Even if you’ve decked the halls and checked the lists twice you probably skimmed over our top three giftable kits below. These buys are like a beauty buffet for your face: you get to feast on a snack-sized portion of a whole array of potent potions. And the frosting on the gingerbread cake? Enjoy 15 percent off storewide and free shipping on orders over $30.  So go ahead and gorge yourself gorgeous on this great beauty booty:

The Real Squeeze

Airport security always tries to hawk your too-big skincare. This year, just toss Juice Beauty Organics to Go Kit ($29) in your kit. You’ll find all the complexion cure-alls you need ( a soothing cleansing milk, lightweight serum, super yummy apple scented peel, plus moisturizer and mist).

Tin Fan

Does the person on your list with everything REALLY have everything? If not, this all-in-one vegan kit for face and body comes to the rescue. Saaf Face and Body Kit ($39.95) is a one stop shop for aesthetic emergencies. From lip balm to enriching hair oil, for head to toe pampering, just pop the tin.

Here Comes The Sun

Suki’s Complete Care for Youthful Skin ($29.95) kicks bad skin to the curb and busts seasonal affective disorder (just look at that cheerful yellow packaging) to boot. Inside, you’ll find all you need to get glowing: a moisture-packed cleanser, toner, moisturizer and face masque.

The Great New Color Care Range

Your favorite organic skincare brand now has makeup!! Juice Beauty, creators of the innovative, patent pending, organic juice-based skin care is the organic solution. Juice Beauty has done it again…paving the way in organic beauty with their high efficacy and authentically organic products.

Introducing Juice Beauty’s NEW makeup collection; ColorCare!  Achieve the healthiest complexion on earth with every drop feeding the skin, leaving it craving more! This line is loaded with antioxidant benefits from the blend of Organic Grape, Blueberry, Pomegranate, Raspberry, Strawberry, Kiwi, and Cranberry.

This new Color Collection is filled with luscious Complexion, Lip, Cheek and Eye Color Products.  Refining and perfecting.  The ColorCare collection was developed with the highest level of organic ingredients, and meets the most rigorous international organic standards.

Try it right now and you can get a free 30ml Green Apple Cleansing Gel when you spend $50 – while stocks last!



Evidence of spring is all around—but all of those newly-blooming flowers are so much more powerful than just eye candy. They’re also plucked and distilled into the perfect ingredients for your skin, so they can help keep you as pretty as they are.

Find it in: Suki Velvet Moisturizing Cream, Marina Cosmetics Sea Perfected Lipstick and almost all of the John Masters Organics products.

Marigold. Also known as calendula, marigold has healing, soothing properties, and it’s a great addition to a gentle cleanser.

Find it in: Dr. Hauschka Cleansing Cream, John Masters Calendula Hydrating Mask.

Geranium. With its invigorating freshness, geranium helps boost circulation and improve skin’s elasticity.

Find it in: Pangea Egyptian Geranium and Adzuki Bean Facial Scrub, Juice Beauty Organic Facial Wash.

Evening Primrose. Calming and moisturizing, evening primrose is a favorite for its fatty acids, which encourage cell renewal and help prevent aging.

Find it in: Cattier Smoothing & Revitalizing Serum, Red Flower French Lavender Moisturizing Body Lotion.

Hibiscus. The huge flowers of the hibiscus are gorgeous (and a true sign of warmer weather), but their essential oils also make a great moisturizer and help maintain a healthy scalp.

Find it in: John Masters Honey and Hibiscus Hair Reconstructing Shampoo.

Linden Blossom. The linden flower’s delicate blooms are great skin soothers and make for soft, touchable skin.

Find it in: John Masters Linden Blossom Face Crème Cleanser and Pangea Organics Ylang Ylang and Linden Flower Facial Cream.

The next time you admire your neighbor’s award-winning garden, you’ll know you’ve got your own prize-winning beauties in your cosmetics bag!

New to Beautorium is Trilogy’s CoQ10 Booster Serum, a radiance-boosting, natural elixir with Co-enzyme Q10, Tamanu, and essential oils for an antioxidant treatment that combats dull, tired skin—you’ll notice a difference right away. The special ingredient, Co-enzyme Q10, is a naturally-occurring substance in the body that is depleted with age. A relative newcomer to the beauty scene, it helps neutralize harmful (and age-revealing) free radicals, and since it’s a small molecule, it’s easily absorbed into the skin.

The new serum is a great addition to Trilogy’s other Age Proof products: the Age Proof Nutrient Plus Firming Serum, which includes green tea, licorice, and mulberry extracts to help even skin tone, and Age Proof Replenishing Night Cream, which works to assist the skin’s natural process of regeneration while smoothing fine lines and wrinkles.

It’s never too early to start preventing wrinkles…

Each year, to celebrate the New Year and to help improve the chances that the next year will be a great one, people worldwide eat specific foods that have traditionally been considered lucky. Although the foods vary, many of them have health benefits beyond just luck—so much so that you can often find them in your beauty products! We’ve rounded up the lucky foods that feed your skin and bring you luck.

Pomegranate. In Turkey and the Mediterranean, pomegranates are eaten at the New Year to bring abundance and fertility throughout the year; pomegranates have powerful antioxidant properties. To incorporate the pretty (and potent) fruit into your beauty routine, try John Masters Organics Pomegranate Facial Nourishing Oil or Saaf Organic Ultimate Moisture Face Serum.

Citrus. In China, citrus fruits are associated with prosperity because the word for “tangerine” sounds similar to “luck” in Chinese. Your skin loves citrus, too: it’s used in a long list of organic, natural products, including Trilogy Age Proof Replenishing Night Cream or Evolution Sugar Cane & Maple Alpha-Hydroxy Facial Exfoliant.

Grapes. At midnight on New Years Day, merrymakers in Spain eat twelve grapes; one for each stroke of the clock to bring luck each month of the year. Both Afterglow Organics Lip Love lipsticks and Exuberance Radiance Facial Cleanser include grapeseed extract to moisturize and beautify.

Legumes. Resembling coins, legumes like beans, peas and lentils are symbolic and money—eating them at the New Year is hoped to symbolize earning power for the months to come. If you’re extra superstitious, try using Pangea Egyptian Geranium with Adjuki Bean and Cranberry Facial Scrub—the adzuki bean is also great for skin clarity and exfoliation.

It’s not too late for a little extra New Year luck! What foods do you eat to celebrate?

-Aleigh Acerni

Yes, the pink-washed month of breast cancer awareness is over, but that doesn’t mean breast cancer just goes away. Every day of every month there are new women diagnosed and beginning the fight against breast cancer. So why not start today, right now, learning about how you can increase your odds of avoiding that nasty enemy? One important step you can take is to do your best to steer clear of the synthetics and chemicals that emerging science has linked to breast cancer. We’ve got the details on two of the main guilty parties for you.

Why aren’t these ingredients banned?

In the United States, testing of cosmetics is voluntary—the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers the cosmetics industry to be a self-regulating industry. According to the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database, 89% of ingredients used in personal care products have not been evaluated for safety by any publicly accountable institution. That means the burden is put on you as a consumer to take responsibility for protecting yourself—and often, that’s not an easy task.

Public Enemy No. 1: Phthalates. According to Breast Cancer Action, phthalates “have been known to cause a broad range of birth defects and lifelong reproductive problems in laboratory animals exposed to these chemicals during pregnancy and after birth.” They’re used as solvents in many cosmetics, but you can also find them in food packaging, building materials, and children’s products, and in cosmetics items including deodorants, nail polish, and fragrances. This substance can mimic natural hormones, disrupting the normal hormone process—possibly even causing early puberty in girls. In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on the Environment reported that phthalates are carcinogenic.

Public Enemy No. 2: Parabens. Breast Cancer Action characterizes parabens, like phthalates, as “chemical preservatives that have been identified as estrogenic and disruptive of normal hormone function.” Exposure to external estrogens has been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. The Skin Deep database considers parabens a high hazard, rating it a 7 on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 corresponds to the highest concern. Traces of parabens have been discovered in breast cancer cells.

We’ve discussed safety as a reason to incorporate organic products into your beauty routine before, and that logic still stands. After all, more than 60% of what you put on your skin is absorbed into your body. If you have a family history of breast cancer, or feel that you’re especially sensitive to synthetic ingredients, swapping out some or all of your daily products for organic ones could give you peace of mind—and leave your skin just as lovely.

-Aleigh Acerni

This week, we’ve got the scoop on what’s hot in makeup for fall. Summer’s glowing, sun-kissed shades are being replace with edgy, stark looks with a bright pop of color, including pale faces with heavily accented eyes or fire engine red lips—think statement makeup. There’s no room for hesitation this season!

The eyes have it. Fall is all about dramatic eyes, with pale skin and neutral color on the lips and cheeks. Enhance your eyes with these beautiful eyeliner pencils from Dr. Hauschka, and read on for more great ways to play up your peepers.

Metallics. A great option for your lids this season, metallics are showing up everywhere, especially in bronze and gold, but also in colors like green and brown. They’re great for a dramatic evening look, although we’d stay away from dark shades during the workday. Afterglow has a beautiful silver shade, Lyric. Metallics also work well as highlighters for cheeks and lips.

Earth tones. They were all over the runway this fall, and for good reason—earthy colors are universally flattering and create a natural look. Go for eyeshadows in browns, greens, and beiges. We like Afterglow’s Ultra Matte shadow in cream, khaki and bark and the Dr. Hauschka Eye Shadow Palette in four shades of brown and grey.

Berry shades. This one works for both eyes and lips—berry shades are a fall favorite, and this year is no exception. The spotlight is on purple this year, and you’ll be right on trend with Afterglow’s Mineral Eye Shadow in breathless or endless, two ultra-flattering shades of purple. For your lips, try Marina Cosmetics Hydrating Lip Gloss in seaberry, island wine or sandbar.

Ruby lips. The other look we’re seeing everywhere from the runway to workday is a bold rep lip. We’re talking bright red, can’t-look-away lips, paired with pale skin and a very basic eye (think thin black eyeliner and mascara—that’s it). You really can’t go wrong with any of the bold shades from Dr. Hauschka, but our favorite shades are amoroso and mezzoforte.

-Aleigh Acerni

When it comes to makeup and skin care products, there are three typical types of ingredients that serve as the foundation (or “base”) of each formula: water, oil, and minerals. We’ve broken it down for you here, so that you can choose type that is the perfect match for your complexion—or mix and match!

Water-Based Cosmetics

Water-based products are typically thinner formulas, most often used in mascaras and liquid eyeliners, but also common for liquid foundations, eyeshadow, and more. Since water is inexpensive, products with a base of water are often less expensive—but are often filled with synthetic ingredients and preservatives, since on its own, water doesn’t have added benefits for the skin. We like Suki Rich Pigment Mascara, which starts with a base of purified water, but then adds all kinds of goodness, like organic sunflower seed oil, beeswax, and evening primrose oil.

Mineral-Based Cosmetics

The least common of the three, mineral-based cosmetics are growing in popularity. Minerals are great for the skin, and can offer a tint or color (for eyeshadow, mineral foundation and concealer, etc.), as well as being a good base to mix with other ingredients. Many mineral-based cosmetics use only natural ingredients, making them a good choice for allergic, acne-prone or sensitive skin—and because of the purity of these minerals, the cosmetics are often a little more expensive than their water-based counterparts. We think they’re worth the price for the natural, glowing look they give your skin. In fact, we raved about one of our favorites, Afterglow Cosmetics, not long ago.

Oil-Based Cosmetics

Oil is the most ancient natural skin care: Ancient Egyptians pressed olives and used the oil as a way to soothe sunburned skin, and legend has it that the Queen of Sheba had an almond plantation just so she could use almond oil for her skin. Unlike water-based products, oil-based cosmetics lock in moisture and provide a barrier between your skin and the rest of the world. As an added benefit, oil-based cosmetics typically have fewer preservatives than water-based products—synthetic or otherwise, and are more gentle on your skin.

Some oil-based products we can’t get enough of: Trilogy Rosehip Oil is practically perfect in every way, for every skin type (and it’s found it almost every item in the entire Trilogy line), and Dr. Hauschka Rose Day Cream has 30 rose flowers in each tube. We also love Saaf Organic Complexion Boosting Serum—it’s packed with a variety of natural oils. (And if your complexion tends to be oily, never fear: oil attracts oil, which means the oil in a skin care product bonds with and dissolves the oil on your face…leaving your skin clear whether it’s dry, oily, or combination.)

Other Base-ics

An alternative to an oil, water, or mineral base is something that Juice Beauty has based their entire skin care line on—fruit juice! The company uses certified organic juice concentrates, which are rich in antioxidants, vitamins, hydroxy acids and phytonutrients, which are pH balanced to use on even the most sensitive skin. We adore the Juice Beauty Oil-Free Moisturizer, which has organic apple, grape, pomegranate, aloe and cucumber juices; it makes our skin look delish.

-Aleigh Acerni

Fall is here, and so is your hectic schedule: the kids have a different after-school activity every day of the week, the workday seems to extend as daylight hours get shorter, and the holidays are just around the corner. This time of year, we turn to comfort food, cozy sweaters—and maybe some extra pampering at our favorite spa. But you don’t have to spend the time (or the cash) to get some body and soul rejuvenation: here are some tips on how to get that spa glow at home.

Relax. Set the mood—get in a relaxing frame of mind with some candles and soft music for ambiance. Oh, and make sure the kids are in bed (or otherwise occupied), so you won’t be disturbed!

Soak. A few drops of bath oil can go a long way to soothe—just choose a scent that appeals to you. Dr. Hauschka Lavender Bath is a great choice for relaxation and stress relief, or try the Organic Sage Bath for a more clarifying, purifying soak. (Or try the entire line with the sampler.)

Scrub. A bath is the perfect time or some extra exfoliation. Use a loofah or body sponge to gently scrub your skin with your favorite shower gel (Pangea Organic makes several great ones to try), or try an exfoliating formula like Cattier’s Exfoliating Shower Gel.

Beauty treatments. While you soak, give your face and hair a little added attention. It’s the perfect time to pamper your tresses with some extra conditioning. We love the Suki Hair & Scalp Conditioning Oil—with 100% organic pressed fruit oils, it treats dry scale, dandruff, or eczema issues while stimulating hair growth and added shine and strength. It’s also a great time to try out a mask to give your face a clarifying and toning treatment. If you’re looking to brighten your complexion, try Suki Skin Care Intensive Brightening Masque, which is ideal for a variety of skin types, including uneven skin tone, sun damage, rosacea, and mature skin. With pharmaceutical grade antioxidants and vitamin C glucoside, it will help restore a more radiant complexion. If you’re battling an outbreak, try Dr. Hauschka’s Cleansing Clay Mask, which is formulated to refine pores, absorb excess oil and stimulate circulation. We’re also big fans of Pangea’s award-winning Japanese Matcha Tea with Acai and Goji Berry Facial Mask; it does everything from detoxify and deep-cleanse to prevent wrinkles, tone, and hydrate your skin.

Moisturize. When it’s time to get out of the tub, wrap yourself in a warm towel or robe, and smooth on a rich lotion or body oil while your skin is still slightly damp. We love Suki Delicate Hydrating Oil (you can also use it as massage oil or put a few drops in your bath), and Pangea’s Lavendar with Cardamom Rejuvenating Massage & Body Oil is another soothing option. Spend a little extra time on any spots that need added moisture, like elbows, knees and feet—you might even try a different formula, like Dr. Hauschka Rosemary Foot Balm or Suki Butter Cream Healing Salve to help seal in moisture.

With a little extra time and preparation, you’ll be ready to crawl into bed and sleep like a baby, or energized to take on the day—all of that relaxing will go a long way to easing your transition to the shorter days ahead. Now if you could just get started on your early holiday shopping…

-Aleigh Acerni

We’ve tried mineral make-up before, from the specialty brands to the drugstore brands, so we were intrigued to do an Afterglow Cosmetics review; we took the Glow Kit for a test drive to see how it would compare. Afterglow Cosmetics founder Kristen Adams is allergic to (almost) everything, and therefore demands that her makeup be free from anything that could irritate sensitive skin, including bismuth oxychloride, which you can find in most other mineral makeup. (It’s also gluten free, carmine free, and of course free of parabens, petroleums, and synthetics.)

First impressions: This kit is full of stuff! It comes with two shades of foundation (use one or combine the two for a more customized match), a blush, translucent setting powder, a baby Kabuki brush, a concealer brush, application instructions, and a cosmetic bag to hold it all. The colors were flattering and surprisingly blendable, and we were happy with the amount of coverage we were able to get, whether we were hoping for just a little even-ing out for a Saturday of errand-running, or full-on coverage for a networking event.

What caught us by surprise: We were thrilled with the makeup brushes. We’ve been consistently disappointed with the brushes that have come with other mineral makeup kits we’ve tried in the past—one broke almost immediately, another left strands behind on our face (and made us wipe off most of the makeup we’d just applied while we tried to pluck them off)—so we were skeptical (but hopeful) that Afterglow would finally make a believer out of us.

After two weeks of daily use, we were seriously impressed. Afterglow’s brushes are vegan, professional-grade tools that are made of super soft taklon, a fine-grade nylon fiber that provides a smooth, even finish, and since it doesn’t have cuticles like natural hair, it’s less absorbent and doesn’t trap makeup. The petite Kabuki brush was ideal for applying foundation, blush, and translucent powder (even though it’s small, it did a better job than the full-sized brush we’d been using before), and the Afterglow Concealer Brush with the long, tapered handle, got the job done and was fun to use.

Extras: Afterglow Cosmetics is dedicated to fighting breast cancer, and donates a portion of the proceeds from the purchase of each Afterglow Organic Glow Bronzer to aid in research. We can see why Afterglow makeup has become one of the few American brands to be a must-have in France.

-Aleigh Acerni