MH's 5th Fan Page Giveaway

As many of you know by now we have Marmalade Hills Fan Page giveaways every time we acquire 30 new fans. It is a fun way to introduce our products to loyal fans/friends and to get their help in making some business decisions. We believe that being successful in business is a two-way street. After all we are small indie business and this is how we differ from the "big guys" who could care less about their faceless consumers. So this giveaway is no different, we need to hear your thoughts about something that has been on our mind for some time. We would love for you to have one of our Clay Facial Masks as a "Thank you" for your time. Please feel free to share this giveaway with your friends, however there are some rules: to enroll in MH's 5th Fan Page Giveaway you must be a Marmalade Hills fan on Facebook; you must be 18 years of age or older; and you have to leave a comment to this post on our blog. Whether you are a fan or just a friend please tell us what kind of Marmalade Hills' product you think you would most likely buy at an art/craft show or fair and why. Would it be handcrafted soaps, facial care product, moisturizers and so on? We are looking forward to your comments which we will take into consideration while preparing for our upcoming shows. Please leave your comment underneath this post. If you leave a comment as anonymous, don't forget to sign your comment. This giveaway will be closed for comments exactly one week from today-March 5th. As always random winner will be announced on our Fan Page.


Good luck!
Liana.

Marmalade Hills Official Debut

Good day my friends! After long time in draft Marmalade Hills' website is ready for it's official debut! We are still hard at work on our shopping cart but now we finally have a place that we can call HOME! It feels great to see how everything takes shape and coming together slowly but surely! You are witnessing a very important moment in Marmalade Hills' life :)
Please stop by to test drive our website and leave your feedbacks and comments!

Truly yours,
Liana.

Healthy Nails Tip

From little girls to teenagers, young women to older age women, we all love to have beautiful, healthy looking nails. There are salons for the care and beautification of nails but the basic care has to start from home. Well maintained nails are a true reflection of good health and hygiene. Try some of these really easy, natural tips from www.SimpleHealth.com to make your nails stronger, less brittle, more shiny and even to grow them faster and longer.
1) Dip cotton swab in fresh lemon juice and rub for 5 to 7 minutes on the nails, doing each nail one by one. After the rub do not wash hands for 10 minutes. Thereafter, wash your hands with tepid water. Regular application of lemon juice will make your nails stronger and give them a natural shine.
2) To remove paleness from the nails try including beet root and Vitamin D into your diet.
3) Soak about handful of raisins in the night in water before going to bed. When you wake up in the morning, drink this water and eat soaked raisins. This will improve your iron content restoring the natural pinkish-reddish tinge on nails and palms and even add a glow to your face.
4) For growing nails, instead of rubbing lemon, keep the nails dipped in a bowl of tepid lemon water for 5 minutes. This helps to deep clean the nails also. Wash with cold water immediately after that.
5) Like for other parts of our body, the intake of 3 servings of dairy every day is beneficial to the nails as well. It will prevent the brittleness and weakness in the nails and will avoid the nails getting chipped every now and then.
6) If almond oil is available to you, massaging the nails with almond oil daily makes the nails beautiful, strong and cures the brittle nails problem.

This article was altered from the original version which you can find here

If Marmalade Hills' Body Oil is already your favorite product, you can utilize it for massaging it into your nails, as it is made of highly nutritious and moisturizing natural oils that will reduce brittle nails problem and improve elasticity of the skin (cuticles) around your nails.

P.S. if you have missed our previous healthy tips you can find them here:
Clean Truth about Antibacterial Soap
10 Foods that are healthier than you think
Healthy Nails Tips
Healthy Hair Tips
When to buy Organic and when it's ok not to
Benefits of Green Tea
Beauty Sleep
Fish Oil or Omega 3 & 6
How to add years to your life

Fourth Fan Page Giveaway

We have been having regular Fan Page Giveaways every time Marmalade Hills acquires 30 new fans! Our fourth Fan Page giveaway is here! Anyone who is our fan on Facebook can enroll to win! This time the winner will receive Marmalade Hills Ultimate Body Butter of their choice (Lavender, Tea Tree Blossom, Cranberry Fig, Coconut Lime)! Body Butters are temperature sensitive products and will not be offered for sale during warm/hot months. You can find out more about our Ultimate Body Butters here.
There are a few rules for this giveaway: to enroll you must be a Marmalade Hills fan on Facebook; you must be 18 years of age or older; and you have to leave a comment to this post. This time please comment about what type of retail stores you see selling Marmalade Hills products? Health food market, Gift/Flower shop, Spa/Salon, Artisan Gallery or something else? I would love to hear your thoughts on this, as it will help me to pursue the right type of possible retail locations. If you leave a comment as anonymous, don't forget to put your name at the end. This giveaway will be closed for comments on February 10th.

Good luck to all!

Truly yours,
Liana.

Featured Product - Lip Balm

Marmalade Hills' Lip Balm is a beautiful child of thorough research and precise formulation. I have come a long way to get to this perfectly smooth, not too soft and not too hard, nutrient rich and vitamin packed lip balm. It is made of creamy beeswax, exotic butters, nutritious oils, soothing aloe vera juice and Vitamin E. Combined together in perfect amounts they protect, moisturize and nurture gentle skin of your lips. Our lip balms are great to wear under your favorite lipstick, I find it especially useful to wear under mineral base lipsticks as they are loaded with powdery pigments that can make your lips feel extremely dry. We also have an optional hook attachments that allow you conveniently wear our lip balms on your key chain or hook it on to your kids back pack. One thing I am sure of is that you can never have enough lip balms! So check out our lip balm sets and remember that each individually purchased lip balm will be shipped for free as a secondary purchased item.

* Creamy Bees Wax is a natural emulsifier and it serves as protective coating that locks in moisture and nutrients on your skin.
* African Shea Butter has been praised for centuries in Africa and is very well respected now for its ability to moisturize and nourish dry, damaged skin. It has been clinically shown to provide benefits from just dry skin to many minor dermatological diseases (if you have a serious skin condition, you should see a doctor).
* Coconut Oil is the source of two of the most powerful anti-microbial agents found in any food substances. These are Capric Acid and Lauric Acid. They are the same acids that are found in mother’s milk and keep the baby protected from infections. When these are applied on skin, some microbes (good ones) present on skin convert these acids into Monocaprin and Monolaurin respectively, thereby replacing the protective acid layer on the skin. Finally, Coconut Oil is soothing on skin and highly penetrating.
* Palm Oil is high in fatty acids and leaving virtually no residue on the skin. An incredibly rich and intoxicating oil which gracefully shares it benefits in numerous food and cosmetic applications throughout the world.
* Almond Oil is one of the most useful, practical, and comonly used oils. It is great for all skin types as an acting emollient and is best known for its ability to soften, soothe, and re-condition the skin. Natural expeller pressed oil from raw almond kernels and exceptionally rich in fatty acids.
* Rose Hip Oil is one of my favorite ingredients. It is truly a miracle oil and it is extremely rich with essential fatty acids (omega-6 and omega-3) which help nourish skin and keep it plump and youthful, helping to reduce wrinkles, tone and smooth roughness. Essential fatty acids are called "essential" because our body is not able to produce them, they must be obtained through the diet or through supplementation. Rose Hip Oil is recommended for scarred tissue and this makes our balms a perfect solution for chapped lips.
* The structure of Jojoba Oil closely resembles that of your own skin sebum and is readily absorbed without making the skin feel greasy or tacky nor does it clog the pores.
* Most people know first-hand the soothing relief of aloe vera on minor burns, cuts and bruises. These superb qualities also add desirable effect of our lip balms on chapped lips.
* And the last but not least ingredient is a Vitamin E oil. The benefits of Vitamin E for the overall good health of individuals are substantial. In particular, Vitamin E is very important antioxidant, regulator of Vitamin A and an excellent anti-aging agent that makes skin look younger by reducing the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

They come in the variety of flavors. Lime, Mint, Tea Tree, Grapefruit are made with pure Essential Oils. Cherry Frost, Tender Plum, Blueberry Muffin, Dulce De Leche, Juicy Pear, Coconut Creme are made with lip safe, food grade natural flavors.

Monthly Newsletter

Our first ever monthly newsletter is here! In it I was trying to summarize most important things that had happened in 2009 and what you can expect from Marmalade Hills in 2010! Our newsletter is a great way to keep in touch if you don't use your Facebook too often, or if you are not familiar with the blogging community. Sign up for our newsletter and never miss a beat! Latest news, special offers, healthy living and beauty tips will be delivered straight to your mailbox! To subscribe just follow this link or check out the link on the left of this post. Hoping to see you on the list!

Healthy Tip - Green Tea

Our Healthy Tip Fridays have moved from notes area of our fan page to our blog. For our blog followers, who are not fans of Marmalade Hills' on Facebook, I have posted a few Healthy Tip Fridays already. You can find them here.
Tea is the agricaltural product of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia Sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods. After water, tea is the most widely-consumed beverage in the world, according to The Empire Of Tea by Alan Macfarlane.
I myself love to drink tea. In winter it is especially popular in our house, we can go through a box of tea in 4 or 5 days. I am sure everybody heard about many benefits of tea and especially green tea and probably I will not tell you anything new today, but I would like to bring to your attention the benefits of green tea once again. I think today's tip can be classified as "lazy healthy tip", right next to the fish oil :)

"More than a decade's worth of research about green tea's health benefits - particularly its potential to fight cancer and heart disease - has been more than intriguing, as have limited studies about green tea's role in lowering cholesterol, burning fat, preventing diabetes and stroke, and staving off dementia.

*Green tea's antioxidants, called catechins, scavenge for free radicals that can damage DNA and contribute to cancer, blood clots, and atherosclerosis. Grapes and berries, red wine, and dark chocolate also have potent antioxidants. Because of green tea's minimal processing - its leaves are withered and steamed, not fermented like black and oolong teas - green tea's unique catechins, especially epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), are more concentrated.

*Green Tea vs. Cancer. The American Cancer Society's strategic director of nutritional epidemiology, says human studies haven't yet proven what researchers like Chan have discovered in the lab: green tea's EGCG regulates and inhibits cancer growth and kills cells that are growing inappropriately. Still, it's difficult not to be intrigued by a few human studies that have shown that drinking at least two cups of green tea daily inhibits cancer growth. One of them, a study conducted in Japan that involved nearly 500 Japanese women with Stage I and Stage II breast cancer, found that increased green tea consumption before and after surgery was associated with lower recurrence of the cancers.

*Green Tea good for your heart? It seems to be, but there are conflicting results of a few epidemiological studies conducted in the East and West.
In a study that involved 500 Japanese men and women, researchers found that drinking at least four cups of green tea every day may be related to the reduced severity of coronary heart disease among the male participants. A Dutch study of more than 3,000 men and women found that the more tea consumed, the less severe the clogging of the heart's blood vessels, especially in women. As Goldberg suggests, lifestyle and overall diet are critical to the outcomes of these studies. But green tea's antioxidants are dilators, she says, because they improve the flexibility of blood vessels and make them less vulnerable to clogging - and antioxidant-rich blueberries and pomegranates do the same.

*Green Tea and Weight. Green tea and its extract have been shown to fight obesity and lower "bad" cholesterol - two risk factors for heart disease and diabetes - but in very limited studies.

*Green tea Straight Up. Taking weight loss supplements that contain green tea extract probably won't hurt, unless you have liver problems. But the best way to get the most out of green tea - even if your main goal is losing weight - is to drink it."

For complete article please follow this link: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/health-benefits-of-green-tea

If you can not get enough of green tea in your cup try these products from Marmalade Hills' that are made with miracle green tea extract:
All Natural Facial Toners; Moisturizing Bath Bombs; Omega 3 Body Lotions.

P.S. if you have missed our previous healthy tips you can find them here:
Clean Truth about Antibacterial Soap
10 Foods that are healthier than you think
Healthy Nails Tips
Healthy Hair Tips
When to buy Organic and when it's ok not to
Benefits of Green Tea
Beauty Sleep
Fish Oil or Omega 3 & 6
How to add years to your life

What is soap?

I wanted to talk about natural and cold process soaps in particular, since I started this blog. But because it seemed like such a massive subject I have been putting it off and putting it off untill today. So get yourself a hot cup of cocoa and read on...
According to various legends, modern soap has its origins at mount Sapo where sacrifices were often cremated and hardwood ashes would accumulate (an early source of alkali). These ashes mixed with the tallow of the sacrificed animals. It is said that after a heavy rain a yellow runoff from the fire pit made its way downhill from the temple. The local women washing their clothes in the river noticed that their clothes were cleaner when the river ran yellow. Over time it was learned that adding salt water to the mixture would precipitate the removal of glycerin and excess water, thus making the soap harder, and not subject to the month long curing process required of true handmade soap. This old-fashioned "yellow soap" was used for laundry, dishes, and the occasional bath. But don't forget, it is just a legend. I am not sure whether anybody really knows the true story.
Well then, what is soap? Soap is a result of chemical reaction between oils and alkiline solution (the base, popularly referred to as lye) this process is also known as saponification. Soap cannot be made without lye. But be sure that because of our precise formulation and a curing period of six weeks, there is absolutely no trace of lye left in Marmalade Hills' natural soap. So how does soap work? Soap molecules can dissolve in water and at the same time they can dissolve grease molecules. While normally oil and water do not mix, the addition of soap allows oils to dissolve in water, allowing them to be rinsed away easily as water strings down your body and into the drain. Brilliantly simple! Nature has her ways of taking care of everything, doesn't she?
What is so special about handcrafted, cold process soap? All soaps are not created equaly. Today's soaps are often made from cleaning agents, such as synthetic detergents and are designed to look like a "beauty bar" or "body bar". The truth is that they are made with the same chemicals you use to wash your dishes or your car. Marmalade Hills' natural cold process soaps are completely different from mass produced soap or even glycerin soaps (these are sold as melt and pour bases). Our handcrafted soaps are made from skin loving, vegetable ingredients and other nature derrived ingredients like earth pigments, clays, herbs and essential oils. Our soaps will not over-dry your skin, as many tend to believe. The cold process soap is the best thing for your skin! In fact I recommend it even over our natural shower gels - those are not as gentle, because even though they are both technically natural, they are not made the same way...but that's another story. All our cold process soaps are made with high-quality, natural ingredients carefully chosen for their healing and beneficial abilities. Food grade Olive Oil is used as a base oil (about 50% of all oils), we also add coconut oil and palm oil for hardness. No vegetable shortenings or canola oil here. In addition I love to play with herbal infusions, prescious oils and butters by adding them at the end of the saponification process. It is called superfatting. This way additional oils do not go through full saponification process, they retain their nutrients and hang around to make our soaps extra moisturizing and gentle. All Marmalade Hills' soaps are made from scratch, using time tested "cold process" method. We mix warm oils, lye and water together. We pour raw soap in small 10 lb molds, let it sit wrapped in blankets for 48 hours. We unmold, cut, weigh and package soaps by hand. So you are getting the most unique yet very functional treat you can get!
Finally, how to take care of your cold process soap? Cold process soap will last you for a very long time if stored properly. Do not leave your soap under a running water, store it away in a dry spot of your shower on a soap dish with drainage holes on the bottom. You can use a regular soap dish, but you must use simple soap saver in this case.

Got SOAP?!

Holiday SALE

Our Spring line of products has been finalized and it means that it is time to make some room for our new, deliciously smelling inventory! Enjoy the remaining stock of our popular seasonal products at 50% off! We had a great run this Holiday season and have only limited quantities of each product left. Remember, when these are gone they are gone until next Winter!