Red Raspberry For Summer Sun Protection

Raves for Red Raspberry!

In March we received an ultra fresh pressed batch of Red Raspberry Seed Oil and not surprisingly it quickly sold out. I'm happy to say that we once again we have in stock now an ultra fresh batch of cold pressed Red Raspberry Seed Oil!

This bright golden oil is one amazing item. Not only is it rich in omega fatty acids and tocopherols, making it a fabulous anti-oxidant, it also is low in saturated fats and has been shown to have an a broad spectrum UVA/UVB SPF factor of somewhere between 25 and 50!

Mix that with your Zinc Oxide before you go forth and swim; and then use it in vinaigrette for anti-inflammatory properties in a delicious nourishing dinner salad too!

My personal odoriferous observation, in the bottle it does not appear to have any particularly discernible fragrance, but when rubbed on the skin a delightfully light, nutty, fruity quality appears.

All around Red Raspberry Seed Oil is good stuff indeed! And since we have it custom made for us in the USA directly from our Red Raspberry Seed grower, we blow the competition out of the water in quality, price and freshness!

Come Out To Whole Foods Kirby

Our burgeoning sister line, CZ LUXE, is now available at the Whole Foods Kirby store in Houston, Texas.

On Monday February 21, in the lunch hours between 11AM and 2PM, we will be there providing info, FREE SAMPLES, and complimentary 30 second CZ Luxe Milk hand massages by our very own, Joe Jackson!

Raves for Red Raspberry!

We now have in stock now an ultra fresh batch of cold pressed Red Raspberry Seed Oil! This bright golden oil is one amazing item. Not only is it rich in omega fatty acids and tocopherols, making it a fabulous anti-oxidant, it also is low in saturated fats and has been shown to have a broad spectrum UVA/UVB SPF factor of somewhere between 25 and 50!

Mix that with your Zinc Oxide before you go forth and snowboard and then use it in vinaigrette for your nourishing dinner salad too!

My personal odoriferous observation, in the bottle it does not appear to have any particularly discernible fragrance, but when rubbed on the skin a delightfully light, nutty, fruity quality appears.

All around Red Raspberry Seed Oil is good stuff indeed! And since we have it custom made for us in the USA directly from our Red Raspberry Seed grower, we blow the competition out of the water in quality, price and freshness!

Click here to order!

Before or After Eight?

Cocoa Mint - This is one of our more decadent soaps as it has REAL CHOCOLATE in it! In addition (if that weren't yummy enough), Creamy Virgin Coconut Oil, Cocoa Butter and Candy Cane sweet Yakima, Washington Peppermint make this a no calorie treat!

Click here to order!

Stirring the Pot!

I love to make soap! Bars and liquid! Blending together a myriad of oils, with vegetable and fruits, flowers and grains, herbs and oils, micas and oxides .. it just gives me a thrill! :)

All this week I will be featuring the fresh batches of soap in the house!

Today's soap is: Sangre de Cristo ~ An aromatic homage to the mountains - virgin oils, red clay, conifers and patchouli .. blend that with a shower and its a warm springtime day in the hills!

Click here to order!

CZ Luxe New Web Site - Free Shipping!

Today I am officially unveiling the new web site for my CZ Luxe product line! http://www.czluxe.com

To celebrate the new site and Cyber Monday we are offering the following shipping specials this week only:

Free domestic shipping on all orders of $45 or more placed on the CZ Luxe web site!

$5.00 off international shipping on all overseas orders of $45 or more placed on the CZ Luxe web site!

Domestic customers - simply enter the coupon code: believe in the voucher space during checkout to apply the discount.

Overseas customers - simply enter the coupon code believe-intl in the voucher space during checkout to apply the discount.

Salt, pepper, rosemary, ginger .. soothing muscles or seasoning chicken ?

I've been stretching a lot and practicing some new "stuff" in Kung Fu (I am training in Chen Style Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong). It has me rather sore in several places.

A few arnica tablets, a good soak in a rosemary and eucalyptus salt bath, followed by a rub made from an essential oil blend of black pepper, fresh ginger and rosemary diluted to 2% in a base of arnicated oil, and of course, proper rest, should do the trick.

Incidentally, that same EO blend, diluted to 2-5% in olive oil instead of arnicated oil (which is NOT edible) makes a great seasoning for chicken!

Rosemary can be a bit too stimulating for some at night, so that should be taken into consideration when making a muscle rub blend for evening use. For me, it is not usually an issue. I have no doubts that rosemary oil or not, I shall sleep well tonight and have dreams filled with symbols and insights :)

Fair Trade and Fabulous - Shea Butter - Karité

Karité is one of the few economic commodities under women’s control in African savanna societies.

The co-op that our Shea Butter is produced through is made up of women from various ethnic groups, which each have their own languages and religious preferences. Everyone involved is encouraged to dress as they wish, speak their own languages, and practice their traditional beliefs. The women are not required to speak or write French, which is a prerequisite for employment in almost every organization in Togo.

These policies help to preserve local languages and cultures. This promotes and values the deeply embedded indigenous African knowledge of handcrafting Shea Butter.

Your purchase of our shea butter products, including soap wrapped in handmade papers supports these efforts and Fair Trade.

Soft as a baby's bottom

This is the diaper ointment I made for my sons when they were that age. I hope it keeps your baby's bottom as happy as it did my cloth diapered boys'.

~ Make it yourself! ~

Diaper Ointment Recipe

Clean and dry baby's skin before sparingly applying this ointment to the diaper area.
A great way to do that is to use our 100% Organic Olive Baby Soap!

1 Tablespoon Zinc Oxide powder to begin with
1 Tablespoon Fractionated Coconut Oil to begin with
2 teaspoons Jojoba to begin with
Drop of Vitamin E
Drop of diluted to 10% or less Rose Otto (Rosa damascena)
or Roman Chamomile Oil (Anthemis nobilis)

Blend well the zinc and oils together, tinkering with amounts, to the consistency you prefer. After blending store in a glass jar with a lid. Make in small batches to keep fresh.

Note: The Jojoba can be infused with calendula flowers for added benefit. For fungal related rashes, I'd use Jojoba infused with taheebo bark.

Tea Tree - The Wonder from Down Under

Have you got your bottle of Tea Tree oil?

While rummaging through the medicine cabinet for my vitamins this morning I noticed the little bottle of Tea Tree oil that I keep in there and was reminded of just how wonderful this oil is and how essential it is in my home’s medicine cabinet!

Tea Tree oil is steam distilled from the leaves of Australia’s Melaleuca alternifolia plant. It has a strong, rather medicinal smell, but it is not malodorous, and once you get past that, its all good from there!

It has properties of being antiseptic, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. There are quite a few scientific studies that back up the claims of tea tree oil being effective at fighting a variety of infections. Many folks use Tea Tree oil for many reasons, including acne, dandruff, toe nail fungus, athlete’s foot, insect bites, scrapes, etc .. I also use it in house cleaning formulas.

Contrary to what some say, be sure to always dilute Tea Tree oil properly before applying it to the skin! When it comes to using essential oils, especially on the skin, less is more and always diluting your essential oils is a smart practice and safer choice than using them "neat" (which means undiluted)! Commonly available carriers are sweet almond oil, fractionated coconut oil, olive oil & jojoba.

Recycling for a future! Artesanìas La Hormiga

Today we present to you the story behind the handmade paper gift box that we are using as part of some gift sets this holiday season. Made exclusively for CZ LUXE by Artesanìas La Hormiga, here is the wonderful story of how recycling is helping a group of librarians in Honduras build better lives for their community:

Our paper making business was created to ensure the sustainability of our community’s library. The funds generated by the business helps the librarians provide more enriching activities for the youth through the purchase of didactic materials such as paint, construction paper, crayons, and table games.

Our business has also served as a recycling program for our community. The recycled paper we make comes from used paper from the local high school and kindergarten as well as the library. Instead of burning great amounts of paper on a regular basis, we now turn what was once trash into beautiful works of art.

The name of our business is Artesanìas La Hormiga because of the ant’s reputation as hard-working and persevering. It is our hope that the youth of our community will one day exemplify these qualities.

We thank you for your purchase and the opportunities it provides for our children and the entire community. - Artesanìas La Hormiga

Making it our business to build better communities

One of the things I strongly believe is that my business can impact many lives in wonderful ways and that it is my responsibility as a business owner to make choices that improve our world and our communities!

This holiday season we are offering our customers the opportunity to directly help build better communities around the globe with their holiday gift purchases.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks I will post here about each of A Little Ol'Factory's
& CZ Luxe's Fair Trade items, ingredients and the community projects that are directly benefit from our purchases of their materials and artistic creations.

**Added note .. since several folks have contacted me and asked .. the youngling in the image is the child of a rose picker I met in Isparta, Turkey. They were waiting at the weigh station to get the day's haul of rose petals logged in. They are paid a good (by local standards), living wage for their labor, as it should be!

The Great Pumpkin Pampering - Part I

Celebrations of Autumn include luxury pumpkin treatments!

Fresh for the holidays and available now!
Unrefined oils including Organic Virgin Coconut, Extra Virgin Olive, and Shea Butter are baked together with a puree of fresh Organic Pumpkin, Muscovado Brown Sugar, Organic Milk and Chai Spices for a luscious seasonal treat! Wrapped in a beautiful, US Artisan handmade, 100% recycled paper wrapper.

Artisan Luxury Pumpkin Chai Spice Soap
Click here to order at our new CZ Luxe Site!

Buy Pumpkin Chai Spice Soap now and receive a free sample of another seasonal favorite, sure to delight - hand prepared Autumn Simmering Room Perfume/Incense.

Keep natural aromatics accessable!

Before you read the latest message from Cropwatch below, I cannot stress enough the importance of what Tony Burfield and his Cropwatch organization are doing FOR US ALL.

If you enjoy aromatherapy, naturally scented toiletries, natural body care and natural perfumes, you'll want to pay attention to this issue very closely as your access to natural aromatics is in danger!

Let's put the power and beauty of our numbers to work! Please volunteer to help him if you have any expertise in the areas he's asking for assistance with, or perhaps you're just a great researcher and can track down the information despite not having these issues in your area of expertise.

If you're shy, you can still contribute to the natural perfumery world, so
please contact Tony at tony@tonyburfield.co.uk

His latest message:

Dear All,

As we approach critical mass, we have some choices to make.

Perfumery used to be about history, art & culture. Now it seems to be
mainly about the (often nonsensical) regulation of ingredients driven
by a form of imposed & unchallengeable legislatory 'Toxicological
Imperialism'.

This itself is held in place by fear-culture amongst perfume buyers, who are terrified of media exposure/litigation over supposedly harmful fragrance ingredients. Interest in herbal medicine used to include your right to self-dosing, using traditional active plant extracts. A program of their removal from shop-shelves is the result of back-door lobbying, via pharmaceutical concerns.

Our age-old usage of aromatic plants & essential oils for their useful properties - as biocides, antiseptics etc. etc., is similarly curtailed by this flawed system of Hyperbureaucratic Technocracy within Europe, which is being carbon-copied by authorities in Canada, the US and other countries.

How much longer do we have to put up with this sorry state of affairs where natural ingredient use is often so affected by negligible &* *unquantified risk, before everyone sees that in reality this is an "Emperors New Clothes" situation? The revolution for common sense in aromatic regulation starts here. We are getting ever bigger! Join us!

Please read Cropwatch's August 2007 Newsletter.
http://naturalperfumersguild.com/news.htm

Tony Burfield of Cropwatch
http://www.cropwatch.org

P.S. Volunteers are needed to help examine the following areas...

1. Furanocoumarins. Academics & industrialists are helping us construct
a massive data-base, which we will make publicly available, so we can
all see the issues for ourselves. But we need more help.

2. Methyl eugenol carcinogenicity - challenges to the present accepted &
outdated view.

3. Dimethyl & diethyl phthalates - ignored data & any associated
industry conspiracy issues (thanks to the Perfume Foundation for this lead).

4. Sensitisers - ignored contrary evidence to the '26 Sensitisers' issue
& new policy initiatives.

5. Issues of transparency & secrecy, freedom of information & the
withholding of safety data from the public domain within professional
trade & research organisations. This area includes how regulatory
bodies have processed scientific evidence, & examining records of how
scientific decisions were made.

We have limited evidence from a number of academics that an 'expert' EU advisory committee has not properly dealt with (or perhaps have not properly understood) submitted evidence in particular cases; these need public exposure, & we need to establish a more robust code of practice.