It’s better to look and feel good.  Achieving that balance means getting a good night’s sleep. Although factors like stress can interrupt your snooze time, the Essence of Vali’s Sleep Collection ($6-$18) can help you catch some Zzzz’s.
The 100 percent natural sleep collection offers a relaxing blend of lavender, marjoram, cedar wood and ylang/ylang and is available as balm, mist, massage and bath oil, and concentrate. No more counting sheep here. I applied a drop of the Bedtime Ritual ($18) to the corner of my pillow case and was lulled to sleep by the clean aroma.
Image credit: Beauty Press.com

Maui is paradise on earth.  I was blessed with a press trip to the beautiful island several years ago and I yearn to return.  Until I can make my pilgrimage back (Maui is an exhausting-yet-totally worth it 15-hour flight from New York), the Hotel Hana-Maui’s Honua Spa has created homemade recipes — with ingredients good enough to eat — that will help us achieve that Hawaiian glow year round.

Almond Body Scrub
¼ Cup Rolled Oats
¼ Cup Raw Almonds
¼ Cup Water
2 Tablespoons Oil (Coconut, Sesame or Olive)
(Optional: Few drops of your favorite essential oil)
Grind all ingredients in a blender or food …read more

I love taking a long, warm bath filled with my favorite essential oils and bath salts. And just in time for holiday gift giving and post holiday destressing, I’ve discovered a few new bath salts.
Here are my picks:

Feeling frazzled? Garden Girl’s “Simmer Down” (8 oz, $15) blends pure, mineral rich dead sea salts and fragrant nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon oils to warm you up and relax your mind and body.

Socal Cleanse Organic Detox Salt Scrub ($72) is a spa-ready blend of salts, botanical, herbs, seaweeds and plant oils.  This paraben, sulfate, and preservative-free scrub contains virgin coconut oil, and exfoliates, …read more

While cleaning out my “beauty closet” full of product freebies, I decided that instead of hoarding all of this beauty booty, I should share it with my Hot Mama Daily readers. So it’s giveaway time!
Be among the first readers to Tweet this post and follow me on Twitter @TracyEHopkins. So that I can keep track, reply to this post and let me know you are following me on Twitter.
Increase your chances to win one of 9 great items from my beauty closet if you also share this giveaway on your Facebook page. Then respond to this post and send me a link …read more

I spend an inordinate amount of time at my local CVS/pharmacy. Primarily because of all the store’s super sales and the CVS ExtraCare Reward bucks I rack up; and secondly because the lines are usually super long.

During Fashion Week, I visited the CVS/pharmacy Reinventing Beauty event, where I found out the store’s beauty aisle shelves are lowered to 5′0″ so products are easily accessible for the average height woman (5′4″), and was introduced to the latest beauty trends and products for the Fall/Winter season. Here are a few highlights:
DIY: Sally Hansen Hair Remover Wax Strip Kit ($5.99 for 44 strips) is …read more

Paraben-free is beauty’s new buzz word.  But what does it mean?  I didn’t know either, so I looked it up.  Parabens are chemicals widely used as preservatives in the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.  They can be found in shampoos, shaving gels, deodarants, and toothpaste. 
 
 
While parabens are considered safe because of their “low toxicity profile,” they can cause skin irritation in people with paraben allergies.  And parabens can mimic the hormone estrogen, which is linked the development of breast tumors and cancers. Yikes!  No wonder the industry is trending towards paraben-free products.
 
 
Here are a few products I’ve tried and give the Hot Mama …read more

In case Hot Mama Daily readers haven’t noticed, I have a thing for Philly.  It’s a city on the come-up with trendy shops, boutique hotels, and foodie restaurants that rival those in New York City. During a recent visit, I discovered SA VA in Center City, which features owner Sarah Van Aken’s contemporary line of women’s ready-to-wear apparel and custom-designed jewelry, and local and fair trade accessories.
The hip, sustainable boutique uses recycled hangers, natural fiber packaging and reusable shopping bags.
Two of my fave Philly eateries are Distrito, a mouth-watering nouveau Latin eatery helmed by Chef Jose Garces (the top chef …read more

I love it when Hot Mama Daily readers hip me to new products.  This great beauty product tip comes from Ferris in Manhattan:
“I’ve been using it for a few years now and it’s honestly the best eye cream I’ve ever tried. This is the only cream I’ve tried that quickly reduces puffiness (like I cried the night before and fell asleep on my face puffiness).
It also works on fine lines and dark circles. It’s by Reviva and contains, DMAE, Alpha Lipoic Acid and Vitamin C Ester. These are the same ingredients in Dr. Perricone’s eye cream but at a fraction …read more

Shecky’s Girls Night Out came right on time.  When I received my overstocked goodie bag yesterday, I was psyched to find a bottle of Fanci-full Temporary Hair Color ($5.99; CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreen’s) in an appropriate shade (Black Radiance).  The gray hairs around my temples appear to be multiplying, and I need to cover them up before cashiers start calling me M’aam again. Since I’m not crazy about using a permanent dye,  I hope this “risk free hair color” will do the trick.
 
 
The instructions seem easy enough:  Fanci-full rinses in, shampoos out, and contains no ammonia or peroxide.  The enriched …read more

My skin becomes dehydrated during the fall and winter months.  So I need to keep it hydrated and moisturized.  What I didn’t realize until I was recently treated to a conditioning True Facial at the Hotel Gansevoort’s Exhale Spa, was that I was contributing to my skin’s dry and flaky state by using a deep cleansing, drugstore astringent.
 

 
I’ve been using an astringent since I was an acne-prone teen, and always thought it was a necessary skin care step for cleansing your pores and getting rid of excess dirt before applying a moisturizer.  As I’ve become more beauty savvy, I discovered …read more