Products for Perfect Hair at Salon Blast, Seattle

Kersastase is wonderful, but it can be expensive. The Kevin Murphy line at Salon Blast in Seattle has a clear winner  - with the same results as Fusio Dose or L'Oreal's Fibreceutical. I must ask the lovely Jessica what the name of the product is next time I am in, which will be soon. My hair woke up todya perfectly shaped, shiny, and artfully mussed. Perfect!

Fall Colors at Salon Blast in Seattle

Roses as Pretty at end of Summer as in June

This morning I rose early and was rewarded with a rose at dawn in my garden, and an early appointment with Jesssica Rockwell at Salon Blast in Seattle's Montlake neighborgood.
A bit meloncholy with the end of summer, we decided to trim the ends of my hair, that were showing the effects of three months of outdoor swimming and sunshine.
Voila - bring me your fall fashions, I am ready to put away the Keds. Jessica gave my hair a magical deep conditioning treatment that gave it shine and life, much like the Kerastase Fusio Dose. However Salon Blast carries the  Kevin Murphy line of products, with the same caliber of results. My hair was toned, and had shine and movement. How lucky I am...I 've go the sun in the morning and the moon at night...I'm a lucky girl....lalalalala - It's a Doris Day song but I don't quite remember the rest.

How to have Perfect Hair

Perfect hair is the best accessory. Best hairdresser Jessica makes her blowouts perfect with a few simple tricks she has shared with me, for better at home results.
It begins with shampoo:

• Use a clarifying shampoo occasionally to remove build up - be careful, these can be drying to the hair.
• Use a toner shampoo once a week to tone down brassiness.
• Then deep condition, preferably under heat. There are heated caps available for this too. Or, use a plastic cap, heat your head with a blow dryer, then wrap a towel warm from the dryer over to capture the heat. Letting it cool after twenty minutes seals the cuticle, creating shine.

Then shampoo and use a light conditioner. When applying Argan Oil, begin at the nape of the neck and work outward.
Super Salve has Replenishing Hair Mask and Body Nurish makes Organic Herbal Hair & Scalp Treatment  this product is brilliant for both the scalp and hair. Massage your head, or ask a friend. This relaxes the muscles, softening the face, and like all products form the Super Salve Company, it smells divine, the scent being fully a part of the experience.
An shiner spray really boosts your hair, Jessica often uses Aquage on my hair.
Never color more than a shade or two from your natural color, and ask your hairdresser for an alternative to harsh foils - glosses break up the roots and help your hair grow out the foils for a more natural and elegant look.
Make perfect hair a habit, don't wait for a special occasion - create the opportunity for a special occasion.

Audrey Hepburn and Sex Appeal

“There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don't need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.”
Audrey Hepburn

Apples aid digestion, are alkaline, this means they balance the acidity in the body, and aid digestion. The pectin keeps your blood sugar stable, so you are less hungry during the day. Combined with an aged cheddar, it provides disgestiive enzymes, it's perfectly balanced, like Reiki for food. Apple cider vinegar suppresses hunger and helps removes toxins.

Apples and cheese are the most perfect match, portable, and nutritious. If you are sharing with someone who gets that apprehensive look that they are about ready to announce they are vegan, graciously pre-empt them and swoop down on their cheese and snatch it like a eagle carrying a carrying off wiggling puppy.
Power Repair Fruity Lift has natural fruit enzymes to exfoliate your skin, so creams penetrate and lines diminish.

Plant an apple tree, or have a picnic in an orchard. Make your beau a pie -it's easier than you think, and he will  gaze at you like you are a winning quarterback  - Audrey is right, sex apeal  is you.  

A Reiki Hot Stone Facial for Symmetry

Tina the Reiki Master gave me a reiki/cranio sacral/hot stone facial, followed by a serious vitamin C mask. The results are symmetry restored to my face, all signs of tension gone, and a very posh glow to my skin, like a lovely sunset, sublte and stunning.
Body Nurish has several great masks, and its fun to be creative with layering. after you exfoliate with the green clay mask, soothe with the Jelly Mask, and then layer on the Vitamin C serum generously - clerks will linger giving you your change and the extra quart of oil for your car engine is on the house.
Ahhh, with your life so much easier, you are that much closer to a book contract, it's easier to be noble and take the high road, and you never know, there could be a wondreful rustic lodge nestled in the trees at the end of the high road.

Poem 4 U

Autumn
by Emily Dickinson
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.

The Cheekbone Relaxer

Winter is snow with black silhouettes - Vincent Van Gogh

Winter is on it's way, and make the very best of it. Make a 6 am walkies date with a friend, rather than an excuse. Find joy in what there is - go to a wine tasting and dinner in an art deco hut half way up a live snow covered volcano, Mt. Hood comes to mind. Find vintage cookbooks, and entertain graciously over the course of an evening - place cards, candles, a proper dinner party from beginning to end. Plant a swath crocus bulbs in the middle of your lawn, you will enjoy color before the mowing begins.
And of course, remove tension to stay pretty:
This massage increases facial circulation and helps clear the sinuses.
Starting at the corners of your nose, apply slight pressure to your nose with your index finger. Sweep out towards your ears and fold for three seconds. Repetez as needed.
Rub Organic Herbal Hair and Scalp Treatment into your hair, and play Buddy Holly's Greatest hits while you dry skin brush. Keep the week day showers fun with Organic Coconut Sugar Scrub - it has pink clay in it, and the smell is so wonderful I have a visceral craving for that, and the coconut cleansing milk. Remember, your shower releases endorphins, it is on bit of joy in the daisy chain of the day - how much beauty can you fit into your day?

Beautiful Week-end

This is my weekend - Mt. Hood in Oregon, staying at Timberline Lodge.
Awesome, in the proper sense of the word.
Have a beautiful week-end.
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Benefits of Microcurrent vs. Cupping

Microcurrent for facial toning gives immediate results that increase with more treatments. Microcurrent can be expensive, and while I know a handful of people who have the machine in their home, this costs more than their housekeeper's car.
Cupping is easy and inexpensive. A set of cups costs about $65.  Cupping is effective -it stimulates circulation and collagen production, moves lymph, sculpts, lifts and tones.
I use the Fruity Lift from supersalve.com to help it along.
My lovely Reiki Master Tina is amazed at the firmness cupping has given my jawline.
Both are non invasive and keep you from going down the slippery slope of more drastic treatments.
Cupping vs. Microcurrent - both!
Start the habit before you think you need to do so!
When your skin looks great, the need to shop is less as you are more satisfied with your appearance. With the money saved you can take a botanical drawing class in London, or go to an auberge and learn to make charcuterie. What a wonderful  hostess gift that will make for the holidays, something you made yourself!

Eliminate Crow's Feet

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This exercise eliminates the appearance of crow's feet by plumping and building the muscles around the eye so that the skin doesn't furrow when you smile. This tones the eye socket muscles.
Open your mouth making a big O, and pace your middle and ring fingers below the outer corners of your eyes. Squint up into the inner corners of your eyes, tyring to close only the lower lids keep upper lids open and stationary, lifting 10 times, repetez three times. Yes, I think was from a yoga teacher named River, or perhaps Pine, but it works.
Body Nurish Soothing Herbal Jelly Mask  is a treat it is hydrating, softening, and you can leave it on as long as you like, it absorbs and disappears.
Tina the Reiki Master today gave me her Age Defying Facial - Hydro dermabrasion, followed by a hyaluronic acid contour mask and LED Therapy. No crows feet or flaws at all.
Celebrate eliminating crows's feet by watching Hitchcock's The Birds and making Black Onyx Chocolate Pudding with Whip Cream, served in individual ramekins. And give yourself a hand for all your hard work!

Carats are Good for Eyes

To me, fair friend, you never can be old
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still.
William Shakespeare

The skin around the eye is thin, so it is more prone to puffiness. Lymphatic drainage is the key to facial freshness, and the Clarisonic Opal gently stimulates the lymph, to help it move along. It is only a minute a day, or so, depending on your level of enthusiasm. Results are visible the first time, and are of course, cumulative. Serums penetrate deeper, keeping the muscles moist and plump.
Body Nurish  and  Power Repair both make great eyecreams, and the easiest eye brigthtener is this: rub the palms of your hands briskly together, until heat is generated then cup your hands over your eyes, and feel the energy shift. After a minute or so, remove your hands, your eyes will look soft and relaxed.
Carats of course are good for eyes.

Flaunt Your Natural Beauty with an Oxygen Facial

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.
Keats

Oxygen facials are another arrow in your quiver- they smooth and soften the skin, imparting a glow, as though you had gone for a run, or met seven other friends for a row on a glassy lake at dawn. As with many good treatments and habits, the skin is nourished.
Body Nurish and Power Repair products have Coenzyme Q10, a powerful antioxidant to protect and nourish skin at a cellular level, and the oxygen facial of course boosts this, leaving you fresh and flawless, like an Italian Countess in a  raspberry colored sleeveless silk dress and shiny hair that she hasn't washed herself in ages, preferring a Blow and Go, it's so much easier.
Prevention is better than cure, oxygen facials are a great habit. Preserving your natural beauty frees up time to do other things to enjoy the coming winter. Perhaps plant a dozen or so different sized pots thick with cyclamen in various colors to provide vibrant color on your front porch and steps, or entertain at home more, it's so intimate. Maybe consider adopting a chef.

Microcurrent Lifts, Tones, and Contours

There are so many great ways care for your skin. In addition to products, drinking water and  wheat grass, walkies, facials, sleep, thinking pretty thoughts are all part of the equation.
There are so many effective products. Some creams are made with flowers harvested at dawn while the sun's gentle gamma rays dry the morning dew, some serums are made with a baby's first  breath, but none work as well as all natural Body Nurish and Power Repair .  These are affordable so you can use them generously.
Acupuncture facials, cupping, energy work, LED, all are genius. As is microcurrent, it  works with your beauty, it doesn't introduce any new elements. Microcurrent lifts, contours and tones your face, and the better your home habits the better the results.
My favorite reiki practitioner when from sweetly mousey to marvelous with one treatment, so I had one. Any cares or aging on my face melted like the snows from a mountainside. Even though I do all the things in this blog, she did one side of my face, leaving the undone side to look as though I had had a stroke or was a cubist painting.
Good habits give better results. Maybe your beau has private label liqueur and a herd of all natural beef, served with buttered potatoes, sigh. These things are ok, in moderation. Make the next day apples from an orchard, picked by local workers chanting blessings the fruit ping pings into the bucket.
Microcurrent doesn't need to cost a fortune, and saving money at a beauty school is chic pas cher.
With the money saved you can adopt-a -seed, plant a few acres of lavender, or maybe harvest a rose petal brooch.

Charcoal for a Brilliant Detox

Charcoal has long been used to detoxify the digestive tract, removing waste and neutralizing the ph. Charcoal also removes many times it weight in water. Yes, it makes you less puffy. Activated charcoal can be found where supplements are found, and for only a few dollars.
Support your body's detox with Power Repair Salt Scrub, it contains Sea salt, dead sea salt, grapeseed oil, vitamin E oil, grapefruitseed extract, and pure essential oils of sweet orange, peppermint, coriander, clove, and wintergreen. You will glissade out of the salle de bain light as a feather, and energized from the essential oils in the scrub.
As you float through the day on angel wings, so light and radiant, and people will glance around to see where the harp music is coming from, cherubs will snap your photo. You are as pretty as you are clever, because what does coal turn into? Diamonds!

Acupressure for Facial Toning

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting. 
John Kenneth Galbraith
Everyone is beautiful in their own way, that is what it is important to find out what makes you beautiful. Acupressure is one way to make you your prettiest.
Acupressure keeps energy flowing. Your energy is your beauty.
Begin by spraying your face and throat with Power Repair Face Mist - hydrating and full of antixodants, it smells of geranium and other wonderful things.
Points down the middle of the forehead 
Starting at the middle of the forehead at the hairline, use your middle finger to apply firm pressure for 3 seconds, release then repeat twice.
Move down to the middle point between the eyebrows, apply pressure, and repeat twice. These points ease frowning and headaches.
Points on the sides of the nose
Place your index fingers next to the base of your nose by the nostrils. Press firmly for three seconds, then release. These points may be tender as a great deal of tension is stored here.
Point in the middle of the upper lip
Place one index finger in the groove above the upper lip and apply pressure, then release, repeat twice. This point tones the lip area as well as controlling hunger.
Points at the Temples
Use three fingers together, with one hand on each temple. Press inward firmly and gently, then release. Repeat twice. These points increase energy and blood flow to the eye area, increases alertness and concentration.
Beauty is energy so create your own beauty in the day.
Be kinder than you need to be.
Listen to Sibelius on a long low couch, upholstered in pink and fuchsia Marimekko fabric, next to a very large lemon tree, that has your smart phone buried in its base, enjoying pistachio and dark chocolate macaroons from Patisserie Ines with gunpowder tea on Rose Chintz china from various years with Tiffany teaspoons from 1918, each with a different flower handle, watching the rain pour down.

Flawless Skin with LightStim LED

Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.
Jean Anouilh, French Dramatist 

It's a lovely bright sunny Saturday. Of course, you are looking forward to turning on the radio for Lunch with Led, because nothing makes a run more fun than Led Zeppelin loudly.
However, consider a different type of LED - light emitting diodes, a beauty device that tones, stimulates collagen production, and heals bumps and scars and things.
An article published in the New York Times stated that a twenty year study proved  facial aging was due to loss of fullness rather than sagging.
NASA came up with LED light therapy to heal wounds and stop the muscle and bone loss experienced in outer space. I thelps the face retain fullness.
LightStim is a home product that uses this technology. The light energy stimulates circulation, addresses bone loss, stimulates collagen production and reverses sagging skin.
Use LightStim  daily, aging happens incrementally, so do results.
To maintain beauty, use LightStim at  home. For more serious repairs, go to a salon, then maintain the results with LightStim. The price is about the same as three salon treatments. You will see a great return on your investment. Bankers like consistent results.
So for the sake of being consistently beautiful, this great means new earrings.  Faberge wins again, because if he is going to buy something wonderful, it should be what no one else has. He has an ego too!

Pretty Nose Smells Bread Baking

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.
Ophelia to Hamlet, Shakespeare
Boil a giant pot of rosemary, your house will smell clean. Rosemary lifts your mood and clears your thoughts, your skin will have clarity, and it helps move lymph.
The uplifting fragrance of course brings us to noses. Noses are cartilage, so it keeps growing.  It has muscles, and these muscles need to stay toned, for your nose to stay slim and looking like your nose. Lightly pinch your nostrils with thumb and forefinger, while the index and middle finger gently push up on your forehead. Flare your nostrils 10 times, repetez this three times for a toned and defined nose.
Does your beau's nose love the scent of baking bread?
This Irish Soda Bread is not very diffiicult, and perfect with Apple Butter. Keep your hair off your face with pearls pushed back as a headband, an Odile Gilbert pin if your hair is longer.
Irish Soda Bread

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose white flour (4 cups for a white bread loaf)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 level teaspoon baking soda (3/4 teaspoon for a white bread loaf)
¾ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted lightly on pan in oven to bring out the flavor

1 tablespoon caraway seeds

1 currants

1 ½  to 2 cups buttermilk
Butter for the baking pan, softened

Preheat oven to 375°.
Combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.  Add  half the buttermilk a little at a time until you have a soft dough, like biscuits.
Soak the currants in the other half of the buttermilk, it plumps them nicely. Or the rosemary tea if you prefer. Then add to the above mixture.
Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 2 or 3 minutes, until it is quite smooth.

Form it into a round cake. Place it in a well-buttered 8-inch cake pan or on a well-buttered cookie sheet. Cut a large cross on the top of the loaf with a very sharp floured knife.
Place it into the oven and bake for 35 -40 minutes, until it has turned a nice brown and sounds hollow when tapped . The cross on the top will have spread into a sort of deep gash, a characteristic of Irish soda bread.
Apples are abundant! Apple Butter is easy!

Apple Butter

Drambuie

Fizzy Water

8 pounds of apples.

You have had enough tea, pour yourself a nice Drambuie and fizzy water.

Peel, core, and chop the apples.
Put in large pot on stove, or if you live in Spokane, a crockpot. 

Add 2 cups sugar, and generous amounts of allspice, cloves, grated lemon, peel and cinnamon. Cook on high, stirring for about an hour. Add one cup Drambuie.

Cover and simmer for about eight hours. I find canning a lot of work, this recipe freezes well.

While the Apple Butter simmers, bring joyous color to your entry way with pansies. Pansies are very hardy and can last most of a winter. Buy several flats and plant thickly around your front steps and walk, with  several large pots of them on your porch for a welcoming burst of color.
You never know when UPS  will bring the Pendleton Ultra Merino crew neck sweaters!

So, planting didn't take 8 hours.

How about a seaweed body wrap and oxygen and microcurrent facial, hmmm?
This bread keeps well, serve for Notre Dame game.
Bon week-end!

Goop

Today's Goop.com is a wealth of good advice.

Exercise to Lift Top Eyelid

"We are God's hands."
St. Therese de Lisieux
This little drill strengthens the upper eye lid muscle by opening up the eye and lifting the brow.
Place your index fingers flat under your eyebrows. Gently push up with your fingers while pushing down and holding both eyebrows. Hold to the count of 10, and repetez 3 times.
Power Repair Eye Cream is all natural and reduces under eye puffiness. Puffy is for ski jackets, not your pretty eyes.
Beautiful habits are wonderfully frugal, you have better things to spend your money on. Such as the Homeless Cooking Program at St.Clouds the third Wednesday of every month, where neighbors descend upon the  bistro's kitchen to create wonderful meals to feed 450 homeless, serving dignity along with the beautifully prepared food.
All that chopping and stirring needs a divine look, such as this scarab ring from Faberge.

Salt Rocks for Beauty

On the sidewalks, earthworms surfed across puddles, and the rain beat a steady rhythm on the garbage can lids, sounding like the march of chain mail boots marching into cold muddy battle at Aigincourt.  
The logical plan is escape to a Korean Spa in a funky strip mall.

We started in a room lined with  amethyst, quartz, and jade. We lay down in the dimly lit room on the floor mats, and absorbed the wonderful heat (148 degrees) and then moved to the salt room. A jump in the very cold plunge pool,  and headed for the Clay Room, at 183 degrees, and became one with the grass mat.
Easy to to do so  as the is Far Infra Red, (FIR) a frequency that heats you from inside out, boosting circulation and metabolism. 
Salt rids the body of puffiness.  

We  had a body scrub and body moisturizing treatment, that incorporated massage, shiatsu, and reflexology.
And for lunch, the seaweed soup alkanizes your blood and is full of antioxidants.
The facials and body moisturizing treatments used cucumber, honey, and warm milk.

The salt, magnesium and other stones emit the desirable negative ions that make your corpuscles happy, and the contrast between the heat and the cold plunge creates a vacuum in your venous blood, increasing circulation as it flushes out toxins. 

Leaving, we  agreed as the rain beat on the windshield that spring was just around the corner.

A Korean Spa is always a great value. With the money you saved you can go to Hong Kong and have a quilted bed jacket made of silk, with matching pajamas. And good heavens, you trekked to a strip mall, now you can afford to have your blow out and pedicure come to you.

Salt Room, Bella Luna Spa, Lynnwood, Washington