Creating Order from Chaos

My 4 year old daughter, Makayla, LOVES art. I don't think a day goes by that she doesn't draw or paint or glue something. I love her "masterpieces" but I do not love the disaster area that is her art bench. Mostly I hate the crayon/ marker/ pencil/ pen bin that seems to breed more and more broken writing/ coloring implements. It was out of control:

So one day, while cleaning out old makeup in my bathroom I saw my travel makeup roll and thought "THAT WOULD HOLD ALL OF THE CRAYONS PERFECTLY!" So I ordered an inexpensive travel makeup roll from Amazon and Makayla had a good time organizing all of the various coloring devices into separate zip pouches. It turned out great!

As an added bonus, not only is everything organized and easy to clean up- it's also portable!

So, You Want To Make A Sugar Scrub.

Sugar or salt scrubs are one of the simplest things you can make for your skin. If you have dry skin, they are great for moisturizing. In my opinion, sugar and salt scrubs are too harsh for the skin on your face but can be wonderful for rough areas like your hands, feet, knees and elbows or to exfoliate your legs prior to shaving.

Making a sugar scrub is something you can easily do at home with ingredients from the kitchen. Really you only NEED two things- an oil and a sugar. Pour some oil in a bowl and add enough sugar until it gets to the consistency you like in a scrub.

Now, there are a lot of ways you can fuck this up and a lot of ways you can make it fancy. Here are some guidelines of stuff NOT to do when making your own sugar scrub.

1) Don't add anything that contains water or is water soluble. This includes any type of juice or extract (unless extracted in oil, unlikely to find in your house).
2) Don't add a bunch of sugar to hand soap and expect it to stay a scrub- the main ingredient in liquid soap is water!

The reasoning behind items 1 and 2 is that sugar and salt dissolve in water! It may start out a scrub but over time, the sugar or salt crystals WILL dissolve and you will be left with a very sugary or salty liquid! There is NO getting around this. A scrub with a water soluble scrubber (like salt or sugar) HAS to be anhydrous!

3) Don't add citrus oils or other irritating essential oils. The whole premise behind the anhydrous (without water) scrub is that you scrub loose any dead skin, etc and leave behind a nice moisturizing layer of oil. Citrus oils are phototoxic, meaning that when they are exposed to sunlight they kill your cells (resulting in a bleaching effect, which is why so many skin lightening products have citrus oils in them) but it's not healthy for your skin. So unless you're exfoliating your lady garden (or other areas that never see the light of day) leave the citrus oils out!

OK, now that I've covered what not to do, here's a few tips on what TO do!

1) Pick an oil that you love. There are literally hundreds of choices here. Some are substantially more expensive than others or significantly harder to get but if you have heard of it, it's out there. Some that are commonly available in grocery stores are: canola, corn, peanut, avocado, coconut, grapeseed, sunflower, olive and sesame. Personally, I like a lightweight oil so my choice would probably be grapeseed. If you have really dry skin you should pick something a little heavier like avocado, sunflower, olive, corn, canola or sesame (peanut if you don't have allergies). The only one that I would personally never use is coconut. Coconut oil is comedogenic, meaning it clogs pores and makes acne worse. I have acne issues, not just on my face but occasionally on my chest and body too- so I avoid coconut oil at all costs. If you don't have issues with acne go ahead and give it a try- it smells great!

2) Once you've picked your main carrier oil, consider purchasing a small amount of a more exotic oil or an oil soluble extract. Again the possibilities here are endless and the interweb is your friend.

Finally, if you want to get a little bit fancy, try making an emulsified scrub. All you need to make a sugar scrub into an emulsified sugar scrub is.... an emulsifier! :) Emulsifying wax (E-wax) is readily available from multiple suppliers on the internet. Emulsified scrubs are still anhydrous but when you are scrubbing your wet body part with it, it forms a microemulsion on your skin and feels like a lotion when you rinse it off. They are also easier to rinse off, don't feel as oily and don't leave a super slick, hazardous tub behind!
The recipe for an emulsified sugar scrub goes something like this:
10g E-Wax
90g oil of choice
Melt E-Wax in to oil in a double boiler
To this add as much sugar as necessary to create the desired level of scrubbiness (probably at least 100g)!

Also, since I've harped on this on my blog before, you actually do not NEED a preservative in this formula. Microorganisms need water and this doesn't have any. That said, dipping wet hands into a tub of sugar scrub CAN introduce bacteria and the water necessary, so a preservative wouldn't hurt. If you don't want to use a preservative, don't make a lot and store it in the fridge just in case. All oils do go rancid after a time, some faster than others. Keep this in mind when choosing your oils and if your scrub starts to smell funny- THROW IT OUT!

A well made sugar scrub is a quick and easy gift idea for any lucky person in your life. Just spoon it into an appropriate container and finish it off appropriately!

How is this healthy again?

There is a recipe currently going around Pinterest. I've seen it repinned at least 10 times now and every time I see it I think to myself: Is that really "healthy"? This is it. The pin says "When you need a healthy sweet: So good. Just five ingredients- coconut oil, cocoa powder, almond/peanut butter, honey, vanilla. 

I'm trying to lose weight and I like chocolate so a healthy chocolate SOUNDS great. But when I read the recipe it didn't really sound all that healthy. In fact, it didn't sound healthy at all. Coconut oil (fat), cocoa powder (ok, I guess), almond butter (fat and a little protein), honey (sugar) and vanilla (flavor). So.... fat, sugar and flavor. Then I thought, well is it better for me than a Reese's Cup because I love a Reese's Cup for a treat sometimes. So I entered the recipe into my favorite recipe site (www.food.com) because they calculate the nutrition facts from the recipe. Here are the nutrition facts for this recipe. 


Calories 210.5 
  Calories from Fat 168     
Total Fat 18.7 g                  28%
  Saturated Fat 10.3 g          51%
Cholesterol 0.0 mg               0%
Sodium 29.3 mg                   1%
Total Carbohydrate 12.0 g   4%
Dietary Fiber 2.7 g              11%   
Sugars 7.6 g                        30%
Protein 3.6 g                          

Compare that to the nutrition facts for a Reese's Cup.


Calories 80
  Calories from Fat 45
Total Fat 5.0g                             8%
 Saturated Fat 2.0g                  10%
 Trans Fat 0.2g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.8g
Monounsaturated Fat 2.0g
Cholesterol 5mg                        2%
Sodium 55mg                            2%
Total Carbohydrates 9.0g         3%
  Dietary Fiber 1.0g                   4%
  Sugars 8.0g
Protein 2.0g

So the healthy chocolate has 2.5X the calories and nearly 4X the fat (including 50% of the daily allowance of saturated fat) of the Reese's Cup? I'm not a dietitian or even really in to health and fitness but this one seems 100% bogus to me!

Skin Care: Propylene Glycol

Every one has something that just gets under their skin. For me, it's spreading myths and misinformation about harmless chemicals. Over the past couple of months I have been working on an all natural skin care line for my company. All natural cosmetics are not at all important to me, I'm much more concerned about making skin care products that don't contain irritating ingredients, have ingredients with proven research for their benefits and are well formulated products. However, natural is the buzz word, and I've got to earn my paycheck.

Ecocert guidelines prohibit the use of glycols because they are derived from petroleum. Well Bossman talked to a supplier who had an Ecocert approved Propylene Glycol and he ordered a sample of it. I should mention Bossman is not a chemist, he's a meteorologist  He started in QC, moved to R&D then to manager. His chemistry knowledge is fairly limited. So he handed me the literature for the Ecocert Propylene Glycol and I looked it over and found that the INCI was propanediol. Propylene Glycol exists as two stereoisomers.

1,2-propanediol:

1,3-propanediol:

The difference between the molecule is which carbon the second -OH group is bonded to. Standard propylene glycol is a raecemic mixture (equal parts) of the two isomers. The Ecocert propanediol is stereospecific to the 1,3-propanediol. Bossman and I got in to a big disagreement about this because he would not accept that the propanediol was not (for all intents and purposes) the same as the propylene glycol that we use every day. There are minor differences but they serve the same purpose and have essentially the same properties, especially for our products. So I did some research on exactly why customers felt we needed to avoid propylene glycol in cosmetics. I was truly surprised at what I found people saying about poor little propylene glycol.

This site claims the propylene glycol is  linked to cancer, developmental/ reproductive issues, allergies/ immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity and endocrine disruption. It has been found to provoke skin irritation and sensitization in humans as low as 2% concentration, while the industry review panel recommends cosmetics can contain up to 50% of the substance. It goes further and claims that it alters the structure of the skin by allowing chemicals to penetrate deep beneath it while increasing their ability to reach the blood stream. Even the EWG (which I should mention, I hate, because they are fear mongers) isn't that extreme. They only list propylene glycol as a 3 (moderate hazard) and claim that it is a skin sensitizer. Honestly it's just absurd. 

Propylene glycol is a humectant, which means it draws water to your skin, acting as a moisturizer. It also improves freeze/ thaw stability of finished products by preventing them from freezing as hard. It is classified by the FDA as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) for all food applications. Unlike it's cousin, ethylene glycol, propylene glycol is easily metabolized by the liver and it does not accumulate in the body over time. The acute oral toxicity of propylene glycol is very low, ingestion of large quantities in a very short period of time are required to achieve a toxic concentration in the blood. I could not imagine a situation in which a cosmetic formula would use 50% propylene glycol as the first website mentioned, it's usually used at around 2-3% in a finished lotion formula. Prolonged contact with propylene glycol is essentially non-irritating to the skin. Undiluted propylene glycol is minimally irritating to the eye, and can produce slight transient conjunctivitis (the eye recovers after the exposure is removed). Exposure to mists may cause eye irritation, as well as upper respiratory tract irritation. Inhalation of the propylene glycol vapors appears to present no significant hazard in ordinary applications. Both experimental and anecdotal evidence to date indicate propylene glycol to be completely non-carcinogenic. In a very interesting study, some rats were fed propylene glycol at amounts equal to 5% of all of their food intake every day for two years, which is a pretty huge volume over a large portion of their lifetime. There were no observable effects on their health or behavior. 

There is simply an overwhelming amount of evidence that indicates that propylene glycol is a perfectly safe ingredient for all food and cosmetic applications. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry issued this statement regarding propylene glycol. Unless you are one of the very few people with an allergy to propylene glycol, it's just not something to be concerned about. 

Sales Parties

I am about to write a post that will not be popular among my friends but here goes.

If you want to sell cosmetics/ candles/ cooking supplies/ sex toys/ the latest pyramid scheme to supplement your income, that's great. Have your party, but leave me out of it. I buy the things I want from either the store or the internet. I research the things I want and make an informed decision. The last thing I want to do is be pressured by a friend to buy something I don't need/ want because they are throwing a party. I don't care if the party is a great way to get out of the house or a fun time hanging out with friends. The real reason for the party is to sell me something. Even if you say "no pressure, just come and hang out" I will personally feel pressured to buy something simply because you are my friend and that's just not cool. I feel like the whole premise behind these parties is rude. I don't beg you all to buy Bonne Bell cosmetics to support my income.

That's basically it. Every time I've gotten an invite for the latest "party" I've wanted to say something but I didn't want the person to feel like I was singling them out. Since I'm not currently invited to any of these types of parties I figured it was a good time to get it off my chest. Obviously this is just my opinion. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who don't mind being pitched to by their friends. I'm not one of them. The next time you are having a party to sell something, feel free to leave me off the invite list.

Skin Care: Anti-Aging Products

Wrinkles and aging skin are a fact of life. There are many things that contribute to aging skin:

1. Sun Damage: Like it or not, repeated exposure to UVA & UVB rays whether from the sun or a tanning bed dramatically speeds up the aging process of the skin. UVA rays penetrate more deeply than UVB rays. UVA is responsible for destruction of collagen and elastin and when they are destroyed, your skin gets saggy and wrinkled. UVB rays are primarily responsible for sunburns. Unless your sunscreen product say "Broad Spectrum coverage, it will only block UVB rays not UVA. Make sure you are blocking both.
2. Genetics: People with darker skin tones are less susceptible to wrinkles caused by sun damage.
3. Hormones: Women who have gone through menopause frequently begin to notice thinning and more saggy skin due to the hormonal changes. 
4. Getting Old: Gravity is a bitch. Every year you are on this earth gravity pulls down on your skin and stretches it more.
5. Muscle Movement: The muscles you use the most, be it smiling, frowning or squinting into the sun, wrinkle the fastest and the deepest. 

This is certainly not an exhaustive list but these are some of the major causes of aging. Now I'm going to tell you the bad news

There isn't a miracle vitamin, plant extract, or any other ingredient anywhere in the world that can change one wrinkle on your face. Stop looking for one ingredient that does it all, because that just leads to disappointment. There are thousands of anti-wrinkle products available around the world with claims that are either misleading or just plain false about what they can do for your skin.

So now that we have that out of the way- what can we do to care for aging skin?

1. Wear broad spectrum sunscreen every day before going in the daylight. EVERY day, not just in the summer, or on days you're at the amusement park, 365 days a year. Sun has been proved to be a huge contributing factor to aging and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
2. Exfoliate! Removing the thickened outer layer of skin can increase collagen production and help your skin form a better structure. You don't have to exfoliate with a scrub (indeed many commercially available products have particles that are too large or too hard to do anything other that tear at your skin). You can also exfoliate with AHA (alpha hydroxy acids like glycolic acid or lactic acid) and BHA (beta-hydroxy acids like salicylic acid). As I discussed in my post about acne, any product using AHAs or BHAs to exfoliate your skin must have a pH between 3 and 4. Anything outside this range is either too irritating or simply won't work. 
3. Retin-A, Renova, Avita and Tazorac are prescription topical products to improve sun damaged or wrinkled skin. These products are cell-communicating ingredients. They can "talk" to your skin and tell it what to do. Niacinamide (Vitamin B3 or nicotinioic acid) is a great non prescription cell communicating ingredient. It increases the level of cerimide in the skin which helps regulate water loss and stimulates microcirculation in the dermis. Some other cell communicating ingredients to look for include: milk thistle, Filipendula glaberrima (Nakai root extract), retinyl palmitate, retinol, peptides, and phospholipids. Using cell communicating ingredients in skin care is in it's infancy. This area of research is sure to expand in the coming years. 
4. Maintain your skin's barrier. Think of the barrier as the mortar in between the bricks. Technically known as the extracellular matrix, the skin's barrier helps to keep your skin soft, smooth, moist and of course keep the bad stuff out. When the barrier is damaged, you get rough, dry and dehydrated looking skin. Maintaining the barrier can be done in several ways. Don't use water that is too hot or cold. Don't using products that contain irritating ingredients. Your skin should NEVER burn or tingle when using a skin care product. It doesn't mean it's working- it means it's irritating your skin. Avoid unprotected sun exposure (I know, I'm beating a dead horse here but it really is important). Some important skin-repairing ingredients to look for include ceramides, lecithin, glycerin, polysaccharides, hyaluronic acid, sodium hyaluronate, sodium PCA, amino acids, cholesterol, glycerol, phospholipids, glycosphingolipids, glycosaminoglycans, glycerides, and fatty acids.
5. Use antioxidants. This is a broad statement that covers a vast amount of ingredients. Antioxidants reduce inflammation, repair DNA damage, restore the skin's surface barrier, help defend against environmental stress, allow skin to build more collagen, and improve skin's ability to heal.

The price of the product means nothing. Good and bad skin care products come in all price ranges. Look at the ingredients. Compare it to the things that are needed to maintain healthy skin. Maintaining healthy skin is the only way to prevent and reduce the appearance of wrinkles. 

There is no one BEST ingredient. There are a lot of great ones but don't buy a product because of it's claims, buy it because it's a well formulated product that will make you look and feel great.

Pint-Sized Bullies

When Makayla started Montessori preschool this fall, I anticipated dealing with separation anxiety, potential tantrums and maybe some negative feedback about her stubbornness. Instead, we are dealing with an issue I never anticipated- bullying. It's not Makayla who's being bullied, she's the bully.

It started about a month after school started. She started getting even more obstinate with us at home and then the first report from school- Makayla bit another kid because he was washing his hands and she wanted to wash her's first. Jeff and I were both pretty shocked. We haven't really been doing the "play-date" thing and she is an only child so her interactions with other kids were fairly limited but whenever we were playing at the park, out at the store or in Sunday school at Grandpa's church she was nothing but loving to other kids. She freely gives hugs (whether wanted or not) and really adores babies. Nothing about her behavior prior to the start of school would have made me anticipate this. Two days after the biting incident, she hit a kid for not doing what she wanted and pulled another girl's hair because she wanted the work the other girl had.

So we went in for a parent-teacher conference and worked out a plan in which after a "touching" incident Makayla would be sent to the "rethinking chair" after which she would be asked to apologize to the kid she wronged. The next week she struck again. She got sent to the rethinking chair and seemed appropriately apologetic when we talked to her about why what she was doing was wrong. She knew that she wasn't supposed to hit but she said "she couldn't help it". Grandma instituted a reward system in which Makayla got 1 quarter on days that she kept her hands to herself but on days she hit she had to give Grandma 2 quarters. It's here where I point out that Makayla is wise beyond her 4 years. She quickly figured out she could still be bad 2 days a week and come out ahead in the quarter system. So every week, 2 or sometimes 3 times a week, Makayla has hit, poked or pushed another kid at school. She doesn't seem to be limiting it to one particular child. She gets angry and immediately strikes out with her hands. So we continued with the plan at school and at home we started taking things that she loved away on days that she hit. We talked to her about what she was doing and why it was wrong. We tried to make her put herself in the other kids' shoes. She said she would be very sad if someone else hit her but she couldn't extrapolate that into "what I'm doing is making the other kids sad".

Meanwhile, her behavior at home continued to slide downhill. She got even more stubborn. She refused to clean up after her messes. She doesn't understand bargaining- she wants what she wants and that's it. So we started using the "counting" system where we count to three and if she's still refusing to do what needs doing, she gets a spanking.

After a month of no improvement we talked to the teachers at school again and made some modifications to the plan. They too are completely baffled by her continued hitting episodes. They said that normally, kids who are lacking verbal skills to express their feelings are the hitters but Makayla is very advanced verbally and she tells them why she hits (she was angry) and yes she knows she shouldn't (but she can't help it). They also said that most kids respond right away to the rethinking chair but it seems to be having no effect on Makayla. So they are teaching her to cross her arms tightly across her chest when she feels like she's getting angry and they are moving the rethinking chair to a place away from the rest of the class to make it feel more punishing. I plan to give this another month and then re-evaluate. Every day I ask her if it was a "good friend day" and if she says yes, I let her know how proud I am that she made good choices today. If she says no, I tell her that I am disappointed that she made bad choices today and that I hope she makes better ones tomorrow. Then we discuss what happened, why and why it was wrong. Time will tell if it helps.

Yesterday, I was talking to my sister who was telling me a story about one of her friends that was complaining about how her kid was being bullied in preschool. She was mad at the parents because obviously they weren't being strict enough or parenting well enough or something similar. Makayla's school tries to keep everything confidential about who hits and who gets hit but Makayla will tell me right off who she hit so I'm sure the other kids go home and tell their parents who hit them. So I'm the parent of the bully. I find it terribly embarrassing but I don't know what else to do. I'm not strict enough? I feel terrible every time I spank her- would beating her harder help? I don't think so. I am I ignoring or encouraging the behavior? Not by a long shot. I honestly think that with more time, Makayla will mature out of this but I'm not sitting around waiting for her to "grow out of it". I am actively trying to change her behavior so that other kids don't get hurt. Hell, I was bullied in middle school, I hated every minute of it, there is no way I want my daughter to turn in to one of the "mean girls". I can understand why other parents would be upset even, I probably wouldn't be looking at from the bully's side if Makayla were the one coming home telling me someone hit her at school.

I don't know, I don't have the answers. But we are trying.