Unique Girl Gifts

If you’re as busy and stressed as I am, you may not take time out for self care very often. I found a great article on About.com that can help you incorporate some personal pampering into your lifestyle.

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How to Set Up A Soothing Home Spa Experience

If you don’t have the budget for a high-end spa, you can create a relaxing home spa experience for yourself. The following are some basic elements to include in creating a home spa experience that will melt away stress and leave you feeling pampered and relaxed.

Difficulty: Easy

Time Required: 30 Minutes to One Hour

What You Need:

A bathroom
A tub
Some privacy

Here’s How:

Privacy: Perhaps the most important part of the home spa experience is being sure you have some uninterrupted time for just you. If you have to hop out of the tub to circumvent a catastrophe with your toddler or answer a string of calls, you may end up feeling even more tense! So make arrangements for some uninterrupted solitude, let the phone go to voice mail, and prepare to indulge.

Music: If you can arrange to have music in your bathroom, you’ll be glad you did. The right soothing melodies can help melt away the stress, make you feel more removed from reality, and, if you live with others, drown out the household sounds that may remind you of everything else going on, taking your attention away from the here and now of your home spa experience.

Lighting: You’d be surprised at how lighting can create a stress-relieving mood. Lighting the room with candles can fill the area with a soothing scent and create a very relaxing atmosphere.

Bath Products: You can go a long way in creating a luxurious bath with a few helpful products. Lavender-scented bubble bath, for example, uses the power of aromatherapy to soothe you. Body scrubs are used in spas to exfoliate skin, and can be used at home as well. There are also skin-moisturizing oils you can add to your bath to nourish your skin and make the pampered feeling last.

Beauty Treatments: While you’re relaxing, you may as well get more beautiful! Putting a conditioning treatment in your hair and a purifying masque on your face can make your face and scalp feel good and leave you looking more beautiful afterward. Rubbing your dry skin with a loofah and scrubbing calloused feet with a pumice stone can be a little more work, but you’ll love the results, and it’ll only take a few minutes.

After Tub Care: You may want to follow up after you get out of the tub by applying a rich conditioning cream to your skin and a coat of nail polish to your toes. Again this will keep you feeling more pampered between spa treatments.

Massage: You may think a home spa treatment can’t include a massage, but it can! If you can’t enlist the soothing hands of a partner, you can use a self-massager to do the same job: loosen up tight muscles, promote circulation, and make you feel great. Or, if you’re really in the mood to indulge, you can even hire a professional massage therapist to come to your house!

Tips:

Block off a specific amount of time for yourself. Sometimes busy people have a hard time just doing nothing because we can think of so many other things that need doing. If this break is scheduled to be a specific length, you may feel more entitled to just enjoy it.

Try to do this on a regular schedule, like once a week or twice a month. With repetition, you may see your spa time making a significant impact on your overall stress level!

Don’t feel guilty for taking some time for yourself—you deserve it!

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We have many great Bath Products to help get you started with your home spa experience. Click here to view our selection.

It seems like girls these days love to be pampered. No matter the occasion, you can’t go wrong with an At-home spa party. Here are some great tips I found on About.com.

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Some girls just love to be pampered. A day at the spa with a group of best friends is the ideal way to share girl talk and feel special together. The day could include any or all of these beauty treatments: facial, manicures, pedicures, hairstyling, massages and a special lunch if the Spa has the facility.

If your budget is limited, but this is the celebration that your daughter would love best, create a day spa in your own home. Many of the products used in spas can be purchased for home use. Set up the spa in your kitchen, and let the girls help each other out with the treatments. For a simple lunch you can serve a Chicken, Apple and Smoked Gouda Salad, bread, fruit salad, juice drinks, and brownies.

Planning Elements

First decide on your budget. This will be important since spa services can be expensive. Make reservations at spa, or purchase spa supplies for home.
Issue invitations.
Pre-order lunch at spa, or prepare lunch for spa day at home.

Party Favor Suggestion

Send the girls home with a gift bag of mini spa products will help them remember the day. You might include a small bath gel, shower puff, and an aromatherapy candle.

Think you’ve got healthy skin? Here’s a great article I found on About.com that I thought my blog readers would enjoy.

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What’s the Difference Between Healthy and Unhealthy Skin?

Whether you know it or not, the health of your skin is being judged everyday. You do it yourself when you look in the mirror for blotches and bumps. Other people are also looking at your skin to determine how attractive you are.

Is your skin healthy or unhealthy? How do you know the difference? What are the components of healthy skin? Knowing the answers to these questions is the first step in determining how you should be taking care of your skin. The following are components of healthy skin.

Even Color
Consistent color is a sign of youthful, healthy skin. Studies have shown that consistent, even skin tone is a main element of attractiveness. As a matter of fact, the consistency of skin color is considered more attractive than having a certain skin color. Examples of uneven color include:

- Blotchiness
- Spots that are dark, light or red
- Dark circles under eyes

Smooth Texture
Healthy skin looks smooth and feels smooth. If you look at healthy skin close-up, the surface is “regularly irregular.” This means that the skin is not smooth like glass but has tiny peaks around hair follicles and pores, and tiny valleys in between the peaks. These peaks and valleys are consistent throughout the skin giving it a uniform appearance. On the other hand, unhealthy skin does not have a uniform texture. Examples of texture skin problems include:

- Bumps
- Acne
- Blackheads, whiteheads
- Wrinkles
- Scars

Hydration
Healthy skin is well hydrated. The skin cells slough off but this sloughing is not noticeable. If too many skin cells slough at the same time, this creates problems that we blame on dry skin, like:

- Flaking skin
- Scaly skin

Normal Sensations
If your skin is healthy, you shouldn’t notice it or feel it unless you’re looking in the mirror. Healthy skin doesn’t have any unusual sensations. Signs of unhealthy skin sensations include:

- Itching
- Burning
- Stinging
- Pulling