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One of our latest events will be coming back to Anthyllis for the winter, after a very successful evening in our workshop area recently.

Bacchus & Beyond run wine-tasting evenings, and will be back at Anthyllis on the 4th December for an evening devoted to the appreciation of the finer points of all things grape. The evenings have proved so popular (and such a lot of fun) that we’d quite like to make them a regular occurrence.

So if anybody out there would like to arrange an evening with us - as a Christmas gift with a difference, or for corporate hospitality or staff incentives - please do get in touch. We can put together a soireé from as little as £20 per head, which includes superb quality wines, glass hire and tasting notes for all your guests.

For details of other events being held at Anthyllis, pop across to our website at www.anthyllis.co.uk/events-calendar.

I was interested to notice this week that Dr Hauschka skin care products have been named by the Belfast Telegraph as one of the ten best organic skin care products out there.

Of course, given that I think the sun rises and sets on Dr Hauschka, this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise…

Click here to see which other products made the list.

What do you think? Have they missed any brilliant brands?

It’s been a bit of an exciting week here at Anthyllis!

Finally, finally, finally after nearly two years of searching we have managed to find an excellent spray tan product that sits in line with our chemical-free, holistic philosophy. Lorrie and I were trained to use Vani-T Velocity spray tan yesterday (Cheryl Cole’s spray tan of choice, oo-er!), and the pair of us are now going about our business glowing mellowly, having practiced on each other at the end of the session.

I must say, I tend to be a bit of a fake tan skeptic myself – having had a few too many run-ins with products that made me look a bit Atomic Kitten; you know that way where your skin ends up about the same colour as your hair? Well I have had two Vani-T Velocity tans now, and I must say I’m thoroughly impressed with the tasteful, natural-looking, even colour that I’ve turned both times.

There’s none of this nonsense you get with some other spray tans where the colour seems to collect in certain areas – the ever popular “recently been Tangoed and forgotten to wash your ankles” look has been well and truly banished! Also gone is the tacky unpleasantness that comes with having to spend all night covered in sludge-coloured goo while your tan develops; Vani-T Velocity can be showered off in only an hour (for a light glow) to four hours (for dusky loveliness), and in the meantime it dries nicely so you don’t feel too much like the sticky part of a post-it note.  

I personally tend towards the “blue, may turn white in sunshine” type of complexion, and an hour’s development time with this product is plenty for me to look quite nicely as if I was a normal person who’d spent a week or so in the Mediterranean. Not only is this convenient for me, in that I don’t need to spend the best part of a day wandering about looking like I could do with a good wash, but it’s also good news for my husband who can’t stand the smell of ordinary spray tans and shuns me accordingly when I occasionally indulge.

Vani-T Velocity doesn’t smell of very much at all – if I was pushed, I’d have to say that the nearest thing I can compare it to is a faint whiff of chocolate (which, to be fair, can’t be bad). It dries instantly, so you don’t have to stand about in the buff for quarter of an hour after you’ve been sprayed, and being 100% organic and chemical-free, I don’t feel squeamish about putting it on my skin.

So what’s the catch then? Surely nothing can be as great as this without having any obvious drawbacks? Well if I’m being honest, I did find the guide colour a teeny bit scary when I looked at my face after I’d been sprayed for the first time; there was a lot of very noticeable teeth/skin contrast going on, which made me feel a bit more Simon Cowell than Cheryl Cole. This meant that the hour’s development time was a little on the tense side as I wondered whether I’d continue to look toothy and frightening once it was washed off! However, one hour, a frenzied dash home and a quick shower later I was reassured as my features were completely back to normal.

With the variable development/results time, it might take you one or two tries to decide on how long you should leave the guide colour on so that the result you get is perfect for you; I’ve tried one hour and one-and-a-half hours so far and both have been absolutely lovely.

Heck! If it’s good enough for Cheryl Cole, it’s good enough for me.

If you’d like to come in and try Vani-T Velocity for yourself, just give us a call on 0131 313 2001 or send us an email at mail@anthyllis.co.uk – a full body spray tan will set you back a mere £25.

We will also be running a promo day all day on Thursday 26th November, when you will be able come in and try the new tan at a discounted rate of £15. No appointments necessary, but tans will be done on a first-come-first-served basis so I’d suggest you make sure you’ve got time to join the queue as hopefully we’ll be busy! We’re planning to make a bit of a day of it, so you might get a cheeky discount on some of our other products while you’re in as well…

Hope to see you there!

Normalising Day Oil

I remember the days before I found out about Dr Hauschka’s normalising day oil…

I would get up in the morning and wash my face, apply a moisturiser for sensitive skin, then plaster make-up on top to hide all my spots. By the time I got to work, my skin would resemble an oil slick – and I’d have to sprint straight into the ladies’ loos to dab the grease off my T-zone before reapplying powder to hide the tell-tale shine.

This unsatisfactory state of affairs had been my morning routine since before I’d even been a teenager. My skin was completely unmanageable, my spots out of control and bent on world domination. At 27, I was fed up with having skin like Adrian Mole, and was determined to try anything to help sort it out once and for all.

Finally, after reading a review in The Scotsman about the Dr Hauschka Treatment at Anthyllis, I felt inspired to visit and find out if there was any chance that natural, organic products could succeed where a thousand high street skincare brands had failed.

Despite being truly appalled at the thought of adding more oil to my already turbo-shiny skin, the science made sense to me and I resolved to give it a go. The theory behind normalising day oil is that by adding oil to an oily skin, the sebaceous glands are reassured that production levels are satisfactory, and they can slow down the pumping-out process.

Often, oily skin can be caused by the very products that purport to treat it. By stripping the skin of oil with harsh cleansing products, the sebaceous glands react by producing even more to redress the balance. The result is unbalanced, unhappy skin that constantly over-produces oil in an effort to replace what is being stripped away day and night by the skincare routine.

Hence the fetching shiny oil-slick look…

Dr Hauschka normalising day oil treats like with like – so oil goes on to oily skin. As disturbing as this sounds to fellow “greasies” like me, the skin learns to slow down oil production very quickly in reaction to the extra supply. Skin balances itself out, oil production normalises, and with the reduced oil levels comes less pore-blockage – and hence fewer spots, hurrah!

Throw into the mix some yummy extracts of carrot, calendula, apricot and anthyllis, and you have a pore-refining, grease-busting, glow-giving elixir of ethereal loveliness! Ok, so maybe I take my love of Dr Hauschka a bit too far at times, but try being a 27 year-old with a 16 year-old acne condition, and whatever sorts it out for you is bound to be pretty  popular…

We’re all excited here at Anthyllis, looking forward to our new Hatha Yoga workshops which will be starting in mid July.

It’s well known that learning Yoga can help sufferers of stress and anxiety to unwind, but did you also know that Yoga can also help to manage the distressing symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)? Our new Yoga partner, Rachael Dunsmore is bringing her expertise in the mind/body connection to Anthyllis and will be running two 7-week blocks of Yoga classes from the Anthyllis workshop.

Find out more by visiting the Anthyllis website here: http://bit.ly/4w0PN.

Recent EU rulings on the UVA filtration capacity of sunscreens have sadly forced our friends at Dr Hauschka to withdraw their very popular natural organic sunscreen range. The new regulations demand a level of UVA protection from sunblock that would be impossible to achieve without adding chemical ingredients, which would really fly in the face of the Dr H ethos.   

There’s been a bit of an international hoo-ha over the changes, and at least one other manufacturer, Weleda, has been forced to step down from the natural sunscreen market for the time being.

While, of course, it’s great that the EU are looking after our skin so carefully, the changes do leave those of us who are interested in protecting our skin naturally a little bit up the creek.

Here at Anthyllis, our customers have been voicing pretty universal disappointment in the products’ withdrawal, and we’re now on a mission to find another brand that fits with the Anthyllis natural approach whilst also meeting the EU guidelines.

We’ve found a few names to look into – one of which is Lavera, who seem to have managed to meet the regulations up to factor 20, which is a start! In the meantime, if anybody out there has any recommendations or other products we might want to look at, please do leave us a comment.

http://www.drhauschka.co.uk/news/2009/04/story-9

Hello and welcome to the new Anthyllis Organic Health and Beauty weblog.

This is where we’ll be posting bits and pieces of interesting information, stories and updates on our favourite subjects; organic health and beauty, personal development and general all-round natural wellbeing.

We’re looking forward to sharing our news with you, please do keep an eye on our blog and website www.anthyllis.co.uk for more updates and information.

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