Bodycare, Boots, Burts Bees, CCosmetics, London, Skincare, UK, free beauty products in Competition 
IS THERE anything more relaxing than slipping below the still surface of a hot bath on a winter day… when clouds — too lazy to even shift in the sky — hang low and gray, bringing on night before your day seems to even begin? Coming in from your evening commute, you peel off your outer layers like a woolly onion, your cheeks, cold and firm, feel ruddy with the sudden warmth of the indoors. You’re barely through the door before walking to the bathroom, flicking on the lights and turning the metal knobs of the bath and stopping the drain. Somehow you’re schedule is wide open tonight — no drinks, no dinners, no work and nothing on the tellie.
The water drums against the tub floor as you puncture the steady stream with up-turned fingers to test the temperature. It’s a few degrees too hot. It’s perfect. When you step in, big toe first, steam curling up from the surface, sweat droplets form instantly on your upper lip. Incrementally you lower in, supported by your hands grasping the lip of the tub. First the feet. Take them out and re-submerge them. Then the calves and the backs of your legs as you gently sit down. The water envelopes your body right up to your belly button and you sit back letting it swallow you whole.
Salts added under the running tap massage your muscles into submission. The fragrant slick of oil on the surface eases your mind with each inhale....
Read the rest at Looking Good No Matter What.
Bathrooms, Bodycare, Looking Good No Matter What, Skincare in Beauty Op-Ed 
I WANT young skin. Don't we all? But it's a fact that the one thing we're not getting as we age is younger (don't believe the commercials!). That said, you can give good skin even as it matures over the years, genes and nature be damned. Sometimes it seems we can't be bothered to put in the ground work to keep it in top form though.
Which brings me to the streak of all things French that I've been on lately. My eyes have been re-opened to the military precision with which French women are rumoured to attack their daily skincare regime. A recent Mintel study stating that French women spend more on their skincare than their European sisters – by a lot – isn't surprising. Sure, they discreetly dabble with the old jab of Juvederm later in life, but, true to the stereotype, their skin seems to age better (with and without cosmetic surgery) than that of their US and UK counterparts, if my eye-witness, anecdotal evidence – and spate of articles (New York Times et al) – has anything to say about it.
So when France's top-selling organic (ECOCERT) beauty brand Melvita (owned by L'Occitane) was rumoured to be coming to both the US and UK, I nearly melted into an agitated puddle of anticipation. Melvita (honey + life for the linguists out there) is now in standalone shops in the US (San Francisco, Seattle and Newport Beach, Manhattan (opening winter 2010)) and available most readily at Whole Foods and John Lewis in the UK.
Founder and Biologist Bernard Chevilliat started his career in beauty as a beekeeper, much like Burt Shavitz of Burt's Bees. Re-locating to south-central France in the late 1970s, he started an apiary that ended up several hundred hives large. They made honeycombed soap from the bee byproducts and, what do you know, it snowballed into a range of certified organic skin care products like skincare, bodycare, fragrance, plant oils, floral waters and haircare that use ethically sourced and harvest ingredients (full ingredient lists are featured online) to do everything from fight acne to clean baby and fight the ravages of time.
To paraphrase a well-known saying – an ounce of preventative (in this case organic) skincare is certainly worth a pound of facial fillers later.
Bodycare, ECOCERT, France, French skincare, Haircare, Melvita, Organic, Skincare, floral water, plant oils in Sponsored Post 
