Entries from July 2009 ↓

I get asked almost daily about the correct way to order skin care products, and how often to use a mask and exfoliant. To be honest I have difficulty answering this question because I personally don’t think there’s an exact formula that you need to follow. Instead, follow your intuition and learn to “listen” to your skin and come up with your own routine that fits best with you. And most importantly, keep it simple!

I was first introduced to the concept of raw food when I was living in Canada last year. I watched a documentary on TV about a girl who set up her own raw food restaurant in Toronto. I was in Toronto at the time so that restaurant (which is called Live Organic Food Bar) ended up being my favorite restaurant in the city!

In Toronto outside my favorite raw food restaurant

Raw food has fascinated me ever since. I love the concept, I love how healthy it is, and I love the flavor of most of the foods. I especially love the smoothies and desserts because they’re pretty much guilt free.

You can eat a cake, which often tastes better than a “normal” cake, without worrying about it being bad for your health. Because it’s made with all raw, natural, and usually organic ingredients. Raw foods also don’t use any of the bad stuff – dairy, flour, processed sugars, preservatives etc. The cakes are made up of fruit, nuts, vegetables and seeds. Which I know sounds odd, but they honestly taste like they’re full of dairy and cane sugar!

Last night I was lucky enough to attend a raw food cooking class run by Brendan and Suki from ROAR. If you’re in the Brisbane or Gold Coast area in Australia then I highly recommend them because the class was awesome.

Brendan & Suki making burgers & pizza

Making the chocolate crackles (one of my favorites)

We learned how to make burgers, cream cheese, chocolate crackles and chocolate avocado cake (all raw vegan of course!). We also got to sample pizza, apple pie, carrot cake, key lime pie and chocolate beetroot cake. Again, all raw. It was a fabulous night and I swear I’ll never make a “conventional” cake again. Why would you when these cakes taste better AND they’re good for you.

Raw Pizza (cut into slices because there were 9 of us in the class)

This raw carrot cake was AMAZING! And so colorful

If you’re in the Brisbane or Gold Coast area I highly recommend ROAR classes. You can find out more information at their website here. Brendan and Suki are two of the loveliest people you’ll ever meet. They even gave me a piece of apple pie to take home! Lucky me.

If you’re not in my area then have a look online and see what’s available to you. It’s a great way to get motivated and to learn about a new and much healthier concept of cooking. There’s a whole new world out there that we’re just learning about. And it doesn’t mean you have to be a 100% raw vegan, I’m not! But it’s great to add more of this awesome tasting healthy stuff into your diet. Who knows, you might even prefer it

The results are in for my vitamin B5 experiment. The one thing I learned through this experiment process was that I need to stop experimenting on my own body! More about THAT in the video-

I was taking 10g of Vitamin B5 a day which is a lot. I wrote an article on using Vitamin B5 for treating acne and how/why it works almost a year ago. You can read it here – How To Cure Acne With B Vitamins

At the time my skin was too clear to experiment with. But I recently had a bad breakout so I used the “opportunity” to do a B5 experiment on myself.

Will I be taking high doses of Vitamin B5 in the future? Probably not. I wasn’t that impressed with the results the first time around and it stressed me out too much taking so many tablets. When I forgot I got stressed and having to take supplements four times a day is too much hassle really. Simple is so much better!

However, if you are considering taking B5 to treat your own skin, I recommend you talk to a natural therapist first. Also take a look at that linked article I wrote AND acne.org has a great review page on their site which shows that some people have had much better luck with it than me.

This is definitely a post for girls only, boys I’ve just warned you so don’t get grossed out if you “accidentally” read this.

I’ve been wanting to write about the DivaCup for quite some time now, probably for the entire past year that I’ve been using it. What stopped me was …well, it’s not really related to skin care at all AND it is a very icky topic, even for some girls. But I’ve had a few requests to write about it and I do think it’s one of the best things I’ve discovered, so here goes!

I first found out about the DivaCup while reading a yoga magazine in Canada. It’s always bothered me how bad for the environment tampons are and I’ve always had this feeling that they’re not that healthy for my body so straight away I was interested in this little reusable device.

So what is it? The DivaCup looks kind of like a little egg cup and it’s made out of a soft silicone material. Without going into too much gory detail, you insert it similar to how you insert a tampon ..the difference being it collects the blood into the cup instead of soaking it into cotton. This can be a little traumatic when you remove it, and it did certainly take me a couple of months to get used to it. But once you get over actually seeing how much comes out of you, you’ll love it and never go back to using anything else.

Why I love the DivaCup so much Continue reading →

This video may create a bit of a discussion, and it already has in YouTube because a lot of you may disagree with me. And that’s okay, that’s what my blog is all about – I’m not always right! I can only give you what my personal experiences have been and what I’ve researched so I love it when other personal experiences come through in the comments.

I’ve never had any luck with using bar soap on my face, no matter what brand it is and how natural it is. There’s something about what they use to make it into a bar that strips the natural oils off my face and leaves it dry. I’m happy to be proved wrong though, I’d love to try something that actually doesn’t do that. Although to be honest, I’d prefer to find a natural cleanser in a bottle, simply because it’s easier to travel with and carry around.

Do you use a bar soap cleanser? Let us know about it! Write a comment in the box below.