Month: July 2019

Pucker Up, Buttercup

non toxic lipstick

Y’all it’s National Lipstick Day! So you know I couldn’t miss the chance to tell you about:

1) My favorite lipsticks and why I am a lipstick convert and

2) Why safer lipstick MATTERS.

Prior to Beautycounter I NEVER wore lipstick. I was a lip gloss girl all the way. Lipstick always dried my lips, I hated the way it felt and I’m not sure I had the confidence to pull off bold colors. When I joined Beautycounter I had no intention of changing that. The lip glosses are amazing (truly) so I wasn’t going to bother with a lipstick. Except I got one for free when I signed up…clearly I had to try it. Holy butter on my lips! That Twig Lip Sheer blew me away. It was smooth, hydrating and had the most delicious vanilla scent (all natural of course). The color was subtle and I was hooked. My next order included several more colors. Petal is still my all-time fav for when I want a natural look. 

Just last year Beautycounter introduced our Color Intense Lipstick, which is long lasting and more intense color pigment. Again, I shook my head and said “that’s nice” assuming this new product was meant for other women, not me. 

Wrong again.

At a training event Beautycounter gave every consultant a Color Intense Lipstick to take home. I got Sunset (a holiday special edition) and at the urging of my friends Brooke and Megan I tried it on. Instant love. My lips still felt hydrated, the peppermint scent was so fresh and the color was perfection. I think I wore sunset everyday this past fall/winter. Since then I’ve played with more of the colors and it’s so much fun. For the most part, they are bolder colors so the mood has to feel right for me. But I mix them into my makeup routine more than I ever thought I would. I love that they last all day and still feel good on my lips. 

You can check out all our lipstick options here.

But this is the important part – lip products are one of the first things you should be switching to clean. Why? Well, because you eat it! There’s some crazy stat floating around about how many pounds of lipstick women eat in a lifetime. I’m not sure the accuracy of that one, but regardless, if you put it on your lips it is making its way into your mouth and into your bloodstream.

Traditional lipstick is made will all sorts of fun ingredients like:

  • Lead and other heavy metals
  • Fragrance
  • Parabens
  • Coal Tar (yes, you read that right)

IMG_6112

Lead is a neurotoxin, which has no defined “safe level”. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics published a study in 2010 revealing they found lead in over 400 lipsticks. In addition to neurotoxicity, lead is also linked to fertility issues and hormone disruption.

Even more concerning, UC Berkeley published a study in 2013  that detected not only lead, but cadmium, chromium, aluminum and manganese in 32 lip products. These heavy metals are toxic.

Fragrance is a trade secret which means over 3000 chemicals could be hiding under that name, many of them harmful to your health.

Parabens are hormone disruptors linked to cancer, infertility and obesity.

Coal tar is a carcinogen, but is often used in dark lipsticks (and mascara).

I’m only scratching the surface, but hopefully you are getting the picture. Lipstick can be a landmine of harmful ingredients and if you’re using it regularly, it is certainly cause for concern.

Beautycounter not only forbids the use of the above ingredients and over 1500 more on our Never List, we also 3rd party test all our cosmetics for heavy metals and other Never List ingredients. 

Heavy metals are natural. No one is intentionally adding them to their formulas. They exist in the ground where companies source their colorants, so it is impossible to be at “zero” when making cosmetics. That’s why we test for them in every batch of our makeup and ensure that if there are detectable levels that they are at or below the strictest international allowable levels. This blog explains it better than I do.

Today I’m celebrating with one of my go-to bright pink Color Intense lipsticks, First Date. What’s your favorite color? Go ahead, have some fun …without the concern 🙂

IMG_6115

 

 

Comin’ Home

2 Comments

 

713FD137-DE02-4E7E-BFA4-BC423B29A7A2Oh hey! I know, I’ve taken a lot hiatus from blogging. But I’m back! Since the last time I wrote a lot of life has happened (hence the blogging had to take a backseat) so I figured a life update would be a good place to start. Here’s the bullet point version:

  • April- began 3rd frozen embryo transfer cycle (FET) with a new doctor
  • May – transferred a perfect embryo, but it ended with a negative test
  • June- Hubby got let go from job so we sell half our belongings, put the other half in storage and move in with my parents in NorCal
  • July- Hubby gets new coaching job in the Bay Area so we are staying put

Kinda makes your head spin, huh? It certainly felt like life decided to throw it all a us at once, just to see how tough we really are. Just to test our faith, see how we would handle it all. 

Our FET cycle was pretty rough on me physically-more than I remember the other cycles ever being. From the moment I started the birth control pills I was nauseous, dizzy, tired…ugh! I’ll save the whole story for another blog post. I learned a lot, faced some fears (like giving myself progesterone injections) and ultimately ended up heartbroken with another negative pregnancy test. 

We barely had time to begin grieving our loss when our life…got flipped turned upside-down 😉

My husband and the rest of the coaching staff at CSUN got let go. These things happen. Of course I have all sorts of feelings on the injustice of it all, but ultimately, in coaching things are never guaranteed. We knew at some point in his career this would probably happen. You never expect it to happen on a Thursday morning, a week after a failed FET cycle when you were supposed to go camping the next day. We did the math and despite my stable counseling job, the only thing that made sense financially was to move in with my parents back in my hometown. 

It’s funny… for months I had been praying a little prayer under my breath.. “Lord, get us out of here” Just like that. Blunt. To the point. Daily. It’s hard to fully explain; our life in SoCal was wonderful in so many ways, but I was tired. Tired of hopping on the hamster wheel every morning and hopping off exhausted at the end of the night just to do it all over again the next day. I was struggling to show up for myself and my family the way I wanted. The vision I have for my family didn’t look much like the life we were living. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. We were and are blessed beyond comprehension, yet I know there is something different for us. I wanted out. Out of the rat race, out of California with it’s crazy taxes and policies, out of feeling like I’d never catch my breath.

Well, God answered, but not how I had envisioned he would. Typical. About a week after we moved in to my parents home, my husband was offered a coaching position at St. Mary’s College…right up the road (okay, an hour with traffic) from my parents. I attended SMC for my masters degree; my hubby had worked there as one of his very first baseball jobs. It’s a great place. 

I should have felt nothing but excitement- we were home! But, I’ll be honest, that wasn’t how I felt at first. I didn’t (and still don’t) know how we will make it financially in the uber expensive bay area when it’s time to leave my parents home. We’ll likely be here for a year. I don’t know where another baby fits in with this new chapter. I don’t know how the quality of life I’m craving for my family can exist here for the long term. And the control freak in me was having a really hard time reconciling it all. 

But then, we took Austin for ice cream at the dairy…

The dairy, for anyone who isn’t from here, is a drive-thru mini market that has been around for decades. Growing up, we would ride our bikes to the dairy for a 50¢ ice cream cone. To me, those cones taste like freedom, and friendship, and comfort. Everything good about growing up in Pleasanton exists in one lick of that ice cream cone. And there was so much goodness growing up here. 

We walked hand in hand with our son down main street with our cones and I could feel the weight of all the “what if’s” and “how will we’s” lifting. I have no idea what the future holds for us, but for now, we get to give our son a piece of the childhood I loved. He gets to wake up every morning and hug his grandparents. He gets to see his other grandparents and all his aunts and uncles way more often. I get to call up my besties for a random playdate on a Tuesday afternoon. I have dreamed of that for the last 9 years.

With the weight of it all just a little bit less, I’ve been able to see this change with new eyes. God has us here for a reason. He answered my prayer in His way. This will be a season of trusting Him more deeply. This will be a season of staying PRESENT instead of planning. A season of drinking deep from the well of family and friendship. Filling our cups with all the sweetness of home. 

The only constant in baseball is its unpredictability. We may stay here for 10 years. We might have a new team next season. I have no way of knowing and no way of controlling it. So, here I am, learning to let go, to trust and to focus on all the blessings in front of me instead of looking towards a future I can’t control.

Here’s to a new chapter! Thanks for coming along for the ride.

XO, Nicole