Create a Mothers Day Certificate
Moms love gifts that come from their children’s hands as well as their hearts. This year your children may want to create a Mothers Day certificate and poem. It will be something that any mother would cherish, no matter what the age of the children.
If your family is like most, you may have given gifts like flowers, candy, or a nice meal out. Mom isn’t going to complain about any of these gifts, but she may want something that requires a little more thought on your part or the part of the children in her life.
Think of all of the things that Mom has mentioned she would like but has never taken the time or spent the money on herself to get. It could be something as simple as having no laundry to do for a day to something as complex as spending at least two hours where all she has to do is relax. If you listen, you may be surprised at the number of ideas you can come up with to use for ideas for creating Mothers Day certificates.
Mom may have mentioned on a number of occasions how she wished she had some time for herself. You can create a Mothers Day certificate for nearly anything. Just think of how excited Mom will be when she sees a certificate for a day at a local spa her own bathroom. The certificate could offer Mom two free hours to enjoy her home-spa.
You can get everything to create a day spa in the comfort of her own home. Scented candles, bubble baths, soft luxurious towels, and soothing music can help you create the atmosphere of a spa at any time of day or night. If you have younger siblings, include free babysitting services for the time shes away at the spa.
What? You dont know how to create this dream-come-true certificate for Mom? You can find computer software that will make certificates or you can make something on your own. Write a poem or statement of appreciation for Mom and then use any word processing software to put a beautiful border around it. Print it out and roll it up like a scroll. Tie it off with a lovely ribbon and tuck a flower Moms favorite into the ribbon.
She will be so impressed by the look of the scroll she may not open it for quite some time. However, when she does open it, and she reads the words you have written from your heart, her heart will melt. You might want to be prepared with tissues just in case she begins to cry because of your thoughtfulness.
If the children are very young, you may want to create a Mothers Day certificate that will help Mom remember what the children were like at this age. You can find Mothers Day poems online or in magazines that Mom will love. Print out the poem and paste it onto a sheet of paper with the children’s hand prints on it. This will be a keepsake Mom will love and cherish for years to come.
How Ingredient Concentrations Alter Effectiveness in Anti-Aging Products
Chances are, at some point in your life you decide to start treating signs of aging. Sunspots, facial wrinkles, eye wrinkles, and hyper pigmentation are all concerns of ours as we grow older and start to be concerned about what we can do to treat them. If you watch even a sliver of television or are exposed to the media via the Internet, chances are you are being bombarded with wrinkle cream offers, anti-aging advertisements, and other skin care product ads. With thousands of companies out there claiming that their product is the best, how do you know which one really is effective in fighting the signs of aging?
Many of us look at ingredients first and foremost. For those of you that don’t look at the ingredients in any sort of anti-aging product, shame on you. Ingredient knowledge is very important for a consumer to know. Ingredients such as retinol, hyaluronic acid, and matrixyl are world-class, KNOWN ingredients that will effectively fight and treat wrinkles. You can try searching for any of those in Google and find a wealth of supporting information, but just so you have a cheat sheet, there they are. Before I was a die-hard skin care and cosmetic expert, I used to ask myself, “why don’t these products I buy at the local pharmacy work? The packaging says it has the same ingredients as the expensive eye creams and skin care products I see online.” I now know the answer, and if you continue reading, you will know it too.
Basically, I entered the business of skin care after really having a problem with spending so much money on products that I didn’t see results from. If you visit your local drugstore, you will see that anti-aging products usually priced well under $20 have the same ingredients as the products you see online offered for $89, 99, even $250 on occasion. Why is there such a variance in price, I used to ask myself? Well, the answer is in the concentration levels of each ingredient. It’s safe to assume at least 50% of any anti-aging cream is water, and of course there are ingredients that help to hold them all together. What this means in laymans terms is that the products you see at lower price points are not concentrated at the levels of the expensive creams. Of course, if retinol works as an ingredient, for example, you would think that a trace of retinol would help the formula. But, what if product a had 1% retinol, and product b had 12% retinol. That’s a big difference in concentration levels. So, taking that information, you can see why different products work differently when they are marketed with the same ingredients.
You also will notice that marquee ingredients will draw a much higher price tag in anti-aging products. Recently, I’ve seen eye creams that are made with the acai berry and gaba, two powerful ingredients that can really take an eye cream to the next level. If you have a chance to get your hands on one of these eye creams, in my opinion it’s worth the extra cost.
It can get tricky, as most of the time it’s difficult to find out what levels of concentration of each ingredient are in different products, but when there is a huge difference in price, and subsequently, effectiveness, it’s safe to say the higher ticket anti-aging creams have a much higher concentration of each ingredient when compared to the cheaper product. I am in no way saying that cheaper products don’t work, I don’t want to give that impression. The only comparison I can draw when I review products such as eye creams is that one may be like buying an tylenol to treat pain, when in reality the treatment that will cure the pain the best would be something much stronger, such as hydrocodone or another powerful prescription pain reliever.
Of course, with any anti-aging product, your mileage may vary. Good luck in your product search and remember to read plenty of wrinkle cream reviews before buying.
Rice Salad with Fresh Herbs
Ingredients:
8 oz brown rice
18 fl oz water
4 tbsp oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, crushed
Salt and black pepper
2 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 tbsp fresh chives, finely chopped
[or any other green herbs such as basil and spring onions]
Method:
Wash the brown rice thoroughly and add to a large pot of boiling water (18 fl oz), stirring once. Simmer covered for about 25 – 30 minutes or until the rice is cooked and the liquid absorbed.
In a separate bowl, whisk oil, vinegar and garlic as well as salt and pepper and mix through the rice while it is still warm.
Let the rice stand until cooled off, then mix in the herbs.
This makes a nice side dish to any BBQ meat.
