Fall in Love with JORD Luxury Wood Watches

 

Fall is practically upon us, although mother nature here in Southern California would have to disagree. This week has been a roasty-toasty 100 degrees Fahrenheit or more.  We are staying indoors for the most part, putting our solar panels to good use, and blasting that air conditioning.  I am day-dreaming of wearing sweaters, boots and scarves -- as well as everything pumpkin: lattes, decor, pies and candles. Anyone with me?

I am partnering with JORD again, this time to feature their beautiful women's watches (See my previous post here about men's wooden watches).  JORD's Luxury Wooden Watches are beautifully handcrafted using natural woods such as Koa, Maple, Olive, Sandalwood, and more.

What do you think of my new wood watch? It's the Dark Sandalwood and Smoke watch from the Frankie series!💕 I love the rose gold accents.  I'm excited for how it will work into my Fall wardrobe.  The natural color from the wood, the smoke color and the rose gold pair well with those browns, olive greens, tans, mustard yellows and peaches of the Fall season. I've worn it around for the last few weeks and I've been surprised at how unexpectedly lightweight the watch is, how many compliments I've received from people mentioning what a cool watch it is, and how comfortable the wooden watch is to wear for everyday use.   

The Frankie women's watch is made of 100% natural, hand-finished woods.  It has an ultra-slim design, with sapphire crystal glass face and Citizen Miyota quartz movement.  The wood is treated to be splash-proof. It is truly a beautiful timepiece.

Be sure to check out the other women's wooden watches JORD offers. Looking for a unique men's watch? Check those styles too! They make a gorgeous addition to any Fall wardrobe and also are a perfect gift for a loved one.

GIVEAWAY
I'm hosting a giveaway with JORD until September 10th!

🌟 CLICK HERE for your chance to win $100 towards a JORD wood watch! It's super quick - just your name and email. One lucky person will win the $100 gift card, but everyone will get a code for $25 off a JORD watch at the end of my contest! Contest ends 11:59pm on 9/10/17. 

Luxury Wooden Watch Luxury Wooden Watch

Detoxing my Home with Essential Oils

 

A while back, I shared with you how I was detoxing my home from harmful chemicals.  Studies have shown that indoor air quality can be up to 100 times more toxic than outdoor air quality.  Many of the cleaning products we use contain chemicals that were not around 50 years ago. These chemicals can lead to problems asthma, allergies, and other respiratory problems,  headaches, eye and skin irritations, sore throat, colds and flu memory loss, dizziness, fatigue and depression. 

Even more concerning, other health effects from highly toxic airborne particles could show up YEARS later, including heart disease, respiratory disease, reproductive disorders, sterility and even cancer (source here and here). Most vulnerable are infants, babies, children and elderly with compromised immune system who are likely spending large amounts of time indoors.

Some simple steps to detox your home:
1). Throw out chemical cleaners.  You can do a lot of cleaning with vinegar, baking soda and Norwex products.

2). Invest in some indoor plants. No need for some fancy, expensive air purifier. Mother nature made a natural air purifier through plants; they cleanse the air and replacing it with clean oxygen. Check out this article for 9 Indoor plants that clean the air.

3). Replace synthetic fragrance items such as perfume, febreeze, and candles with essential oils.  Did you know most fragrance has been made in a lab and is considered a neurotoxin, meaning they are poison to the brain? There are potential 500 chemicals listed as "fragrance" in your cleaning and personal care products.... scary!

When looking at essential oils, look for purity. Unfortunately, the FDA allows companies to sell oils marked as "100% pure" essential oil, but in fact it may only contain 10% of the true essential oil in the bottle and the rest can be filled with a filler oil or synthetics. Such marketing lies!

When you are looking at the label, make sure it is "100% Pure, Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oil". This is an oil safe enough to ingest. 

Only 2% of essential oils are suitable for medicinal/therapeutic purposes. Young Living makes 98% of the 100% Pure, Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oils in North America. They have a "Seed to Seal" quality promise.  Essential Oils sold in health food stores are aroma-grade oils, and while they smell nice, they may contain less than 5% of pure essential oil. Even what you put on your skin reaches into your blood stream, within 20 seconds, so consider this fact when you put on lotions with "fragrance", or even aroma grade essential oils instead 100% Pure, Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oils. 

I decided on Young Living because of all the reasons mentioned above and was so excited to receive my Young Living Essential Oils Premium Starter Kit in the mail. The Premium Starter kit comes with eleven 5 mL bottles of the most popular oils: Lavender, Panaway, R.C., Purification, Frankincense, Stress Away, Lemon, Copaiba, DiGize, Thieves, and Peppermint.  Additionally, for the rest of May, you get a free 15mL bottle of Tangerine - that's the big bottle!

The kit also comes with your choice of diffuser: Dewdrop, Home, Rainstone or Aria. I chose the Dewdrop because it gave good coverage of diffusion and could also act as a humidifier.

In addition, the kit came with 10 glass sample bottles, 10 sample packets of a variety of oils, 2 NingXia Red 2 oz samples, a metal roller ball fitment, a Young Living Product Guide and their most recent magazine that contained recipes and ideas of how to incorporate essential oils into daily living. 

At the time that I received my kit, our household was battling illness. We had some issues with coughing and sore throats, so I put Thieves in our diffuser. Thieves supports healthy immune function and it has a beautiful smell from real clove, lemon, cinnamon, and eucalyptus. We also used R. C. directly on the skin of our chests to relieve the ache from coughing.  I'm excited to use Frankinsense on my skin... it's said to help with aging lines. And add Peppermint oil to my tea. And Lavender to my bath.  There are endless possibilities on how to incorporate essential oils into your life. Below I share a simple replacement to Febreeze that we are using in our home. And let me tell you - it actually works BETTER than Febreeze to cover up after bathroom odors.

Non-toxic Essential Oil "Febreeze" Recipe

 (super easy!)

1. Go get an amber glass spray bottle. I used these ones. The amber glass helps protect the essential oils from going rancid.
2. Fill bottle nearly full with distilled water.
3. Add 5-6 drops of your favorite essential oil.  That's it!

Interested in essential oils? For the month of May, you can get a free 15mL Tangerine oil with purchase of your Young Living Premium Starter Kit!  To sign up for your Premium Starter Kit, just follow this link!

 And for those already using essential oils, what are your favorite ways to use them? Leave me a comment below and share!

Travel Easy with Wander Wet Bags

So life with three kids is no joke. Just when I was adjusting to two.... no, scratch that. I'm not sure I fully adjusted to two kids before having our third baby (our "surprise" when Luke was just 5 months old). Life with two children under three was enough cray-cray for this mama -- and then we added yet another little one to our tribe. Please don't misunderstand me, we are SO thankful little Penelope is here, it's just CRAZY... in the most exhausting, messy, and beautiful way. Three kids UNDER three. One more week before my oldest turns three.  It's so wonderful and yet so overwhelming.

I have realized that what will help us most during this stage is to find strategies to manage the chaos. Prepping meals ahead of time and in bulk, packing the diaper and preschool bag ahead of time the night before, and getting up before the kids do so that I am not in reaction mode all day is key.  I have had to be more intentional about staying organized, cutting clutter, and creating systems that save time and thought process.

A close friend recently told me about Wander Wet Bags, a fashionable way to tote around your swimsuit for travel, swim, gym and the beach. They help keep wet and soiled goods from the rest of your luggage or items in your bag.  I'm in love with this chic black and white chevron pattern, Siren in Noir, that goes with everything!

These gorgeous bags are SO versatile and easy to pack wherever life leads you. They come in a variety of gorgeous fashionable prints and have a waterproof lining on the inside.  Especially handy at the beach, pool or gym to tote your wet swimsuit or workout clothes home.  If you are in the life stage with little ones in diapers, you'll love carrying a Wander Wet Bag in your diaper bag to hold the baby's soiled clothing (for ahem, spit up and diaper blowout moments).

Wander Wet Bags are machine washable and eco-friendly with a high quality, medium-weight 100% cotton fabric with a waterproof, food-grade safe PUL interior lining. They are made in the USA, locally here in Southern California.

Wander Wet Bags come in three sizes: small, medium (featured) and large.  You can see this featured pattern Siren in Noir on the website www.wanderwetbags.com
Use code MALIAJAYNE for 20% off through March 15th.

Check out the website above and comment below with your favorite print!

New Year, New Sheer with Beautycounter

This past year, I have dedicated a lot of time and effort to finding great chemical free products—from cleaning products, to facial lotion and body wash, to cosmetics. And slowly, little by little, I'm detoxing our home. My good friend Becky introduced me to Beautycounter, a brand that is dedicated to making facial and cosmetic products without all the toxic ingredients.  Beautycounter makes products free from synthetic fragrance and approximately 1,500 questionable or harmful chemicals on their “Never List” that they never use to formulate their products. (i.e. perfect beauty products for pregnant ladies and nursing mamas!)  Beautycounter is a start-up company out of Santa Monica, CA with the mission of getting safer products into the hands of everyone.

A study conducted back in 2004 found that 28% of lipsticks contained cancer-causing chemicals. Modern lipsticks are formulated from upwards of 10,000 chemicals, 89% of which have never been tested for human safety. The average woman eats 4 to 9 pounds of lipstick in her lifetime, that’s somewhere between 481 and 1083 tubes.  Yikes!

Additionally, those who use lipstick for 3 days increase their risk of developing lupus by 40%.
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33 brand-name lipsticks, like Cover Girl, L'Oreal, and Christian Dior, and reported that "61 percent had detectable lead levels of 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million (ppm)." One-third of the lipsticks tested had levels higher than 0.1 ppm, the FDA's safety limit for lead in candy.

The problem with chemicals in lipstick is not only do they get absorbed through your skin, but they are also ingested when you're eating and drinking.

BUT there is hope for you lip color lovers! I recently tried lip sheers, a Beautycounter best seller.  There are ten shades in all and they are formulated to look great on every skin tone.  How amazing is that? They are very moisturizing, add a hint of color, and go on like butter.  There's no synthetic fragrance, just a sophisticated hint of vanilla planifolia, leaving these lip sheers not tasting or smelling like your average lipstick.  They can also double as a blush.  Non-toxic and gorgeous... a win-win.

Why not make 2017 the year you change to a non-toxic lip color? Lip sheers are an amazing and beautiful way to start to detox your makeup collection!

Lip sheer colors on me from top left to bottom right (left to right): bare/none, Twig, Terra, Coral, Raisin, and Plum.

I am excited to team up with my good friend and favorite Beautycounter consultant, Becky Pacini, to host a giveaway for a FREE LIP SHEER on my Instagram page. See below for details.

GIVEAWAY!
Enter the giveaway for a free lip sheer in Twig—Allure's Best of Beauty winning shade (over $30 value with shipping).

To enter, you must have an account on Instagram.
1. Follow me on Instagram @maliajayne
2. Like my Beautycounter  "New Year, New Sheer" photo.
3. Sign up for Becky's e-newsletter by messaging your email address to @beckyblevs on Instagram.
4. Tag friends for additional entries. One tag per comment, please.
5. Share the post for an additional entry.

Giveaway ends Monday, January 9th at 9pm. Winner will be announced on the Instagram post.

Purchase of Beautycounter products can be made through the link: http://www.beautycounter.com/beckypacini
Beautycounter Lip Sheers can be viewed HERE.

Pregnancy the Third Time Around

Many of you know by now that my pregnancy with baby number three was unplanned. We had just settled into having two little souls to nurture and care for, and there I was, pregnant again when my youngest was only 5 months old.  And yet, once the initial shock wore off, we became very excited.
I recently wrote a post on Instagram that discussed strangers comments to me while out with my two young kiddos.  To be fair, on most days it looks like a circus. I'm pregnant and I'm out attempting to shop with a toddler whose favorite word is "no" and a baby that is perfectly content until I stop holding him (then tears and screams, people).  After discussing my woes on social media, I resisted the urge to delete it right away and just allow myself to be vulnerable. I was so touched by the outpouring of encouragement and empathy.  I'll still often catch myself justifying the baby saying this one was a "surprise" (which is true), but I want this baby to be more than just an accident or "oops".   Deep in my heart, I know that this little girl is meant to be here and there are no accidents when it comes to little babies. 

 

Each pregnancy is new and slightly different, but one thing that hasn't changed is how I carry my babies.  While my mother was pregnant, she was stopped in a sporting goods store because they thought she was smuggling out a basketball.  It sounds cliche, but it's true. I carry my babies very similar to her.  What do you think? Does it look like I have a huge ball under this pretty dress? 

 

I recently read an article that discussed what you should do while you are pregnant with your last baby. It mentioned to take all the weekly photos, have a baby shower (yes, even for a 3rd baby), indulge in some cute maternity clothes... all the the things that make pregnancy special the first time around.   

As an additional reminder, at my last appointment the nurse reminded me to take care of myself and baby, just like I had done with the other two. I had selfishly put off the glucose test - First, who likes needles? Second, who likes that glucola drink?  I didn't have gestational diabetes with the first two, so I had somehow justified I am "off the hook" with this one too.  Silly I know.... but anyone who has taken that test knows exactly why I put it off. The good news is, that I finally took the test and I once again do not have gestational diabetes.   I should have just taken the darn test and realized I needed to place importance on taking care of myself and the baby from the get-go.  Self care for myself (and baby) is important.  Lesson learned.

This beautiful pleated plum dress is by Pink Blush.   I am absolutely in love with the lace detail at the top of the dress.  I am currently 32 weeks along with our third child, a baby girl due in February.   

Holiday Product Spotlight with JORD Wood Watches

The holidays are fast approaching and each day gets a little colder outside, even here in California.  Brrr... I love breaking out the boots and scarfs and bundling up this season.

However, if you are like me at all, you are just starting your holiday shopping and every year I fret over what to get my husband. My husband is seriously THE TOUGHEST person on my list to buy a present for. He is a pretty simple guy that likes non-fussy gifts.  In addition, he tends to buy everything he feels he needs. When I came across JORD woodwatches, I was very excited.  I knew Andrew would love a unique timepiece!

I ended up this picking this Fieldcrest watch in dark sandalwood for Andrew.  I was really blown away by the beautiful packaging. The watch arrives in a wooden box on a little pillow. It really is breath taking!

 

 Andrew tried out his watch over the weekend. He said it was very comfortable and he loved the style. He is a very analytical person, but appreciates craftsmanship and style.  He loves that the watch can be a conversation piece and goes with both casual and more formal apparel.  In addition, Andrew loves that the watch is comfortable, lightweight and breathable.

 

 If you’re having trouble trying to think of what to get your boyfriend or husband for Christmas, definitely check out JORD woodwatches .  They have a WIDE selection of watches for men and women. I personally love that they feature unique woods sourced from all over the world. 

Luxury Wooden Watch  

GIVEAWAY & INSTANT E-GIFT CODE:
I will be personally giving away a $50 JORD watches gift card to one lucky reader for you to use on yourself or as a gift! Complete the two steps below to enter to win!
If you would like to give (or keep) the timeless gift of a gorgeous wooden watch this holiday season,
1. CLICK HERE and you will be emailed your own instant $25 JORD Wood Watch e-gift card right away! You have until 12/18/2016 at 11:59pm to sign up, and until 2/28/2017 to redeem your code.  Time flies (pun intended), so sign up now!  
2. Please comment below to let me know you have signed up for your instant e-gift card and you will be included in my giveaway for the additional $50 JORD watch gift card!
 

CLICK HERE TO RECEIVE $25 E-GIFT CARD FROM JORD WATCHES

 *This post was sponsored by JORD Wood Watches, but my opinions are my own.

Luke's 1st Birthday

At the end of this month, Luke will turn ONE. Goodness, where is the time going?  The milestones with the second child certainly do go faster than with the first child. Many of you know that I am expecting a third child this February, which came as a total shock.  In fact, I didn't even know I was pregnant for the first 10 weeks! We weren't quite prepared mentally to take on back-to-back kids... to have three kids under three when she arrives. After the initial surprise, I became excited about this new little life who would soon make her debut  - but I also didn't want to lose Luke's milestone of turning one in this busy time of working part-time, being tired and pregnant, and entertaining his outspoken older sister. This photo shoot was a time to slow down and document his life before his baby sister comes. 

We took Luke's first birthday photos this past week with the lovely Elyse Leedom. We headed over to Laguna Niguel Regional Park and brought a simple cake (or rather a giant cupcake) for Luke to dive into. He looked like a little man in his Levi jeans and plaid Carters shirt. He seemed to not mind the photo shoot very much, especially since (spoiler alert!) he was able to dive in and cover his face with cake.

And this is one of my favorite photos of him smashing the cake into his face! 

Seriously, this sweet boy! I love his laugh, curiosity, and feisty determination.

 Luke is teething pretty badly right now, but he still maintains a pretty good attitude. And we got this money shot right here:

I am beyond blessed and thankful for my family.

Sienna is very sweet with Luke and loves giving him hugs and kisses. She loves to make him laugh and smile. It's fun to see their relationship take form, as everyday they interact more and more with each other.

Little Luke and his four teeth!

 Sources: Luke's shoes are Pediped Footwear. Luke and Sienna are wearing clothing from Carters, GAP Kids and Levi's. My top is from Nordstrom. Andrew's shirt is Oakley. Cake and decoration from Ralph's Grocery.  Beautiful photos are by Elyse Leedom Photography.