Pumpkin Pie Face Mask Recipe

Fall is here and pumpkin stuff is popping up everywhere! Pumpkin is full of vitamins that your skin needs including zinc, which is one of the most skin-healing minerals in nature. No matter your skin type, you can use pumpkin to keep your skin in good shape through fall and winter. Here are a few recipe options:

For sensitive skin:

1tbsp canned organic pumpkin
a dash of nutmeg

For normal skin:
1 tbsp canned organic pumpkin
a dash of nutmeg
a small dash of cinnamon
a small dash of clove

For oily skin:
add a 1/4 tsp organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar to the "normal skin" recipe

For dry skin:
add a 1/4 tsp organic pumpkin seed oil or other oil (almond, avocado, or olive) to the "normal skin" recipe

Choose the best option for your skin. Whip the listed ingredients together into a paste and smooth it onto clean skin. While very stimulating and circulation-enhancing, cinnamon can be a bit sensitizing so adjust the amounts as you see fit for your particular skin type. And of course, rinse off with tepid water if anything feels uncomfortable.

You can leave this mask on for 20 minutes or so and rinse with warm water. Follow with your usual topical regimen.

This mask leaves your skin smooth and well fed for a healthy glow without the use of chemicals or harsh exfoliators. So you can use it as often as you want!

Ralph Lauren Model gets fired for not being thin enough

Ralph Lauren fires model for being too large to fit into clothes. She's a size 4! Yet another reason to not support that company.

read full article here

skinny with the chance of cupcakes > A Custom Jean from the indiDenim Design Vault

I just found the most amazing new website! If you're like me, the perfect pair of jeans is like the Holy Grail. I have trouble finding jeans that are my favorite color and style, not to mention the right fit for my particular shape. Everyone's different right? indiDenim has an online system that allows you to create the perfect pair of jeans for your preferences and measurements! Check out mine and then make yours!

skinny with the chance of cupcakes > A Custom Jean from the indiDenim Design Vault

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Cargo PlantLove Lipsticks

While I try to keep makeup to a minimum during the week, I like to wear some on the weekends or for events, and I'm very choosy.

I only go into Sephora for two things: Bare Minerals Foundation (which is getting better safety ratings on www.cosmeticsdatabase.com now so I consider it a cheaper and accessible alternative to Zosimos and Coastal Classic Creations) and... Cargo PlantLove Lipsticks. These lipsticks are my new favorite! I've never used another natural lip product like them! They can be worn lightly for a very sheer stain-like look or applied to opaque coverage. There are super natural-looking colors as well as some bolder shades. My faves are Yellowstone, Majella, Lindsay, and CeCe. I wish I could wear more of them including Ageless, Eve Pinky, Maria, and Evangeline, all of which are amazing colors that just aren't gonna work with my particular coloring, which finds the orange in even the bluest of shades.

Cargo PlantLove Lipsticks have recently been reformulated with MUCH cleaner ingredients and they are cruelty-free and vegan as far as I can tell (I frequently pour over the ingredient list to find anything that might be the pinch to wake me up from my vegan natural lipstick dream).

I attribute the excellence of these lipcolors to the fact that they were made by a cosmetics company who knows how makeup should perform, rather than by a natural makeup company that set out to make products that emphasize ingredients while sacrificing function. I want both! And I think these lipsticks are a great option.

So love your natural lips, but if you must dress them up, do it with healthier cosmetic choices.

Plus Size Beauty in Glamour Magazine

The November issue of Glamour has a pretty cool article about recognizing the beauty of bigger bodies. It opens with an amazing photo of several plus sized models wearing nothing but strategically placed body parts. Their bodies are undeniably beautiful despite the fact that they don't measure up to current standards of beauty.

Apparently, there was an overwhelmingly positive response to a photo of a plus sized model bearing some belly rollage in their September issue. I remember this photo (I've been reading these damn magazines lately- I get them for free at work- it's a phase I hope). The picture was not part of a plus-size feature, it was simply used in an article without any mention of body types as I recall. Lots of people wrote in praising this inclusion.

As someone who is slender yet still has trouble being totally comfortable with her curvy areas, I was truly grateful for this article. After seeing this photo and being struck by how lovely these ladies looked to me, I instantly felt more accepting of my own shape.

The article also mentions that they received many negative comments about the September photo. Several people reprimanded Glamour for promoting an "unhealthy" body type and felt it supported poor choices in an already obese country.

Yes, the US has an obesity epidemic, it's true. But as one of the models points out in the article, seeing photos of very thin models and airbrushed celebrities never motivated her to make healthier choices long term. In fact, this tends to result in worsened self image and therefore more destructive choices like drastic dieting, emotional eating, and unsustainable exercise habits. According to the model, it wasn't until she came to embrace her figure that she began to reach a healthy and stable weight.

I don't think Glamour is trying to promote the fastfood approach to beauty, but rather they seem to be taking steps to be more inclusive in their definition of beauty in the first place.

Our healthiest and most beautiful shape is whatever shape we achieve when we exercise regularly and feed our bodies a diet of healthy, fresh foods on a daily basis. For some people that will look like a breastless, buttless, rail thin bean pole. For others it will look like a super curvy plus sized figure. If I can remind myself of this everyday, I'll be set.

Back from the East Coast

I've just come back from a trip to the East Coast (the Carolinas and New York City) and thought I'd better post something.

New York was AWESOME. It's definitely on my list of places to live someday. Everyone there is so well-dressed and beautiful that I found myself wearing full makeup everyday and caring more about my appearance, which is kind of lame of me, but practically irresistible in the fashion capital of the country. So I'm partly glad to be back in the East Bay where the maximum level of effort is combed hair (or not) and yoga clothes for most people.

product reviews and recipes to come shortly...

Obesity and Prescription Drugs

Today I saw an article about America's Top 10 most medicated states and I decided to research what the top 10 fattest states might be. According to the most recent info I could find, the findings were very similar:

10 Most Medicated States:
1. West Virginia
2. Alabama
3. South Carolina
4. Tennessee
5. Arkansas
6. Missouri
7. Kentucky
8. Louisiana
9. Mississippi
10. Iowa

10 Fattest States
1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. West Virginia
4. Tennessee
5. South Carolina
6. Oklahoma
7. Kentucky
8. Louisiana
9. Michigan
10. Arkansas/Ohio

The top 3 drugs sold last year were:

Lipitor- a cholesterol control drug
Nexium- an acid reflux drug
Plavix- an anti-platelet drug to prevent strokes and heart attacks

The obvious thing that this comparison shows is that obesity and lifestyle-related health problems are the motivation for most of this prescription use. But more importantly, it seems to indicate that these things are not working!

With the rampant prescription use in this country, we should be in better health over the years if these pills do what they say they are going to do. Certainly, that is how doctors prescribe them. As someone who is watching so many of my family members take part in the use of these dangerous drugs (I feel that I can pretty freely call them dangerous considering an anti-platelet drug was listed as one of the causes of death on my dad's death certificate), I can say with confidence that they are not helping.

The problem is, the average American has NO CLUE how to eat a healthy well-rounded, disease-preventative diet. And it's not entirely our fault. Just like the beauty industry, we have companies and organizations telling us the wrong things. We are being told that refined grain products, conventional meat, and dairy are all acceptable foods to eat freely. And the greatest lie we're being told is that processed, packaged, and convenience foods are foods at all.

So just as consumers need to be ruthlessly savvy about lipstick ingredients, so too do we need to be about our food. And the same rules apply. If it isn't 100% whole food that readily grows or exists in nature and is free of all synthetics, additives, isolates, fortifiers, etc., then it is not serving our health. Real food is true medicine.