Visions of Sugarplum

Today is a very special day. It is the day I became a momma for the second time. Such a beautiful, sweet love came into the world! She lights up every day of my life and her kindness, loving spirit and spunk are icing on the cake of life.

Happy, healthy birthday, Sugarplum! oxox

One of the birthday rituals I have is to sing "Happy Birthday to You" to my kiddoes, just like I did moments after they were born. While digging around, I found this vintage card...

Taking the leading question to heart, "Ever wonder about it?", on this Women and Wednesday, I am going to use it as a segue because as well as bountiful happiness, I wish my daughter bountiful "healthiness" today and every day. So that these are not just visions for her life but are realities, that means digging deeper and getting to the root of some more "stuff".

How did we get so "chemicalized", so toxic? When did all this start? Interestingly enough, a lot earlier than I thought. Queen Elizabeth was famous for her white painted face, full of lead and arsenic. Earlier still, while smart in her use of milk for bathing (milk's lactic acid is a fabulous natural exfoliator), Queen Cleopatra also wore lots of lead and copper-laced kohl eyeliner. Beauty products traced back to the Egyptians had heavy metals, animal oils and arsenic. And so, it seems that since ancient times we have been mixing in additives.

Along with celebrating my daughter's birth, this has given me cause today to rebirth some fresh ideas that return to the root of good health and return that good health back to us.

Here is a fabulous recipe...just the berry thing for my birthday girl (the carrots will have to wait...stay tuned!)

Calming Rasp-licious Facial Mask (adapted from Narine Nikogosian)

15 organic raspberries
3 tablespoons organic milk
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sparkling mineral oil

In a small glass bowl, mash berries and add milk and then olive oil. Add sparkling water and mix again.

Put a thin layer on skin, relax and enjoy for about 20 minutes. Rinse off with warm water and apply moisturizer. Blow out birthday candles! Eat cake! Oxox

Fragrant Dis-stress

I love perfume. Cannot imagine a day without it. First fragrance? Tinkerbell.

As a teen, I wore Muguet du Bois, Tweed and then quarts of Nina Ricci's L'Air du Temps all while also inhaling my BF's English Leather and Brut.  Later, I flirted with Chanel #5, Coco, Opium, Dune, Caleche...the list goes on. Now I have 4 fragrances I really love and wear depending on which I can afford.

Coming out of the library the other day I passed an elderly woman who had on the most fantastic fragrance and I told her so. Her eyes lit up and she bubbled out a similar story, "Why, thank you. It is lovely, isn't it? It is a very old fragrance, Ma Griffe. Oh, and at night I switch to this one, Le Noir Magique (spoken in perfect French which this isn't!). It is divine!"

And so, it pains me to share this but I must...because that's what I do.

I feel like a rat.

Read this and weep http://www.ewg.org/notsosexy

It is yet another tale of harmful petrochemicals hidden in the goods we slather on ourselves every day. I went to my vials to read what I could and tried to check them out online, too. That 2 of the 4 said "inflammable" is a big heads up, right? I love the fragrances but not enough to go up in flames with them. The other two were strictly essential oils that I had mixed up in a small shop.

So...the quandary, especially because Valentine's Day is right around the corner and you may be thinking "gift sets". Hold out for a minute...

Fortunately, I do not wear perfume anywhere but on my pulse points. I do not recommend anyone use fragrance-laced soaps, shower gels or body lotions or any perfumed product all over which is why I am always letting people know I have safe solutions for those very products.

"Fragrance", the hidden catch-all on the label of most products scores a whopping 8 (10 being the highest!) on the toxicity scale!!! Many fragranced products are also full of artificial dyes, too, another blow to health. And, the "celebrity" fragrances seem to be especially bad, horrible actually because they are marketed to guess who...our precious young people. 

The pulse points for perfume have always been plenty...maybe just a couple instead of all 20...and a dab instead of a full spritz. And, nix the sets. What do you think? 

Here is a how to apply perfume video I found this morning. Love how she stresses subtlety...
http://www.ehow.com/video_4404983_applying-perfume-pulse-points.html