animal instincts

Brown saucer eyes and a black button nose were such a contrast to the snowball of fur a friend handed me several years ago. My friend pleaded with me to give the 10-pound puppy a home and it only took one look, eyeball-to-eyeball, and I swallowed the hook, line and sinker without even opening my mouth! I was little aware at the time that instead of doing someone a favor, as I foolishly believed, I was receiving an incredibly rare gift.

She was given the name Astra, meaning ‘star’ and from the beginning was the perfect pet for our little family.

While I was busy making fruit leather snacks, tying shoes, ironing shirts, working for money and developing and making skinfood, Astra, at 115 pounds, was by my side and under my feet every step and misstep along the way. She was strong, funny, instinctual, stubborn, protective and loving…a noble being. Did I mention smart?

Once, Astra carried a newborn mole (in her mouth) a few hundred yards and gently lowered it to the ground at my feet and looked up at me with those big, brown pleading eyes! It took a second for me to get what she wanted. Uh-uh! No! It ain’t happening. I’m not going to take care of one more creature– especially one I know nothing about, I told Astra, raising my voice for emphasis. No way!!!

I gently picked it up, took it back to the bush she’d found it under, laid it down with a prayer for its well being and started back to the garden. Giving me a look that showed her disbelief at my lack of sensitivity, (I swear!), my four-legged Florence Nightingale once again gingerly lifted the orphaned, eyeless creature with her tongue, carried it to the shade of my daughter’s green bean teepee, put it on the ground and laid down beside it. The “Fine, I’ll do it myself!” look she was sending me was hard to miss – and one of the sweetest things I’ve seen.

When Astra developed a tumor at the age of 9, the doctor explained the surgery she needed: If he opened her stomach and found the growth attached to any of her organs, he would simply sew her up and we’d consider the next options, ones I refused to think about. He also explained that as large as the tumor was, she might not make it through the surgery at all.

By the time I finally got to bring her home a few days later, I was ecstatic – she’d made it! Sure she had a 13’ incision down the middle of her tummy, but no organs were affected, she was still with me and I could’ve danced for joy had she not been in horrible pain. Even though I knew a wound has to heal from the inside out, it was so hard to wait. I wanted to put skinfood on the painful incision, knowing it would not only ease Astra’s pain, but it would help fight infection and speed the healing process. That was the crunch – didn’t want to heal the outside incision before the inside trauma had recovered.

When her moans made it impossible for me to wait any longer, I opened the jar of skinfood dedicated to her and swiped a bit of it out with my finger. Even as careful as I was, Astra flinched and yelped the instant the skinfood barely touched her and I immediately abandoned the idea. The wound was still too tender.

But as I reached for a towel to wipe the skinfood off, Astra raised her head and in one swoop, licked the skinfood right off my finger. Amazed, I watched as she started licking the incision. I got more out; again she took it with her tongue and continued to coat the entire cut. Glory be! Once that was done, she laid her head down and sighed deeply. I was also relieved ….but more awed by the implications of what I had just witnessed. She knew!! Not only did she know what I’d been trying to do, but she knew skinfood would indeed help! What an amazing confirmation for skinfood – from the animal kingdom no less, from one who lives instinctually…like, wow!

After a few days of repeating this process, Astra was up and about exploring the world like nothing had ever happened. The doctor was amazed with her rapid healing and I had a new confidence about the healing powers of skinfood and the amazing instincts of animals. Thank you my loving companion!

 with love, Peggy

Mysteries and curious intrigue of the onion ...

Yesterday I got an email from a friend telling two stories about onions. One story is about the humble little vegetable saving people from the flu and from the black plague. The other is about how dangerous left over cut onions are, their potential for causing food poisoning. Now, anyone who knows me knows I have no love of the onion. Never have, probably never will. Can't stand the smell, can't stand the taste. But I do believe that something seemingly as small and inconsequential as an onion can be really big on capabilities ... just like a little green container of skinfood! (Okay, yes, shameless plug of promotion, I know!)

So I read the stories and thought they were interesting. Then I decided, just for snorts and giggles, to check and see if "Jeannie" was really the CEO of Mullins Food Products as stated in one of the stories. I Googled it. Well, well, well. First listing to pop up in the search results was this: Cut Onion Contamination. Naturally, I clicked the link and TaDa! I discover the stories are false. Not really surprised. But it got me to thinking about how such stories are passed around, old wives' tales and urban legends that are told and re-told, and often times believed without question. Personally, thinking that people can be so quick to believe without proof is scarier than many of those old urban legends about the boogie-man with a hook for a hand!

Then my curiosity about that most wicked little vegetable was peaked and I Googled it, too. Wikipedia had lots of info. Mr. Onion is thought to help everything from sore throats to getting wounded by a sea urchin. Um, I'm not likely to test the validity of either of those beliefs! Still, it is interesting to read about the potential of something so ordinary, something we think of as not much more than a food product, to be so helpful ... and how similar that concept is to the ingredients in skinfood.

All around us are natural things with some amazing, multiple talents. Many of them we use all the time but don't think about using them for anything except one purpose. Olive oil = cooking. Beeswax = candles. Thyme = spice. These are some of the ingredients in the original skinfood.

Olive oil has long been used for more than just cooking. Research has shown it to be an effective skin care product. People worldwide have used it for a shaving lotion, hand, nail and hair moisturizing, in soap for body moisturizing, the OCM (oil cleaning method) for the face, and lots of other stuff.

And, of course, the health benefits from eating it ... There is a large body of clinical data to show that consumption of olive oil can provide heart health benefits such as favourable effects on cholesterol regulation and LDL cholesterol oxidation, and that it exerts antiinflamatory, antithrombotic, antihypertensive as well as vasodilatory effects both in animals and in humans. (per Wikipedia)

Pretty amazing for a tiny little olive, don't you think? Gives that ol' stinky onion a run for its money, I'd say.

If you don't believe me, here are a couple of links to check out ... hope you enjoy them!

Beauty and Olive Oil

Olive Oil History

Namaste', y'all ...
Carol

Agalychnis callidryas

 a.k.a. Red Eyed Tree Frog!

Why choose a frog for a skin care company logo? Good question. Glad you asked!

Because they are more vulnerable than many other creatures, amphibians are considered a ``canary in the coal mine'' for environmental damage. The canary was used for detecting toxic or explosive gases in coal-mines, before there was a better way to do it. More sensitive to such gases than humans, they would collapse long before the miners were affected, and a collapsed canary was therefore a signal to the miners to get out immediately, and to management to look at the problem and clean up the mine. 

Like many others world-wide, we at Skinfood Works, Inc. are seeing this frightening canary-in-the-coal-mine phenomenon with our frog populations right now, on a global scale. It's a wake-up call. We need to pay attention ... and take action. 

Amphibian populations are in decline in many areas of the world. In cities and the countryside, in rain forests and wetlands, countless areas which previously hosted a range of healthy amphibian populations now have fewer - and even no - frogs, toads, and salamanders. While healthy populations of some species may exist elsewhere in some cases of declines, a few species - including Costa Rica's Monteverde golden toad and Australia's Gastric brooding frog - are now believed extinct.

The continental United States is home to at least 230 amphibian species: 90 frog and toad species, and 140 species of salamanders. In the U.S., declines are particularly serious in California, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest. Amphibian deformities - extra limbs, malformed or missing limbs, and facial malformations - have been documented in 44 states, and involve nearly 60 species. In some local populations, up to 60% of the amphibians exhibit deformities.

So what is Skinfood doing about it? Well, that's another really good question. Allow me to share our company philosophy with you ...

One Product • One Planet

At Skinfood Works, Inc, it is our passion to produce safe, effective and environmentally sound skin-care products as well as operate our company, on all levels, with Green Business practices. It is our sincere hope that we can make a positive contribution to our global health and environmental challenges, while inspiring and encouraging others to do the same.

Skinfood is handmade and contains no parabens, artificial fragrances, artificial coloring, petrochemicals or harmful ingredients. Our ingredients are carefully chosen, each working in synergy with the others, to improve the health of your skin.  As a comprehensive (all-in-one) remedy, it eliminates the need for many specialty products. By purchasing skinfood, you’re supporting sustainable agriculture, fair-trade sourcing and the use of renewable, recycled and recyclable resources - which means you, too, are positively impacting the future ... our future, and the future of our planet. 

So what does all that really mean to you and to the environment?

It's actually quite simple. The Original Skinfood helps you, and the environment, by being an "eco-friendly" product. Because it's made with all natural ingredients that are safe enough for even a frogs' skin - no harmful chemicals or other nasty stuff - you can feel good about using it on your own skin. Sustainable indredients means it's not using up our planets' fragile and ever depleting natural resources. 

The Original Skinfood takes the place of a host of other products clogging up your medicine cabinet, too. If you read the ingredients in many of todays' skin care products you will see a pretty scary list of toxic chemicals. Check out some of your favorite products on a very informative website called Skin Deep. I was shocked to read about how dangerous some of the things I had in my own medicine cabinet were! They contained known cancer-causing ingredients, and a lot of other seriously bad stuff. Why in the world would you want to use something like that???

Skinfood Works, Inc. is a "green business." Our product containers and our packaging are made from recycled and recyclable materials, so it's not filling up landfills with even more trash and pollutants that leach back into the earth and the water supply. In our office we use recycled (and recyclable) materials, everything from printer paper to trash bags! Our manufacturing facility operates the same way.

Last, but certainly not least, we have never - nor ever will - use animal testing with our product. A horrifying reality is that many of the skin care products on the market are tested on animals. It's an incredibly cruel practice with no actual benefit to humans. Take a couple of minutes and read this article about it - Animal Testing. We, at Skinfood Works, Inc. believe it should be banned on a global scale and applaud countries like Belgium who have already banned this inhumane practice. The Original Skinfood, because it contains no toxins or harmful chemicals, is as safe for your pets as it is for you ... and we know this from practical use on our own pets! I'll have to get Peggy to blog the story about using it on her dog.

I hope, like our mission statement says, that we as a business can help further the eco-awareness movement that is slowly but steadily growing in our global society. We truly only have one planet and we need to "clean up the mine" before it's too late.

Namaste', y'all ...

Carol 

worth her weight in chocolate!

Thank you Lovely Lisa for your nice comments about the website and skinfood. You have been such a strong supporter for so many years (don't really want to think about how many!). Yep, Carol is a good web designer and I appreciate her soooooo much...wish she was mine to give...lol. Not that I would of course, but might consider loaning her for a while! She truly is a magnificent artist - check out her site at carolsmartinez.com and tell me if I'm exaggerating! She does do work for others, just by the way.

I've always enjoyed visiting your site (gemsand whims.com for those who don't know) - love all the photos, really engaging - something we hope to do eventually. You have such a huge inventory and manage to get most of it displayed, a lot harder than working with one product. While on the subject of the websites, I hope to get your permission to link your site from ours, just didn't have time to do that before we went live. Whaddaya think?

Thank you for touching in - miss you terribly and hope we can sit down and reminisce and laugh and play again soon. When we get a little further down the road and start offering skinfood in select stores, you can believe you'll be the first we contact in Johnson City! I haven't forgotten.   ...love ya bunches!!

And glad you're mobile Rena...you and technology go together like frogs in a tree!  Peggy