.SOMETIMES RAW.

A question came up recently from one of my readers on what beauty products I use on a daily basis and what’s in my make-up bag all related to me being a minimalist.

Well when it comes to the products I am using I keep it very simple. Usually I do not change my beauty routine too much. First of all I am very lucky with the type of skin I have. (Thanks genes!) Even when I was pregnant with my son I did not have any problematic, hormonal skin or outbreaks. This was I believe mostly due to the fact that I am not using too many products and the way I am eating because this is where it all starts.  So here I share what I am using more or less on a daily basis:

Let’s start with what is currently in my makeup bag if you can even call it as such. It is an old small grey leather bag that I found in one of my mom’s drawers years ago. I do not use too many makeup products at all because I am just not a big fan of it. So my routine in the morning to put makeup on takes about five minutes and is just very simple.

The products I have are mostly organic. For my hair I use Khadi Products. I have been loving these for a while. My hair is very important to me and I have written an entire post on my hair routine. Find it here. 

The trick is to apply the shampoo on DRY hair and only on the scalp and just a tiny bit. Not that much in the length. Then rinse after five minutes. Done! I wash my hair once a week and it is growing super fast this way. 😀 As far as washing the rest of my body I am using this soap:

I have been trying many soaps before. I even made my own at some point; however, none of them gave me a softer, creamer feeling on my skin than this one.

As far as makeup goes I have been using Dr. Hauschka products. This one for mascara and for an under eye concealer this one.  These are the only non-organic products I am using. They are a little pricey but they last quite a while. I also tested many drugstore mascaras before and they made my eyes tear up all the time and did not stick to my lashes so I looked like a raccoon after a while. Fail!

For my lips I am in love with this Lush product:

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This is it basically believe it or not. I am making my own skin and body cream and will be sharing the recipe on this blog soon. This cream I am also using on my son if needed.  It is all “back to nature” with me. 🙂 I want to put as little chemistry on my body as possible. I am open to try new organic products however.

My signature scent is COCO Mademoiselle by CHANEL. I have been using this perfume forever. Recently, I have been stumbling across Barr-Co. products and I am in love.

Here are my recent purchases:

The smell is just very soft and powdery. I would also describe it as a fresh and clean smell. My husband likes it! 🙂 According to the labels on the products the smell is a blend of “milk, oatmeal, vanilla and vetiver”. I have been using the perfume every single day. In Canada I purchased the hand cream and am in love as well. It is just not sticky or greasy and lasts for a long time.

So there you have it. Nice and simple. As I try to keep everything in my life.

This question I had on my mind since I got out of the car today after driving around all afternoon. How do I start this post? Maybe I already do know the answer to this question above. It is enough the way it is. I have my husband and my baby and I love them. It is all clear. We just all sat in the living room today and I looked at my son – like really looked at him, eyes, face, hair, body, the whole picture and this is really all I need. His happiness when he looks into my eyes and I can show him “I am here. You are safe”  and I tell him without words and he feels and understands. I know this is all I need. However, then there is this little extra beat of my heart that makes me think of another baby.

I never ever wanted to have kids in the first place  so this is all weird for me to actually write about. All I always wanted was career,  travel the world, school, finish another BA, MA whatever. But I finally met the man who for the first time in my life  I could imagine having kids with. I just knew it would all work out – it would be all fine – I am okay and safe. Then I got pregnant and this pregnancy was a piece of cake. I was so fortunate. Nine months of just getting bigger, but no complaints otherwise. Then the birth – via c-section also okay. And I welcomed this beautiful baby boy into this world. (And I did not stop traveling – in fact it has gotten better. We just take the baby everywhere we go. Simple as that.)

Throughout the last year with all these changes in my family’s life I was dreaming about homeschooling (this won’t happen – just no way), about having my own garden to grow my food (this will definitely happen soon) and just live an awesome family life. So we had this one child and I saw how that went. It was easy. It was okay. I grew into loving being a mom, loving what I can teach this little soul on a daily basis. And then he grew and grew. My son is almost two years old now and I have loved every single second with him. I was so fortunate that I could raise him on my own and with my parents help because this is where I lived since my son was five weeks old. (My husband is on a mission with the United Nations in Congo).

I am feeling these days that more and more of his baby-ness is falling away. I am just wondering what is next. Another baby? Yes! I am open for it. I would love to have another one. I am wondering if I have any holes in my heart that yearn to be filled with another baby. Or if I want to grow our family one more time.  I am sure the answer is yes and if it will happen it will happen. No stress involved. I always asked myself when it is the right time to have a baby. When will I slow down enough to have one and say it is okay to have a baby  now. Well, there is no right time. Life never slows down enough so I would say, okay, NOW I want a baby because NOW the time is right.

I have promised myself that if we get the chance to get pregnant again that I will enjoy this beautiful season of my life. I will be in the now which will be so important and this is exactly where I want to be and where I need to be. We will see what happens next for this little family of mine but I am open for changes all the time. I have this little voice inside of me saying:
“If it happens it will be an awesome experience all over again!”

Usually whenever I am traveling and leaving my parents’ place my mom makes sure I take a jar of jam with me. I believe to most people this would be weird – a jar of jam, or two – but to me it is always so much more. To just get a little idea about this jam-thing is to understand her way of saying that she loves me.  I see my mom picking all the berries from the bushes or trees when it is time to harvest – then proudly going to the kitchen and cooking the best jam ever is amazing. The way she washes the berries first, weighing and measuring all the ingredients will always be familiar; as the smell that flows through the house when the jam cooks is. And of course we always tried the jam with a slice of bread when it was still too hot to eat. 🙂

Then she gives me the nicest jar to take on my flight to wherever. How it is always important for her to make sure my family and I have always fresh sheets, towels, simply fresh everything when we come to stay. With me currently living here of course nothing has changed. Sometimes the feeling is just me reverting back to being 12-years-old when I am here. Of course I am grown up and the situation with me living at my parents place for so long now is definitely not normal but we arranged for the time being let’s say. I know I am their grown daughter and a wife and adult with a child and that this living situation will not be forever. But just the thought that they offered to help me and make me more comfortable I will never ever forget. And I have been telling them that I am very grateful for what they did for me and petit Joel so far; also for my husband when he visited.

It is also nice to see that every time my younger brother is here my dad makes sure his car is all checked before he leaves again. Tapes and fixes it, and fills some oil in here and there. All sparkle and shine. It is the cutting out of any “Sudoku” from the newspaper for him because he loves to solve them.  And the coffee that my mom always makes fresh whenever he wakes up.

Also when my younger sister comes home to visit they take care of her as well. And if it is just by taking her two kids for a couple of hours so she can relax and have a drink outside on the terrace with me at night. 🙂 Also how they let all of us know whenever they see, hear, or read anything that could be of interest to us; call with traffic updates or when they always say “call when you get home and be careful driving”.

These are my parents.  They show us that they love us verbally but also through actions. I have never realized this too much when I grew up because it seemed just “normal” but now since I moved away, came back, all grown up as a mother I can see and understand all this even better. I have been thinking today that becoming a parents after I have been parented all my life is pretty weird. When I grew up I had all these guidelines, models of what to do and what not to do or even more how to figure out how to solve something and what being a good parents looks like. All this knowledge I gained I have to apply to myself and my son now if I wish to do so.  Maybe just some of it – whatever I like best.

I have been thinking about the parent I want to be and the parent I currently am. I thought of my son and how he is growing up – and how  he at some point might look back at me as his mom and at the way I love him and did things for him. And most importantly I want for him to look back at his childhood and just feel happiness. Just remembering the smell of this glass of jam. All of these little things in our daily life like I have his banana in the morning sliced up, his apple juice mixed with water ready when he is having breakfast. All these routines that make him happy. Read to him every night and make sure he has his teddy when he curl up in bed – big love, little actions. 😀

A glass of jam, this all so familiar smell in the kitchen when my mom cooks it – I am looking forward to all these  things I can show my son and this will roll into the larger story of this unconditional love I have for him.