Ellie Mag

I use Dr Bronners for my body and a bar of charcoal soap on my face.
Apple cider vinegar diluted with water as a toner, then a store bought "natural" moisturizer and sunscreen.
If my arms or legs feel dry I use straight coconut oil. I use natural (store bought) deodorant although I have to switch brands every couple months because for some reason they stop being effective. I use baking soda with a couple drops peppermint oil as toothpaste. I don't think using chemicals on your skin and hair is required to feel glamorous. I feel lovely when I take a couple minutes to pluck my eyebrows, brush out my hair and pin it up nicely (as opposed to the quick and messy bun it's normally in.)  

Could be that we need to just slightly reframe "glamour"- instead of a dolled-up pinup girl with heels and makeup and styled hair and a pushup bra, maybe skewing more toward the quintessential "french girl" look. Artfully messy and carefree.

Thought I'd post an update in case someone else has this problem. I called the company and they told me they don't sell just the heating element for this machine but pointed me to their parts store (thank you Robert Ray, that was the correct website.) I ordered an entire new back panel which was about $67. It was really easy to install and connect the wiring and now the dehydrator works great. Spent more than I wanted to but I guess it was overall still cheaper than buying a new machine and kept this one out of the garbage.

Thanks again everyone that replied previously

Ah, thank you both!
I'll take the back off it tonight and see if I can figure out what happened.

Hi everyone,
I've wanted an Excalibur dehydrator for years but can't get myself to bite the bullet and buy one. Last week I found a Magic Mill dehydrator on FB marketplace for $75 and bought it.
Upon getting it home and testing it out, I've found that the fan fans, but the heater doesn't heat.
I called Magic Mill and they won't repair it since I bought it from a 3rd party, but they sell a replacement back panel with a new heating element for $67 plus shipping and tax.

Does anyone know if there's a way to repair the heating element for one of these? For cheaper than replacing the whole back panel? Does anyone have experience with a Magic Mill, is it even worth it to fix or should I get an Excalibur instead?

Thank you!

For reference, it's this one:
https://magicmillusa.com/collections/food-dehydrators/products/magic-mill-food-dehydrator-machine-mfd-7700

I would be happy to help as well if you need anyone else! Sounds like fun, I love cooking and proof reading and I'm very interested to see what a radio show cookbook is all about

Saurkraut, Pickles, sometimes kombucha. Going to try to start sourdough again this week, I haven't been successful in the past with that.
Does anyone have a good root beer recipe?

Moka pot with fresh ground coffee!
I dilute the coffee with a little boiling water (Americano style) and add half and half I used a french press for many years and still have and use it occasionally, but prefer the smoothness of the moka pot to the slightly gritty french press coffee.
The moka pot also uses less grounds than the french press and the used grounds come out in a cute little hockey puck which is easy to toss into my compost bucket or worm bin. I mostly use the french press for making loose-leaf tea.

I have hot coffee first thing in the morning, and usually an iced coffee at lunchtime

I also need to be better about looking after my garden tools. I have a tendency to walk away from my project, and then get distracted by something else and then all of a sudden 3 days have gone by and my garden fork has been out in the rain.

There are a lot of awesome suggestions in this thread!

At least once or twice per year, I'll go through my households utilities and annual bills and see where we can make changes or improvements to save money. For us, this includes electricity, water, propane, internet, garbage, insurance, cell phones. For example, last year I switched from my prepaid Verizon cell phone service ($40/month) to Visible ($25/month). I'll look over the car insurance and see if there are any new discounts available or if we have extra services we don't need. PG&E has a price comparison tool so you can look at their different rate plans and make sure you're on the cheapest one. Etc etc. I have found that if you do this continually you can save hundreds per year, as prices and usage tend to creep up when you're not paying attention. Obviously this is on top of making sure to reduce usage in the first place, but a lot of our services here are fixed-rate.

Another thing is to make sure you are taking advantage of all opportunities at work to make sure you're making as much as possible. At my job there is an option to earn an education incentive yearly, up to 10% on top of your salary, and hardly anyone takes advantage of it. Also if you have a 401k and your company matches up to a certain percent, make sure to contribute at least enough to get the match. I do payroll at my job and it's so sad to see people not making anything close to what they could be.

Choose bike over car as much as possible. Pack food when you go on a trip (I'm bad at this). Spend money on good quality food and vitamins that you're not able to grow yourself.