skin = largest organ

One thing that I did learn in massage school that blew my mind, and has stuck with me ever since, is that our skin is our largest organ. Never knew this before. Did you?

That being said, I knew that the bubble baths, and shampoos & soaps that I was using on my baby twins had to also be clean & healthy (in addition to the food they were eating).

Never once was a Johnson & Johnson product used in our home- although for many (even me), we associate the "no more tears" with something ALL babies should use, right? I mean, why should a product used to bathe our precious little babies sting their eyes?

Guess what people? That "no more tears" garbage, is just that. Garbage. The "thing" that makes it not cause tears is CHEMICALS! In case you weren't aware of the fact that J&J were supposedly going to remove these harmful chemicals in their baby shampoo, you can read about it here . And even scarier, the chemicals were not disclosed on product labels because they're contaminants, not ingredients, and therefore are exempt from labeling laws.

I started using California Baby regularly. The shampoo & body wash was awesome & clean! The sunblock the only one I used on them for many years, and the sun stick too! Then I started thinking about what I put on ME! From make-up (not that I wear it too often), to lotion, to shampoo. Anything we put ON our bodies, ends up IN our bodies. Period.

I recall when Bath & Body Works (don't even want to mention that store, but I have to for the purposes of this post. When I walk past that store, I get an INSTANT headache, and FEAR for the employees long-term health woes, from breathing that junk in day in & out. Literally, breaks my heart.) carried non-B&BW products in the front of the store, one of them being a line called 100% Pure. Smelling the samples of the body lotions was incredible- lotions that truly smell like the name on the label (back then, the packaging was in a bottle with a pump, they are now sold in tubes). I'm a huge citrus fan, so I was immediately hooked on the Blood Orange, but also couldn't get enough of the Vanilla or Coconut. They even had make-up! I had to try a lip gloss, since I'm a huge "lip-gloss-girl". Low and behold, it tasted like FRUIT! You know why??  Because all of 100% Pure's make-up is colored with fruit & vegetable pigments, and flavored with the real deal!! Best of all- they had bubble bath & shampoo/bodywash for the kids in fun & yummy flavors! SCORE!

For reasons still unknown to me, I stopped using 100% Pure for a few years. I think either B&BW stopped carrying it, or I just stopped going to the mall regularly.

Flash forward to 2012. I'm 6 months pregnant, with love child on the way. And my super awesome fellow-massage-therapist friend, Meldi invited me to her home for ... are you ready? A freakin' 100% Pure party (as an alex+von consulant). Wait! What?? STOP IT RIGHT NOW!  You mean the same 100% Pure I know and love and couldn't get enough of???  COUNT ME IN!  I am there.  So, I grab Dylan and take her with me. Perched atop Meldi's table were the yummy scrumptious products I had missed so much. Then, here is the kicker! Not only can I go to my friends house to BUY this stuff, I can sell it too!!!

I have ALWAYS been a person who LOVES LOVES LOVES nothing more than sharing amazing finds with my friends and family. I have been doing it for years and years, and have seemed to become a go-to person of sorts, for all things "natural". Can you say, perfect fit?? I can!

alex+von is simply awesome! They hand pick brands for consultants, like me, to represent. Just a little background and why I love them so!

Our Story
At alex+von we're taking a fresh approach to working from home. We give women the opportunity to earn income selling products from amazing boutique brands. We connect these brands with women sellers who are truly passionate about their products. Women recommend and sell products in-person, via home parties, or online. They can represent one or more brands. We enable each woman to decide what works best for her.
We have a passion for well-crafted products and socially-responsible companies. With every purchase you make, you support a woman in your community and help small businesses in the U.S. succeed. You help us make a difference every day.

Now this one is a biggie:
Our ingredient promise
We guarantee that our products are free of the following ingredients which have been identified as endocrine disruptors, possible causes of cancer and generally harmful to environment*:
1. BHA and BHT
2. Coal tar dyes
3. DEA
4. Dibutyl phthalate
5. Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives
6. Parabens
7. Parfum (a.k.a. fragrance)
8. PEG compounds
9. Petrolatum
10. Siloxanes
11. Sodium laureth sulfate
12. Triclosan

If you are interested in reading more, here is the direct link to the website page where this information came from. PROUD to be a part of a company like THIS, when there are so many others that aren't so great & do NOT have full disclosure of their ingredients, or if they do they include ingredients that will HARM & not HELP you & your family.

But wait, there's more!  Yes. 100% Pure was the main reason I joined up with alex+von immediately, if not sooner. HA!  However, since then, there have been 3 others brands I have become a consultant for (meaning, I specialize in these brands & know a little more about them than the others we carry).  And they are... Original Moxie FABULOUS salon-quality haircare, EO Products bath, body, pets, kids, men, & home ALL "scented" with essential oils & Grateful Body Skincare which is WHOLE-istic as it gets!  Super pure & super clean, and a little goes a LONG way. So now I get to host parties at my home, or the homes of others, and SHARE THE LOVE for these truly amazing products (something I have always done anyway), getting people more aware & healthy and wow... I'm so very lucky!  alex+von is so dynamic, it's so smart- they keep bringing on more lines for us to represent & they truly only get better.  

BOTTOM LINE- Just because companies use buzz words, like 'all-natural', doesn't mean that it truly is!  Read those ingredient labels on your products just like you would read ingredients labels on your food.  It's THAT important.


*All I want to do is share. I'm not here to judge or say you are wrong and I am right. That is never my intention. Perhaps by learning something new, I have helped you in some way, shape or form.

How did I get this way?

What is my background, you may ask?  Why am I an authority on all things "healthy"?  To start, I began my passion in holistic living/alternative medicine around the time my 56 year old AMAZING Daddy, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Something deep down in me must have known that the chemo & drugs weren't the only option.  I recall us both talking about acupuncture, and LUCKILY this is where my BEAUTIFUL sister-from-another-mister came into my life, Dr. Vicki Weissler, Acupuncturist Extraordinaire.  I had been wanting to try acupuncture, and a referral from someone my Dad had seen lead me on the path to Vicki. Sadly, my Dad lost his 10-month battle with cancer 2/5/01.  And to be frank, life has sucked since.  Sucked in a way that he is missing out on WAY too much, and simply it isn't fair or right and I still can't comprehend it at times.  Around this time is when I started realizing the connection between a healthy diet & staying healthy, and how food really could be medicine.  Could Hippocrates have been on to something??? 

Shortly after losing my Dad, my now ex-husband and I went through a round of In-Vitro Fertilization.  Amazingly, we got pregnant with triplet boys.  Devastatingly, we lost them just shy of 20 weeks gestation BECAUSE I GOT A MASSAGE THAT PRETTY MUCH PUT ME INTO PRE-TERM LABOR.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Within 24 hours of this massage, I was at UCI Medical Center & my whole world was spinning out of control, or so it seemed.  

Massage was something my Dad & I were both huge fans of- and both of us had received many times over the years- healing, and therapeutic & simply amazing.  Not this one.  I knew it wasn't right once she placed me on the ground (mind you, I'm almost 5 months with triplets, so I look like I'm 9 months with one), and started adjusting me AND after this, began grinding her fists into my sacrum HARD.  Upon visiting with Vicki after this life-altering trauma, I explained what had happened.  Her eyes popped open & she ran to get her book to show me that... low & behold, there are 6 points on your sacrum that INDUCE LABOR.  That is exactly the area on my lower back where this supposed "massage therapist/chiropractors" fists were pushing very very hard.  

By the following Spring, and another round of IVF, I amazingly got pregnant again, this time with boy/girl twins.  That too, was an experience in itself.  Spending 7 weeks, or 49 days, on hospitalized bed rest (i.e. having permanent IV's, taking a "bath" in your bed with a sponge, the nurses washing your hair in the sink your bed gets wheeled over to, etc.).  NOT FUN!  Still after all of my hard work, the little munchkins were born 9 weeks early on 9/27/03, after my torturous stay in that darn bed- and spent their 1st 4 weeks of life in the NICU.  2001-2003 NOT THE BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE, would you say???

As the twins turned one (2004), I decided I wanted to go to massage school to learn what this woman had done to me, causing me to lose my pregnancy and more importantly WHY it happened.  This is where my whole perspective changed about EVERYTHING.  I never quite knew what he word 'holistic' meant- and boy, know that I knew, everything made sense & fell into place. I found my "thang".  Then, after taking an elective Aromatherapy class, I fell even deeper in love.  These oils!  Holy cow!  AMAZING & HEALING & POWERFUL & just WOW!  I must share with the world.

My whole life, I have pretty much been sensitive to artificial fragrance, perfume, etc. I get an INSTANT headache when I smell it (gee, wonder why- TOXIC CHEMICALS ANYONE?). [Yes, I will get up and move if you sit next to me in a restaurant with a gallon of perfume on.  Yes, I will make an ugly face at you if you enter an elevator with a gallon of perfume on & ruin my day.]  Enter the twins starting pre-school, and me walking down the hall one day to pick them up as this NOXIOUS, TOXIC insanely strong odor comes wafting towards me.  Lysol is being sprayed all around the room extremely liberally, with NO fresh air ventilation, for these poor little developing lungs to inhale & breathe day in & day out.   WHAT THE WHAT?  I was in shock & fear & anger, and just had to make a change, somehow.

Enter RubyBlaise Essentials - lovingly named after my beautiful babies, their middle names combined.  I started concocting blends of mists, putting them in bottles & voila- I could now share my love & passion for these puppies with family & friends alike.  This was at the end of 2007.  I am SO not a creative/artistic person, but somehow someway, I designed the labels for my bottles, came up with the names of each blend, my tag line (elevate your mood + purify your space) & the colors associated with each blend.  I started printing the labels at Kinko's.   And there I was- blending, pouring, sealing & labeling - this was my other baby.  

One of my very first retail customers in March 2008 was the one & only Delilah of Road Less Traveled Store & quite possibly one of THE most awesome women you will ever want to know.  I am forever grateful for her giving me a chance & supporting me.  

Then, in August of 2008 a local Whole Foods store had recently opened, and I happened to go in to speak with the Body Care buyer/manager about possibly carrying my line.  I'm local, after all, and this is something Whole Foods really pushes.  Before long BAM, my babies were on the shelves, looking oh-so-pretty in their colorful way.  My mists were selling, I was getting reorders quite regularly, I hired a rep & then get my face to face meeting with the regional buyer for the So Pac region of 50+ stores.  She loves my products & seemed like she was going to give us the green light that summer of 2011.  Fast forward March 2013, we JUST got the green light that all stores can now move forward with my Top 6 Best Sellers.  Wowzers!

So I feel like that was a bit all over the place a little... it's been a gradual progression in my quest for all things healthy & natural.  Organically (no pun intended), I came to the place I am in now.  Wishing I had known more when the twins were first born but grateful I know what I know and have given them an AMAZING foundation in life.  From losing my Dad, to my triplet boys, to my previous marriage... loss, loss, loss has inadvertently lead to this!  I smile as much as I can, but of course have my days.  I am human after all.  

Having since remarried (2 years ago) and meeting my one-of-a-kind truly inspiring & supportive other half of mine (almost 5 years ago), life is so beyond insanely good. Our beautiful love child just had his 1st birthday, and simply put, I am one lucky lady.  Never did I know that one could be so happy & content & simply just loved, every minute of everyday the way I am loved (and love back).  Sigh.  Ok, enough of the mushy stuff.  But in all honesty, my hubby supports me and all that I (we) do to the Nth degree.  He will do 3 week holistic detoxes with me, he stopped using fluoride toothpaste, avoided eating meat with me for 6 months, was all on board with our hypnobabies birth (which sadly, never came to be), strolls the local farmers markets with our family on weekends, sprays his throat with colloidal silver when it hurts, knows that nursing our baby as long as I am able is the #1 best thing I could ever do, & he pushes me every single day to be  better & to laugh & reach for the stars.  BLESSED IS ME!

Now my mind is spinning with so many things I want to write about.  Hopefully this post has given you a bit of a snapshot into what has created the Jody of today, and you'll understand me just a little better.  It has been said, after all, that I tend to care about others more than myself sometimes. Hence, my thirst for sharing information that I know can only help & benefit you and your families.

xo

*All I want to do is share. I'm not here to judge or say you are wrong and I am right. That is never my intention. Perhaps by learning something new, I have helped you in some way, shape or form.