I can’t open a magazine without seeing at least 2-3 ads starring Scarlett Johansson. She is the face of practically everything. How did this happen?

Look what came in the post today. I really like the Philosophy perfumes for spring and summer and someone wanted to spoil me with falling in love which was missing in my collection. Thank you

I’ve missed you the past few days but had to catch up on sleep. Yesterday I let one of my colleagues use my hand cream and “he” couldn’t stop going on about it: ” it’s amazing, my hands feel so soft, so silky, it sank right into my skin”. I thought I better share it with all of you…

I been using L’Occitane products for years. I love their Shea butter hand cream and foot cream.

They are doing limited edition hand creams at the moment in Ylang Ylang, Rosebud and Frangipani. All made of Shea butter.

and while I’m at it I have to recommend their Almond Apple Velvet Concentrate. I love the smell and texture and it makes my skin feel silky.

Thanks to the PBS series of the same name, this book is getting a second life. I found it fascinating when I read it several years back (before my conversion) and reviewing these reading selections I realize it still holds the same attraction for me, although now I tend to read it through the prism of God’s creation – something I tended to lack as a point of view before. Many of the stories here also have a theme of the corrupting influence of man’s stewardship of God’s creation – one thinks of the tulip bubble or the use of cannabis.

A few posts back I introduced Fr. Robert Barron’s explanation of the etymology of the word “sin,” how it was related to scattering and the product of sin,” over-and-againstness, separation, suspicion, mutual hatred, blaming” were all signs of the presence of that scattering power of sin. The current economic collapse we are experiencing and some of these stories (think of the story of the potato) seem to illustrate that better than the usual.

The potato (you’ll have to see the video or catch the PBS special) was first rejected by Europeans because it was a member of the nightshade family and was thought to cause leprosy — and it came from America. three strikes that made it fit to eat, only by the Irish( then considered European miscreants. The Irish soon found that the combination of protein and vitamins B & C made the potato a worthy, versatile staple.

Their dependence grew so strong, that when a fungus eradicated their crops in the late 1840s, it also decimated the human population by millions. We seem to have punished the potato with our own genetic engineering techniques: a modern potato like The New Leaf variety (the potato favored by MacDonald’s for its fries) has the ability to kill beetles with toxins from its own leaf. But consumers, fearing the unintended consequences of man’s messing with nature, rose to protest its introduction into the modern food chain.

Here are my reading selections, random stuff I pick up,  from the book:

Coevolutionary Relationship
Matters between me and the spud I was planting, I realized, really aren’t much different: we, too, are partners in a coevolutionary relationship, as indeed we have been since the birth of agriculture more than ten thousand years ago. Like the apple blossom, whose form and scent have been selected by bees over countless generations, the size and taste of the potato have been selected over countless generations by us — by Incas and Irishmen , even by people like me ordering French fries at McDonald’s. Bees and humans alike have their criteria for selection: symmetry and sweetness for the bee; heft and nutritional value in the case of the potato-eating human. The fact that one of us has evolved to become intermittently aware of its desires makes no difference whatsoever to the flower or the potato taking part in this arrangement. All those plants care about is what ever being cares about on the most basic genetic level: making more copies of itself. Through trial and error these plant species have found that the best way to do that is to induce animals — bees or people, it hardly matters — to spread their genes. How? By playing on the animals’ desires, conscious and otherwise. The flowers and spuds that manage to do this most effectively are the ones that get to be fruitful and multiply.

Domestication
We automatically think of domestication as something we do to another species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests. The species that have spent the last ten thousand years or so figuring out how best to feed, heal, clothe, intoxicate and otherwise delight us have made themselves some of nature’s greatest success stories….Domesticated species don’t command our respect the way their wild cousins often do. Evolution may reward interdependence, but our thinking selves continue to prize self-reliance. The wolf is somehow more impressive to us than the dog. Yet there are fifty million dogs in America today and only ten thousand wolves. So what does the dog know about getting along in this world that its wild ancestor doesn’t? The big thing the dog knows about — the subject it has mastered in the ten thousand years it has been evolving at our side — is us: our needs and desires, our emotions and values, all of which it has folded into its genes as part of a sophisticated strategy for survival. If you could read the genome of the dog like a book, you would learn a great deal about who we are and what makes us tick.

Sweetness
…sweetness has proved to be a force in evolution. By encasing their seeds in sugary and nutritious flesh, fruiting plants such as the apple hit on an ingenious way of exploiting the mammalian sweet tooth: in exchange for fructose, the animals provide the seeds with transportation, allowing the plant to expand its range. As parties to this grand coevolutionary bargain, animals with the strongest predilection for sweetness and plants offering the biggest, sweetest fruits prospered together and multiplied, evolving into the species we see, and are, today. As a precaution, the plants took certain steps to protect their seeds from the avidity of their partners: they held off on developing sweetness and color until the seeds had matured complexly (before then fruits tend to be inconspicuously green and unpalatable), and in some cases (like the apple’s), the plants developed poisons in their seeds to ensure that only the sweet flesh is consumed. Desire then is built into the very nature an purpose of fruit, and so, quite often, is a kind of taboo. The vegetable kingdom’s lack of glamour by comparison (whoever heard of a forbidden vegetable?) can be laid to the fact that a vegetable’s reproductive strategy doesn’t turn on turning animals on.

Flowers and Beauty
Most of humankind for most of its history have been in the same irrational boat as the seventeenth century Dutch — crazy for flowers. So what is this tropism all about, for us, and for the flowers. How did these organs of plant sex manage to get themselves cross-wired with human ideas of value and status and Eros? And what might our ancient attraction for flowers have to teach us about the deeper mysteries of beauty — what one poet has called “this grace wholly gratuitous”? Is that what it is? Or does beauty have a purpose?.. Psychiatrists regard a patient’s indifference to flowers as a symptom of clinical depression. It seems that by the time the singular beauty of a flower in bloom can no longer pierce the veil of black or obsessive thoughts in a person’s mind, that mind’s connection to the sensual world has grown dangerously frayed.

Flowers and Natural Selection
Natural selection has designed flowers to communicate with other species, deploying an astonishing array of devices — visual , olfactory, and tactile — to get the attention of specific insects and birds and even certain mammals. In order to achieve their objectives, many flowers rely not just on simple chemical signals but on signs, sometimes even on a kind of symbolism. Some plant species go so far as to impersonate other creatures or things in order to secure pollination or, in the case of carnivorous plants, a meal. To entice flies into its inner sanctum (there to be digested by waiting enzymes), the pitcher plant has developed a weirdly striated maroon-and-white flower that is not all attractive unless you happen to be attracted to decaying meat. (The flower’s rancid scent reinforces this effect.)

Flowers Avoid Self-Pollination
Though many flowers, like the lilies, possess both male and female organs, they go to great lengths to avoid pollinating themselves. That would defeat the floral point, which is the mixing of genes that cross-pollination ensures. A flower can avoid self-pollination chemically (by making its ovule and pollen grain incompatible), architecturally (by arranging stamen and pistil in the flower so as to avoid contact), or temporally (by staggering the times when their stamens produce pollen and their pistils are receptive.

The Love of Their (Flower’s) Lives
For many flowers the great love of their lives now is humankind. Those daylilies leaning expectantly forward? Their faces are in fact turned toward us, whose favor now ensures their success better than any bug’s can. That peony with the salacious pubic stamens? Blame the Chinese for than one: for thousands of years their poets, discerning manifestations of yin and yang in the garden, likened peony blossoms to a woman’s sexual organs (and a bee or butterfly to a man’s); over time Chinese peonies evolved, by means of artificial selection, to gratify that conceit. Even the perfume of certain Chinese tree peonies is womanly, a scent of flowers tinged with briny sweat; the flowers smell less like perfume of the bottle than a scent that’s spent time on human skin. It may still attract the bees, but by now it’s our brain stems the scent is meant to fire.

Beauty and Health
Evolutionary biologists believe that in many creatures beauty is a reliable indicator of health, and therefore a perfectly sensible way to choose one mate over another. Gorgeous plumage, lustrous hair, symmetrical features are “certificates of health” as one scientist puts it, advertisements that a creature carries genes for resistance to parasites and in not other wise under stress. Among birds, the species most susceptible to parasites are the ones with the most extravagant plumage — probably because these are the ones that most need to advertise their fitness. A fabulous tail is a metabolic extravagance only the healthy can afford. In the same way a fabulous car is a financial extravagance only the successful can afford. In our own species, too, ideals of beauty often correlate with health: when lack of food was what usually killed people, people judged body fat to be a thing of beauty. though the current preference for sickly-pale, rail-thin models suggests that culture can override evolutionary imperatives.

The Canonical Flowers
What sets these canonical flowers [rose, peony, orchid, lily, tulip] apart from the run of charming daisies and pinks and carnations, not to mention the legions of pretty wildflowers? Perhaps more than anything else, it’s their multifariousness. Some perfectly good flowers simply are what they are are, singular and, if not completely fixed in their identity, capable of ringing only a few simple changes on it; hue, say, or petal count. Prod it all you want, select and cross and reengineer it, but there’s only so much a coneflower or a lotus is ever going to do. Fashion is apt to puck up such a flower for a time and then drop it — think of the pink or gillyflower, in Shakespeare’s day or the hyacinth in Queen Victoria’s — since it won’t let itself be remade in some new image once its first one is passé. By contrast the rose, orchid, and the tulip are capable of prodigies, reinventing themselves again and again to suit every change in the aesthetic or political weather.

Natural vs. Artificial Selection
From the chance mutations thrown out by a flower, nature preserves the rare ones that confer some advantage — brighter color, more perfect symmetry, whatever. For millions of years such features were selected, in effect, by the tulip’s pollinators — that is, insects — until the Turks came along and began to cast their own votes. The Turks did not learn to make deliberate crosses till the 1600’s; the novel tulips they prized were said simply to have “occurred”. Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural selection, but from the flower’s point of view, this is a distinction without a  difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with ore offspring. Though we self-importantly regard domestication as something people have done to plants, it is at the same time a strategy by which the plants have exploited in us and our desires — even our most idiosyncratic notions of beauty — to advance their interests….Mutations that nature would have rejected out of hand in the wild sometimes probe to be brilliant adaptations in an environment that’s been shaped by human desire.

Flowers, the Crucible of Beauty?
Human desire entered into the natural history of the flower and the flower did what it has always done: made itself still more beautiful in the eyes of this animal, folding into its very being even the most improbable of our notions and tropes….we gazed even further into the blossom of a flower and found something more: the crucible of beauty, if not art, and maybe even a glimpse into the meaning of life…the heart of nature’s double nature — that is, the contending energies of creation and dissolution, the spiraling toward complex form and the tidal pull away from it. Apollo and Dionysus were  names the Greeks gave to these to these two faces of nature, and nowhere in nature is their contest as plain or as poignant as it is in the beauty of a flower and its rapid passing. There, the achievement of order against all odds and its blithe abandonment. There, the perfection of art and the blind flux of nature. There, both transcendence and necessity.

Lessons of Coevolution
One of the great lessons of coevolution is that the all-out victory of one species over another is often Pyrrhic. That’s because a powerful, death-dealing toxin can exert such a strong selective pressure for resistance in its target population that it is quickly rendered ineffective; a better strategy may be to repel, disable, or confound….some plant toxins such as nicotine, paralyze or convulse the muscles of pests who ingest them. Others such as caffeine, unhinge an insect’s nervous system and kill its appetite. Toxins in datura (and henbane and a great many other hallucinogens) drive a plant’s predators mad, stuffing their brains with visions distracting or horrible enough to take the creatures’ mind off lunch….compounds such as flavonoids change the taste of plant flesh on the tongues of certain animals, rendering the sweetest fruit sour or the sourest flesh sweet, depending on the plant’s designs. Photosensitizers present in species such as the wild parsnip cause the animals that eat it to burn in the sun; chromosomes exposed to these compounds spontaneously mutate when exposed to ultraviolet light. A molecule present in the sap of a certain tree prevents caterpillars that sample its leaves from ever growing into butterflies.

Catnip
Catnip contains a chemical compound, called “nepetalactone” which mimics the pheromone cats produce in their urine during courtship. This chemical key just happens to fit an aphrodisiac lock in a cat’s brain and apparently no other.

Types of Marijuana
Cannabis Sativa, an equatorial species poorly adapted to life in the northern latitudes. Sativa can’t withstand frost, and… usually won’t set flowers (sinsemilla) north of the thirtieth parallel…American hippies traveling the “hashish trail” through Afghanistan returned with seeds of Cannabis indica, a stout, frost-tolerant species that had been grown for centuries by hashish producers in the mountains of central Asia…it rarely grows taller than four or five feet (as compared to fifteen for the stateliest sativa) and its purplish green leaves are shorter and rounder than the long, slender fingers of sativa. Indica also proved to be exceptionally potent, although many people will tell you that its smoke is harsher and its high more physically debilitating than that of sativa.

Marijuana’s Genetic Revolution
Marijuana’s genetic revolution recalls an earlier horticultural watershed: the introduction of the China rose (R. chinensis) to Europe in 1789, an event that made it possible for the first time to breed roses that would flower more than one  a season…for both the rose and marijuana, human mobility coupled with human desire — for a rose that would rebloom in august; for sinsemilla that would grow in the north –  led to the reunification of two distinct evolutionary lines of a plant that had diverged thousands of years before… the smoother taste and “clear, bell-like high “ associated with the best equatorial sativa.. Could be combined with the superior potency and hardiness of an indica… the result.. “a great revolution” in cannabis genetics…

Cannabis Genetics
By judiciously manipulating the five main environmental factors under their control — water, nutrients, light, carbon dioxide levels and heat — as well as the genetics of the plant, growers found that the marijuana plant, this remarkably obliging weed, could be made to perform wonders….cannabis genetics improved to the point where it was no longer unusual to find sinsemilla with concentrations of the THC, marijuana’s principal psychoactive compound, as high as 15 percent…(THC in ordinary marijuana ranged from 2 to 3 percent…for sinsemilla 5 to 8 percent)…nowadays THC levels of 20 percent are not unheard of.

Indoor Growing of Cannabis
Indoors… the gardener is mother nature but even better. ..growers discovered they could speed photosynthesis by supplying plants with all of the nutrients, carbon dioxide, and light they could handle — vast amounts, as it turned out (Cannabis is, after all a weed.) Gardeners found that their plants could absorb hundreds of thousands of lumens — a blinding amount of light — twenty four hours a day. Later on by abruptly slashing their diet of light to twelve hours daily (and changing from metal halide to sodium lights, the frequency which more closely mimics the autumn sun), growers could shock their plants into flowering before they were eight weeks old. With the right equipment, an indoor grower could create a utopia for his plants, an artificial habitat more perfect that any in nature…

Female Marijuana Plants
As long as the female marijuana plant remains unpollinated, it will continue to produce new calyxes, steadily adding to the length of its flower. in this state of perpetual sexual frustration, the plant also continues to produce large quantities of THC-rich resin. But even a few grains of pollen to reach the plant’s flowers, and the process abruptly stops: bud and resin production shuts down, the plant commences producing seeds and the sinsemilla is ruined

A Regimen of Encouragement For Cannabis
The grower had chosen this particular town because it is home to a candy factory, a bakery, and a chemical plant. Marijuana plants, and indicas in particular, emit a strong, acrid odor; he was counting on the cacophony of smells produced by these three neighbors to cover the telltale stink of his plants…he flung open a tightly sealed door and I was hit squarely in the face first by a blast of white, white light, and then by a stink so powerful tit felt like a punch. Sweaty, vegetal, and sulfurous, the place might have been a locker room in the Amazon…I stepped into a windowless chamber not much bigger than a walk-in closet, crammed with electrical equipment, snaked with cables and plastic tubing, and completely sealed off for the world. More than half the room was taken up by the gardener’s Sea of Green: a six foot square table invisible beneath a jungle of dark, serrated leaves oscillating gently in an artificial breeze. There were perhaps a hundred clones here, each barely a foot tall, yet already sending forth a thick finger of hairy calyxes casting about vainly for a few grains of airborne pollen. A network of narrow plastic pipes supplied the plant with water, a tank of CO₂ sweetened their air, a ceramic heather warmed their roots at night, and four 600-watt sodium fixtures bathed them in a blaze of light for twelve hours of each y. The other twelve, they were sealed in perfect darkness. The briefest lapse of light would ruin the whole crop…in exchange for a regimen of encouragement the likes few plants have ever known, these hundred eager demonic dwarves would oblige their gardener with three pound of dried buds before the month was out — some $13,000 worth of flowers.

One Culture’s Panacea Is Another’s Panapathogen
But the reason cultures give for promoting one plant and forbidding another are remarkably fluid in both time and space one culture’s panacea is another’s panapathogen (root of all evil).Think of the traditional role of alcohol in the Christian West as opposed to the Islamic East…Tobacco smoking and coffee drinking  were taboo in the West before the Industrial Revoliution. The German historian Wolfgang Shivelbusch, suggests that the two drugs became socially acceptable because they aided in industrialization’s “reorientation of the human organism to the primacy of mental labor.”

A Natural History of Religion
A natural history of religion would show that the human experience of the divine has deep roots in psychoactive plants and fungi. Karl Marx may have gotten it backward when he called religion the opiate of the people…somewhere in that volume we would surely find a chapter on the place of the opium poppy and cannabis in the romantic imagination…It’s well known that many English romantic poets used opium, and several of the French romantics experimented with hashish soon after Napoleon’s troops brought it back with them from Egypt… Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s notion of the imagination as a mental faculty that “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate,” an idea whose reverberations to Western culture haven’t yet been stilled, simply cannot be understood without reference to the change in consciousness wrought by opium….Not just poetry but modernism, surrealism, cubism, and jazz have all been nourished by Coleridge’s idea of the transforming imagination….Lenson writes “We have to face the fact that some of our canonical poets and theorists, when apparently talking about imagination, are really talking about getting high.”

Meme
A meme is simply a unit of memorable cultural information. It can be sas small as a tune or a metaphor, as big as philosophy or religious concept. Hell is a meme, so are Pythagorean theorem,  A Hard Day’s Night, the wheel, Hamlet, pragmatism, harmony….Dwarkin’s theory is that memes are to cultural evolution what genes are to biological evolution…Memes are culture’s building blocks, passed down from brain to brain in a Darwinian process that leads by trial and error, to cultural innovation and progress. The memes that prove themselves best adapted to their “environment” — that is the ones most likely to survive and replicate and become widely regarded as good, true, or beautiful. Culture at any given moment is a meme pool in which we all swim  — or rather that swims through us.

Cannabis “High” is a Creation of the Mind?
Andrew Weil contends that cannabis does not itself create but merely triggers the mental state we identify as “being high.” The very same mental state can be triggered in other ways, such as meditation or breathing exercises. Weil believes that it is an error of modern materialist thinking to believe that the high smokes experience is somehow a product of he plant itself (or THC), rather than a creation of the mind — prompted perhaps but sui generis.

The Cannabinoid Network
On the assumption that the human brain would not have evolved a special structure for the express purpose of getting it high on marijuana, researchers hypothesized that the brain must manufacture its own THC like chemical for some as yet unknown purpose. The scientific paradigm at work here was the endorphin system, which is tripped by opiates from plants as well as endorphins produced in the brain….Raphael Mechoulam found…the brain’s own endogenous cannabinoid. He named it “anandamide’” form the Sanskrit “inner bliss”…the effects of the cannabinoid network: pain relief, loss of short term memory, sedation, and mild cognitive impairment …”All of which is exactly what Adam and Eve went after being thrown out of Eden. You couldn’t design a more perfect drug for getting Eve through the pain of childbirth or helping Adam endure a life of physical toil. …cannabinoid receptors had been found in the uterus, of all places, and speculated that anandamide may not only dull the pain of childbirth but help woman forget it later. The sensation of pain is curiously one of the hardest to summon from memory…

High With Carl Sagan
“There is a myth about such highs, the user has the illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny until morning. I am convinced this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved while high are real insights; the main problem is putting those insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day…If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I’m high, I know about this disbelief.”
Marijuana Reconsidered, Lester Grinspoon

The Importance of Forgetting
What a curious thing ..for the brain to do, manufacture chemicals that interfere with it own ability to make memories…forgetting is a mental operation, not a breakdown of one….think how quickly the sheer volume and multiplicity of sensory information we receive every waking minute would overwhelm our consciousness if we couldn’t quickly forget a great deal more of it than we remember…oru mental health depends on a mechanism for editing the moment-by-moment ocean of sensory data flowing into our consciousness down to a manageable trickle of the noticed and remembered. The cannabinoid network appears to be part of that mechanism, vigilantly sifting the vast chaff of sense impression from the kernels of perceptions we need to remember if we’re to get though the day and get on with what needs to be done. Much depends on forgetting.

Transcendence
Nietzche is describing a kind of transcendence — a mental state of complete and utter absorption well known to artists, athletes, gamblers, musicians, dancers, soldiers in battle, mystics, meditators, and the devout during prayer. ..It is a state that depends on its effect on losing oneself in the moment, usually by training a powerful, depthless concentration on One Big Thing (Or, in the Eastern tradition, One Big Nothing). If you imagine consciousness as a kind of lens through which we perceive the world, the drastic constricting of its field of vision seems to heighten the vividness of whatever remains in the circle of perception, while everything’s (including our awareness of the lens itself) simply falls away…Some of our greatest happinesses arrive in such moments, during which we feel we’ve sprung free from the tyranny of time — clock time, of course, but also historical and psychological time, and sometimes even mortality…in the Eastern tradition: “Awaken to this present instant,” a Zen master has written, “we realize the infinite is the finite of each instant.” We can’t get there from here without first forgetting.

The past few months I’ve had some lovely compliments about my skin.  I give all the credit to Laura Mercier’s tinted moisturizer… and my boyfriend of course I used to put on a foundation every morning, always a light one as I hate feeling caked-up. The best foundations I have ever tried and therefore ended up using for years was  Clinique’s Superbalanced Makeup. It’s very lightweight.  I couldn’t imagine changing to anything else until a friend of mine let me try her Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer. I noticed a huge difference to my skin since I started using it, it feels super soft.  My complexion has really improved and the product adds a healthy glow which is what most people comment on.  The shade I use is Nude for a natural tint of colour. It has SPF20 which is brilliant and keeps my skin hydrated all day.

I LOVE  IT!!!!

ABS WORKOUT
—————————————————
Remember, you’re not going to reduce fat content without body stretching or a lot of abdominal work. For best results, Experts agree that the combination of a healthful, nutritious diet and cardiovascular exercise are needed to train your abdominal muscles. For many overweight people, their efforts in losing belly fat and attaining the six-pack abs have been frustrating and unsuccessful. Cardiovascular exercises increases your metabolic rate causing the fat burning capacity of your body to increase dramatically. A simple method of weight loss that you can try is drinking plenty of water as much as 8 glasses a day.

EXERCISE ROUTINES
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The truth is, its not only about trimming and getting rid of fat, it should be more on strengthening the abs muscle. Therefore, you are better off concentrating on cardio, strength training and your diet to obtain the best abs results.

FLR COMES TO THE RESCUE
—————————————————
On dieting, William D. By encouraging people to adopt the Fat Loss Revealed program of right diet, exercise program and supplement, anyone can finally achieved their weight loss goal. Brink has helped many people who failed at loss weight.

FAT LOSS REVEALED (FLR) PROGRAM IN CAPSULE:
—————————————————
> Diet program does not starve the person to death.
> Does not condemn the use of food supplement but shows the acceptable ones.

EXERCISES YOU CAN DO AT HOME
—————————————————
> Plank (Hover) Exercise.
> Long Arm Crunch.
> Long Arm Crunch.
You can choose from the exercise list to strengthen your lower, upper and oblique abdominal muscles.
To order, just visit fatlossrevealed website.

 
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A friend of mine asked me how I keep my hair healthy and shiny. Long hair has always been my thing, I can’t even imagine myself with short hair despite loving short cuts on others.  Having long hair means you really have to look after it and what you’re eating and how you feel can really be mirrored in your hair.

As we all know more important than what you put in your hair is what you put in your body.  I eat lots of Salmon. It’s loaded with omega-3 fatty acids needed to support scalp health. Vitamins and supplements  help nourish your hair and scalp from within. Make sure your multi-vitamins contain vitamin A, C and E which your body needs to produce sebum- your hair’s natural conditioner, and Zinc and biotin which prevent hair loss. I have been taking Silica complex for years and seen result.

My hair dresser  always warned me that one of the worst things for the hair is brisk towel drying. When drying, only squeeze hair gently with the towel. Avoid hard rubbing. Also I allow my hair to air dry as often as possible. I know it’s hard to stay away from the ghd’s but I try to only use mine once in a while and let my hair have some rest.

A product that I absolutely love is a treatment called Elasticizer by Philip Kingsley. It was introduced to me by a top hairdresser as model’s secret to great hair and I must say it’s been pretty fantastic to my hair.

And finally, as my friends know I hardly ever brush my hair and I truly believe this is why it ha maintained its shine. When needed I use the Tangle Teezer, it gently untangles hair and I have noticed less split ends since using it.

I feel like I’m advertising products at the moment but really I’m not receiving anything for mentioning these. I just like spreading the word on stuff that works. There are so many crap products out there so we should all share tips on what’s good and what’s not. What are your best tips for luscious hair?

Isn't it a wonder that we are always drawn back to it time and time again?

This calorie count may seem reasonable, but that is only if the ingredients in the smoothie is just right. If there are extra ingredients added, like the popular chain, Jamba Juice, then expect to have several hundred more calories to be added to that number.

I know know why teenagers and people in their early twenties usually don’t have very good skin. No sleep, large intake of caffeine, and wrong foods. People around these ages usually are in school or are starting off at work. A few hours of sleep is more than likely normal. When there are piles of work to do, who actually eats healthy food if most don’t even remember to eat? The tips for good skin seem to apply to people with more time than people who usually face skin problems.

However, good skin or not, people need to remember to clean their skin! (e.g. daily cleansing and exfoliation) According to wikipedia, mechanical exfoliation is:

This process involves physically scrubbing the skin with an abrasive.[1] Mechanical exfoliants include microfiber cloths, adhesive exfoliation sheets, micro-bead facial scrubs, crepe paper, crushed apricot kernel or almond shells, sugar or salt crystals, pumice, and abrasive materials such as sponges, loofahs, brushes, and simply fingernails.[8][10] Facial scrubs are available in over-the-counter products for application by the user. People with dry skin should avoid exfoliants which include a significant portion of pumice, or crushed volcanic rock. Pumice is considered a good material to exfoliate the skin of the feet.

So maybe boys and girls out there will invest in exfoliating cloths for their face. Yes, boys too. No one will know as long as you and your family don’t tell anyone, so don’t worry and go ahead!

My skin used to be nice, but not much longer.
My symptoms and causes of those symptoms:
Dry Skin – not enough water
Pinkish Skin breakouts – Not enough exoliating cloths
Mixed Coloring – Too much time in the sun, not enough vitamins, and not enough Sleep

See why I need some help in this area?

I am now on a quest to find cheap and accessible products to use on my face. Let’s just hope that i won’t get any allergic reactions shall we?

]]> http://wennier.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/spray-tan-solution/ Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:13:31 +0000 wennier http://wennier.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/spray-tan-solution/

A spray tan solution is optimal for body application if it meets several conditions. First of all it should contain only FDA approved ingredients; the equipment should perform well and the skin condition must be great too. The final tan also depends on the compatibility between the spray tan solution and the skin condition; impeccable results can only be achieved on impeccable skin, and usually, there is no such thing. This is why the same spray tan solution may have different outcomes for different users. Should there appear a weak link in the chain, the effect of the spray tan may be ruined, and the first you’ll feel like blaming is the technician in the spa or salon.

The way the salon reputation is protected by quality services influences the entire development or growth of the business. This is the reason why offering a simple spray tan solution may not always be enough. People need information about the preparations necessary for the first tanning session. Moreover, salons have the responsibility of presenting the dos and don’ts of sunless tanning so that all clients may be satisfied. For example, there are drugs that interfere with tanning agents, but lots of people have no idea about such a risk.

It is a bad idea to try a spray tan solution while you are following a medical treatment; talk to the doctor first and foremost and then decide for or against tanning. Drug prospects should also help if you need to learn about possible interactions with other chemical substances. Stains and streaks make the most common problem that could appear with a spray tan solution. Plus, even if the tan may look good when applied, its intensity or development may be impaired by the drug active principles. In normal health conditions, the tan achieved with a quality spray tan solution will last up to eight or ten days.

Colored or colorless, these are the two variants of spray tan solution used for atomization. The colored variant could give rise to minor inconveniences: you may stain the clothes, the towel and the sheets and color will give away when showering. It definitely sounds better to use a colorless spray tan solution that makes no mess of your clothes. High quality tanning booths can only be used with equally fine solutions, according to the contract clauses included by the manufacturer in the service agreement. Consequently, the spray tan solution needs to rise up to all the standards in order to provide successful tanning results.

Best selling: Coppertone Sunless Self Tanning Lotion and Moisturizer
Spray Tan Tent
Co-author: Skincare

]]> http://wannabenewyorker.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/groom-yourself-for-less/ Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:49:28 +0000 Jenni - Syracuse http://wannabenewyorker.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/groom-yourself-for-less/

Lifebooker promotes health and beauty on a budget. It is the preeminent marketplace where spas and salons advertise discounted appointments. The site, which is free for clients, allows you to browse through uniquely good deals and book appointments instantly online. In order to ensure users get the best Lifebooker has to offer, they’ve made it possible to filter or sort services by appointment availability, discount amount, total price, by neighborhood, duration of service, individual service rating. You can also book for multiple guests at once.

For many people the recession has made Lifebooker an essential resource for maintaining their health and appearance during these tough times. Students and interns alike have trouble keeping up with the demands of living in the city as well. As a result the site is receiving media coverage from outlets such as 0, The Oprah Magazine, which recommends it as the, “easy way to find the best-priced salon treatments.”

-Written by Lifebooker

Picture thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/bettyx1138/ / CC BY 2.0

]]> http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/acai-berry-a-must-get-superfood/ Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:11:40 +0000 Gigi http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/acai-berry-a-must-get-superfood/

Acai (pronounced as ah-sigh-ee) Berry is the number #1 Superfood recommended by Dr Perricone’s article in Oprah.com. The extremely high concentration of antioxidants, omega fatty acids, amino acids, fiber and other nutrients are the reason this superfood has so many benefits. Here are some of the many benefits that acai berry can help with:

Promote weight loss

Increase energy and stamina

Fight heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other diseases

Boost the immune system

Improve the digestive system

Reduce the effects of aging

Improve vision

Increase sex drive

SpreeMama is particularly interested in the area of reducing the effects of aging (I’d like to look like 21 all the time!), and has gotten 1 bottle of Naturol from Drugstore to try it out!

Natrol Acai 1000mg Capsules 60 ea

Acaiberry – The Ultimate Super Fruit
Studies have shown that this little berry is one of the most nutritious and powerful foods in the world. It helps protect the body against oxidative stress, commonly associated with the aging process.

Rain forest Safe: Wild crafted to protect the environment

Gently extracted with water to protect its activity. No chemical solvents.

I got it on sale at $7.99 but I suggest you don’t get this because the price has reverted back to its original $10.99 and they have a new version of Natrol Acai at 1200mg per capsule at $9.79!

After consuming it for 1 week I feel that my appetite has somewhat been surpressed – I don’t feel hungry very often. The rest of the supposed effects – have yet to manifest in me *bah*

To get the best deals for yourself, I am very sure you would like to pop over to iHerb or Vitacost sprees at Singapore Motherhood Spree Section and get your acai dosages at much lower rates! My same item at iHerb is retailing at $6.83 (excl shipping) and $6.73 at Vitacos (excl shipping). Variety goes from extracts, juices, capsules.. you decide the types and brands!

Here’s a video clip of Rachel Ray featuring Monavie – a Acai Berry blend…

… and me going gaga over Marigold Berry Power Juice (contains a wee bit of acai berry) at NTUC!

Love, SpreeMama

]]> http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/vitacost-com-gives-your-more-savings-than-drugstore-com/ Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:53:53 +0000 Gigi http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/vitacost-com-gives-your-more-savings-than-drugstore-com/

Great savings for all shoppers! If you compare the same exact item, VitaCost.com will give you more savings.

Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm is $2.99 in Drugstore but is $2.20 in VitaCost.

Queen Helene Refreshing Natural Facial Scrub Mint Julep is $3.49 in Drugstore but is $2.44 in VitaCost.

For 60 capsules of Acai Berry Extract Capsules (regardless of brand) cost you $7.99 in Drugstore but cost you $5.77 in VitaCost.

In a spree scenario of a total order of US$200, you will save more at VitaCost even if it comes with a flat standard shipping rate of $4.99 as compared to a FREE shipping promo with Drugstore.

For example, if you are buying a Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm at $2.20, you only pay an additional of ($2.20 / $200 * $4.99) $0.05 for its domestic shipping. The same way of calculation goes for the rest.

Visit www.vitacost.com and bag your items for more savings today!

The only difference is that Drugstore combines its shopping cart with Beauty.com – and you can’t really find any beauty / cosmetics items in Vitacost. If you want the best of both worlds (shop for both supplements and cosmetics at the same time), I would still recommend Drugstore for its convenient factor

Happy hauling!
Love, SpreeMama

]]> http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/burts-bees-res-q-ointment-godsent-in-a-tin/ Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:35:44 +0000 Gigi http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/burts-bees-res-q-ointment-godsent-in-a-tin/

For all of life’s discomforts, naturally soothe skin with Vitamin E, Comfrey, Lavender and Wheat Germ oils.

Directions: Apply a thin layer as needed for relief. For external use only.

Ingredients: Olive oil, sweet almond oil, beeswax, comfrey root extract, cocoa butter, wheat germ oil, lavandin oil, tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E), comfrey leaf powder, chlorophyll & vegetable oil, rosemary leaf extract, tocopherol (Vitamin E).

This is a small tin every woman should have stashed in their first aid box and handbag. Good for burns and insect bites, which fits in perfectly in my ground-floor home!

Get Burt’s Bees Doctor Burt’s Res-Q Ointment from Drugstore.com

Love, SpreeMama

]]> http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/burts-bees-pore-refining-mask/ Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:29:56 +0000 Gigi http://spreemama.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/burts-bees-pore-refining-mask/

Burt’s Bees Pore-Refining Mask with French green clay deeply cleanses pores and draws out impurities while remineralizing and refining the skin’s texture.

An assortment of carefully selected powdered herbs stimulate, nourish and renew your complexion leaving you radiant and glowing.

Ingredients: French green clay, bentonite (natural clay), bentonite (natural clay), fragrance, mentha piperita (peppermint) leaf, shavegrass herb, calendula officinalis flower, rosemarinus officinalis (rosemary) leaf, salvia officinalis (sage) leaf.

Directions: Add enough water* to 1 tablespoon powdered mask to create a thin paste. Apply to face, avoid the eye area, and rinse off with warm water after 5 to 10 minutes.

*Or substitute:
- carrot juice for mature skin
- tomato juice for troubled skin
- green tea or grapefruit juice for oily skin

I just love Burt’s Bees packaging and its typography on its packaging. And it’s great they have recommendations of different substitutes for different kinds of skin. I’m using green tea on my hubby and carrot juice for myself! Do I really have to make the drinks out of real fruits and tea or can I do the instant can drinks way? *winks*

Read Reviews:

AssociatedContent.com

Amazon Customer Reviews

Love, SpreeMama

]]> http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/about-face/ Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:01:38 +0000 bridaldaze http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/about-face/

Nutrition for your skin.  Here’s a daily nutritional plan that your skin will love you for.

• 2 cups of raw fruit
• 2 1/2 cups of raw vegetable
• 3 ounces or more of whole grain products
• 6-8 glasses of water
• Reduce coffee or tea intake to 2 cups or less.
• Avoid drinking liquids 2-3 hours before bed to reduce puffiness.
• Avoid alcohol
• Eat Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs): Omega 3 and Omega 6.
• Reduce saturated and processed fats.

]]> http://lisawashington.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/whats-for-dinner-beauty/ Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:03:10 +0000 lisawashington http://lisawashington.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/whats-for-dinner-beauty/

Ever since I was a little girl I always  loved dressing up and wearing make-up. I actually would sneak my mom’s red lipstick out of the house each morning before school. I would run in the girls bathroom and put it on.  You should have seen my face when I left the bathroom, you saw my lips before you saw me.  I had no idea how to apply make-up when I was 12 years old.  The funny things is I remember at 10 years old plucking roses off my rose bush in my backyard, putting it in a bottle with water and letting it sit for a few days. After about 3 days I would open up my bottle take a cotton swab and rub it all over my face. My goodness it felt so refreshing and cool. I loved how my skin felt afterwards, my mom and dad would get on me and tell me to stop messing up their rose bushes. They thought I was too young for this non sense.  Skincare has always been my passion. I learned it from my great aunt. She would take things out of her garden and make potions and elixirs. She had the most beautiful skin, even in her lat 7o’s she did not have one wrinkle.  So, it is no surprise that I started my own skincare company a couple of years ago. I believe you should feed your skin as well as you feed your body, naturally. So, hence the title of this blog, what’s for dinner- beauty.

Do you know in your fridge, pantry and cabinets, lies some of the oldest beauty secrets. Here is one I will share with you for younger looking skin:

Alpha Hydroxy wrinkle cream:

Take two egg whites place in a glass bowl

mix with 2 tbs of honey and 1/4 cup of red wine

Mix thoroughly and apply to face and let dry for 20 minutes. Rinse off.

Apply moisturizer. I have a terrific multi-tea moisturizer infused with essential oils to tone, tighten and rejuvenate the skin. www.btyliskintherapies.com

Finding beauty in your kitchen is also more than mixing ingredient together and applying them topically. Eat beauty as well. Fish is great for the skin, hair and nails. Fish is packed with the essential fatty acids we need for health but also for beauty. If your skin is dry eat more potassium-rich foods, like leafy greens, bell peppers, bananas and sunflower seeds. Drink plenty of pure water.  One of the greatest ways to be a natural beauty is through nutrition. Eat to youth and vitality. Live well and beautifully.

]]> http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/secrets-to-a-flawless-face/ Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:21:23 +0000 bridaldaze http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/secrets-to-a-flawless-face/

Every bride wants to showcase her beauty on her big day.  While makeup can conceal minor imperfections, nothing beats healthy, clear skin.  Let’s face it – no one has a perfect skin.

Do no harm .  When it comes to your skin, remember not to harm it.  Usually you won’t be able to feel or see it, but accumulations of low levels of trauma may add up to skin damage and aging later on.  Here is a list if things you can do to protect the largest organ of your body.

• Protect yourself against ultraviolet radiation by wearing sun protection.
• Avoid harsh detergents that may be harmful to the skin instead use nonionic detergents.
• Keep your hot showers and baths short if your tap water has high dosage if chlorine.
• Avoid skin irritants which may directly damage the skin or trigger an inflammatory or allergic reaction (fro example, overuse of makeup or long-lasting makeup tend to contain harsher chemicals and require stronger solvents for removal.
• Treat inflammations but not to a point where the treatment causes more damage than disease.
• Minimize puffiness.
• Be aware of certain facial expressions, which when repeated enough, may cause motion wrinkles.
• Be aware of overusing skincare products.
• Stay away from excessive cleaning and exfoliation.

]]> http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/eye-spy/ Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:54:02 +0000 bridaldaze http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/eye-spy/

Want to leave the black rivers on your checks for another day?  Secrets to jaw-dropping peepers.

BANISH SMUDGES

When emotions are running high use Genie TLC mascara, a waterproof formula that defines and lengthens the lashes.  Then, to mop up tears while staying smudge-free, wrap a small piece of paper towel around your finger and dab – rather than wipe – away the moisture.

Genie TLC mascara, $20; geniebeauty.com

GET LONG, LUSH LASHES

Fake lashes do not have to come off cartoonish (Betty Boop) or theatrical (Liza Minnelli).  The trick: Rather than attaching a full strip along the entire length of your upper lash line, ask your make-up artist to attach individual ones to the outer edge of your eyes.  Simply pluck them out with the help of an oil-based makeup remover. Try Ardell Lashtite Individual Eyelash Adhesive.

Ardell Lashtite Individual Eyelash Adhesive, $4; drugstore.com

QUIT SMOKING

Instead of wearing event-inappropriate smoky eyes, line the inner rims with a water-resistant black eyeliner.  It creates drama without heaviness.

DARKEN BROWS

Skip the dye job and fill them in.

STEP 1 – Brush brows up and out with a clean spooley brush.

STEP 2 – With a pointed taupe (for lighter brows) or brown (for darker ones) eyebrow pencil, draw tiny feathery strokes on the skin beneath the hairs.

STEP 3 – For the color to look natural, use an angle-cut brush to go over the brows with eyebrow powder. It blends the powder and takes away the waxy finish of the pencil.

Anastasia Beverly Hills angled-cut small brush, $17; sephora.com

You have ripped up unflattering pictures of you in the past and your wedding snaps don’t want to have this final end.  If you are able to afford one, book your makeup artist for the day or at least until after dinner.  This way if you want to add a darker eye it would become much more appropriate after your dinner is complete.

]]> http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/hands-down/ Thu, 28 May 2009 14:04:44 +0000 bridaldaze http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/hands-down/

Polish off your bridesmaids’ wedding day appearance with a one-of-a-kind nail tint that’s custom-blended to match your palette.  Use fabric swatch of their dress es to guide you towards the perfect shade, or have your salon mix up a polish that is close to your favorite color.  Hands down, it’s the easiest way to get the very look you’ve been searching for.

Custom Blend Nail Enamel, Giella, $25 each, giella.com

]]> http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/shaping-up-for-the-big-day/ Wed, 20 May 2009 20:30:22 +0000 bridaldaze http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/shaping-up-for-the-big-day/

Upcoming weddings start everyone thinking about getting into better shape. In addition to staying on a healthy diet, exercise is the best way to look good in the wedding photos. By following these steps you can get the best results in the shortest amount of time.

Step 1

• Plan for success by choosing a realistic start date. If you can, ideally you should begin your pre-wedding exercise program at least three months before the big date.

Step 2

• Find help. When working with limited time, it is extremely important to be sure you are choosing the right exercises and doing them properly. You can do this either with DVD programs designed for quick results or by hiring a trainer (which is the better choice if it is within your budget).

Step 3

• Determine what your focus is. It should be the parts of your body that will show the most. For example, if you are the bride or a woman wearing a sleeveless or spaghetti strapped dress, focus on exercises that strengthen your arms and back. Free weights will work best in a short amount of time.

Step 4

• Strengthen your core to help with your posture. This will improve how you look at the wedding. The best way to do this is by doing exercises using a stability ball.

Step 5

• Perform cardiovascular workouts to help burn fat. Aim for 30 to 45 minutes a day three or four days a week. Choose whatever activity will keep you going.

Its not just you who is going to be on that honeymoon in a bathing suit – get your fiancee out there with you.  It’s something that you can do together to get in shape and exercising is always easier when you have a buddy – or soon to be hubby.

]]> http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/beauty-is-skin-deep/ Wed, 20 May 2009 04:01:10 +0000 bridaldaze http://bridaldaze.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/beauty-is-skin-deep/

Whether you want that special glow for your wedding day or you want to rejuvenate your skin, you always want a fresh look for your wedding day.  Some spa packages can get a a little pricey and for the more budget conscious bride you may want to try some at home recipes for facial masks.

Facials increases and improves natural cellular regeneration by aiding in faster cell renewal of skin. Common ingredients used in home made facials are eggs, lemon, milk, honey, cucumber, tomato, essential oils and lots more fruits, herbs and other ingredients. Following are a few homemade facials that will help make your skin beautiful and vibrant.

As with any natural foods, if you have an allergy to any of the  ingredients below, please do not attempt to apply these to your face. Always consult with your doctor before trying anything new if you have severe food or contact/skin allergies.

Honey Banana Face Mask: Using a banana and honey mask makes your skin feel radiant. Just mix half a banana with 2 spoons of honey; apply to face and leave for 5-10 minutes and then rinse. Also banana skin (the inside) is excellent for hard skin on feet!! Relax and Enjoy!

Chocolate Face Mask: Ingredients: 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/4 cup of honey, 2 tablespoons of heavy cream (sour cream will work as well), 3 teaspoons of oatmeal powder Preparation: Mix all the ingredient until the mass in consistent. Apply on the face, gently massaging it so that oatmeal can start exfoliating the dead skin cell layer. Leave it on for about 20 minutes and rinse off with luke warm water.

Orange Face Mask for Oily Skin: 1/2 orange, 8 tablespoons of flour. Preparation: Squeeze orange and mix in flour. Start out by adding 5-6 tablespoons and keep adding more, until you get a compact, thick mass. Not too thick, but thick enough to be able to spread on the face. Apply and let it rest for 20 minutes and wash off with lots of luke warm water.

Apple Moisturizing Face Mask: Apple is full of potassium, a mineral which when used in skin care, helps trap skin's moisture giving it a nice glow. Ingredients: 1 apple, 1 cup of milk, 1 tablespoon of flour, 1 tablespoon of olive oil Preparation: Peel an apple and cut it in little slices. Boil it in a bit of milk, until soft. Mash it and add flour and oil. Apply to face while it is just warm (not hot! try it on your inner wrist first!) and let it rest for 20 minutes. Rinse off with luke warm water.

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