Have A Little Faith in We

One of my favorite things about being a blog follower is how the experience goes from just following along to eventually feeling like you are taking advice from a friend. As a result of my love for blogs, I have purchased clothes, tried hair styles, decorated mantles, read books, organized my office, discovered health tricks, and become inspired in countless ways! Reading about a solution that an everyday person, just like me, finds enriching to their lives has been really helpful – so here on HALF I thought I would get in on the info sharing action and include a weekly favorites post! Each week I will share one of my favorites things! The topic areas will range from favorite clothes to organizing solutions to health tricks. Really anything that I feel we just can’t live without – or would really not want to – at the Bessette home and maybe you can find something you love too!

Happy Friday ya’ll! Hope you have some fun weekend plans in the works and if you are in the Northern VA area – hope it includes some in door options with the rain that is coming! Over the next two weekends Danny is officially in hockey mode. He has hockey training camp with his kiddos and a couple of classes for the next level of his coaching certification. This means Quinlan and I are pretty solo – so I am hoping for the perfect balance of down time and relaxing and productivity! The to do lists are mighty….. I have big blog plans, a new project, a few classes, and a long list of housing to dos….. plus I just said “YES” to being in my sisters wedding which is going to be in January! Oh and ya’ll – we have a lungiversary (spelling???) coming up and I am thinking we best be planning to celebrate big! All that to say my head is swimming a little bit and before I got too crazy I turned to my favorite ways to relax last night: the spa!

It sounds very spoiled – but its true, I am a girly girl and I love a day of pampering! But the way those days costs they have to be a special treat! So my sisters and I are constantly trading tips of things we have heard you can do from home. Katy is a hairdresser with make-up training and Brig is the most budget conscious Heppes to walk this earth – so we always have ideas to swap. When I decided to pour over Pinterest and find some tips for an at home spa night they were my go to Guinea Pigs! Plus my mom is ALWAYS up for a girls’ night and we like to include Ganmommy (aka force her into whatever crazy adventure we are on) – and thus our girls’ at home spa night was born!

For the first attempt at this I wanted to keep it super simple – 3 treatment options and a nail painting station. But I still hoped it would feel special – even if my oatmeal hand treatment was a dud – so I also made little goodie bags with my favorite pampering tools (nail buffer, vaseline, wash cloth, hair band). Then the icing on the cake – Mom treated us to some new girly matching PJs and slippers and we were on our way!

Face treatment: We have been interested in checking out this Charcol fad, but it can be a little pricey and we really had no idea of we would like it. So this one I kept super simple and picked up a kit from Target.

Lip scrub: This is something that was very simple with the potential for immediate results. Oh – and we had all the ingredients on hand! So easy peasy…..and my lips are very soft!

Hand treatment: Well ya’ll know I like to address all my fears/worries/frustrations by giving into my OCD with a good hand scrubbing. Translates to – my skin on my hands is ROUGH! So a hand treatment was super appealing to me and this was another recipe that I could make from stuff in my kitchen.

Last night we got a good laugh as we basically sloshed around in oatmeal and seemed to only be exfoliating the kitchen table as the mush got all over! But this morning while at work I was amazed at how my hands still seemed to be letting go (I am not sure the polite way to describe that….) of the dead skin and leaving my hands with fresh soft skin! Me with the sand paper hands! So last night my family comforted me by saying even if it did nothing – at least it felt good on our hands with the warmth of the oatmeal, but today we are all pretty happy with the results.

So all in all the night as a success! We served up some simple snacks with margaritas and stayed up well past mid-night (and on a school night!!) chatting and laughing. And when I woke up this morning my hands and lips were even softer and my face had a nice brightness to it. These simple little treatments actually did work! If you are interested in hosting your own I would say head to target for those masks and a very inexpensive set of wash clothes, check out Pinterest for some recipes (here is my board), and one of my new favs for inspiration check out Angela Lanter’s blog or videos. Taking care of your body and feeling pampered is a really nice treat…… but I think any time you can slow life down a little and laugh, that is the best medicine!

Thank you so much for reading and remember to make it a great day!
Jackie