Indie Lee’s DIY Pumpkin Pie Sugar Scrub

October 1, 2013 by Alia 65 Comments

Who doesn’t love a little bit of pumpkin pie?  It’s creamy, smooth and tasty.  Now, you can have that for your skin too!  Want to know more?  Read on!

Indie Lee

I was recently approached by the marketing firm for Indie Lee.  As described right on Indie Lee’s website,

“Indie Lee is devoted to making all natural beauty products from the world’s finest ingredients. What you put on your body is just as important as what you put in it. We must nurture our soul to let our inner beauty shine through. Live life to its fullest, one moment at a time.”

Indie Lee also likes to share DIY recipes and that’s where I came into the picture.  I was asked to try out this DIY body scrub recipe and write about it.  There’s absolutely nothing in this for me, except of course, I get to try out a new body scrub and pamper myself.  Tough life, isn’t it?

Pumpkin Pie Sugar Scrub

Here’s the recipe, as it was sent to me:

Pumpkin Pie Sugar Scrub

Unfortunately, I didn’t have all of the ingredients on hand.  So, I made do with what I had and made a modified version of this body scrub.

My Modified Recipe:

1 cup of white granulated sugar
1/8 cup of coconut palm brown sugar
4 tsp of pumpkin spice*
1/8 cup of coconut oil
4 T of olive oil

Ingredients From My Cupboard

As you can see from the photo of my ingredients, I didn’t have a whole lot of white sugar left.  So, I opted to make half of the amount in this recipe, just so I could have a cup of sugar left over at the end.

I used coconut palm brown sugar. It’s not quite as soft as regular brown sugar, but it worked just fine in this recipe.

I used my homemade pumpkin spice instead of the cinnamon and nutmeg.  My pumpkin spice recipe comes directly from Heidi at Lightly Crunchy.  It’s a great little recipe that includes cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves.  Check out the recipe here.  I used quite a bit more spice than the original recipe calls for.  I did that to compensate for the lack of actual pumpkin in my concoction.  I used the spice to simulate that spicy pumpkin pie scent.  If only I could transmit smells through my blog, you would know that it worked.

Sugars and Pumpkin Spice

I used both coconut oil and olive oil.  While the original recipe did not call for olive oil, I found that I needed to add some moisture to compensate for the lack of pumpkin.  I could have just as easily added more coconut oil.  Both coconut oil and olive oil are good for your skin, so I didn’t mind having both in this scrub.

Adding Coconut Oil

Finally, it’s obvious that I didn’t include any actual pumpkin.  Pumpkin pie mix is just not something that I have on hand.  I would have loved to include some pumpkin puree or butternut squash puree.  Alas, I had used my entire supply up already (mostly on baby food).  So, I did without and added both olive oil and a lot of pumpkin spice to compensate.

The Result

The result of my little concoction looked like this.

Final Product

The mixture was fine and felt pretty smooth.  It smelled like baking, which was exactly what I wanted.  I used it on my arms and legs and ended up with very soft and polished skin.  I could feel the difference right away.

Would I Make It Again?

Sure!  I would certainly make this again.

This scrub, like most scrubs, serves two main purposes. It exfoliates the skin and it also provides moisture, by virtue of all the oils.  I’m someone who always has to apply lotion to my skin after a shower.  However, I was able to skip that step when I had used this scrub.

I love recipes like this one because you can make it with common ingredients found in your kitchen.  And if you’re faced with a problem like I was, in that you didn’t actually have some of the ingredients, you can use substitutes and still come up with a great product for your skin.