mean: Your desire will not be fulfilled in this way.
Vivid pain is, in truth, an important compass.
That’s why many people choose the pain of avoiding life rather than living pain. Vivid pain confronts us with the truth. It shows us that something we desire doesn’t want to/can’t come to us in the way we’ve chosen.
Vivid pain looks like a meter-thick concrete wall, toward which our desires are currently steering us.
The moment we decide to walk directly toward our desires, it’s as if we’re allowing ourselves to be pulled into that wall with full force.
Go beyond the horizon of your experience.
There are two possibilities for what happens next:
Either it turns out that the wall isn’t a wall at all, but our idea of something. The wall dissolves like a veil of fog the moment we prepare ourselves to have to break through it or to be broken by it.
The second possibility is that we truly experience pain. The pain of a shattered illusion. Our longing isn’t fulfilled, and we see our fear confirmed that our wish won’t be realized.
Those who succeed in not stopping at the rejection of pain, but instead recognize its information, come closer to the true fulfillment of their longing.
The opportunity lies in the fact that through the impact we discover that we weren’t moving toward what we thought was our longing. Pain shows us what our true priority is. It gives us the opportunity to recalibrate and align ourselves with our deeper truth.
That’s how life works.
Experience can be interpreted as “not like this” – or as “not at all”
You may have a different image for the concrete wall. It is the “it doesn’t work.”
It doesn’t change anything:
Life is a constant outgrowing of one’s own horizon, beyond the walls with which the mind encloses the known.
That’s why the feeling always remains the same:
No matter how often we experience that we’re heading towards a wall, and no matter how deeply we reach in consciousness that we can trust that the wall is either a smokescreen or a help in recognizing our true desires:
The same feeling, the same choice, remains.
Do we pursue our needs, desires, and longings even when they come accompanied by fear, or do we let them go?
The former is a “yes” to true life—colorful, intense, pleasurable, and connected to ourselves, everyone, and everything.
Making the experience the absolute truth means withdrawing from life.
Not pursuing our desires is also living. However, here the creativity we naturally carry within us, which flows through us and wants to be expressed, is guided by fear.
No matter how powerful the creativity flowing through us may be—it is the guidance of this force that determines the outcome. The content of our life reflects this force.
Since we do not only live an individual creation story, but shape this world together with others through our creative power, the world reflects the individual and the collective creation that represents our inner state.
We ignite the full positive potential of our creative power, which leads to a loving, beautiful world, and bring it to fruition by choosing our true desires AND the associated fears.
There is no path without fear.
There is no path without pain.
Only lived joy is fulfilling.
There is a way to allow joy in our imagination, perhaps even to delve very deeply into the richness of the inner world, and yet to choose not to realize the fulfillment of this inner world on the physical plane. It feels better to avoid pain (or the possibility of pain). The price we pay for this is to receive a life in which we survive but do not live.
There is a path of deep and genuine joy and bliss, which is also connected to deep pain (and thus to deep healing from pain) and deep fear (which turns out to be the idea of something).
Those who truly want to live must answer the question, “What are you willing to pay for it?” with “My life.”
Those who dare to do this will discover that this means “My life so far” and that you will be given a new life that surpasses everything you could have imagined in the best way possible. Again and again.
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All the best,
Sarine
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Junk food – for real 2
I did make those burgers for dinner today – with homemade BBQ sauce and hamburger dressing and all. Only the ketchup and the mayonnaise in the dressing were not made from scratch, even though there were recipes for that in the Junk food book. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me this fast food faux pas.
Do you too see a face in this picture? She’s frowning, right? -
DIY – Scented tea cup candles
Do you have a hard time throwing away stuff that’s practically useless? Do you stuff it in a drawer, telling yourself you’ll come up with something it’ll still be good for? Here’s a suggestion for what to do with leftover wax from candles that are technically burnt down:
Tea cups: my latest thrift-store hunt. Wick: some linen cord. 
For the wick it’s important that you use a cord from a natural fiber, since, you know, you’re going to light it. I used linen since it happened to be around. Cotton works, too. 
To make the wick not drown in the wax, I wrapped a rubber band around the cup … 
… and hung the linen cord over it. One mustn’t be stupid, as the Swedes say. Now this step I forgot to document in pix: melting the wax. I just put the chunks into a tin can, which in turn I placed in a pot filled with water. Heat until the wax is melted. I put the linen cord in there, too, so that it would soak up some wax (which I imagined would keep it from burning too fast). Also, I added some tea tree oil. I am sure any essence works, but I probably wouldn’t use anything that’s not organic.
And this is the result. You like? 
I do! These are going into the bathroom. I don’t like having the fluorescent light blinding me when I brush my teeth at night, so I’ve been decking out the place with tea lights. To state the obvious: this is prettier.
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Recipe – Make your own nutella
The hazelnut chocolate cake deliciousness from earlier reminded me of one of my favorite homemade things. Homemade nutella. I came across this recipe when I got into the low-carb thing. I am not that strict about it anymore as I was then but I still use birch tree sugar.*
Obviously you can use any sweetener you like – and it’s still home-made nutella. In all fairness: it doesn’t taste exactly like nutella. In my opinion, it tastes better. Plus, it’s easy, fast to make, with no exotic ingredients (except the coconut fat), and some might even say: healthy. I don’t know if I would go so far considering that I probably eat way too much of it at once. I would however go so far as to say that – as anything home-made, and thus made with love and care – it is a healthier alternative to the stuff from the store.
You need:
- 2 cups of ground peeled hazelnuts
- ca. 4,5 to 5,5 tbs of sweetener (just use how much you like)
- 3 tbs cocoa (the raw stuff for baking, not the sweetened ready-made stuff for chocolate milk)
- coconut fat – I start out with 2 tbs, see how the texture turns out, and add till it’s right
- a dash of vanilla
Just put everything into a blender and, well, blend. Add whatever you feel needs adding according to your preference. Done. It lasts … well, I don’t know, in our household never long enough for me to actually figure out a best before date.
Hazelnutty for you! * Birch tree sugar is a form of xylitol, which doesn’t up the blood-sugar level so much. I like it best out of all the alternatives because although the sweetness is different from the taste of sugar, I don’t feel “cheated”. Stevia just tastes like licorice to me, so that’s no real alternative if you ask me. I make sure I buy it at a health food store because xylitol can also be made from – guess what – GMO corn.
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Junk Food – for real
I am not only a hoarder when it comes to thrift-stores, no, I also hoard books. Library books. I cannot praise Gothenburg’s library enough – free membership, branches in every part of town, a huge selection, and, the best of all (yet also my downfall, as will soon become apparent): you can borrow a lot of items at once. I mean it: A LOT. You’re not supposed to borrow more than five at a time but there is no mechanism in the scanner that prevents you from checking out more.
I try to be reasonable but what does happen to me a lot is, that I go to one of the libraries (they are nice places to hang out in town when it’s cold outside and you’re waiting for someone), and I find something that interests me. Lately mostly cook books, and diy related stuff. Mainly because those are really nice to look at, and inspiring, and also: expensive, so I wouldn’t buy them. What happens next then is me thinking “Oh, I want to borrow this one. But wait, I already have so many books at home. But if I don’t check this one out now, I’ll probably forget the title, and what if it’s not there anymore next time I come here?!” So… you get the picture.
This past week I borrowed a cook book, which makes me want to cook/bake through every single one of its recipes. It’s called Junk Food – på riktigt. I’d translate that with: Junk Food – for real. It combines two interests of mine – junk food and health. Health is obviously relative, in this case I mean that the food is made from the best ingredients possible (because you’re the one making it, duh), no funny business like preservatives, flavorings, etc. So the book has recipes for how you make all the classic junk food meals from scratch. Get this: there is even a recipe for how you make marshmallows!? I’m in love. Also, the food photography is really appealing – lots of vibrant colors.
I am planning on making hamburgers (including making my own bbq sauce and hamburger dressing) tomorrow but since the dough for the buns is a yeast dough, I prepared that tonight (fresh yeast dough tastes great but it is basically a guarantee for a stomach ache).
The yeast dough is rising under one of my beloved Kate Bingaman Burt kitchen towels. Ok, I admit – I just included this pic to have an excuse to show off one of my beloved Kate Bingaman Burt kitchen towels. 
Turmeric is what makes them look so nice and yellow. So, thank you Gothenburg library. I actually think I will purchase this book.
To be continued … -
Thrift-store raid
I can never go into a thrift-store without buying a bunch of stuff. So I am equally thrilled as terrified by the fact that here in Sweden thrift-stores (called “loppis”, short for “loppmarknad” = flee-market) are all over the place. I kid you not: even when you’re driving on the loneliest road through the woods you’ll find signs (some hand-made, some “real”, like the official signs for a town or something) saying “loppis”.
I have, however, found a solution for my problem. Not going in. Yes, unfortunately that is the best thing I have come up with so far. The positive thing with my addiction is: it is relatively cheap. I regularly find myself with a basket full of stuff in the line for the cash-register, preparing myself for the supposedly inevitable heart attack I am going to have when I hear the total. Kind of like at IKEA, you know, where you end up picking up a bunch of small items on the way, which you never planned on buying but now that you’re here, and they’re so cheap, and then at the cash register you find out that you misread the price (or rather: the tagging on the shelves was misleading), and everything is much more expensive than you thought but you don’t feel like bothering with returning the stuff now that they’ve already scanned everything – you know what I mean?
Only, that at a Swedish loppis that’s not how it turns out. I am surprised every time by how a ton of stuff can cost so little. Everything is really expensive here (well, I guess that’s relative, I suppose the Norwegians would disagree but compared to Germany it is – and I do still compare, even after two years, sigh) – except for thrift-stores. Those are really cheap, and the only chance of me dying of a heart attack there is from the anxiety I build up myself while waiting in line.
So, yes, there are a lot of things that are great with thrift-stores: it’s obviously better from a environmental/consumption point of view if we re-use stuff that already exists, instead of throwing away old stuff and producing new stuff all the time. It’s cheap, so I can afford buying a ton of stuff even when I don’t have much money (which is most of the time). And it’s fun. The less central/known the location of a thrift-store, the higher your chances of finding real treasures. Even better when the people working there have no idea what stuff is worth (well, better for me, that is, I guess).
But regardless of all the pros – stuff is still stuff, and accumulating it, no matter where you get it from, still clutters your home. Consumption is consumption is consumption … If I didn’t restrict my visits to these places, and my “feng shui bible”, I might as well be one of those hoarders that you see on tv.
This week, I broke my self-imposed prohibition. I have been to three thrift-stores, it cost me 316 SEK (ca. 50$ | 38€), and here is some of my booty:
Lately I have been buying a bunch of plates … Because I am obsessed with (making) these three tier servers:
Obvs also made from plates found at various “loppises”. 
Yes, I am aware that we have no possible use for more than two of these, so anything I am making from now on, I will somehow have to get rid of … 
I especially dig plates with this kind of delicate flower pattern. 
This lovely can was only 5 SEK ( = 80¢ | 0,60 €), and I thought it would be perfect as a gift – filled with some chocolate chip cookies, maybe? 
Both Peter and I have been wanting to have these kind of spoons for when we eat sushi. Well, actually we don’t want the spoons for the sushi but for the miso-soup that comes with it. 15 SEK ( 2.60 $ | 1,80 €) for 4 spoons. Not bad, eh? 
I bought two of those brass forms … … because I thought I could use them when I try this recipe for making your own bath bombs.
Oh yeah, and the tea cups I got because I want to make …
… these kind of candles. This retro beauty is for my sister, if I can find a way to mail it to her safely (she lives in Jena and used to live in Mainz – how freaky is this?):
Hm, you can’t see it in this picture but it also has a stamp that says “Schott Mainz”, so … I also broke my biggest no-no: I am not allowed to buy any new fabric until I have made something from the tons that I already have hoarded. But I just couldn’t walk past this:
50 SEK ( 7.80 $ | 6 €) … 
… for about 1,5m x 3,2m (1,6 x 3,5 yards) 
Now all I need is an old arm chair that I can make over! Or professional help … Or professional help re-doing an old arm chair!
Like so. Also, I bought …
… this enamel-coated plate … 
… at 40 SEK ( 6.30 $ | 4,80 €) one of the more expensive purchases. But I just HAD TO. Why? Apart from that I think it’s adorable, I want to exchange all the plastic dishes with enamel (both for health and aesthetic reasons) in this lovely picnic basket:
Do I need to mention that this is also from a loppis? 50 SEK (7.80 $ | 6 €). My best buy this year so far. Now you know the severity of my condition. If you know of any cures or remedies – please don’t tell me! I can’t imagine my life without loppis treasure hunts.
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Recipe – Angie’s Flourless Hazelnut Dark Chocolate Cake
It is as divinely delicious as it sounds – and it’s gluten-free! I’d also like to think that it has to do with Ayurveda in so far as Ayurveda is all about pursuing happiness. This cake definitely made me happy. I am spoiled when it comes to mushy chocolate cakes since I live in Sweden. Swedish kladdkaka (mud cake) is the best, in case you didn’t know. I am very patriotic (or whatever it is called when a foreigner is that) that way. I am just telling you this so you fully comprehend what I am saying when I say the following: Angie’s Flourless Hazelnut Dark Chocolate Cake is the best muddy chocolate cake I have made/eaten. Ever.
Just the way I like my chocolate cake: chewy on the outside … 
… and real muddy in the center. 
And did I mention that it’s real hazelnutty, too? Das könnte Dir auch gefallen:
Vegan Peanutbutter Oatmeal Spelt Cookies | Recipe
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No poo – tested for you
Well, ok, it wasn’t a completely selfless act, I do dig these kind of diys. I have been meaning to write this post since last Wednesday (that’s when I tried some recipes) but I wanted to wait till I had some pictures. As most of the times, I am not completely happy with them but I am afraid if I wait until I am, I will never share this with you. And that would be sad because trying out these recipes really was a revelation for me. So: do try this at home!
I tried some of the recipes from this ByzantineFlowers post, namely the soap nut shampoo, the green tea conditioner, and the coffee scrub.
Soap nuts The soap nut shampoo I simply did because I had those nuts (that are berries) at hand. It’s actually what we’ve been using to do the laundry with, I had no idea you could use them as shampoo. Boiling the soap nuts in water for 30 minutes, preparing the shampoo every time you want to use it rather than storing it – the procedure is simple yet somewhat time-consuming, so I am not sure I will stick with this one in the long run. The liquid does have a distinct smell, which I find neither particularly unpleasant nor particularly pleasant. It’s ok. As to whether this shampoo worked or not – I find it hard to say. I mean, my hair did get clean and looked nice but I can’t say for sure that it was the soap nuts, or simply washing my hair (after all, some do use water only), or …
… The green tea conditioner. Now this one I loved. My hair usually is very hard to comb (I don’t even use a brush). I have gotten used to it and don’t even think about the discomfort anymore but those days are over! I was skeptical, and wondered how this was supposed to work, after all, the green tea is water, and won’t that just run down before I even got a chance to rub it in? I have no clue how it worked – but it did. My hair was super-easy to comb, and it did look nice (again, I can’t know for sure what to contribute that part to).
Green tea The real revelation however was the coffee scrub. It is easy to make, relatively cheap yet it feels really expensive (which is the best, right?), feels nice, and makes you smell so good! I only deviated from the original recipe in so far as I used coconut fat instead of olive oil. Again: because it was at hand – and also because it is supposed to be good for Pitta (yup, I just had to sneak in something Ayurveda). Also I used vanilla sugar instead of regular since I had prepared a jar full a while ago (you just put a vanilla bean in a jar with sugar and let it sit), which we don’t use anymore (the sugar being white). Same goes for the coffee: we haven’t been drinking any lately, so this is the perfect way for me to enjoy its smell anyway.
In the original recipe it says it’s against cellulite but I just went ahead and used it as a full body scrub. Peter was concerned that maybe that way I’ll just end up spreading cellulite. Very good point, so I will keep you posted as to whether I suddenly develop cellulite on my nose or something.
I have been combining using this scrub with the Ayurveda massage technique from the morning routine, so I fancy myself getting the benefits from both. I am no expert though, so I don’t know, I am just going with my gut here. Another thing that’s great about this scrub (yes, there is more!) is that the coconut fat (or whatever fat/oil you’re using) keeps your skin from drying out in the shower. At the same time, you don’t get so sticky that your towel or clothes feel greasy after using them. Your skin just feels really nice and smells like coffee – how cool is that?!
Coffee scrub FYI: all this coming from someone who normally doesn’t use more than shampoo and soap in the shower – read: I don’t get excited about beauty products very easily. Yesterday I even managed to get Peter excited about this coffee scrub. His only concern was that he was going to a lecture, and that the coffee addicts among the guests might be tempted to start licking his skin. No reports of the sort have been filed, so I guess this delicious scrub is safe for use in public. Well, maybe not the actual use but you know what I mean.
