Wednesday, March 25, 2009

My Calm Moment Today

I took a calm moment today. Those of you who know me are laughing because you think that I drink too much coffee to ever be calm. In fact, I have a friend who is by trade an herbalist and special educator who describes me to her friends and colleagues as "random access". I'm pretty sure that was her way of nicely telling me that she would say that I was ADHD or ADD....see, I already went off on my first tangent.

Anyway, I was treated by my new friend Laura Tuttle, moved here recently from Maine, to a wonderful facial and eyelash tinting at her newly opened day spa called Calm Moments. Now, the eyelash tinting fascinated me from the minute that she mentioned it because mascara is the only makeup that I wear and I liked the idea of replacing it so that I didn't have to deal with clumps and not blinking my eyes to let my mascara dry (which never works for me because it always seems to be my time to sneeze!)

The eyelash tinting is a vegetable dye that is applied directly to the eyelashes and looks great! And my facial was wonderful and it included a foot massage while my facial mask was drying. I was completely relaxed and calm, I almost fell asleep right on the table. She said "don't worry, it happens all the time". My face is completely hydrated and smooth as little Lucy's bottom.

Laura also offers several different types of massages, facials, tinting, waxing peels and wraps in her day spa located in downtown Ludlow right behind DJ's Restaurant at 144-1/2 Main Street. Check out her website at www.calmmoments.vpweb.com or give her a call at 802-738-5556 to treat yourself to a calm moment.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

New artists at Summit Soapworks Gift Shop

I've been busy cranking out soap, making bath bombs and playing around with some new scents for the spring. Today, two new Vermont craftspeople joined the store, Vermont Balsam (vtbalsam.com) with their oh so wonderful smelling balsam products and Mountaine Meadows Pottery (mountainemeadows.com) with their many funny sayings.

Vermont Balsam sent incredible smelling sachets, "mug rugs", hot mats, computer wrist rests, all smelling like balsam as well as afghans, pillows and cat mats made from recycled sweaters. At first I was a little unsure about the recycled sweater line but when they arrived I was like "wow". And my kitty is getting a new cat mat for her special place by the fire.

Mountain Meadows has many plaques with different sayings, some inspirational, some folksy and many that are hysterical. I of course ordered the hysterical/humorous ones for the shop like "Put on your Big Girl panties and get over it" and "We don't skinny dip we chunky dunk". My favorite is "Everyone brings joy to this office (or in my case the shop), some when they enter and some when they leave".

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Passing the last winter days

The ski season is winding down, so the shop is a little slower pace and we've had more time to pass the last of the winter days. One of our favorite activities is shoveling some of the larger snow banks and "spreading the snow" around our paved driveway and doing the snow melt dance, don't laugh, many Vermonters do this, well, not the snow melt dance part but definitely the spreading of the snow around. I know that it's working because I have to reach higher and higher lately to put food in the bird feeders. The other day Jaycob heard geese and while everyone says that robins are the first sign of spring, I'm a firm believer that it's really the geese that know what they're doing.

We don't have cable or a satellite dish, a personal decision to be unplugged for our kids sake, but we do belong to Netflix and recently finished the first season of "Everest Beyond the Limit" from the Discovery Channel. I'm not a fan of most reality tv shows, although "The Deadliest Catch" is one of my absolute favorite shows but I think it has more to do with my love affair with Alaska than anything else. So when I ordered this show for Jaycob I expected it to be dry and boring, like how interesting could watching some men climb a large snow covered mountain be right? I was completely fascinated and stuck to the TV, in fact, I've suffered two nights of shortened sleep because of this show. It was fascinating to watch men with their dream of summitting go to the extreme point, dancing with death, to reach the highest point of the world. I don't at all understand it, see, I get the risky behavior on the "Deadliest Catch" because it's a means to the end of a large pot of cash and being someone who always worked too much, I get that. I don't get paying $40,000+ to risk a life and if one happens to survive they might not still have all of their digits and or in one man's case both of his feet. But I suppose it's as they say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and so I rooted them all on and won't sleep again later this week when the second season comes in the mail...