Sounds Good

 Big Deals: What to say … what not to say
I was actually reading “Turn Small Talk into Big Deals” in a waiting room. This networking book about customizing conversation styles for clients has a chapter on that. With some new approaches, Don Gabor illustrates how to garner clients at every place from a museum and golf courses to reunions and elevators. He even suggests what to avoid discussing:
Potential waiting room topics: newspaper articles, sudoku puzzles, celebrity news, herbal medicine.
Taboo waiting room topics: medical horror stories, malpractice suits, insurance fraud.

Boxed in
Except for the purple and gold Mardi Gras shoes I wear each year, my shoes are all exposed in the closet. It is Texas and we don’t have such a collection of summer vs. winter shoes as our northern sisters may accumulate.
My Shoes Under space-saving shoes organizers is for other stuff. Southern sisters still have a rash of goodies we’d love to store under the bed. Shoes Under is an As Seen on TV product that’s as durable and handy as is promoted. A clear cover zips over 6 sections that can store craft items, etc. just as easily as out-of-season pumps. It’s a keeper.

Making scents
Artificial scents give me a big headache, literally. Aura Cacia has a new line of electric aromatherapy air fresheners that use 100 percent pure essential oils. I can detect a difference, especially with Relaxing Lavender. I know this scent is said to induce a calm mood for sleep, but I love how the company promotes it as “reminiscent of a Ukrainian meadow of flowering lavender stems. It creates a soothing environment for relaxation in the bedroom or living room.” I actually have a relative who lived there, so I’ll ask about this. I’m going to the valley soon, so I hope I can vouch for the Refreshing Lime & Grapefruit tout that it “evokes the crisp scent of Mexican lime trees swaying in the breeze. (You can almost hear the thump of the falling ripe fruit.)”

Summer beauty
Down south, we may get cracked lips in winter, but imagine how we’d feel in a snowy clime. Here, we need to keep those little balm sticks handy for sunscreen. Coola Liplux in peppermint/vanilla has SPF 15 and is made with organic, food-grade ingredients such as raspberry and avocado butters. It feels good, smells good and lives up to a label claim: “a truly tasty treatment.”
The Body Deli — doesn’t that name sound great? — makes the most routine tasks seem exotic. Of the company’s wide range of treatments, I’ve experienced the aromatic, cooling Fresh Cell sea cucumber gelee that you keep in the fridge. Talk about a refreshing wake-up treat. The ingredient list sounds like a shopping spree with kombucha tea, virgin coconut oil, fresh cells of cucumber, kiwi and olive leaf extract. It’s very cool, along with the botanical facial masque Glacial Mineral Mud, which you also keep in the fridge. Carrot seed and Japanese honeysuckle are some of the goodies in this feel-good mask. Both should put the glow into, and take the heat out of, summer.
Frais puts Australian blended essential oils in the best-smelling hand sanitizer I’ve ever experienced. With ginger, tangerine, lemon, myrtle, basil as just part of the mix, there’s a real luxury sensation going on. I first heard of the product when we were frantic about swine flu, but hey, we need hand sanitizer all the time. Some of us more than others.
Even lip balm is going organic. Coola Liplux offer raspberry butter, an antioxidant; rose hips with omega-3 and 6; and avocado butter for sterolins to reduce age spots and repair sun damage. I tried a sample of the peppermint vanilla and loved it. Part of the $12 fee goes toward skin cancer research.
ddoiron@panews.com