Good enough to eat: LUSH-inspired edibles
Fresh, natural ingredients are at the heart of our formulas at LUSH. Sometimes the resulting creations look so delicious that we're tempted to take a bite, although our recipes aren't designed to make a good snack; they're designed to be effective on the skin and hair. To keep our nibbly temptations at bay, we've taken inspiration from our delicious-looking products and adapted them into tasty recipes that will keep us from sneaking sly bites in the LUSH kitchens!
Vegan banana-oat cookies
One of the most appetizing products in our shops is our Oatifix fresh face mask. It looks like a delicious creamy bowl of banana oatmeal, but contains kaolin clay which would make it much too gritty to be an enjoyable snack! Save the face mask for beautifying your skin; we've taken the most delicious ingredients from Oatifix and made them into a tasty vegan cookie recipe.
Oatifix is full of ingredients that are fantastic for your skin and beneficial for your body. We use oats for their soothing, anti-inflammatory properties. They work wonders to calm the skin, though it's not only our skin that benefits from oats; they are also highly nutritious. Oats are a source of calciu...
DIY Terrariums: Grow Your Own Piece of Nature
Here at LUSH HQ, our spring months are often filled with gray rainy days that leave us longing for sunny afternoons spent outdoors. In an effort to bring a little of the outdoors inside (while staying out of the rain), we decided to make terrariums for our office!
Terrariums are fantastic little ecosystems that are simple to create and manage. Trust us: even the most gardening-inept can tackle making one! They provide us with a little piece of nature that will flourish on a desktop, bedside table or bookshelf in our homes or offices and create a connection with the environment that can be difficult to attain for the city-dwellers among us.
Not only do terrariums help to foster a deeper connection with the natural world, they also have positive effects on our health! NASA's studies in the eighties proved that houseplants improve interior air quality, and studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences show that indoor plants decrease incidences of dry skin, fatigue and coughing. If you're a business owner or manager, take note: a study by the same university concluded that offices with have living plants report less sick time taken by employees and higher productivity. Nobody wants to play hooky if they've got a terrarium to look after!
With all these benefits to owning a terrarium, what's holding you back? Not sure how to make one yet? Let's do it together- you'll be an expert in no time.
Choosing ...
LUSH Crafternoon: Put a Pinwheel On It
Do you know which way the wind is blowing?
Often used in Chinese New Year celebrations for their symbolic meaning of 'turning one's luck around', pinwheels became widely popular children's toys in North America in the early 1920s. But they aren't just for kids anymore! You've likely spotted a pinwheel or two in bridesmaid's bouquets, table centerpieces or as decorative garden flourishes. Inspired by our pinwheel-adorned Mother's Day gift, Happiness, this craft is simple, beautiful and sure to impress your mother dearest.
Materials Needed:
- Colorful, double-sided craft paper
- Scissors
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Large straws (or wooden dowels with a hole drilled through the top)
- Small felt or fabric flowers
- Long, bendable pins
- Medium-sized round beads
Step 1 The very first, and most important, step is to make sure your paper is a perfect square. Fold your paper in half, and then in half again, to find the center. Mark it with an X.
Step 2 With your pencil and ruler, draw straig...
Take A Hike
None of us realize how simple it is to celebrate the earth in our every day lives.
There is a sense that we are obligated to do something very different from our daily routine to honor our earth during the month of April each year.
The problem is that simply one day a year is not enough.
It isn’t sustainable. If you thought of it like a marriage, like maintaining a friendship that you truly cherish, would you dedicate more than only one day a year towards that effort? I know you would.
In Gibran’s quote, you see how simple it is to be one with the earth; to commune her and to celebrate the gifts she brings to us. In observance of this time of year, it might even be more fulfilling to take a day off from work (yes, I advocate working less), go out to the beach or to the forest, and spend a day feeling the vibrations of the earth in an ...
10 Things You Might Not Know About... HONEY!
Honey is one of nature’s purest ingredients--the gooey result of dedicated honeybees. Apart from the scent, flavor and golden-hued goodness we associate with honey, it creates a buzz for all kinds of different reasons:
1. Spanish poet Antonio Machado once wrote, "I dreamt - marvelous error! - that I had a beehive here insife my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures."
2. Honey changes appearance and texture over time, and is sensitive to its environment, but some batches appear to be thousands of years old and not rancid. Honey was one of the gifts entombed inside Egyptian crypts. When explorers found ancient burial sites, the honey they found in some cases was quite well-preserved.
3. Honey has noted antiseptic powers, and aids in creating a protective barrier on wounds. It lends a hand in the skin’s natural processes of healin...
