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Donna Maria's Handmade Beauty Connection
May 6, 2002
Happy Mother's Day!! (Yeah, I know it's not until Sunday, but this is my first Mother's Day celebration so I've decided to start early and celebrate for most of the month!)
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A Publication of The Handmade Beauty Network
ISSN 1530-9630 | Vol. 3, Issue 18

This Week's Sponsor:
Fallen Muse WebWorks

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1. HBN Update: Welcome New & Renewing HBN Members!!
2. Handmade Beauty Trivia Question: win a bar of fabulous soap made by HBN member Charlon Bobo of Utopian Garden and described in this week's Handmade Beauty Product Review!
3. Create The Life You Love™: On Being A Parent & A Business Person ... tips to help you survive both!!
4. New At MakeYourCosmetics.com
5. Handmade Beauty Product Review: Customized Soaps For Mother's Day!!

1. HBN Update: Welcome New & Renewing HBN Members!!

~ Welcome New HBN Members!

Victoria White Eagle | Victoria Noorlander | Utah
* Native inspired earth friendly soaps, bath products, candles and jewelry to help us walk in beauty

My Anoush | Mari Avedissian | Ohio
* Our creations are a mixture of quality, innovation, whimsy..skin sakers, bath salts, soaps, body sprays, lotions

Artful Journey | Lori Kim Oberlander | California
* Unique, handcrafted soap, Twoshea lotion bars, dead sea products, scented stones, massage oil, and more

Gibson Girls Hearth and Soul | Jill Gibson | Missouri
* Creating the perfect atmosphere with handcrafted soaps, lotions, bath salts, scented potpourri and candles

Silk'nShea | Joena Buchholz | Oregon
* Products made with shea butter, silk protein, Dead Sea salt, vegetable oils, herbs and pure essential oils

Blooming Lotus | Jen Denslow | Missouri
*Healthy, sustainable alternatives to a chemical based products ... baby products, Goddess soaps & more

~ Welcome Renewing HBN Members!

Learn more about our members and their exciting activities by visiting their Web sites through HBN's Online Member Directory, now with 4 ways to search: (1) by state/country; (2) by member business name; (3) by keyword search; or (4) using our new alphabetical listings!

2. Handmade Beauty Trivia Question: Last week's winner was Roger Rollin of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Roger won a copy of the audio taped Beauty Call™ with public relations expert Katherine Hutt. To order this and other Beauty Call tapes to help your business grow, click here.

Last Week's Question: I have been called the flower of the Incas. While I have no known essential oil to speak of and don't even really have a scent, there are millions of bottles containing fragrant liquid bearing my name. It is said that I sprang forth from the limbs of a beautiful Greek water nymph who died of heartbreak when the object of her affections cast his affections toward another. What am I?

Last Week's Answer: Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

This Week's Question: Who is credited with penning this lovely poem featuring fragrant herbs?

Balm brings you sympathy and Marjoram joy
Sage is long life ... Sweet Wooduff augurs well for health ~
A blessing richer far than wealth.
While Lavender means deep devotion,
Herb of sweet omen, Rosemary conveys
Affection and remembrance all your days.
May Heaven and Earth and Man combine
To keep these blessings ever thine.

To win this week, be the first to submit the correct answer and win a bar of fabulous soap made by HBN member Charlon Bobo of Utopian Garden and described in this week's Handmade Beauty Product Review!

Special Contest Rules For This Week Only: the regular contest rules still apply and you can read them here. This week, in honor of Mother's Day, these additional rules apply: (1) you must be a mother of at least 1 child who lives in your home to win, so include in your response the names and birth dates of your child(ren); and (2) you must be a business owner to win, so include in your response the name of your business and your Web site address if you have one.

While time does not permit me to respond personally to all entrants, the winner will be notified by email and their name posted at HBN's home page.

3. Create The Life You Love™: On Being A Mom & A Business Woman ... tips to help you survive both!!

OK, so I'm not being politically correct here. The politically correct title for this article is, "On Being A Parent & A Business Person." But am not being politically correct here because today, I'm talking to moms who are managing their own businesses from home. What special challenges we face! We are not "stay at home moms" in the pure sense of that phrase because, while we are "at home," we are being more than moms while we are there. (By the way, I hate the phrase, "stay at home mom". There is no such thing as a "stay at home mom" because there is no such thing as a stay at home child. I'll save that beef for another day.) But whatever we call ourselves, we strive like everyone else to find balance in our daily lives. And for a mom with her own business, balance is not always easy to come by.

This past Saturday, I was honored to be the keynote speaker at the Mocha Moms Mother's Day Tea. What fun we all had enjoying tea and sweet cookies on lovely plates of china at an historic mansion in Bowie, Maryland. (The best part of course was not having to watch out for little fingers throwing things across the room!) My topic was on finding balance as a mom and a woman, and the tips I shared are suitable for anyone, male or female, parent or not, who seeks daily to find what we simply call "balance" in our lives. This and the next 2 articles in this column will reprint my remarks (edited for space reasons) in 3 parts: (1) Make The Glass Full; (2) Surrender To The Moment and (3) Be Flexible Yet Decisive Based On Pre-Determined Priorities.

I define balance as a satisfying arrangement of parts creating a harmonious design. This means that we find balance once we have arranged the various parts of our lives so that we have a somewhat consistent pattern of harmony and satisfaction. Before I ever had a family of my own … in fact, before I got married a few years ago … I made a decision to put the above 3 principles to work in my life in order to simplify, not my life, but the way I looked at my life. While it has not always been smooth sailing since then, it has definitely been more balanced sailing. I am satisfied in my life and I feel as though things are working together in harmony - sometimes chaotic harmony, but harmony nonetheless. The first thing I decided to do is:

1. Make The Glass Full!

Traditional wisdom tells us that the glass is either half empty or half full. Supposedly, those who live life with the attitude that the glass is half full have a more positive outlook and thus, are more fulfilled and productive. But I beg to differ! For me, the glass is never half empty of course, but neither is it half full either. Instead, it’s always full because I choose to fill it up!! I have made a conscious choice to make the glass full, and then consistently acknowledge that the glass is full. Notice I did not say “I believe that the glass is full.” I said that I make the glass full. Of course this doesn’t mean that I don’t have bad moments. In fact, I was having one when I made my first call to Shellie English, a fellow Mocha Mom and an attorney as well. I can remember like it was yesterday the night I called her. I had been calling every mother I knew, literally going through my phone book, when my daughter was exactly 5 weeks old. I wanted to know how in the world they did it, why in the world they did it, and why no one told me it was so hard to do BEFORE I did it!!?? My schedule was no longer my own, I couldn’t get even the simplest tasks accomplished no matter how hard I tried. I had this new thing attached to my breasts. My husband did not know how to get up 4 times a night and the dog still needed to be walked, the dishes needed to be washed, EVEN MORE clothes needed to be cleaned, and I still had a business to run.

As Shellie and I spoke, I quickly saw that I was not alone. That was helpful in and of itself and I was able to remember how very full my glass actually is. After all, as author Sylvia Ann Hewlett has documented so extensively in her new book, “Creating A Life,” anyone in my age bracket (closing in on 40) is blessed to be able to get pregnant and carry a child to term at all! When I began to think of my situation in that light, my bad moment ended and I began to find a state of balance again because, by choice, I made the glass full again. Again, this choice does not mean that I don’t have bad moments, but it does mean that I move through them faster and I learn more from them. It also means that, because I make the choice I do, while I may have some bad moments, I very rarely ever have a bad day.

When we make a conscious choice to put more water in the glass … to fill the glass up … to make the glass full, we are no longer left with half full abundance. We are left with full abundance which, in turn, facilitates the harmony and satisfaction that we can call “balance.”

Next Week: Surrender To The Moment

4. New At MakeYourCosmetics.com

Mother's Rose Belly Salve is an easy to make treat that is the perfect Mother's Day treat. Make some this week and give it to the new moms and mothers-to-be in your life to help minimize and fade stretch marks. I enjoy my Mother's Rose Belly Salve and made some as a gift for my cardio kick boxing instructor ... who at several months pregnant outlasts most of the class! Check it out here, and when you visit, remember that it's easy to buy the ingredients you need to make your goodies by clicking on our Partner links:

Essential Wholesale: natural unscented cosmetic bases, pure essential oils, absolutes, carrier oils such as avocado, virgin coconut, sweet almond, jojoba, shea butter and specialty packaging supplies!

Bramble Berry, Inc.: over 80 different, fully tested fragrance oils (including the exclusive "Relaxing" and "Energy" blends), over 250 soap molds, essential oils and unscented bases.

SunRose Aromatics: pure essential oils (many organic), carrier oils and other aromatherapy products, each carefully selected for quality. Check out their Perfumer's Emporium.

The Scent Shack: fragrance oils and soap supplies. Fragrance oils are tested in cold process, melt & pour soap, and candles, and test results are listed at their Web site. Scents tested by soapers for soapers!

Coming soon!! A Canadian partner for our users north of the border!!

5. Handmade Beauty Product Review: Customized Soaps For Mother's Day!!

Customized Soaps For Mother's Day!! (and other special occasions) by HBN Member Utopian Garden
(prices vary)

OK, you all know how excited I am when anything is customized just for me. So of course I could not wait to tell you about these fabulous soaps that were made for me by HBN member Charlon Bobo of Utopian Garden. I have reviewed her handmade soaps before so if you missed that, you can read it here. And this time, she's done it again!

For the Mother's Day Tea at which I spoke last Saturday (see this week's Create The Life You Love article, above), Charlon made several bars of her delicious handmade soap for me to give to each mom in attendance. Were they impressed or what? Each one received a handmade bar of soap weighing about 4 ounces! Each bar was composed of chunks of purplely-pink soaps, enveloped by a tan soap base. The colors are extraordinary hues of purple/pink/magenta/violet ~ very feminine. The top of each bar of soap is dusted with something that looks like a thin layer of smooth powdered sugar and in that layer, Charlon placed some soap curly cues to match the colors in the soap bar. And she topped it off with a fabulous scent in the fruity (??) family. I don't know what it is, but the lucky women at the Mother's Day Tea fell in love with it. Each bar was individually packaged in glassine bags with a pretty label saying, "Happy Mother's Day from Donna Maria." What a memorable gift ... and everyone felt so special. Some were clamoring to get their mommy-paws on more than one bar, but I was not having that! I wanted to make sure everyone got one, and I also wanted to make sure I had at least one left over as the Handmade Beauty Connection Trivia Contest prize this week!

Again, I can't say it enough! If you are looking for some customized soaps for any occasion, do yourself a favor and check out Charlon. She can make them fast and in a hurry too, so don't worry if you feel like you've waited until the last minute. Personalized logo embossing is available! Visit her Soap Gallery and have a look around ... there's something for everyone!

Visit The Handmade Beauty Connection Archives.

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MangoButter.com: 400+ suppliers of raw materials and packaging, updated weekly!
MakeYourCosmetics.com: ingredient encyclopedia & original cosmetics recipes
DonnaMaria.com: sound advice for your small business, Create The Life You Love™
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Donna Maria, Editor-In-Chief, DonnaMaria@HandmadeBeauty.com
The Handmade Beauty Connection
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