RSSThe DVD I Use To Heal
January 26, 2010
I believe that there is no division between Nature and our bodies, between the energy fields around us and within us. There is also no distinction between what is happening to your body and what is happening in your mind. Your Deeper Self and these forces are one and the same, completely swirling and intertwined.
Read moreSites To Know : Inside Out Style Blog by Imogen Lamport
January 20, 2010
I don’t buy into North America’s adulation with the winners of the fame and fortune lottery, so I particularly enjoy sites and blogs written by non-North-Americans. We hero worship celebrities and in trying to look like them, we don’t like our own looks. But it’s THEM that look crazy. We’re the ones who look normal.
Read moreProduct Review : Merle Norman Luxiva Timeless Age-Defying Makeup
December 21, 2009
My search for good quality AND colour in cosmetics, laid out intelligently so women could understand how to use them, led me to MN. I don’t use the skin products because they’re not at Beautypedia, but I relax that rule for makeup. It’s hard enough to get colour right. Timeless foundation has been a happy find.
Read moreProduct Review : Paula’s Choice Resist Barrier Repair Moisturizer
October 19, 2009
This article may be better titled “The Language That Sells To Women”. It is not a review in the traditional sense. I apologize if I offend, that is not my intention.
Read moreProduct Review : Maybelline Color Sensational Lipstick
September 30, 2009
A brighter, coloured lip is more than anti-aging. It also looks more interesting. More sophisticated. More confident. More creative. More exciting. More fearless. It is less safe and it gets noticed. That takes some getting used to so you don’t begin with the full face on Day 1. But is “Don’t notice me. Don’t make a fuss over me.” , really what you want to tell the world about you?
Read moreBeyond Bean Salad
September 24, 2009
I’m not looking for mere survival here. I want supreme and excellent health. This is anti-aging from the inside. Anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, you name it. This is escape velocity in a bowl.
Read moreProduct Review : Clinique Repairwear SPF 15 Foundation
June 12, 2009
I wasn’t planning on buying foundation but I got overheated with the excitement of finding this color and formulation. And I’m still on a Winter Self-Discovery kick. And I had an afternoon alone. So what, you might say. Or, you might say, “3 hours?! In a row??” . I myself fit into the latter category.
I went to Sears to buy another tube of Estee Lauder Zero-Smudge mascara because my daughter appropriated mine. And I had a gift card, you see. So I wandered over to Clinique because they make some good, and more affordable, stuff and they had a GWP.
Their gifts are pretty good and free has a certain appeal that I’m certain you can understand, especially if you have teenagers. I wish they’d put some new lip products in those gifts. The ol’ Different Grape (this is a widely wearable color?), Apple Cider ( less wearable than A Different Grape), and Raspberry Glace (kind of boring), they’ve seen their day. I guess that among Clinique lipsticks, I really like the Butter Shine best, but I can see how not everyone would because it’s so creamy. I do like the choice of gifts, the various glosses, and how they’ve done a warm and cool option.
Clinique has a PWP offer right now of Summer Pinks or Summer Bronzes.
I’m always drawn to foundation. It fascinates me for some reason. There’s a sticky spot in my head for all those nuances of beige. My own skin issues are,
-lines under eyes,
- a lot of pigment discolorations on sides of face,
-large pores on nose,
but the skin is pretty smooth in the sense of not-bumpy.
Foundation these days is astounding in the number of finishes available and even the more complete coverage products look and feel pretty good. So I started looking for a foundation with heavier coverage that might still look believable with a face full, and would allow for less coverage in some places and much more in others. Although we all need a darker skin-tone concealer (for imperfections on the skin) along with the lighter one (for shadows), I feel unlikely to begin mixing 2 concealers to arrive at my perfect shades. Even if I did, I don’t have time to dot concealer on a hundred little spots. What if foundation alone could cover well enough to hide those pigment spots?
Decades ago, foundation used to be too pink. Eventually, I think makeup artists convinced cosmetic companies that skin is actually more yellow than it is pink. Now, I wonder if a lot of products are too yellow. The salespeople tell you that they make it that way to diminish redness. Well, ok, but you’re not supposed to see the yellow tones. Your skin becomes a different color than your ears. I see skin as kind of grayish, but maybe that’s because mine is. I freely admit that I have no experience matching foundation to anybody but myself. Does anyone remember Club Monaco makeup? Monica Lewinsky wore it, just to date it for you. Those were neutral foundation colors.
I found Repairwear in Fair Neutral 03 and Neutral 05. Micaela, the very nice Clinique saleswoman who has worked at our counter for years and knows me to be weird, contesting, and hard-to-please but does a great job of pretending I’m a normal client, gave me a sample. I’m thrilled to see they’re taking a page from the MAC book and doing this now; must have all been at the same staff meeting. You should get a sample too. It’s very hard to get a sense of this foundation, or any foundation, at the store. Like mascara, it can only be tested in your own bathroom.
What happened was this. I tried it on, just the smallest bit, as Micaela advised. She said clients who buy it love it and don’t buy another bottle for ages. Your initial impression is “No way, this is too masky”. But once it’s all spread out, after about 10 seconds, dayam, it looks good. It feels a little bit heavy if you get too much on, but your skin seems rather perfect. Maybe a little too perfect, but I can get with the drama easily. This is not the formulation to begin with if you’re leery of the artificiality of foundation.
Pick a Saturday when you have a lot of time. Apply it as you usually do your foundation. Realize immediately the coverage is more dense than you expected and the only way to make it look real is by wiping it off which will make your skin red and uneven. Rinse it all off instead. Wait 10 minutes.
Begin again. Use ¼ your usual amount of foundation. 1 pump of the bottle is about right for your face. Apply it on the side of your hand and from there, put little dots all over your face and start blending them together. You have lots of time to work it around. The sunscreen in it doesn’t sting so it can go on eyelids and at the inside corners of eyes.
Take a little more off your hand and dab it, or stipple with your foundation brush, over pigment irregularities. It covers very well without looking cakey. If you have larger pores, drive the foundation brush into them end-on, with a little more foundation, and they’ll go away. Only the thinnest coverage goes under the eyes, as with any foundation, mostly just to blend away the concealer lines.
It is supposed to dry matte, and it does an ok job of it. You will need powder. I don’t need more touchups during the day than I normally would. I think the product looks a little “tired” at the end of the day, after a couple of powder re-applications. If I were going out at night, I’d wash it off and reapply. Luckily, I have no night life besides chauffering to soccer games so … if it ain’t my problem, … it ain’t a problem!
I start with Clinique’s All About Eyes concealer in Light Neutral, fabulous in its own right, and paint it in the usual places, the darker shadows. I don’t even blend it in, just paint it on with a lipstick brush. Wait 2 minutes and it will dry looking like Indian paint. The foundation brush will blend it for you but don’t smear. Keep your foundation brush strokes feathery, light, and quick. You want the concealer to stay where you put it.
Don’t buy makeup without visiting Paula Begoun’s group at Beautypedia. You’ll get another opinion and a better sense of what’s in this product than I can give you. You’ll learn whether it deserves Clinique’s “anti-aging”, or even better “de-aging”, label.
Unbelievable someone could have so much to say about foundation.
-->Your initial impression is “No way, this is too masky”. But once it’s all spread out, after about 10 seconds, dayam, it looks good. It feels a little bit heavy if you get too much on, but your skin seems rather perfect. Maybe a little too perfect, but I can get with the drama easily. This is not the formulation to begin with if you’re leery of the artificiality of foundation.
Read moreWhen You Know You’re Rich
April 9, 2009
For her 15th birthday, my daughter wanted to sponsor a child with World Vision. This would be the same child whose favorite activity is watching Ice Road Truckers with her father.
Having more than enough
Barira is a 10 year old girl from Niger who sits on our fridge and looks out. It’s somehow ironic that she adorns the food repository. Her father farms as does my husband so she connected with all of us. He can’t feed his family in a good year and nor can Canadian farmers, but of course the scale is completely different. We know that.
We wanted to send a birthday gift. It had to be flat for mailing and not extravagant. My daughter wanted a musical singing birthday card, which I feared would scare the pants off the child. We find ourselves at the Dollar Store trying to find something not too extravagant.
We are TOO rich to find a gift for this little girl. Everything seems wasteful and excessively adorned. For us it’s disposable, for her unimaginably frivolous. In the cheapest store there is, where we could afford anything, our wealth is still too great to find an appropriate gift. Your whole frame of reference changes when you know what “too rich” actually feels like.
Money and the Law of Attraction
I’ve been reading Jerry and Esther Hicks’s recent Money and the Law of Attraction : Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness. The book is as good as any of the previous and doesn’t rehash the old material. There are a lot of new ideas here, presented in their most practical and possible style.
I really like this stuff because it helps me get through the day with a real undercurrent of openness and joy. People who know me are ROTFL right now. Well, I’ll have you know I really am joyful. If I look more intense than joyous, it’s because I’m part Winter.
I’ve learned to find the best things about what I do, even the things I like less (except producing meals day after day). I’ve learned that we all create our own reality. I don’t have to feel bad for others who aren’t getting what they want because they can make different choices anytime they want to. What’s happening to them isn’t happening to me because I didn’t make their choices. I know nobody can block me or even slow me down from getting what I want because nobody controls the Universe – as a result, I am never irritated by the behavior of others. That’s quite a cathartic milestone right there.
How others have failed me is never important, only how I’ve failed me. There is never a need to get involved in the actions of others, only in my reaction to them. I do have control of my character, every aspect of it. Everything I’ve sent out there, good and bad, is on a trajectory aimed at my face. Energy stays equal so what goes out comes back in kind.
In this clip from the Abraham-Hicks site’s video clips, watch the 11th clip from the top on the right side. The video title is the same as the book, an excerpt from the DVD. Listen to how she (Abraham) answers the question at the end.
When does the creating start?
Though I thank Jerry and Esther for modeling such a powerful and easy way to learn calmness and happiness, I’ve run up against a question I can’t answer. This is it : I can’t think of anything I’ve manifested or attracted. However my life changed, it changed because I stuck my claws out there and made a few attempts to drag something in and finally got a hook that stuck. It never just came with “ease” (and by ease, I do not mean absence of effort; more like, you just looked up one day and there it was, like it had been there all along).
It didn’t come with struggle or worry either. I love doing it. I love the ride and my river moves fast because there’s a lot I want. I’m reading the money book to attract more of money to stay in the raft. Money is an energy (infinite) not a resource (finite). It’s flowing in the streets, kind of like guns. Just because you don’t have one doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of them. How many guns I have doesn’t affect how many you can have.
I live wealth like it’s happened. I look at my house, I see a castle. I used to worry that I wouldn’t be able to afford to educate my kids, but a friend said “Who do you know that didn’t go to University because they couldn’t afford it?”. I stopped worrying.
I quite get what they mean by Leading Edge. My toes are touching the line. I’m not impatient. Our needs are more than met and that’s the only story I tell. I’ve found that thing in life that I would do even if I weren’t paid. We CAN make things just by thinking about them, I’m convinced of it.
The question is not how to get more money, though to realize my dream will take more than I have. It’s how to have it appear by thought, not action. Nothing is getting created that I didn’t build. No doors are presenting themselves, closed or open, that I didn’t go out and ferret out. How will I manifest money if I can’t manifest anything else?
Was the manifestation that I chose these actions and not those actions? You could say that I manifested everything I live. Yes, right thinking brings right actions. There is just no feeling of letting it happen. I made it happen. And, anyone who has manifested money can measure it by the ways of our physical world. I have yet to manifest a cent.
Realizing a downstream dream
My Easter will be spent becoming a Color Analyst. If women could see themselves as their most effective, beautiful, powerful best, I’d be happy. That’s the vision I have of them when I meet them. That’s what I want to help them do – and learn to resist the marketing onslaught that makes us think age is more ugly, more abnormal, and more weak than youth. Aging, or more precisely “anti-aging”, is a marketing phenomenon and nothing else.
My speaking tour will be called You : Gorgeous And Fearless. Everything will turn out fine, but when does the manifesting/creating begin???
So, Abraham, from a purely intellectual perspective, what are we supposed to think next? The bank account is going down but I can ignore it with ease. I could sell the piano on eBay but that feels upstream so I won’t do it. Will it have to reach a crisis before I manifest something? Does the room have to be completely empty before the new furniture can fit? I don’t mind waiting but you might take the line “as early as tomorrow” out of your teachings.
Is this like dieting? You can start tomorrow but you won’t look different for a month. Until the new eating kicks in, you will look like your old eating patterns. In the same sense, until the new thinking starts to shift the Universe, life is still bringing you the rewards of your old thinking ways.
Keep your day job. And your fat pants.
-->Though I thank Jerry and Esther for modeling such a powerful and easy way to learn happiness, I’ve run up against a question I can’t answer. This is it : I can’t think of anything I’ve manifested or attracted. However my life changed, it changed because I stuck my claws out there and made a few attempts to drag something in and finally got a hook that stuck.
Read moreBook Review : Staging Your Comeback
February 26, 2009
The full title of Christopher Hopkins’ book is Staging Your Comeback : A Complete Beauty Revival For Women Over 45.
If you don’t know the book by Hopkins (a.k.a. The Makeover Guy), you have several hours of hugely enjoyable reading and thinking ahead of you. It recognizes our particular needs in a terribly honest way. He’s not too big with indulgence either, the talk is straight up, as in “ …you are not the right temperament for hair color.” Fun moments abound.
You will read some pretty raw admissions (“I am no longer interested in attention from men.”). The makeovers begin with 12 mommies and grannies, women way out at one end of the I-let-myself-go spectrum. He’s got every Before stereotype covered and achieves 12 remarkable transformations.
Check out the Befores right here. See you in about an hour.
Christopher proves that it’s not only certain men and women who can be more attractive than ever as they age. It’s all of us. Every single one. We make excuses for why we don’t care what we look like but the only result is to further and further weaken ourselves.
Nobody cares how old you think you look. We all know that’s a choice. If you don’t want it to be that way anymore, this is the guy to help take you through a transition.He has vision and imagination. There is so much that can be done before you even think about seeing a dermatologist for Botox or fillers. It doesn’t cost that much money. You use face cream anyhow, right? You do get haircuts, don’t you? We all go out in sweats and sneakers sometimes but there are a thousand small differences that matter.
What I love about this book:
1. The women are real. They’re not suspiciously gifted with wonderful skin or fabulous eyes just waiting to be revealed. You know me. I have little use for anything that’s not Real World, unless it’s meant as an entertaining diversion.
2. He’s brutally honest about what age does to bodies but still respects and enjoys the company and confusion of older women. You also know that I love aging, which I see as an opening of doors. And I love older women and their mind-blowing and completely unrecognized (especially by themselves) potential.
3. There doesn’t appear to be any Photoshopping going on, at least not too obviously. A beauty book with a pixel of Photoshop is rendered useless, IMO. Right away, the whole thing is out of reach.
4. He really really gets how to wear clothes, not just for aging but for all body types. Here’s one I never knew, but it’s obvious when he says it as all correct ideas are : The tighter your sleeves, the bigger your chest. OK, I can use that.
5. The pictures are bona fide, cringe-worthy renditions of the I’m-too-busy/old/young/comfortable/ugly/hot – to care. They are not forgiving or concealing anything. I got a few jolts because I think I saw me.
6. He’s not trying to get you to spend useless money. Quite the opposite actually. One of my favorite lines, “In the beauty industry, live and learn is taboo. Forget and buy is the name of the profit game.”
7. It’s comprehensive. The clothes, shoes, bra, buttons, hair, makeup, nail polish… all covered. He hits on every cliché and has noticed every detail.
8. The hair chapter is outstanding. If there’s anything that we all get wrong in every conceivable way, and that ages us the most, it’s hair. He covers it all, from color to cut, with a very comprehensive discussion of the very common problem of thinning hair.
9. He’s heard every comeback. He’ll tell you your fears before you tell him. Your objections get pretty weak when they’re No. 5 and 8 on the Exposing Your Excuses list.
10. His goal is to give you things you can do yourself. He just wants you to see differently, where seeing yourself is the hardest thing of all. He’s never showing himself off.
11. He’s funny. I spewed my smoothie on the line about the biscuits.
12. He can be brutally honest, ( I know I said that already) , almost sarcastic, in trying to get these women to see that they are so much more than they believe. Your best friend can say things nobody else can, not strangers or family, because you know he/she loves you and you can entrust him/her to take care of your feelings. Nothing is held back.
13. He doesnt’ see what is. He see what is possible. Possibility is what it is all about. Learning, change, it’s all in honor of what is possible. And there are very few limits.
See the man himself on YouTube.
He says his frustration with makeovers is that women don’t continue to practice what they learned, they just go back to the familiar. It may be because the transformation is too much of a leap to adjust to, too much like a fantasy. It can’t be incorporated into the woman’s life fast enough, so it just gets forgotten like a dream or a week on a Carribean island. Even I couldn’t maintain myself in the After Pics and I already use all this stuff. If you presently wear no makeup but would like to try, you’ll need a friend who knows how to do this or a makeup artist. Ask around. Book a private appointment, not a MAC counter on a Saturday afternoon.
Another reason women don’t stay with the changes is the time it takes. I don’t know about you but my tightest commodity is time. Change does take time. It takes trial and error and error and error too. So take on one thing at a time, and pretty soon, you’re in a whole new place, looking back and thinking “That WAS me but it isn’t me anymore.”
He writes a blog. I liked this post on aging. Considering the world of appearance that he lives in, he finds a good balance.
His personal experience with plastic surgery, the new addiction, and how easy to go a little too far with just a little more is here.
Enter the Sweepstakes to win a makeover with him!! for US residents only (how could they?).
We’re not trying to look 21. Or 31. We’re trying to look like fantastic 40’s , 50’s , and beyond. OK, maybe a fantastic 60 does look 50, but not 30!!
Sometimes the way you look IS what’ s holding you back. It’s not a symbol of the shallowness and superficiality of our world. This is completely internal. The whole thing is happening inside yourself. It’s your message to your subconscious that you’re slowing down, that you don’t see yourself or your future as worth the effort. If you believe the future looks just like the present, why expend the energy?
What you believe about the world makes it the way it is for you. If you can sincerely say “I like my life and I don’t want anything to be different, ever, not one single thing”, then you’re doing fine. Otherwise, change starts with you. You don’t have to see or know the endpoint. You don’t have to absorb the entire scope of possibility immediately. You are just signaling your subconscious that you’re changing your brain waves. It will get it. It works for every human being and it will work for you. It never doesn’t work.
If you look like you can take on more, this could be the first step in convincing yourself that it’s true. We’ve all seen (or been) the woman who got an amazing haircut but didn’t keep it because she couldn’t match her personality to that cut. Certain behaviors accompany, and are expected of, certain appearances. Amazing, subtle, and true.
Everyone else automatically believes what you believe about you - I mean, what your subconscious believes. You can strut all you like; if your subsconscious has doubts, that’s what others will hear. Can you know ahead of time where the break in the clouds will happen? No, that’s not part of the deal. All you’re doing is saying “I want the cloud cover to lift. I’m ready to think about a new chance.”
By the end of the book, you feel like you’ve travelled a little journey of empowerment with these women. He has given them back so much pride in themselves. In the After pics, they’re laughing and moving and playing in ways they probably never would have again.
-->
If you don’t know the book by Hopkins (a.k.a. The Makeover Guy), you have several hours of hugely enjoyable reading and thinking ahead of you. It recognizes our particular needs in a terribly honest way.
The makeovers begin with 12 mommies and grannies, women way out at one end of the I-let-myself-go spectrum. He’s got every Before stereotype covered and achieves 12 remarkable transformations.
Ellen as Cover Girl Spokesperson
January 11, 2009
I bet CG will sell a ton of whatever makeup Ellen is promoting because they picked a real person and didn’t Photoshop away all her wrinkles. The brand will be noticed for celebrating diversity in women, just as they were with Queen Latifah. The consumer appeal will be that these are real women, not plastic girls, and they’ve teamed up with Olay to put an anti-aging spin on it.
She’s 50 years old. She’s worth $65million.
This is the link to the CG ad, not reproduced here to protect copyright. There, you’ll find the videos for the photo shoot. I wonder if I could afford those pants and shoes.
Why is she always in black or black&white? Is it her choice, do you think? Neither one do anything to light up her natural beauty. Her incredible eyes don’t shine through and her skin looks tired. Why frosted pink lips? Surely, the makeup artists could have come up with something more interesting.
Real women needed
The fashion and cosmetics industries desperately need to find women of the Over 40 group to inspire real clothes and makeup. Look at how Michelle Obama dresses. She doesn’t spend a ridiculous (a disgraceful) fortune on what she wears.
You can’t tell me that a woman whose ensembles cost $50,000 and up has the slightest idea about the life of the everyday family. Maybe Mrs. Obama doesn’t either but at least she looks great, she has a unique style, her shoes make sense, and she doesn’t buy into what any designer tries to put us all in. She could look at pictures of herself in 10 or 20 years and not cringe. These women really do represent how we look and how we want to look.
Why do women decide that designers somehow have flawless vision? What makes their taste so sacrosanct?
Look around and suddenly you see women in this,
Stiletto at Amazon, linked to source if you wish to buy.
or this,
Pants from Amazon. Click image to find source.
In need of real muses
We look dumb dumb dumb. Weak. Suckers. The marketing department cranks up its imagination and they rake in cash. The media machine doesn’t address the needs of regular women over 40 because it doesn’t know how. It still thinks we all have the body and budget of Diane Keaton. It is dawning on them that we have interests beyond those of Goldie Hawn but they’re not sure what they are.
Ellen’s style of dress may be masculine but at least it’s real. There’s nothing she wears that I wouldn’t like to own (in the right colors, in case I haven’t said it often enough). She doesn’t wobble when she walks. She could even dance to faster music, like You Can’t Stop The Beat from Hairspray, or Avril Lavigne’s I Don’t Like Your Girlfriend, which I think would be a good departure from the present tempo, and she wouldn’t risk falling over and needing help to get up.
I hope they’ll paint Ellen as a real woman. They’re almost forced to because she’d look too goofy in sparkle and cartoon eyelashes. They couldn’t get away with it. I’m hoping to see what their makeup artists can do with neutral. Because her coloring is so incredibly soft, they can’t overpaint her. Even here, she looks interesting, if a little metallic.
Photo Michael Thompson. Ellen on W, February 2007.
She is funny. Like all people who have a certain exterior face, her private side is probably fairly serious, maybe even overly reflective. People who are always up and funny on the outside are often the opposite on the inside. Here, she is just plain funny, from YouTube.
One bone to pick
Now why is she selling for a company that animal tests? Why? It is so outdated. It also feels a little two-faced in light of her support of animal charities. Her tell-it-like-it-is honesty isn’t really her biggest selling point. Her funny sense of timing and dry, throwaway remarks are, like Bill Cosby. She’s incredibly likable but this feels deceitful.
Among the charities various celebs support, this page shows Ellen’s causes.
There are more Ellens in reality. There are no Julias. That’s the beauty of the woman. She’s all of us.
-->I bet CG will sell a ton of whatever makeup Ellen is promoting because they picked a real person and didn’t Photoshop away all her lines. The brand will be noticed for celebrating diversity in women, just as they were with Queen Latifah. The consumer appeal will be that these are real women, not plastic girls.
She’s 50 years old. She’s worth $65million.
Get daily makeup and colour updates. Join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook! A Click on the box will take you there.
-
A Greener Tea
Web Maintenence by Rick Beckman
