#46: Busy Life Update

Episode 46: Busy Life Update | November Wedding, Baby L’Amour’s 2nd Birthday (!), Home Improvements, Beauty Shopping

October has been a very full month around here, and I was blanking on an episode for this week so…when in doubt, chat about real life? Today I’m sharing the major goings on around here, and also included some beauty talk towards the end where I discuss the Limited Edition Beauty Heroes Box featuring Earthwise Beauty and Pacific Northwest Essences. Also it was time for some online beauty shopping cart curation (Credo, Sephora, Beauty Heroes).

Episode Notes:
Products mentioned –
Earthwise x Beauty Heroes LE discovery https://bit.ly/2HAhwdP
Rime Ardokay https://www.rime-arodaky.com
Barnyard Banter https://amzn.to/3ko4MoX
Luft Balloon https://www.luftballoonstore.com
Bake Chicago https://bakechicago.com
Meri Meri https://merimeri.com
Strider balance bike https://bit.ly/3joG9XQ
Toddler helmet https://bit.ly/35tG1Sh
Coco-Mat https://www.coco-mat.com
My Green Mattress https://www.mygreenmattress.com
Obasan https://obasan.com
The Clean Bedroom https://www.thecleanbedroom.com
Essence consult on PNW Essences (LAMOUR for 10% off) https://bit.ly/3okSHn5
Pai Sea Aster + Wild Oat Serum (legacy packaging on sale) https://bit.ly/31u2MEn
Votary Super Seed Serum https://bit.ly/34kqRPB
PNW Essences Lichen and Mosses Aura Mist (LAMOUR for 10% off) https://bit.ly/2ZkWwOo
Kjaer Weis Invisible Touch Liquid Foundation https://bit.ly/34moYSz
Ilia Brow Gel https://bit.ly/37L5DNh
Lepaar Elemental Day Silk https://bit.ly/34kUaS5
NARS Climax Extreme Effects Eyeshadow Palette https://bit.ly/35oOTbN
Fitglow Peach+ corrector https://bit.ly/34jnhFB
Aromatherapy Associates Forest Therapy Bath and Shower Oil https://bit.ly/37BfEwa

To watch –
June Patron Exclusive Video – Wedding Planning https://www.patreon.com/posts/38982235
Henry Brun Trio https://youtu.be/IUX8xHmmhIw
Earthwise Beauty Review | Oils/Oilseums https://youtu.be/uaEShK89PkA

To read –
Super Nutrition for Babies https://amzn.to/37uc0Ep
Nourishing Traditions for Babies https://amzn.to/2Htsjqh
Paleo Patisserie https://amzn.to/2IYqUIT

Find Mercedes:
Join the L’Amour et la Musique Patreon community to gain access to exclusive episodes of Your Purpose is Beauty, along with 2 1/2 years’ worth of exclusively produced beauty video content!

Subscribe to L’Amour et la Musique on Youtube
Follow L’Amour et la Musique on Instagram
Visit L’Amour et la Musique’s website
L’Amour visual inspiration on Pinterest

To listen and subscribe, just search “Your Purpose is Beauty” on your favorite platform. New episodes every Monday (first Monday of each month is a Patron-Exclusive episode, available for $3 per month)
Your Purpose is Beauty on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36oCxPT
Your Purpose is Beauty on Goodle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/35l7Xp1
Your Purpose is Beauty on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2ZPU94Q
Your Purpose is Beauty on Stitcher: https://bit.ly/2QqCLAO
Your Purpose is Beauty on Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/ki27eqe5

OVERVIEW

00:07 – Introduction & Episode Guide (Jump to section)

06:06 – Wedding Planning Updates (Jump to section)

16:42 – Halloween & Handmade Costumes (Jump to section)

24:23 – Baby L’Amour’s 2nd Birthday (Jump to section)

34:34 – Mattress research, coils versus no coils (Jump to section)

43:23 – Beauty Heroes Limited Edition Discovery feat. Earthwise and PNW Essences (Jump to section)

52:21 – What’s In My Credo Cart (Jump to section)

54:44 – What’s In My Sephora Cart (Jump to section)

58:04 – What’s In My Beauty Heroes Cart (Jump to section)

01:01:14 – Coming Up Next on the Podcast (Jump to section)

01:03:13 – Closing Thoughts (Jump to section)

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

(music)

00:07

Hi, friends! Welcome back to Your Purpose Is Beauty. This is Episode 46 of the podcast. Truthfully, as of last night, I had no idea what to record for the podcast for you for this final Monday of October that you’re hearing it. And then I thought, well, there’s a lot of stuff going on in my life. I’m very busy doing a multitude of different things, so I guess I could just talk about that (laughing). I totally understand if this episode won’t be interesting to everybody. I do have some beauty stuff to talk about, though, more towards the end, but I figured this could just be a bit of a life update episode. I mean, when in doubt, I can talk about what’s going on in my life.

We’re just a couple weeks out from our wedding and it’s going to be happening in San Antonio in early November. So I’m going to give you a bit of an update on that because that’s really what’s been taking up most of my time. It has honestly been extremely stressful. I think weddings are stressful normally, but imagine trying to plan and execute even a small wedding during the cluster that is the world situation right now.

I want to talk a little bit about Halloween because I am handmaking – well, I guess kind of handmaking – Baby L’Amour’s costume as this might be the last year that I have full reign over the costume, because I feel like next year, at three years old, there might be more of a preference, a stated preference, right? But at two, they still don’t really know fully what’s going on. So I’ll talk about that. And then Baby L’Amour turns two on November 4th so I’ve been doing a little bit of planning around how to celebrate the birthday, especially because we’ll be traveling around that time. But I’m planning to make a cake, so I’ll tell you about that, maybe some of the gifts that I’ve decided to purchase, my philosophy on gifts – maybe you’ll be interested in hearing that.

I’ve also been, or we have been, undertaking some – as Kaveh likes to say – some “capital improvements” around the home. Namely, I have been researching to the ends of the earth about a new bed for us to invest in, so I can tell you a bit about that. I have been focused on – I’m sure it will surprise no one – a bed that’s made of eco, organic, sustainable materials, preferably a mattress without coils in it, so I have some thoughts that I could share on that.

And then we’ll end with some beauty stuff. So at the time you’re hearing this, Beauty Heroes will – and it may be sold out by the time you’re hearing this episode – but at the time I’m recording, which is on Monday, October 19th, this coming Friday, October 23rd, Beauty Heroes is launching a limited edition discovery with Earthwise Beauty and Pacific Northwest Essences. So ever since people caught on that Beauty Heroes was carrying Earthwise, even though I’m not sure they’ve done an official announcement, but they are listed on the “New” section of Beauty Heroes’ website and I think maybe they’ve been featured in some mailers. Ever since people have seen this, they have been messaging me, or people in my orbit anyway have been messaging me, and asking if I have any intel on if Beauty Heroes is going to be doing a box with Earthwise. So they are doing this limited edition box, so it’s not part of the monthly subscription box. But they’ve curated a limited edition box; they have a very small amount of them. So it’s possible that at the time you’re hearing this on Monday the 26th that they will be gone, but if they’re not, I will have a link in the show notes for you to go check that out and I’ll tell you about it towards the end of the episode.

And then I also have been spending the last couple of nights when I have time to just decompress on my computer at the end of the night when the baby is sleeping – usually by that time, Kaveh has passed out on the couch – so I just finally have time to myself. I’ve been putting together some beauty carts because Credo is having a friends & family sale this week. It will have ended at the time you’re hearing this episode. But I have a couple of things in my Credo cart; they’re doing a 20% off friends & family sale. I have a couple things that I might get in the, I’m assuming, sometime in November Sephora VIB sale, even though I’m not even sure that I’m even a VIB anymore. I might just be a Beauty Insider (laughing) because I don’t even know what I’ve purchased at Sephora this year. It really hasn’t been very much. And then I have a Beauty Heroes cart going because every couple months, I just like to make a Beauty Heroes order, try some new things out, replenish some stuff, so we’ll talk about that.

And then I’ll close out the episode with what I’m thinking about doing for next week’s episode, which will be the November Patron-Exclusive episode, and even though we may still be here, we may be traveling. Anyway, I haven’t – as you’ll hear by the end of this episode, I just kind of have a lot going on. So the first Monday of November, November 2nd, will be a Patreon episode, and then I’m probably going to take Monday, November 9th off from the podcast, so you probably won’t hear from me here on the public feed until the 16th unless I have an opportunity to pre-record something to go up on November 9th. Otherwise, that’s around the time of the wedding and our travel, so I’m just not sure it’s gonna be feasible for me to get something up then. I’m sure, or at least I hope, that you will understand. So enough of a prologue, let’s jump into talking about these wedding updates.

(music)

06:06

So back in June, I believe, I did a whole video on Patreon, it was the June Patron-Exclusive video, I think. May or June, I can’t quite remember. But it was a video all about my wedding planning process. So if you want more of a visual element to this description – obviously, quite a bit has happened over the last couple of months, so the updates I’m gonna give you today are kind of the more last-minute things. The video that I did at the end of June, I was talking quite a bit about the invitations, I think I showed a picture of the dress I got, which is currently at the tailor. I’m going for a final fitting on Wednesday of this week. So I talked about, I think, the music that I had booked, the floral, although that has evolved a bit. So I’ll just give you kind of the broad, overarching view of what the wedding is.

Also, as you’ve probably picked up if you’ve been following my work, Kaveh and I are technically married but we had eloped and never had any sort of celebration, so we decided that we wanted to. And this was before the world became what it is, so we’ve been going through this process, we really hemmed and hawed about whether to go through with it, we had a decision point back in May. And we just decided, you know what, we’re going to do it. It was going to be a small wedding anyway and it was always going to be in San Antonio, Texas, which is where my mother lives and where all of my extended family lives. So in theory, they were going to be able to come and I do think that most of them will attend, but it was going to be an out-of-town trip for a lot of people. So I think the thing that has been challenging – and this, I’m sure, goes without saying, anyone that’s been trying to plan an event or a wedding during this time – there’s just been a lot of uncertainty, and people are at very different comfort levels of risk and what they’re willing to expose themselves to, situations they’re willing to put themselves in. So having grace around that has been – it’s been an exercise in that for me, basically, having grace with people. But it’s been hard. I mean, I’ll be perfectly honest, there have been some really big disappointments with people in both of our lives, and it’s tough because you are in this position where you kind of have to be understanding of people in this situation. But I will say that there have been people in our lives – and you know, the wedding’s small, so we only invited people that are truly close to us and that we really value. But there have also been people that will not be attending that have been extremely compassionate and loving, and to me, that has really made all the difference in what really sticks out in my mind. So people that have been more dismissive and not as caring about the celebration that we have wanted to do, even during a difficult time… Yeah, it’s just been… what’s the word? Kaveh had said something to me the other night. Revealing, I suppose. And that’s… yeah. I don’t want to keep rambling on about that. Let’s actually talk about what’s been going on.

So I have a dress fitting this week. I actually just got my dress off Net-A-Porter. Nothing fancy. I mean, to me, it is fancy and beautiful but it’s very minimal, very slim-fitting, it’s a – if you go to the Patreon video, you can see a photo of it, but it’s very low, kind of – I don’t even know how to describe it. Basically, comes off the shoulders and criss-crosses in the back, it is slim all the way down and then has like a very, very slight flare and train at the bottom. I love the fabric. I picked out the dress, just – I loved seeing it on the site. And then I found out that it’s a Parisian wedding dress designer. I think her name is Rime Arodaky, if I’m not mistaken. I’ll try and put it in the show notes. So that was kind of a funny to me that I was – I picked this dress and it ended up being from a French wedding dress designer.

So the other big thing that’s been going on is we just put together the rehearsal dinner. That was actually Kaveh’s purview, as I guess is traditionally the groom’s role to plan a rehearsal dinner. So we’re just going to be having tacos and margaritas the night before. Everyone that’s coming to the wedding is invited to and hopefully coming to the rehearsal dinner, so I’m looking forward to that. I’ve also been working to finalize the floral. So I’ve gone back and forth a lot with the florist. Flowers are important to me and I thought a lot about what I wanted the color palette to be. In the Patreon video, I had showed some inspiration photos and for a while I thought I wanted something really modern and minimal and clean, and then the more poking around, Pinteresting I did, I realized that I really quite like what I guess could be considered a “wildflower look: (laughing). I really like the inclusion of some succulents, like aloe flowers, like bright pops of color, like calendula. I love delphinium. So the color palette is white, orange, a pop of magenta, indigo blue, and very bright greenery. So for a while, with the florist, they were putting – we’ve been going back and forth with mood boards – and they had been putting this very kind of dark green greenery and I really wanted something fresher. So when we switched the greenery from this kind of dark green to a brighter, almost more fluorescent green with different textures, like fluffy-looking greens, I forget the names of them, but they just totally changed the whole thing. So I’m really, really looking forward to that. We’re going to have some fresh floral as an accent on the cake, which I think will be beautiful.

And then also this week, we’ve been selecting the menu, which I guess is like not really that exciting. But yeah, we’ve been picking – so, I’m sorry, I forgot to also say that we are having a morning ceremony and it’s going to be followed by a brunch with live jazz, Latin jazz. I’m really, really into the trio that’s going to be playing there. It’s the Henry Brun Trio. There’s actually a couple of videos of them playing live on YouTube. I’ll try and link one of them if anyone has any interest. But sometimes I’ll put – they have, like, live concerts that they’ve done I think actually during quarantine and sometimes I’ll just put them on during meal time here at home and they’re like 50 minutes long and it’s a percussionist, Henry Brun is the percussionist. There’s an upright bassist and a guitarist. So I’m gonna actually be spending some time, I think this week, putting together a list of maybe some songs that I might like them to play. And maybe Kaveh, although, you know music is perhaps not Kaveh’s strong suit. I think he kind of will be fine with whatever I might want them to play. So they’ll kind of do their own thing, but then I might have a couple of requests, but it’ll be mostly no dancing, really, but just loungey, background music, but really beautiful and elegant and yeah. I just hope that it’s a really, really nice ambience.

That may be the bulk of what’s been going on with the wedding stuff. I feel like it’s been (sighs) more stressful than that than what I’ve just described. But if you’ve planned a wedding, or not even a wedding, any kind of event with more than 20 people, I’m sure that you can understand all of the moving parts that you just don’t anticipate (laughing). So we’re just kind of in the thick of getting all of that sorted out, you know. Kaveh had to book the air travel, we’ve had to just finalize a whole bunch of little things. So I’m just really looking forward to enjoying the day and honestly moving on from this. I think that if it were not during such a fraught time, maybe it would have been a different experience, but as Kaveh consistently reminds me, you know, we just kind of have to accept that those are the circumstances right now. And I’ll just end this little section by saying that really the reason we decided to go ahead with it is there are zero guarantees that things are going to improve in 2021 or 2022. I mean, there’s so much uncertainty and with the way that the world is going, I just didn’t really see a point in waiting, to be honest with you. I know a lot of people think that they’re just waiting for life to go back to normal, and we have just decided to live by example and live within the circumstances and that’s what feels right for us to do and that’s our risk assessment during this time. And also on that note, I’m doing a video at the end of this month, October, on Patreon. It’s, I think I titled it “Seasonal Wellness Prep and Current COVID Thoughts.” So if you want to hear something perhaps a bit more candid – I know it’s somewhat of a controversial thing if you take any issue whatsoever with the mainstream advice and perspective on what’s going on in the world, but I maintain that it’s really important to have some critical distance from what we hear, and yeah, I don’t want to say too much but I’ll be talking about what I have done to feel – I mean, I don’t know what to say. Empowered, emotionally healthy, physically healthy, prepared for, you know, going into quote unquote “cold and flu season,” a lot of unknowns about what are gonna, what’s going to be happening in the world. So we’ll get into some of that in the video. I had been talking for a while about maybe doing it on the podcast, but I’m going to do it as a video.

(music)

16:42

Alright, Halloween. I was gonna say, How do I feel about Halloween? I enjoyed it as a kid. It was never necessarily, I guess, a favorite holiday of mine. I know some people who absolutely love it. In fact, a lot of people in our neighborhood go all out with Halloween decorations. People will rent setups of these whole elaborate skeleton – I mean, what’s the word, like skeleton displays? It’s like a big, macro panorama. What are those things called, panorama box or something? Anyway, people go really, really all out with Halloween decorations around here. Maybe they do where you are, as well. And I have to say, I don’t know if this is just a weird sensitivity I have or who knows. I mean, I hate horror movies with a passion. I always have. I hate that feeling of being scared. Some people I know really, really love it. There’s a lot of like, semi-disturbing Halloween decoration setups, right? I mean, I know a lot of people think that it’s really light-hearted. Some of it is like really gory and scary. So I just have to say, I really appreciate when I see a house that is decorated just generally festive for fall, like with maybe a scarecrow, maybe some bales of hay, a bunch of pumpkins and gourds, big huge displays of mums, and (laughing) like, fall foliage. I mean, to me, that’s – actually, we passed by a house on a walk around the neighborhood a couple of days ago that had exactly this kind of setup, and I told Kav that that was my ideal Halloween/harvest/autumnal decoration style. You know, I don’t really want to replicate a graveyard in my front yard, but you know, make of that, I suppose, what you will. I also have – I’ve discussed this maybe when I’ve talked about herbalism and the whole way that the word “witch” is talked about and thrown around and then how it’s reclaimed in certain circles. Yeah, I’m not really sure that I had a point to that other than I’m always just trying to look at what’s underneath some of the popular representations or iconography around things that people might just kind of gloss over or look at more superficially. I don’t know what that says maybe about my personality type. I’ve never done Enneagram, but I just, I see things in this very deep lens, oftentimes to a detriment.

Anyway, Halloween. So I vacillated a bit around what I wanted Baby L’Amour’s costume to be. Last year, we did a lion costume, so I had just ordered – it was like a bonnet with a mane that had been sewn on off Etsy and then just put the baby in a cream-colored onesie, called it a day. It was adorable. This year, Baby L’Amour’s favorite animals of late have been zebras and giraffes. So I looked for costumes around that and they’re terrible. If you’ve ever searched for a toddler zebra costume, they’re scary. They are really disturbing-looking. Similar with giraffe, I just couldn’t find anything good. I think that’s a hard costume to pull off. And then I kind of thought about doing something that I thought would be really cute. So we have this book that we got from the library but we’ve had it for many months because no one has recalled it. Baby L’Amour loves it. It’s called Barnyard Banter. I don’t know who the author is off the top of my head. But it’s this book – it has really, really nice illustrations, and it’s a book about all of these different barnyard animals making different sounds. But every couple pages, they say, “But where’s goose?” And then at the end of the book, it’s like, “There’s goose! Honk honk honk!” So we actually call Baby L’Amour “Goose” as a nickname. I’m sure other parents do, too. I’m sure it’s a very common nickname, because it’s like, “You’re a silly goose,” “Are you being a goose,” “You’re such a sweet goose,” blah blah blah. (laughing) Oh god, I’m sure that this is probably really boring to some people. But I decided to do a goose costume for Baby L’Amour, and it’s shockingly hard to find people that do a goose costume, not a duck, but a goose. And so I found a photo on Pinterest of someone that had hand made a goose costume for their toddler. I’ll post a picture of it. I think the thumbnail or the image for today’s episode is going to be a collage of a couple different images and I’ll include this goose costume image.

Here it is. So it’s actually pretty simple. You need a pair of orange tights, which are pretty easy to come by. But I had to try a couple of different ones and return because they were the wrong size, but I ultimately found a pair of like neon orange tights from Amazon, of course. (laughing) And then on Etsy – if you need anything like this, Etsy is such a good place to go look – but I wanted a pair of duck slippers and turns out, yep, there’s a woman in upstate New York who hand makes little slippers of different animal feet or paw types. So I ordered a pair of orange duck slippers, which are too big but they’re going to have to be okay. And then, just from what I can tell from this image, you need some sort of white onesie underneath, so that’s easy. I feel like everyone probably has white onesies for their baby or toddler. And then the handmade part, it looks like you need a zip-up white hoodie that you get some – you have to go to the craft store. So actually, Kav got really into this. We needed to kill an afternoon time during the afternoon with Baby L’Amour. So we piled in the car, we went to Michael’s, and Kav got like really into it. He was helping me pick out the eyes that you superglue on the top of the hoodie (laughing), and I got a piece of orange felt that I’m going to basically cut a bill out of. I’m like really trying to study the picture and see what they did, because I really want it to look exactly like this photo because that person did a really good job. But you basically make an orange bill out of what looks to be felt, and then I bought some feathers and a hot glue gun. They’re quite cheap. They’re like $10. And you – I guess you could also buy a pair of wings, but I just bought some feathers and I’m going to try and hot glue them to the hoodie in a way that mimics this photo. It’s really adorable looking, this photo. Mine will probably look much, much jankier but I mean it’s a homemade costume for a two-year-old, so I think I’m going to be okay either way. Someone else sent me an Instagram DM about making your kid a bunch of grapes with purple balloons and that also seemed like a really cute idea. But I think Baby L’Amour would be a little bit too fussy to have balloons actually affixed to a costume and just kind of like want to pop and play on them. So I’m pretty happy. I hope that it turns out well. I’ll probably post a photo on Patreon because I don’t post any photos of my kid publicly anywhere because I’m weird like that, but I do post things and show things periodically on Patreon.

24:23

Okay, so that’s, I guess, kind of it for Halloween. Kind of dovetails into Baby L’Amour turning two on November 4th. So since we’re going to be traveling around that time – Baby L’Amour has a cousin who has a birthday on November 3rd and is several years older, turning five. So my sister-in-law and I decided to do a little joint birthday, or rather, she said that she was thinking about having a little birthday for her turning-five-year-old on Halloween and I kind of was like, “Well, can we celebrate Baby L’Amour on that day too? Because we’re going to be traveling and we have all this wedding stuff coming up.” So we’re doing a little joint party and I appreciate her being amenable to that. So I don’t know where you guys live if balloon companies or balloon installations are a thing, but they’re like a pretty big deal in Chicago. I think it’s a trend and I’m wondering how much longer it’s going to go on, but people buy and display these really elaborate balloon installations on their porches ,at parties, very elaborate and honestly, quite expensive. So I have ordered balloons from a company that does these very elaborate balloon installations in Chicago. It’s called Luft Balloon, l-u-f-t. I ordered just a couple of small bouquets, like a cluster of four or five balloons, for Baby L’Amour’s first birthday party. So this year, I just ordered a bunch for the cousin turning five and a bunch for Baby L’Amour turning two, and they do have really nice colors and number balloons. So balloons are fun, you know? You have to have balloons at a birthday.

And I’m going to be making a cake. Last year, I actually ordered a cake from I think it was a shop called Bake Chicago, if I’m not mistaken. The cake was amazing. But I think I have more wherewithal this year to make a cake. I really cut myself slack last year because I feel like, I don’t know, you’re still like kind of all over the place after a year of having a baby. But I had actually just remarked to my acupuncturist at my last treatment this past weekend, that at two years – Baby L’Amour is just about to turn two – I finally, finally am feeling not postpartum, if that makes sense. And I know that in some cultural traditions, you’re technically postpartum for three years. But I feel finally that I’ve kind of crossed some sort of threshold, but it’s taken two years to feel that way, to really kind of regain everything that was given during the pregnancy and the birth and the breastfeeding and the pumping. It’s a really long process. And this is something that I think is coming more into public awareness. I mean, I think that women and certain circles of women and people that support women have been saying this for a really long time. But obviously, in the United States, we don’t support women really in any substantial way at all. We still live in a deeply misogynistic and patriarchal society and world and women are just not supported. I mean, the fact that you get one postpartum appointment six weeks after you’ve had a baby and that’s it is just incredibly sad and heartbreaking to me because it has taken me two years to feel basically like I did pre-getting pregnant. So I have a little bit more in me to make a cake from scratch.

So last year, I had done a gelatin cake (laughing) with homemade whipped cream because I did really, really delayed grain introduction with Baby L’Amour. Where did I talk about – I’m trying to think of if there’s a place I could direct people talking about baby nutrition and my approach to introducing solids and weaning and things like that. I have talked about it a lot in Petit Conseils, which are these one on one, individual Q & A’s that I do with people on Patreon. It’s the $11 level. So I’ve definitely talked about it there. I’m not sure I’ve talked about it publicly anywhere. But I basically did really delayed grain introduction. I mostly followed the books Super Nutrition for Babies – I’ll try and include that in the show notes for you – and the Nourishing Traditions for Babies approach, like the Weston A. Price approach to introducing solids for babies. So we weren’t even really doing grains at all by a year and I started some sprouted grains, like rice and corn, at like 13 or 14 months maybe. So this year, we do pretty much all foods at this point, though I still kind of – not actively limit but I don’t do a lot of gluten or a lot of refined wheat or things like that. So I was thinking, I’m kind of of two minds about this. I have a book called The Paleo Patisserie by Jenni Hulet. It’s a beautiful book. If you’re into gluten-free baking, it’s kind of a must. I mean, it’s quite elaborate. You probably want to have a stand mixer to make most of the recipes. In fact, I had not cracked open the book until getting this KitchenAid stand mixer as a wedding gift, and I’ve been experimenting. So she has some cake recipes and what I love is because – you know, some gluten-free cakes, particularly those that are made with almond flour, they can be incredibly dense, right? Even ones that are made with coconut flour. So I like that she makes cakes that are either four inches or six inches and layered. So I just picked up three six-inch cake pans from Williams Sonoma and I think I’m going to do a three-layer vanilla cake with chocolate Swiss meringue frosting. Both recipes are from Paleo Patisserie. Now I have to say, even though I’m feeling very ambitious about this, I may punt at the last minute and get a boxed cake mix from Whole Foods and do a homemade Swiss meringue fros – or maybe it’s a buttercream, I can’t remember which one, either a Swiss meringue or a buttercream frosting from Paleo Patisserie. Whole Foods actually carries this brand, I think it’s called European Gourmet or something, but I had gotten their vanilla cake mix and chocolate frosting mix from Whole Foods for Kaveh’s birthday last February. And I know it’s not homemade, obviously, but it was better than just buying a cake from the bakery section of Whole Foods, and it was surprisingly really good. So if I’m feeling too stressed out to make the cake from scratch – because it’s going to require procuring almond flour and like a bunch of special ingredients, some of which I have, but like I need to get cream of tartar, I need to get a candy thermometer… It’s like a whole undertaking. So I realize I’m talking quite a bit about a two-year-old’s cake (laughing), but these are the things that I’ve been thinking about, and if you’re a mom, maybe you relate about your kids’ birthdays, your kids’ holidays, and I don’t – I don’t go very over the top. But certain things matter to me and having a nice cake with like a beautiful candle – So I really like ordering number candles from this company, Meri Meri (m-e-r-I m-e-r-i), they do really, really nice candles and just really fun party supplies in general, so I ordered a number “2” candle from them.

And then the only other thing I was going to say about Baby L’Amour turning two was the gifting situation. So I think doing a nice kind of quote unquote “big gift” is okay. I mean, we’re not a very big gifting family. To be honest, I grew up in a household where we certainly received gifts, but they were not at all a centerpiece, and I thought a lot about – like, is one of my love language gifts? And truthfully, it’s really not. I don’t really get that excited about receiving gifts. I do like to give gifts, I like to be thoughtful about gift giving. And some, I mean, if a gift is really thoughtful, I of course appreciate that. But it’s not, it’s not about the quantity. And I know some people who are very, very lavish with gifts, and it’s definitely – they need that. So I decided to get Baby L’Amour a balance bike. I feel like either a tricycle or a balance bike or something is a very, very common gift to get a two-year-old because they’re walking, they’re mobile. A bike is just obviously kind of a natural gift, probably, for a two-year-old. So I decided to do a balance bike, even though for some reason I’ve kind of resisted, I guess, because I didn’t grow up with a balance bike, and I’m like, “Can they really learn to balance on a bike at two years old?” But I received the recommendation to get a Strider balance bike, so I got that and a helmet, and I’m excited to like put a big bow on that and kind of have that be the big gift. And then we got a couple of other smaller things, just some books and I got a couple of new puzzles. And I’m trying to think of what else. I just am hoping that family – it’s just, it’s difficult to navigate the gifting thing with family because it’s hard. You know, the extended family gets you things that they think that your kid will like, but at this young, I don’t – we don’t have a lot of toys, honestly. I’ve tried to keep things pretty Montessori and I’m wanting to research more about Waldorf and what creating kind of a Waldorf learning/living space at home would look like. More imaginative play, I think, than Montessori but I’m attracted to both philosophies quite a bit.

(music)

34:34

So let me quickly tell you about this bedroom project or bed project. It’s a big undertaking to research a new bed, a new mattress, especially if you have certain specifications in mind. So I think that, in fact now I’m remembering, some months ago, maybe even six, seven months ago, I had done a query to Instagram. I’d put on my stories that I just had gotten in my head that I wanted to get a brand new bed, new bedding. We don’t have anything nice currently, definitely need a new mattress. And I got a number of really, really amazing responses, and of all of the responses I got one, company stuck out to me. And it’s the company that I’ve had in my head as wanting to get from that time but I hadn’t really taken the time to sit down and thoroughly research or call the store and talk to someone about it. So the company is Coco-Mat. I imagine many people have not heard of them, unless – I mean, it’s a pretty niche company. They’re based in Greece, I believe in Athens, and they actually outfit a bunch of hotels, mostly in Greece but I think also throughout other parts of Europe. And they’re all-natural, non-coil, latex, coconut, horse hair, rubber, all of the materials that you would hear as part of a natural mattress, that’s what they are. And just the aesthetic of them looks beautiful. They’re handmade all in Greece and they have one showroom in the U.S. in, I think it’s in midtown Manhattan. So it’s kind of unfortunate, because unless you’re in that area, you can’t go and try them.

So buying a bed with never having tried it is – I actually would buy Coco-Mat totally not trying it. But Kaveh has been a little bit harder to convince. So here’s a couple of other things. There’s also this company, My Green Mattress, and the big plus with them is that they’re based in Illinois. So they craft and manufacture and ship out a bunch of eco, organic mattresses from a space in Illinois. So we went just the other day to their showroom, and they make other mattresses other than just organic textile mattresses, and in fact, they only had one mattress in the whole store that was a non-coil mattress. Now I’m not sure I really want to get into why – there’s a couple of reasons why you would want a mattress that doesn’t have traditional springs in it, from an orthopedic sense, or just – yeah, a body alignment sense. It can be healthier for the body. There’s also the issue – and this could be a little fringe for some people – but with our increasing oversaturation with electromagnetic frequencies, you know, this inexorable rollout to 5G around the globe, just ever-increasing electromagnetic pressures on our biological beings, having a conductor of that frequency in your sleeping area is just something to keep in mind. I’m certainly not saying that it’s going to hurt you or anything like that, but if you’re sensitive to things like that, if you are very keen on having a totally kind of sanctuary type of sleep space, then reevaluating something like metal springs in a sleeping environment is just something to consider if you’re in the market for a new bed. If you’re not, you know, I have slept for 35 + years on traditional mattresses with springs and whatnot. So it’s just kind of one of those things, and there are increasingly more and more mattresses because I think people are really wanting this kind of option, an alternative to traditional mattresses. Not to mention – I mean, I haven’t even touched on how traditional mattresses, if you just go into a mattress store, they’re usually coated in flame-retardant chemicals, which have been shown in many, many, many studies to bioaccumulate in the body and have been borne out in biomonitoring studies, they’re found in human tissue, blood, urine, breast milk, the whole nine yards. So these things do get into our bodies and over time, it can lead to certain health vulnerabilities or contribute to particular health outcomes. I feel like I have to be careful with how I word that but hopefully you know what I mean. It’s really common sense and it has been borne out in environmental toxicology studies, epidemiology, and things like that.

So My Green Mattress is an option. There’s also a company called Obasan that I’ve learned about recently. A lot of wellness bloggers, I think, like Obasan. They’re a Canadian company. They do a whole bunch of sleep products; they do mattresses, but they also do really beautiful pillows. In fact, they just had a sale on their queen size shredded rubber pillows and I picked up two of them because we also need new pillows. So they just arrived today, so I can’t even tell you what they’re like to sleep on but I will update you if you’re interested. I mean, maybe when this whole process is complete, when we’ve decided on a bed, and bedding, and pillows, and the whole nine yards, I’ll do some sort of content around it. And you know who has, in fact, is Organic Olivia, one of my favorite people to follow. She sometime within the last couple months had gotten a new bed from a store in New York called The Clean Bedroom. And in fact, Kaveh was getting was getting into this research with me. The Clean Bedroom has other locations. They have three in the U.S.: New York, I forget the second one, and then Indianapolis, and we are relatively close to Indianapolis. So I think we will probably take a little day trip out there to go see what they have. And then there’s also a mattress store, very eco/organic-minded, in Madison, Wisconsin that carries Obasan mattresses that I think we’re going to go check out, as well. So we’re really kind of going to let – Kaveh, I mean, bless his heart. I mean, this just kind of goes to show, if you have an open-minded partner, it doesn’t really matter at the outset of your relationship what you do or don’t agree on. If someone has an open mind and is willing to grow and learn, then they will be open to, you know, spending more on an eco/organic mattress or getting away from drinking tap water. I mean, things that I don’t think Kaveh would have questioned at the outset of our relationship, he’s now really, really embraced and I think trusts my lead on these topics. So I feel fortunate for that. So those are kind of my recommendations. This is an in-process thing. We’re not fully decided on what we’re going to do. It’s a pretty big investment and if you go – actually, I think Organic Olivia has it pinned to her story highlights, her – the bed she got. And she has a page of all the things that she, like – the mattress, the topper, the pillows, maybe the sheets, the pillow, like everything; accent pillows, everything she got is linked on The Clean Bedroom – it might be an affiliate page swipe-up type of thing. And I tried to find out how much the mattress that she got cost because these are – the mattresses – if you start researching in this area, they’re going to be anywhere from double to, oh my gosh, I mean, four, five, six plus times the price of a traditional mattress, so they can get really pricey. And what I found of the retail price of the mattress that Organic Olivia ended up getting like, a blew my mind. I was like, “Whoa.” (laughing) I mean, I know that she got some kind of deal or discount on it, but I’m sure she still paid a fair chunk of change on it. And it’s like, whoa. But you know, for some people, it’s – I think that that is a very, very worthwhile investment. Okay, moving on. I have talked about that for too long.

(music)

43:23

If you stuck around till the end of this episode, I will reward you handsomely by talking about beauty, which is really supposed to be the point of this podcast. But you know, beauty is multifaceted, so I do hope you enjoyed hearing about those other things.

So let’s quickly talk about this Limited Edition discovery with Beauty Heroes, which like I said, if it’s still available on the day that you – that this episode is releasing, I’ll of course include it in the show notes. So this is a limited edition wellness discovery as part of this campaign or project that Beauty Heroes is doing called the “Election Connection” campaign. They say, “2020 has been a year for the books around the world. And for those of us in the States, the added stress of the upcoming election is enough to push any of us over the edge, regardless of political affiliation. Now more than ever, we need to find ways to stay connected with our own physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. We’ve put together this very special campaign with the help of a few of our friends. In each day for the 10 days leading up to the election, we will share a new way to reconnect and nurture our most important relationship: the one we have with ourselves.” I thought that that was really well-put and I just think Beauty Heroes is always such a class act and I – I just appreciate them so much. And of course, I love this discovery. I mean, you’re already going to know out of the gate that I do. So what’s included in this: a full size 30 ml bottle of Nap in the Meadow Face Serum. I have already gone through a full bottle of this, I will have you know, and I have actually already repurchased it, so I love it. And then there’s – I’ll talk a little bit more about it. Let me tell you what else is in the box, though. There’s a 3.4 fluid ounce bottle of the Aura Shield Scented Aura Mist from Pacific Northwest Essences and the Pillow of Flowers Sublingual Essence Blend. This is a 0.5 fluid ounce bottle. So the value of this box is $132 and it’s available for a limited time for $59.00. If you are a Beauty Heroes member, you can also save 15% off of the limited edition discoveries.

So this – if you’re interested at all in Earthwise and in trying essences and you don’t mind that it’s been pre-curated, then this box is absolutely worth it because just the bottle of Nap in the Meadow retails for $60, I think, or right around $60. So it really is a wonderful box if you’re if you’re feeling called and drawn. So Nap in the Meadow – at first, this was actually one of the first things that I tried from Earthwise because it was a part of my A Night for Green Beauty 2019 Awards review project, and I’ll be 100% honest, I did not care for it at first. I felt like it was way too strong. I felt like – it has quite a high percentage of essential oils and I’m somewhat averse to that, or it could be mostly mental. Sometimes my skin will tolerate them well, sometimes not so much. But I was just kind of kind of having an aversion to this product. I thought it was too active. And then I started tweaking the way I used it. I found that by putting down a slight barrier product, something like a Pai creamy serum, the Sea Aster and Wild Oat from Boxwalla I love for this purpose. The Votary Superseed Serum is also wonderful, but if you have any kind of creamy serum, putting that down and – if you’re sensitive, putting that down and then putting on two to three pumps of this is wonderful. I feel like when I use this regularly – Nap in the Meadow – my skin looks firmer. I feel like it looks more bouncy. I feel like it’s more hydrated and there is also a really significant mental/emotional impact to this product. It’s extremely refreshing. I personally prefer to mostly use it in the morning. It’s not so much of a PM product for me. I find it refreshing, I find it wakes my skin up, I find it somewhat protective in an energetic sense. It’s just blissful. So I did buy another bottle and I’m happy to now have a backup because you can go through this stuff pretty darn quickly.

So Aura Shield and Pillow of Flowers are both new to me. However, I’ve been trying and incorporating the aura mists for a number of months now, like seven or eight months. I’ve been trying different mists. I’m no stranger to flower essence mists. I have used the Lotus Wei essences for years, although I haven’t used them in a really long time. And I really like just room mists in general. In fact, I’m finishing up a couple bottles of like the By Nieves Cloud of Protection and then I have a Captain Blankenship, it’s like a palo santo spray, like a smokeless smudge type of spray. So I love misting spaces. I think it really makes a difference that I can perceive, anyway. So I’ve tried Grandmother Willow. I’ve tried Voice of Courage, which I keep by my filming space. Oftentimes, I’ll mist Voice of Courage before I’m going to record a video or a podcast. I sprayed Aura Shield for the first time today and it has an almost – I’m going to do it now, actually. It’s a frankincense smell. It has – You can also get the Aura Shield Mists scented or unscented. The one here in the box is scented. And it has frankincense sacra essential oil and I’ve never smelled a frankincense like this. It is absolutely captivating. I’m like, what’s the word? Is “enrapturing” a word? It’s bewitching, it’s alluring, it’s fortifying, it’s protective as the name “Aura Shield” would imply. So I’m really looking forward to putting this one in rotation. I will also say, if you live in a home with a lot of different personalities and energies, then Lichens and Moss – or Lichen and Moss? Lichens and Moss? I can’t remember – is a wonderful one to go check out. I’ll just give you that as a little PSA.

And then Pillow of Flowers… I actually have not tried any of the – I don’t know what these would be called, like a stock blend that Pacific Northwest Essences sells on their site, because I’ve been doing custom essence blends with Ava over the last seven months or so. I’m on my second one and that’s like a whole experience to talk about at another point in time. Really, really amazing. I have tried flower essences in the past myself, like Bach’s Remedies, of course. I feel like everybody who’s into natural wellness has tried those. I’ve tried Alexis Smart, I’ve tried Lotus Wei. I think those are the main ones. But the custom essence is kind of a whole other level. But if you’re just getting started with them, then I think Pillow of Flowers – I mean, I hadn’t even – where’s my little insert? I hadn’t even – I had never heard of this one. It might be new. It’s a deep sleep, relaxation, and restoration blend, developed to support an easy, peaceful transition into slumber. It has – let’s see, morning glory, black tourmaline for protection and detoxification, chamomile… So this is a vibrational infusion of white morning glory, chamomile, calendula, wild daisy, blue vervain, angelite, and black tourmaline. So because I’m taking a custom blend, I’m going to set this aside and take it during another time when I’m not taking a custom blend because they can interfere sometimes, although you could always check with Ava. It’s kind of on a case-by-case basis. But the good thing is that the essences keep for a really long time, both the mists and the sublingual blends, because they’re preserved in alcohol, so they have an extremely long shelf life. If you keep them just in a dark, cool place like a cupboard, they’ll keep for years and be just as potent because the alcohol really preserves the energetic or vibrational imprint of the plants and the flowers and the gems that are used in these blends.

Wonderful box. I highly recommend. I think it’s going to go super, super quickly. And then I’ll also say, if you’re interested in the custom essence blends or exploring more for yourself and kind of letting your own intuition guide you towards what you need – or say this box has already sold out and you still want to try – you can save 10% on any Earthwise or Pacific Northwest Essence products using my code “LAMOUR” (L-A-M-O-U-R) and that’s good off the essence consultations, too. So if you’re interested in that, you can save 10% that way.