Do you really want to know?

In my research over the last several weeks about skin care products I have come upon some fascinating information - ranging from mildly interesting to completely shocking. I was never one to consider what exactly I was putting on my body....as long as it was under $10. Oil of Olay was getting a little crazy for me. Before starting Arbonne, it never really mattered to me or occurred to me to think about what the products contained.

Well today I am going to share with you a dirty little secret called "rendering plants". I had never heard of such places and when I first learned of them I was a little suspicious and decided to do my own research on the matter. Rendering plants, do in fact, exist. What is so disgusting about them?

A rendering plant is a place where animals, not in our food chain, are taken to be ground up and "cooked". These animals include roadkill, euthanized pets (including their collars, tags etc), farm animals, spoiled grocery meat (including the packaging) etc. As you know when you cook a chicken, the sticky fatty stuff comes to the top. This is called tallow. So when they boil these animals, they take the tallow and sell it. The first people to buy tallow? Cosmetic and skin care companies.

Tallow is used in cosmetics because it is cheap. It is also a binding agent and makes products smooth and creamy. You average bar of soap is primarily made of tallow. Look at the ingredients in your medicine chest. Alot of times it comes up as "sodium tallowate". Lipstick is often a major culprit - almost entirely tallow in many cases.

Another thing to be aware of is that anything you put on your skin takes an average of 26 seconds to reach your blood stream. What you put on your body can be found in your blood and organs. This never had occurred to me, had never been something I had cared about. But now I have small kids and these things are starting to matter. The FDA does not control what we put in our skin care and cosmetics. That means it is up to us to determine what is healthy for our lives.

If you want to do your own research, and please do, go ahead and google "rendering plants". Or you can take a look here.

I had someone ask about products without tallow, and of course, Arbonne is one of those companies. If you want to know more, please let me know.

Should I be concerned?

I walked into Red's room last night and saw this:

WTF? LOL.

New Beginnings

I've been lazy about blogging lately. All my free time has gone from being an internet junkie to keeping busy with the new business. I sure am loving it though. I feel like I have something of my own...I am contributing to my family in a way that I haven't been able to do in a long while...and I am really having fun.

In other news, my little Red Beast is having her final day of preschool this week. She will have 2 weeks off and then off the kindergarten. My eyes well up every time I think of it. How am I grown up enough to have an elementary school kid?? When did that happen?

So this week is full of shopping for school supplies, new shoes the whole works. Dan is silently staring at his empty wallet trying not to grimace. But it should be fun. I LOVED shopping for school stuff. I hated the school part, but the new shoes and clothes and a fresh box of Crayolas? Hell yeah!

I remember being in first grade and I had my first pencil and used it until it was down to a tiny little nub because I was too scared and embarrassed to use the pencil sharpener. Introvert? You think?

What do you remember about starting school?

Surprise!

Ok, so you all know my irrational fear of the whole icky rodent thing that is lurking in my garage. Well, the other day I was outside gardening and starting gabbing to my neighbor (also named Dan we call him Mr. Dan.) about the situation and how I have laundry a mile high because I am scared to use the washing machine. It is located right there in mouse central.

Being the sweet, former Navy man that he is, he went walking into the garage, opened the dryer and started pulling the clothes out. I stood there protesting vaguely but slightly happy to see some clean towels.

The he went to open the washing machine to put those clothes in the dryer. My protesting became a little more fervent. I just KNOW I have my thong underwear in that load. He brushed me off and kept working away. Until he burst into laughter.

There in the midst of my new Victoria secret panties was also....a panty liner.

I was purple with embarrassment. He kept laughing.

Do your own damn laundry Gingers Mom.