Mom’s are pretty great. They blow on cuts to take the sting out. Read bed time stories. Cut the crusts off sandwiches. And teach us all what true love looks like. The lovely site, The Glow, captures that special bond between mother and child with breathtaking images and inspiring advice from some very stylish moms.

Ramya Giangola and Chiara by Laura Stuart for The Glow

A collaboration between photographer Kelly Stuart and editor Violet Gaynor, The Glow is both gorgeous and poignant. Along with the show stopping images, each mother shares her experiences, advice, and favorite things that collectively capture what it is to be a mother.

“My most humbling moment as a mother was when I looked at my children and realized I cannot control their destiny. For the first time in five years, I have started to let go and let them each become the person they want to be. Not to say that I don’t influence their lives—believe me, a pair of Crocs will never enter this house!” Christina Hutson

“The most surprising thing about being a mother is what it does to your capacity to feel things. I thought that I was loving with all of my heart before, but now that I have a child I’ve discovered a whole new depth of love (for my baby, my husband, my parents).”
Zoë Buckman

Busy Phillips and Birdie by Laura Stuart for Coach’s collaboration with The Glow

For Mother’s Day, The Glow has collaborated with Coach to present a glimpse of real moms using unconventional Coach baby bags. A truly special gift for mom for sure! You know. If you are still looking for that perfect thing…

We’d like to wish all mothers a wonderful Mother’s Day! And send a very special thank you to our own moms. Ira, Jill, and Sandra. We love you.

If you haven’t met Mikaila Ulmer yet, prepare to be blown away. This 7 year old, social entrepreneur runs possibly the cutest lemonade stand (and inspiring business) we have ever come across. Inspired by a recipe found in her 88-year-old great-grandmother Helen’s vintage 1940s-era cookbook, Mikaila adds honey and her own secret ingredients to create BeeSweet Lemonade with Flaxseed. Yum! We can see why it won “Most Creative Lemonade” in Austin’s 2011 Best Lemonade contest.

BeeSweet Lemonade and Mikaila sharing her award winning lemonade. Photo by Patrick Wong.

When not behind her stand extolling the digestive benefits of flax seed or sharing her true love for bees, you can find Mikaila donning a bee suit and harvesting her own fresh honey for BeeSweet Lemonade. Clearly we have found a kindred spirit! In fact, inspired by our encounter with the girls, she put together her own poster to educate people on bee friendly flowers. And if that weren’t enough, after each production of honey lemonade, she composts the lemon rinds for her backyard butterfly garden.

Mikaila’s poster on bee friendly flowers.

Having started her stand at the ripe old age of 4, she was the youngest speaker at this year’s SXSW, where she spoke about balancing a business with second grade! Oh and one more thing. She donates 20% of the profits from her lemonade sales to the Texas Beekeeper’s Association to help save the bees. See, we told you. Blown. Away.

An entrepreneur who gives back, with passion and creativity. An educator and a student. And simply cute as a button. Mikaila is a true icon of beauty!

If you live in Austin, you are in luck. Mikaila will be participating in National Lemonade Day on Sunday, May 6. Her BeeSweet Lemonade stand will be located at the Hope Farmers Market from 11 to  2 p.m. You’ll find her next to the Round Rock Honey booth. Round Rock Honey is sponsoring Mikaila by providing local Texas wildflower honey. Stop by and enjoy. We wish we could join you!

Everyone’s favorite part of the day was hands down the iced tea pedicures! Perfect for a warm, summer afternoon. To see how to do your own iced tea pedicure (make sure it is unsweetened so it doesn’t get sticky), pop over to Southern Weddings to see the full instructions!

We’d also like to say a special thanks to all of the amazing vendors who helped make the day truly special:
Photography: Sarah DeShaw and Brent DeShaw
Photo Styling: Sarah DeShaw
Venue: Hampton Island
Flowers: Holley Jaakkola
Beehive Cake: Serendipity Bakery
Clothing: Go Fish
Hair & Makeup: Katherine Taylor
Paper Goods: A Darling Day

Milk contains lactic acid, a gentle, yet effective alpha-hydroxy acid that eliminates toxins from the skin. It also exfoliates the top layer of your skin, leaving skin soft and smooth with a marvelous, youthful glow. Yes please.

Honey, a natural elixir, has been used for centuries to moisturize and reverse the effects of aging on the skin. Fresh, raw honey has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties, acts as a humectant (which means it pulls moisture out of the air), reduces inflammation, helps the skin to heal more quickly, and has an impressive array of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. Wow!

So you can see why these two are a match made for beautiful skin—gentle exfoliation + hydrating moisture = great beauty. Caesar never stood a chance!

Create your own luxurious milk and honey bath at home. Drizzle a bit of honey (1/4 cup is ideal)—and remember the purer the honey, the better the treatment—with 2 tablespoons of Brand New Day into hot bath water to soothe and soften the skin. Follow with a Skin Savior Beauty Balm for a decadent experience that will give your skin a beautiful,
healthy glow.

All photos by Sarah DeShaw

The quality, flavor, and benefits of honey will vary depending on the location in which it was collected. The plants and environment from which pollen, saps, nectars and resins are gathered and used to make the honey will influence its nutritional composition and taste. Our local honey, Tupelo Honey, for example, comes from the nectar in the blossoms of the gum trees that grow in the swamps of southern Georgia. We are partial of course, but it tastes pretty awesome. Although it is available throughout the year, honey is an exceptional treat in the summer and fall when it has just been harvested and is at its freshest.

Honey is perfect for those who are watching their weight. A tasty alternative to white sugar, researchers from Waikato University in Hamilton, New Zealand discovered that while sugar leads to weight gain, honey does not. The gift that keeps on giving! The researchers fed rats diets with no sugar, eight percent mixed sugars, or ten percent honey. The animals fed either honey or no sugar at all gained the same amount of weight, while those eating sugar gained significantly more weight.

We have several friends who swear by their local honey as a way to fight seasonal allergies too. There have been no peer-reviewed scientific studies to prove honey reduces allergies, but with a remedy this tasty, we figure it’s worth a try.

Of course we love to mix raw, organic honey with Brand New Day to create a luxurious, clarifying masque (In fact, pop over to Southern Weddings today to see how to make a refreshing iced tea pedicure). But with all these benefits, you can have your masque and eat it too! Our favorite honey treat? Plain greek yogurt drizzled with raw, organic honey topped with walnuts. Delicious!

All photos by Sarah DeShaw

We recently visited local Georgia bee keeper and former head of the Coastal Department of Natural Resources, Susan Shipman, to discuss the vital role that bees play in our agricultural system and what we can do to encourage their crucial work. Susan affectionately refers to her bees as “the girls.” Hives are comprised of mainly female “workers” and a single egg-laying queen. There are just a few male “drones,” whose only job is to mate with the queen—they don’t do much else.

After our conversation, Susan kindly invited us to go into the hives and meet “the girls”—about 60,000 of Susan’s closest bee friends. She assured us that bees are very gentle and will only sting if they feel the hive is threatened—a respectable animal instinct. When a bee is away from the hive foraging, it will rarely sting unless someone steps on it or handles it roughly. A bee will die shortly after stinging so a sting is definitely a defense of last resort.

upper right Susan greeting her girls, bottom left Suzanne meeting the girls for the first time

After going into the hive, we quickly moved from feeling a bit of fear and apprehension to wonder and true love for these magnificent creatures. We were so moved by the experience, we decided to dedicate our Earth Day celebration this year to bees. We are donating 20% of the net proceeds from all sales of Brand New Day from April 19 through April 27 to Earthday.org. We suggest celebrating this year by pairing Brand New Day with your favorite local raw honey for a luxurious masque! It’s the bees knees!

But don’t stop there! Support your local bees (and in turn your local farm crops) by planting a bee-friendly garden. Some bee-favorite plants include: lavender, lemon verbena, anise hyssop, heather, clover, maple, poplar and lupines. They will fill your garden with a lovely scent too! For those of you in apartments, show bees a little love. No swatting, please. And spread the word about what an important role bees play in producing the world’s food supply.

All photos by Sarah DeShaw

The Deluxe Essentials to Go is a great way to try the whole line or stream line packing for a trip. These little guys should get you through any adventure, from ski slopes to tropical beaches and everything in between.

And have you seen Open Sky? Such a fun way to discover new brands and see what your favorite lifestyle bloggers are loving. We’re addicted! Stay tuned. There just might be a One Love Organics Open Sky shop soon.

So what if you find you are still plagued with dry skin? You’ve done all the right things. You’ve installed a filter on your faucet to reduce the drying effects of chlorine. You’ve used a mild, plant based cleanser like Easy Does It Foaming Cleanser. You’ve finished with a light application of Skin Savior. Luscious, pure plant oils like coconut and chia nourish every cell of your skin. And yet you still have dry skin. What gives? How can this be?

A common hidden culprit of dry skin is a weakened or sluggish thyroid. Your thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped gland located at the base of the front of your neck, just below your Adam’s apple. Hormones produced by the thyroid gland have an enormous impact on your health and affect your body’s natural balance. Thyroid hormones also regulate metabolism and body weight by controlling the burning of fat for energy and heat. If you experience dry skin, fatigue, increased sensitivity to cold, brittle fingernails and hair, unexplained weight gain or difficulty losing weight, hair loss (especially your outer eyebrows), constipation and/or muscle aches, tenderness or stiffness; your thyroid may need a bit of pampering!

To feel your best and to have the most beautiful skin, nourish your thyroid. We put together a simple thyroid optimization plan to help.

Eat more foods with Iodine (and Selenium):
Iodine is key for a healthy thyroid and an efficient metabolism. We all want that! We prefer to get ours from fresh, food sources. Foods rich in iodine include sea vegetables, organic yogurt and milk, eggs, strawberries and mozzarella cheese, fish and shellfish. According to Dr. Mercola, foods rich in iodine AND selenium provide the raw materials to help your thyroid gland to work better. Excellent sources of selenium include button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, cod, shrimp, snapper, tuna, halibut and salmon. Yum! Dr. Mercola also recommends Omega-3 fatty acids to help restore thyroid function. We like to add chia seeds to our daily Goddess Smoothie for an Omega-3 boost.

Drink Clean:
Make natural, filtered water, homemade vitamin water and herbal teas your beverage of choice. Avoid beverages that include fluoride, chlorine and bromines. These elements compete with the same receptors used to capture iodine and may reduce the amount of iodine absorbed by the body. Yikes! Fluoride and chlorine, found in most tap water in the US, can be filtered out of the water using reverse osmosis or distillation. Brominated vegetable oil is added to some citrus sodas and energy drinks to help suspend the flavoring in the liquid, so read your ingredients label!

Relax:
That’s right. Take a load off. Thyroid glands can become impaired as a result of weak adrenal glands. Adrenal exhaustion is frequently due to stress. The thyroid then works overtime to compensate for exhausted adrenals and can get, well, burned out too. So relax. Meditate, take a walk, or a long bath. Do whatever it takes to unwind. It is important for your health, peace of mind and yes, beauty.

Get a Little Herbal Help:
We love Thyroid Support from Gaia Herbs. (We love everything from Gaia Herbs actually.) The herbs coleus forskolii and Schisandra help promote a healthy metabolism, natural iodine from the sea vegetable bladderwrack and kelp and the amino acid L-Tyrosine help support thyroid hormones and the herb Ashwagandha is included to help cope with stress.

Yep. Apply a little extra Skin Savior to nourish from the outside. Eat yummy foods, drink clean water, relax and get a little herbal boost to nourish from the inside. Get healthy skin and an optimized metabolism. Take that winter!

Note: This article is written for educational purposes only. This information has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you have any questions or concerns about thyroid health, please consult your doctor.

Morning Glory is here!  (We’ve been waiting on pins and needles in anticipation of this!)

A whisper light moisturizing oil, this fragrant little powerhouse product has quickly become our favorite way to greet the day. Infused with organic raspberry leaf, organic lemon balm, organic sweet mint, and organic ylang ylang, it helps to brighten, de-puff, and protect your skin. Vegan-sourced omega 3 fatty acids smooth the appearance of fine lines and help protect your skin from everyday environmental damage. And don’t get us started on the amazing floral scent. Hello day! Hello New Year!

Speaking of New Year, pop over to the homepage to see a few of our New Year’s resolutions. These are our kind of resolutions. Ones that you want to keep because they make each day more joyful and fill your life with things that matter; friends, family, laughter, and love. Here’s to the best year yet! Happy New Year!

All images by the amazingly talented Sarah DeShaw. This is a little sneak peak into a story we are working on for the spring. Stay tuned!

We love to give gifts. So as you can imagine, we had a lot of fun putting together our holiday gift sets. We put together 4 sets we think everyone on your list will love. And each one comes gift wrapped and ready to give. We think everything should be this simple at the holidays. It leaves more time for the important things like drinking hot cocoa and spending time with family.

Our deluxe set, the Beauty Queen lives up to its name. This set includes a full size product from our entire line, including the serum! It’s like a spa in a box. Be prepared for squeals of joy.

Our popular Beauty Essentials Gift Set is back and gift wrapped for the holidays. Including one full size Easy Does It Foaming Wash, Brand New Day Microderma Scrub, Skin Savior Waterless Beauty Balm and one New Best Friend Skin Shammy; it’s sure to be a crowd pleaser.

It’s the Balm Gift Set includes our dynamic duo: Skin Savior Waterless Beauty Balm and New Best Friend Skin Shammy. From moisturizer to foundation primer, Skin Savior is our go-to product all holiday season long. We recommend buying these in pairs. One to give and one to keep!

The Little Luxuries Gift Set might be the cutest of them all. A perfect gift for the frequent flyer or a great way to introduce a friend to the line. This set includes the Discovery size of Easy Does It Foaming Wash, Brand New Day Microderma Scrub, Skin Savior Waterless Beauty Balm and one New Best Friend Skin Shammy.

Whew! Now we are ready for some hot cocoa. Preferably with marshmallows.