We all love to indulge in our favourite organic skin care products - Dr.Hauschka, Spiezia, Trilogy, Essential Care - there are so many gorgeous and skin loving potions to pamper us these days. But sometimes you find yourself in the horrific (well not quite but it can feel like it at the time!) circumstance of running out of cleanser or hair conditioner. Ordering online is an option but you still won't get it until tomorrow at the earliest. What's to do but to put on your resourceful hat and look at what you've got to hand. And the best place to go first is the kitchen cupboard.

Cocoa (organic, fairtrade is in all our baking cupboards of course!) is an excellent colour reviver for dark hair. Mix equal measures of cocoa, honey and olive oil for nourishing hair treatment (for darker hair types only remember!).

Lemons are ideal for correcting self-tanning blunders. Simply rub the cut side of a half lemon on to the skin and rinse off. For those with light hair, squeeze a little on your head for a quick rinse. If you're feet are in dire need of a little pick me up mix a little lemon juice with brown sugar and rub into toes and heels to clean and remove dead skin cells.

Epsom salt and brown sugar are excellent body exfoliators. Epsom salt tightens and purifies the skin by drawing out toxins from your body. Add to a warm bath for an relaxing body treatment. Brown sugar has an anti-inflammatory action so is safe for those with acne or eczema. Simply rub into your skin and wash off.

Yeast is high in vitamin B6. When mixed with a little water (so that it becomes pasty) and applied to the face, it nourishes and purifies the skin.

The old (and contemporary) favourite extra virgin organic olive oil is one of the best and easiest treatments for skin. You can use it as a make up remover, body moisturiser, a base for a scrub (add brown sugar) and cellulite treatment (add caffeine or chestnut extract) as it is both an excellent moisturiser and cleanser.

If that sounds a little too much trouble, perhaps give Sensuous Sugar Scrub by Green People or the hand made Pure Olive Oil Soap by Essential Care a try?

I'm about to embark on a 6-month odyssey down the Americas. With two other eco advocates we plan to work in and visit a number of sustainable communities and organic farms to enhance our understanding of what's best for the earth from the ground roots up from the cultures of the Americas.

Avoiding air travel where possible (CO2 emissions alert) we'll be travelling extremely light but we'll need all the tips and advice we can get to fit 6 months worth of luggage into our wee backpacks.

Doing a little wondering today I stumbled across this great little eco travel blog called One Bag, which was voted best blog in the Tripbase eco travel awards category.

One Bag is the perfect resource for all travellers who want to have minimum impact on the environment on their journeys. ‘Overpacking tops the list of biggest travel mistakes' says One Bag. Travelling light is an art and science, one of the best travel skill one can obtain. It can make for a much more relaxed, productive and stress-free experience the blog points out.

The site aims to help convert more people to expert one-bag traveller status. They do this by giving tips on what to pack, what to pack it in and how to pack it (wrinkles are avoidable even in a backpack). One good tip I noted which may be useful given me and my travel partners are covering two continents and 8 countries is to split our luggage up ie half my stuff and half my friends stuff in my bag in case one does get lost in transition.

One Bag also has a Travel Letters page with comments from people who have put its ideas into action (which will hopefully convince even the biggest luggage travellers to slim down.

If you're keen to hear updates of my eco experiences I'll be posting blogs of right here on the So Organic site from September onwards.

If you thought of the words natural, organic, eco as a colour you'd probably think of whites and creams, browns and soft greens or pinks, right? It's a natural (pardon the pun) association the mind is drawn to - stereotypes build their reputation through repetition after all. But in this eco savvy, climate change campaigning world things are changing. Designers are creating to appeal to wider tastes - bright pink eco kettles, funky organic tea boxes, and... bright bold eyeshadows.

For those who haven't discovered the world of organic make up may be a little surprised at the variety of colour available. Natural eyeshadows (as in the chemical-free variety) don't have to be only natural in colour. You just have to take a look at Inika's 16? Range of mineral-based shadows to realize just how possible it is to make so many brilliant colours using ingredients virtually direct from the source.

Why bother with a natural eyeshadows if your already happy with the colours you use now from a conventional product? Though most conventional products contain mineral pigments in them, it is usually a very little amount and is mixed with fillers, preservatives and other synthetic ingredients. Petroleum, tar, nylon, aluminium and mineral oil are just some of the nasties you can find in your high street eyeshadows. Some of these ingredients are carcinogenic and many can trigger allergic reactions.

Mineral-based and organic eyeshadows, like Inika, NVEY and Lavera, contain few ingredients that are much safer for the delicate, thin skin on your eyelid. In fact the zinc oxides in mineral eyeshadows are believed to actually nourish the skin which strongly supports the statement that mineral make up is so pure you can sleep in it!

We weren't given opposable thumbs for nothing! We use our hands for almost every daily task - from applying our make up to writing an email and scrubbing the bath tub - how fortunate we are to have them! But how many of us truly show them the loving tender care they deserve after a busy day of doing everything?

Given the hands are so useful they deserve a little looking after we think. Here are a few care tips for looking after your hard working handy hands:

1. Clip and shape regularly to keep your nails strong and prevent them from snagging or ripping. When filing make sure you do so in one direction rather than a back and forth motion. This will keep the ends even smoother and stronger.

2. Gently push back cuticles using the rounded end of a nail file and a good cuticle hand cream like Badger Balm's Cuticle Care. Take care however as the skin around the fingernails is very delicate and does well to protect the nail from infection. Gentle is the way with this one.

3. Exfoliate with a gentle scrub like the Sensuous Sugar Scrub by Green People for extra silky hands in preparation of a deeply nourishing moisturise.

4. Massage with a specially formulated hand moisturiser as often as you can - every chance you get if you want to keep the skin on your hands from ageing prematurely. Because organic beauty product manufacturers know how weary our hands get they've done well by them to create some truly restorative hand creams. Intensive Hand Cream by Lavera, Safety Gloves Barrier Hand Cream by Barefoot Botanicals and Satin Gloves Anti-Aging Hand & Nail Cream by Rosa Fina are some of the best that provide delicate care for elegant hands.

My mum always said you can tell a woman's age by the condition of her hands and in this day of botox and make up tricks it's harder than ever to guess a woman's age by her face wrinkles alone. Make it even harder for the guesses and look after those hands ladies - they deserve it!

Those new to the biodynamic skin care brand Dr Hauschka often ask us why they don't have a night cream. It's a good question and one Dr Hauschka have a very good answer for.

According to the skin care experts at Dr Hauschka (which by the way is one of the oldest and trusted companies in the world when it comes to looking after our skin!) say that night creams ‘stifle the skin's processes making it sluggish, lethargic and dependent'. Basically they believe that a thick, heavy cream used in the evening can have more of a negative effect than positive. Our skin needs time to regenerate itself, to do what it was evolved to do naturally and freely. Fatty night creams clog the pores and do not allow the skin to breathe during sleep when the body's natural metabolic functions are at their regenerating best.

For those who can't imagine not putting a night cream on in the evening or need some time to get used to the idea, Dr Hauschka has an alternative. The Facial Toner, Rythmic Night Conditioner, Rythmic Conditioner Sensitive, Clarifying Toner, Regenerating Serum and Intensive Treatments 04 and 05 are their night care. These toners, as all good toners should, strengthen and support the skin's natural restorative processes.

So why then use a moisturiser at all? Day creams protect the skin acting as an extra layer to outside pollutants and increase moisture levels to rehydrate the skin in the morning.