On the Ball

Tags

ball, canning accessories, cooking tools, herb sicissors, kitchen organization, kitchen shears, kitchen tools, pantry organization, removable labels, spice labels, spice lids, water infuser

I don’t usually do random product recommendations, but I am so taken with four new things recently, that I just have to share them with you.

You already know that I love to can foods. One of my future projects is to create the perfect Paleo Marinara and can up a ton of it. Tomato season will be arriving soon, so this is moving up on the to-do list. In the meantime, I keep looking at the canning supplies of my local stores. And I must say, Ball has some seriously cool new tools! Four of them top my list of all-time favorite kitchen aids.

Ball dissolvable labels. I can’t tell you how many times I have put leftovers in the fridge, mingled among various similar containers, only to forget what’s in each container, subsequently ignoring said containers and emptying them into the trash ten days later. (As I mumble Oh, yeahhhhh, we DID have pot roast last week. Darn!)

Enter these new labels. Cute as a button, real paper stickers that don’t require any special kind of pen. I label everything. Did you hear me??? EV-RY-THING. I have them in the fridge:

I have them in the pantry:

I have them in the bathroom:

The coolest part of these labels is that they wash right off! (Even accidentally, so don’t get your jar near water if you want to keep the label!) No scrubbing or special solvents to rid your item of stickiness. They wash right off in the dishwasher. Or under the faucet. It’s pretty cool to watch it dissolve off of the container under a stream of running water.  I think it’s safe to say my OCD loves these things!

Ball Five-Blade Herb Scissors. Holy mother of pearl, if you’ve ever spent ten minutes finely chopping herbs for a single meal, you need these scissors!! They have five blades, so you can chop herbs in jig time. I have been a parsley chopping fool for the past five months. I got these scissors three weeks ago, and my life hasn’t been the same since. Snip, snip…oh, look, all my chopping is done. I have time to have a glass of wine while hubby lights the grill!   These seriously rock!! The first time I used them, I freaked out when the parsley stuck all between the blades, leaving me to wonder how in the heck I was ever going to get all those herbs out of those tiny, sharp spaces. And then I looked at the cool plastic sheath that came with the scissors. There’s a corresponding five-blade grid on the end of the sheath that is used to clean out the scissors. Voila!!! No wasted herbs. Why can’t everything be this easy?

 

Ball Herb and Spice Lids. I thought the little quarter-pint jelly jars were too cute when they were sold as a set of four with these regular-size flip-top shaker lids. But now, Ball sells the lids in separate two-packs. I already had a full set of the tiny jars and was using the jar/lid/ring combos for my spices. But fiddling with lids and rings every time I want dried basil or shrimp seasoning gets old. These lids offer four generous holes covered by a secure flip-top. I love their size and color. My spice-cabinet loves their easy stackability.

Ball Mason Jar Infuser. Okay, so this one really isn’t a kitchen tool. It’s a sippy cup for adults. Whatever. I love it. This infuser fits wide-mouth mason jars and supplies a drinking lid and removable infuser compartment. Just fill the infuser with your favorite herbs, fruits, whatever, and fill the jar with water or tea. Moments later, you have a rockin’ flavored beverage. The infuser is dishwasher safe and BPA-free, for the win!

So there it is, folks: my love of all things Ball. Green rocks!

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The Vaulted Files: Infestation??? Horrors!!

Tags

head lice, Logic Products Group, natural lice remedies

I have a rather insane storage vault of unpublished posts, both for this blog and for my life and love ramblings over at DomAndLori.  Some of them are not just unpublished, they are unfinished.  But I intend at some point to publish them anyway. Here is the first to come out of the vault: 

 

Let me be honest at the start, here: this is not something I want to be talking about.  For the second Christmas holiday in a row, my family is battling head lice.  Go ahead and gag now.  I’ve made a morning of it, myself.

I truly had hoped that we would be done with all this nonsense once the kids got out of elementary school.  Oh, sure, I had seen many a note come home in their backpacks about a lice sighting in their wee years’ classrooms, and I was smugly grateful that it never struck us personally.  Until 2012.  There we were, minding our own business, settling into the new home, enjoying Christmas and BAM!!  We were hit with a one-two punch.  Vic and me.  E-gad!  This is what I get for snuggling my kids?  I took roughly five days off of work to deal with 1) the infestation of those little unseen buggers and 2) my personal trauma/embarrassment/failure as a parent.  Overdramatic much??

To debunk any misconceptions of the nastiness that surely must exist in my home and on my person, I learned the following during that horrific week of wanting to claw my own eyes out:

1. Lice attaches itself better to clean hair.  Yes, folks, contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be a filthy person to suffer the injustice of head lice.  Clean hair holds the eggs better, so I guess, Yay, we’re clean!
2. You don’t just have to share hairbrushes with someone or sleep on their pillow to get head lice.  Lice are sneaky, creative travelers and sometimes where it came from and how you got it is only a guess.
3. There is a proliferation of chemical-laden treatments on the shelves of our local pharmacies.  None of them are natural or holistic, and very few of them are safe for repeated use.  Granted, I almost don’t care if it burns my scalp off, I want to use whatever I can as often as I can to make the hell pass more quickly.

Last year as I was confessing the horror to a coworker, she knowingly stated, “It doesn’t matter how natural and against chemicals you are, once you are dealing with head lice, you will practically douse your kids in gasoline just to get rid of it.”  Omigosh, having now been through it twice, I can tell you…truer words were never spoken.

For months afterward, any time either of my children itched above the neck they would run to me and blurt, “Check me!!” and I would commence to combing through their hair to make sure they were not infested again.  And fortunately, they never were.  But there I was this morning, unassumingly stroking my son’s hair as he slouched on the bathroom floor, nauseated from what we would determine four hours later to be the flu.  The flu, people.  My son is wrestling the flu and I’m thinking out loud, “We need to cut your hair soon, sweetie.  Wait a minute, what’s this in your hair? WHAT THE %$#@! IS THAT?!!!!!!!”

But I knew exactly what it was.  And I was nearly sick right beside him.  Within minutes I was checking the Hubster, my daughter and myself, determining whom to treat and whom to all-out quarantine, practically in tears with the memory of last year.  But I sniffed the tears back, grabbed my keys and a ponytail holder and sped off to WalMart at 6:30 in the morning to begin my journey:

Step 1: Drop well over $100 on every kind of lice treatment on the shelf.  Throw in some homeopathic cough meds and several packs of Ricola, and hope something gives the kid some relief.

Step 2: Treat every head with gawdawful pesticides while Hubster strips beds down and begins the laundry cycles.  I love the Sanitize feature of my washing machine.  It’s great for making sure my stuff is clean when we’re dealing with crap like this.  Forget that it takes four days to wash two loads.  Sheesh!

Step 3: Send text messages to family members whom we have been around during the holidays.  Pray that they don’t have it too.  This brings up a touchy point:  Yes, it is highly embarrassing to admit to someone that you have head lice.  I get that.  I’ve had it twice now and sharing the news hasn’t gotten any easier.  You will feel like a pariah.  But hear me on this one thing: You must let others know so that they can treat and/or prevent the malady in their own households.  Yes, it sucks to call someone up and say, “Hey, great seeing you the other day! I’m so glad we got to spend those eight hours together!  By the way, we have lice, so check your heads.”  There’s no easy way to do it.  But you have to.  And when that person you’ve called is dealing with head lice later, hopefully he or she will remember your honesty and pay it forward.

Step 4: Run to the pediatrician’s office for flu test on a Saturday morning.  Thank God they are open on weekends!

Step 5: Take a moment to actually breathe and read the label on the spray can for the furniture.  I had forgotten why I didn’t use it last year.  Dear goodness.  We would have to sit all four of us plus the dogs outside in the cold while the stuff dries on the furniture, then ventilate the cold into the house so that we can once again breathe indoors.  Who the hell created this stuff?  Monsanto?

Having two dogs and one flu-ridden son prevents me from opening windows and spraying toxic chemicals in my home on a December day.  So I took to the Internet, hoping something somewhere would provide some measure of treatment for my furniture and non-washables.  Vacuuming, steaming and scrubbing just doesn’t seem like enough.  In the five days I took off work last year last year I wiped down, scrubbed and cleaned every surface to the best of my ability.  I was exhausted.  I’ll do it all over again out of necessity, but I’d like some help.

And so I stumbled upon the Logic Products Group, founded by a mom just like us.  She too dealt with the horror of head lice and discovered that there were no natural, safe treatments available.  She has remedied that.  I ended up on her site because of her household spray, which is reported to be safe for repeated use around pets and people, unlike any of the spray products you will find at the pharmacy.  I ordered a bottle straight from her site and another bottle from Amazon with my Prime membership.  Unfortunately, I won’t have the product until next week, so I’ll be vacuuming and scrubbing until then.  Without the benefit of trying the products yet, I am impressed by what I see on their site.  They have general products for the home as well as flea and tick treatment for pets. (Update: I purchased the furniture spray and the lice shampoo.  I sprayed everything down and was pleased with the spray, but did not have the opportunity to use the shampoo, as it arrived a week after the trauma had ended.)

The Nourishing Gourmet also wrote a great post on natural treatments of head lice.  Neem oil and tea tree oil are top choices for treatment and prevention in her post.

So – quick recap – we have head lice, flu and now (oh joy!) a puking dog.  There simply is not enough wine in this house.  I seem to recall a bottle of tea tree oil in my bathroom cabinet, so I’m off to mix that into some water and spray on all our heads for good measure.  Hey – better than gasoline!

Catching Up

Tags

giveaways, makeup, Simple Beauty Minerals

Sorry, y’all.  I took a little unintended snooze for a while and neglected my blogs, my email and life in general outside of Poca Voglia.  I practically dropped off the map.  I’m actually surprised the Internet still knows me.  I logged in only to pay bills and buy things from Amazon.  (I heart Amazon.)  My own parents didn’t see me for three weeks, and Mom and I only talked on the phone twice in that whole time.  I know, right?  And what, you may ask, kept me holed up in my bubble for so long?  Well… see, what had happened was…

I got tendonitis in my elbow, which is aggravated by my desk height every time I use the computer at home.  So that kept me from sitting there to write, which as you see I am finally determined to do anyway.  My poor little blog has been bombarded by spam and autobot “users” despite all the free protection I can afford for the site, so checking my email has become an all out pain in the backside.  I had to deal with Comcast (the corporate spawn of Satan) three more times, and suffered the botanical injustice of watching a “white” crepe myrtle bloom purple in my front yard.  PURPLE!  The nursery graciously gave me another tree that blooms in the correct color.  (Comcast, surprisingly, also came through for me in the end.  The very end.  Go figure.) I was cell-phone harassed by an obnoxious marketing ploy for two weeks before I finally got the chance to give them an uncensored piece of my mind.  I got sucked in to a really long book that I couldn’t put down despite my grudge against it.   And on top of all that, Aaron’s computer got a virus, so any tech time I had at home was devoted to restoring his system.  Were it not for my father, I’d still be sitting there trying to disarm the virus.  He dealt with it for twenty minutes and then just formatted the hard drive.  Needless to say, I am now an overbearing Windows-updating, kilobyte-clearing, security-locking, virus-sniffing bloodhound. Floppy ears and all.

Not that it’s been all bad, mind you.  My garage now sports a gloriously organized peg-board, my yard is looking pretty good, and the family is still healthy.  I managed to ease myself into a new hairstyle, and this pasty white girl is finally sporting a natural, subtle summer glow.  The tan (if you’ll forgive my liberal use of the word) won’t last long, but I am enjoying it nonetheless.

OK, so now that you’ve heard my sob story, put down your violin and sneak a peek at this!  I am officially three weeks late with the news (because of all that crap I just whined about) but Lisa over at Simple Beauty Minerals (formerly Style Essentials) is having a month-long anniversary party.  And she’s giving gifts at her own party…’cause that’s just how she rolls.  Each week is a special celebration.  I won’t even tell you what we’ve already missed, but this week focuses on Different Colored Eyes and Lisa has free mineral shadows to send based on your eye color (if supplies still last).  Next week will have something to do with ice cream colors, which sounds perfect for this time of year.  I’ve already put you drastically behind, so head on over to Lisa’s site and sign up for her newsletter so you can get some cool gifts too!  You’ll only be sorry if you don’t sign up.  😉

May the rest of your summer be infinitely healthy!

Keep Calm and Carry On

Tags

3-Free, Butter London, mother-daughter time, nail polish, summer fun

Victoria and I did a novel thing Friday night.  At least, it was novel for us.  No one else in a three hundred mile radius would have blinked an eye, but we established a new mother-daughter bonding activity: Trampoline Manicures.  You must realize that the novelty of this is that I actually, in fact, enjoyed it.

This hen party spontaneously combusted simply because Vic wanted to jump on the trampoline and I wanted to paint my nails.  Don’t all wise women just assume those two activities are compatible?  Duhhh…

So, out to the trampoline we marched…into the 90+ degree early evening (I don’t know what the thermostat actually registered because, quite honestly, some days I’m too chicken to look.)  This particular evening was not nearly as scorching as I expected it to be, though, and I found myself enjoying the gentle breeze blowing through the tree branches high above us while we buffed and filed and painted each other’s nails – all in the middle of our net-walled trampoline.

And then we squealed and laughed and bounced each other through the air as if we had not a care in the world for our freshly decorated fingers and toes.  And here is yet another shameless plug for a product I have fallen in love with:  Butter London nail lacquer.  Lisa over at Simple Beauty Minerals (formerly Style Essentials, my fave beauty supplier) suggested it to me because it is “3-Free,” meaning it is manufactured without the three toxic chemicals commonly found in nail polish: DBP, formaldehyde and toluene.  It smells like regular nail polish – it is paint, after all.  But it also has the staying power of regular nail polish, a feature we had begun to miss in our more “natural” polishes.  And Butter London magically causes me to speak with a British accent, which makes Victoria giggle endlessly.

This spiffy polish also comes with a hefty price tag, but I’m sold, nonetheless.  $15/bottle.  Yesirree, you read that right.  Still, it beats the $20 bottles I had tried in the beginning.   And, up until midnight tonight you can get 30% off your entire order on Butter London’s website.  (Sorry to be so late bringing this news to you, but it’s still worth sharing.)  Basically, if you put four bottles in your cart, one of them is free plus you get free shipping.  Don’t ask me how I know that little detail.  😉  If you’re reading this too late for the sale, go on over there and sign up for the newsletter so you won’t miss the next one.   If you happen to go looking for Butter London locally, I can tell you that most ULTA stores carry it, but don’t expect to use any coupons on it.  Also, there is an extensive list of American retail shops on Butter London’s website.  God Save the Queen!

The only downside of our trampoline manicure was that both dogs had gone outside with us.  While Mabel, our four-year-old Labrador Retriever, tried (unsuccessfully, thankGOD) to get on the trampoline with us, Mason, our 13-year old Lab rested in the grass nearby, but had such difficulty in the humidity that he could not walk himself 20 yards back to the house.   He had 30 minutes of labored breathing outside, during which I managed to lay him on a blanket and drag all 80 pounds of him back to the patio.  Five minutes after that, I was hovering above him and supporting his torso while he ambled across the patio to the back door.  I was absolutely beside myself, fraught with guilt for having let him venture outside with us for longer than he could withstand.  But he did eventually cool down – 30 minutes later – in the kitchen, where Victoria lay across him, crying and begging him not to die.  (We don’t mince too many words in our house, you see.)  He happily obliged, coming around to his old self within another half hour, wagging his tail and slobbering kisses on us, and inspecting our fingernails, which were not marred in the least for all the doggy drama they had endured.   Ahhh, Mason…Carry on, old chap!!

(I believe it is proper blog etiquette to note that I get no rewards, kudos or even nods for recommending these products with my lopsided, drooling reviews.  Seriously.  I wish.)

The Busiest Months of Our Lives

They say there are five major stresses in a person’s life:

1. Change in marital status
2. Moving
3. Changing jobs
4. Birth/addition of a child
5. Death of a loved one

In the spring of 1996 I had all but one of those stresses at the same time.  Within the span of six weeks I got married, moved across town, changed jobs and lost my grandmother.   I was a prime candidate for The Crazy House.  The only thing that kept me out of the loony bin was the fact that I was not pregnant at the time.  I’m sure we can all agree: that would have sealed the deal.

And yet 1996 had nothing on this summer that is now winding down.  Building, selling, making home repairs.  Call the builder; call the real estate office; call the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker… I forget who I am most days, and the sticky-notes and phone reminders that I set for myself are little help if I can’t even remember to look in the direction of said reminders.  I need reminders for my reminders for my reminders.  So it struck me as odd, as I stood in my kitchen one morning in July with my builder (yes, at the old house…long story that you can bore yourself with here) when I paused long enough to notice our family calendar on the refrigerator.  It was pretty bare during July, save the lone pen marks of my husband as he counted the days he has been smoke-free.

Dom quit smoking 219 days ago – right as we were gearing up to sell the house and dive head-first into building the new one.  Not the most desirable time to drop a vice cold-turkey, but then again I am of the mindset that NO TIME is a bad time to take control of your health for the better. I am soooooo proud of him!  I’ve wanted to shout it from the rooftops and sky-write congratulatory love notes, but he’s a pretty private person so I had to celebrate in silence.  And I was even tempted to leave the calendar alone and let it speak for itself. But…

Calendars are my diary.  Aside from my blogs, they are the only form of journaling or scrapbooking I do anymore.  I have kept wall calendars since my college days.  Even as I matriculated into electronic calendars (and yes, even as I chastise co-workers for using paper calendars) I always kept one hard copy calendar on the fridge at home.  This is where I mark the random stuff we do – the birthdays, the celebrations, the memories and the milestones.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  It’s all right there, and all I have to do is pull a calendar out of the box and flip through twelve simple pages to relive an entire year in my mind.

My favorite calendar now is Mom’s Family Calendar featuring the lovable critters of Sandra Boynton.  Each person has his or her own column in which to record activities.  Our family of four reserves the fifth column for the pups and any extended family birthdays.  It’s a 17-month calendar, starting in August for the new school year, which is really a great idea, even though I only remember to buy a new one in December when I’m Christmas shopping.  Plus, this calendar always comes with a ton of cute character stickers and a magnetized write-on/wipe-off board for important phone numbers, etc.  Oh, and an interior pocket “for loose $100 bills.”  I love that.  I keep looking in there hoping one or two bills have appeared.  No luck yet.

July and August wound up being perhaps the busiest months of our lives.  In the end, I decided if I didn’t mark it all down I would regret it later.  So I grabbed some Sharpies and a few stickers and “went to town” inscribing our activities for the summer and the milestones, stresses and successes 2012 has brought us so far.

I hope your summer was wonderful!

Rites of Passage and Rules of the Road

Tags

beauty, cosmetics, girls and makeup

I came home one day last week to a slightly made-up version of my 10-year old daughter: a little eye shadow, some mascara and lip gloss.   Mom had prepared me that Vic was asking to “practice” with some cosmetics and had been provided with her own sampling of some Grandmama-approved colors.  Mom knew that I would have no problem with the quality of the cosmetics because we both buy our beauty products from the same place.  (That would be from Lisa at Style Essentials, for those of you who might be curious.  We love her!)  I asked Mom over the phone if Vic’s friends were wearing makeup already.  She replied, “Apparently, there’s been talk of it.”

Ohhhh, great.

I admit I get a tad squeamish when I see little girls with their faces made up.  I try not to go all judgemeister on the moms; I know we all pick our battles.  But two things instantly blaze through my mind when I see pre-teens wearing makeup reminiscent of 80’s glam rock:  1) what ungodly chemicals are seeping into that baby’s face? And 2) what message are we giving our daughters?  Do we really have to wear makeup to be “pretty?”  Is “being pretty” all that it’s cracked up to be?  Is it the be-all/end-all of womanhood?

While I want my daughter to answer “NO!” to each of those questions, I admit that I rarely (if ever) leave the house without at least a hint of powder and mascara.  I don’t walk into a store wearing my pajamas and sporting bed-head; a little makeup, to me, is as important as getting dressed and combing my hair.  At some point, the line is crossed from showing respect for ourselves to drawing attention to ourselves.  I’d like for my child to keep it all in perspective.

I hope to teach my daughter that beauty is on the inside.  It’s what you see with the heart, not with the eyes.  Beauty is who you are when you think no one is looking.  Women will always be their own worst critics; I know I am.  Ultimately, who my daughter is on the inside is far more important to me than how she looks on the outside.  As she matures, nothing would please me more than for her to hold the same values.

But, I put all my worrying to the side for the moment and focus on the rules of makeup with her.  I have a few. (You knew I would.)

Makeup Rule #1: Makeup should not look like makeup.  If I can see it before I see you, it’s too much.

Makeup Rule #2: If you put it on your face, you must take it off before bedtime.  Skin care is of utmost importance.  No sleeping in makeup, no matter how natural the product is.

Makeup Rule #3: You do not share makeup with other people.  Ever.  (Ewww.)  In fact, I hereby invoke my Mom Authority to limit the sharing of personal items to tee-shirts and shoes, even though the shoe thing is still against my better judgment.

Makeup Rule #4: I will approve and buy the makeup.   There is no need for you to ever even entertain the notion of putting mainstream, chemical-laden cosmetics on your skin.

Makeup Rule #5: You will read the ingredient labels.  You will become familiar with and knowledgeable about what you are putting on your skin.  Then, at the very least, when you go off the rails in college and sport CoverGirl to your heart’s content, you can’t use ignorance as a defense.  In other words, Mama’s not gonna raise no fool.

For now, Vic’s experience with cosmetics will be limited to learning how to use a few select things (pale shadow and lip gloss, cleansers and moisturizers).  I began wearing makeup in middle school at age 12; my baby girl will be there next year at age 11.  I’m not ready for her to be glammed out by next August, so we will navigate these waters slowly, carefully and together.

She is, after all, the reason I know all this stuff in the first place.

Healthy Oils

Scattered in among my current thoughts about houses, summer sandals and particle physics (no, not really!) are a few things you can actually benefit from: my thoughts on healthy oils for your skin. I have two cost-conscious favorites: almond oil and coconut oil.  My splurge oil is jojoba.  I’m sure there are a multitude of other healthy oils, many of which I am learning about for cooking purposes. But these oils are the ones I have tried myself and can vouch for.  Here’s how they have helped me:

Almond oil as makeup remover

Whether you are sixteen or sixty, I hope you aren’t neglecting to take your makeup off at night.  And if you use mineral makeup, as I do, then you know that it doesn’t wash, rub or cry off with any ease.  But that’s okay, because we have oils that make the job ten times easier.  I use about a dime-sized drop of almond oil on a warm-water washcloth to remove my makeup.  It does a great job at a fraction of the cost of mainstream makeup removers AND is beneficial to your skin. Plus, being pure almond oil, it won’t clog your pores, threaten you with cancer or knock your hormone levels out of whack.  After the first rinse, I typically use Style Essential’s Pink Mineral Complexion Bar.  At least twice a week, I skip the Bar and use another dime sized drop of almond oil on my face, followed by draping a hot-water washcloth over my face for a couple of minutes.  Sadly, I cannot remember who I learned this from – either Lisa at Style Essentials or Robin at Toxic Beauty – but I know both ladies would agree that this is an excellent way to cleanse and moisturize.  If you double up on the almond oil, you don’t really even need another moisturizer, but I use one anyway because I absolutely lovvvvvve my moisturizer – it’s an olive oil crème from Style Essentials and it rocks!

One word of caution to contact lens wearers:  When I wash my face at night I still have my contacts in.  If you rub the almond-oil-washcloth too much into your eyes, as I sometimes do because I want to make sure I get all the eyeliner and mascara off, then you could get the oil onto your contacts and blur them up a bit.  Lens solution cleans them right up, and I probably don’t even need to mention this to any of you, except that I’d be the reader who squints into the mirror saying, “Well, crap!  She didn’t say anything about THIS!”  So there.  I said it.

Almond and Coconut oils as body lotion

I first used coconut oil as a moisturizer during my initial 365 days on this blog.  I loved it! The one I bought has no scent, so I ran no risk of smelling like an Almond Joy.  I would use it instead of lotion after a shower.  My heels LOVED it and coconut oil became an immediate fixture in my homespun pedicures.  After a while of using the coconut oil (especially during the winter) I got tired of having to warm up the solidified oil in order to use it, and I was afraid I was using too much and wasting.  So I switched to almond oil – bought the big bottle – and added my favorite essential oil to it.  Voila! Instant perfumed moisturizer.  Into the big bottle I pour about 20 drops of jasmine oil (you can pick any oil or combination of your favorites!) and shake it up a bit.  By the next morning, the essential oil is dispersed through the almond oil and smells sooooooo good.  (NOTE: Do not use the scented oil as makeup remover.  Keep a separate bottle of pure almond oil for your face.  Trust me.)  I have since also put jasmine oil into my coconut oil as well.  And now, I use either the coconut or the almond right before I dry off from the shower – this way, I use less and there’s no chance of being shiny when I leave for work.  J

The only thing I don’t like about the oils – and this may only relate to me and my personal weirdness – is that the oils react with the gold in one of my 14K rings and discolors my skin under the ring.  Coconut oil makes it worse, but it still does it a little with the almond oil.  If it’s the weekend and I have plenty of time between shower and jewelry, then it’s not an issue.  Since it doesn’t react with my wedding ring, I’ve considered asking a jeweler to examine the gold in the other ring.  But really…like I have time for that!

Coconut oil as tanning agent

OK, this is where it gets a little weird.  Even I can see it.  When I wrote the previous post about having to give up my sunless tanner, one of the commenters posted a link that has steered me in a completely new direction.  The Paleo lifestyle…which shall be a whole post unto itself.  I read this post on Sarah’s paleo blog and decided to give it a try.  I mean, I’m already vampire white and eating differently from everyone else.  What have I got to lose?

Sarah suggests that sun protection is more effective when addressed from the inside out.  As the sunburn is a symptom of inflammation, address and prevent the inflammation itself.  Makes sense to me.  While I won’t go all into the paleo benefits and backups in this post, I will say that Sarah listed a small supplement routine that, in addition to the paleo lifestyle, should help increase sun tolerance, i.e. the time you can be in the sun without burning.  Vitamin D (which gets cancelled out by sunscreen), cod liver oil (don’t gag…it’s tasteless in the gelcap form) and – you guessed it – coconut oil are all on the list.

Now, I’m still wrestling with this one, even though I totally see the reasoning behind it.  Sarah suggests downing ¼ cup of coconut oil in a mug of herbal tea each day.  I managed to do it for three days.  Perhaps if I find a coconut oil for cooking that does not have the coconut flavor, I’ll be better about that. (And if, in the last cup, the oil didn’t pool on top of the tea – a fact which led my mom to believe I was completely outside my mind.)  Instead, I have used coconut oil almost exclusively in my cooking.

My tiny paleo results, though skewed because of a week of complete dietary mishaps, are that I only got a tad pink on my neck during my four hours at the school’s Field Day last week, using no sunscreen (in the name of experimentation, people!) Also, my face was blemish-free for two weeks…until I went with Dom for pizza and beer.  Damn the pizza and beer!  I’m climbing back on the paleo wagon and will post more information when I’ve done proper experimentation.  😉

In the meantime, go get you some healthy oils, and be free of the cosmetic chemicals!

Paint Tips for the DIYers

As I have mentioned, we are preparing to sell our home, so I am painting like a mad woman.  Mad, I say.  Stark raving.  To the point that if Mason falls asleep too near me, he may wake up with a newly sanded, textured and painted tail.  Stuff like that happens at my house.  I’m just sayin’…

Yesterday I had a SuperWoman lunch hour, which turned out to be actually two hours.  During said lunch break, I did my grocery shopping and flew home to stock the pantry and fridge.  Knowing Mom would be visiting this morning to help me with painting, I decided to get a jump start on today’s project and spray a texture onto the bathroom walls I had recently bared.  Yes…me…on my lunch hour…spraying a can of oil-based wall texture.

I am not, as one might say, the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Five minutes and three sneezes later, the can was empty, my eyes were burning and my dress clothes were speckled.  I brushed at my clothing and my hair and ran to wash my hands, which looked like I had been in a marshmallow food fight.

Those of you who are smarter than I am already know that water will not clean oil-based paint products off of your skin.  I finally caught on, thankyouverymuch.

I read the can and learned that the suggested cleaning agent is paint thinner.  On my skin?  AS IF!!  So I reasoned to myself: if water cleans water-based paint, then oil should clean oil-based paint.  Makes sense, right?  You bet your boots it does! I reached for a bottle of almond oil, put about two drops onto my hands and began to rub it in to the white paint residue I was wearing.  And voila!! That almond oil gave new meaning to the phrase “gone in sixty seconds.”  It worked like a dream, and my hands were moisturized too.

I had to share that with you – just in case you ever need to use oil-based paints on your lunch hour.  😉

Happy with Whole Living

Remember a few posts ago when I mentioned that after having-it-up-to-here with magazines that promote unhealthy products and mindsets I half-heartedly subscribed to Martha Stewart’s  Whole Living magazine?  The tagline of the mag is “body + soul in balance.”  It sounded like a fairly likeable magazine, unless it turned out to be just another catch-phrase label, cleverly masking its unhealthy content.

Which, I am quite pleased to say, it is not.  I received my first issue nearly two weeks ago and I just now had a chance to really spend some time with it and see for myself what the editors think “whole living” is.  I am ecstatic that they pretty much promote what I already believe, and their tagline is quite in balance with that.  I sat down with my magazine tabs and was amazed at how many blue ones I needed.  See, in my scheme of magazine perusal I color code ideas and things I want to come back to with these cute little page flags.  The blue ones are for health/medical/wellness ideas that I either need to save or follow up on.  Typically, even in Health magazine, I only used one or two blue flags, and that wasn’t even with every issue.  LOOK at this:

That’s an unprecedented amount of blue tags, folks!  Which means that they share a lot of health and wellness advice that I deem valuable.

Best part?  No annoying ads of beautiful, air-brushed, you’re-never-gonna-look-like-this-in-a-million-years models.  The ads are for things like seriously all-natural gummy vitamin supplements, organic teas, and products that promote natural beauty and health without chemicals and artificial ingredients (for the most part).  They promote sustainable companies and products, which I realize I don’t know enough about.   In short, I find this magazine to be severely lacking in “plastic promotion” – petrochemicals, harmful beauty regimens and overall fakeness.   (Is “fakeness” even a word??)  Allow me to share with you some of my favorite parts of the November 2011 issue:

Pages 2-3 contain an action plan for strengthening the immune system and beating stress in November, like how to ease a sore throat and a recipe for air freshener without hormone-disrupting chemicals.   All of the advice solutions are natural – really natural, not just buzzword natural.  😉

Page 22 shares the “Econumdrum” of home efficiency and offers insight into how to improve your home’s heating efficiency this winter.  Page 26 tells you how to shop for ethical meats.  Several natural perfume recipes are listed on page 42, and page 48 enlightened me to the ancient art of Ayurveda.  I’m going to share Page 52 with Dom as I try to get him to follow some yoga advice for people with rotator cuff injuries.

There is an entire recipe section where you’ll find all kinds of special-diet healthy recipes to share at Thanksgiving, so even people with food sensitivities can enjoy the feast at your table.  And best of all, there is a recipe for Dark Chocolate Bark with Pistachios and Sea Salt.  Oh my.

Not everything promoted in the mag is “organic,” which is okay because not everything has to be.  One article even points out the fallacy in thinking that organic foods are healthier foods for losing weight, which I found out on my own is not the case.  (Generally speaking, organic produce is preferred to its non-organic counterparts, but organic snacks are NOT necessarily lower in fat, sugar or calories.  It is still incumbent upon us to read and decipher labels.)  I also was inspired by the article that pointed out, “What is healthy for me may not be healthy for you.  Listen to your body…”

Check out the magazine online.  Subscribe.  Or, buy one in the checkout line.  Call me up and we’ll chat about the articles. You know you want to!

Product Changes Posted! (And the book I’ve been hiding in…)

It is finally up!!  The page I promised nearly a month ago that was to outline all the product and food changes that I have specifically made in my home is finally posted.  It is labeled Product Changes in the menu bar, and will remain a work in progress as I change and settle on better things for my family.    The list was a labor of love, believe me.  And there is still much that I probably didn’t even think to put on the list.  But it’s up now, for better or for worse.

One of the reasons I am so delayed in posting the list is that I have been immersed in a book – and NOT the audio kind, for once!  Kim had an extra copy of The Help, and I am two-thirds of the way through it.  I saw the movie before I got the book, and I’m glad because I can hear the characters’ voices in my head as I read and I think that helps me with the dialect.  But I find, too, that even away from the book I think in Aibileen’s voice.  (As in, “Law, I shore am into this book!” and “Those chilluns better like this dinner I’m a cookin’” and “You is a good puppy. You is a smart puppy.  But you is gettin’ yella dawg hair on my black skirt, and Law knows that ain’t right!”)

I’m taking mom to see the movie one day this week and then we will head out to harass some car salesmen with a three-page list of amenities I EXPECT to have on my next vehicle…for a price I like!

Law, give those po’ men the strength they gone need to deal with me!