Taking care of your hands is important as well as easy.Even those who think that they have no time for such treatments, can manage to take out about 5 minutes from their busy schedule, and pay some attention to those poor, neglected hands.

To make your hands look pretty as well as well-kept, start with manicure.It takes about 15 minutes, and once a week is quite enough.Once your hands are manicured, all you need is a little natural oil to keep it moisturised.

A Simple To Do-Home Manicure:
Things You Require:
For your manicure, take a small bowl of warm, soapy water.A small hand towel, a nail file, cotton wool, coconut oil for moisturising, nail polish remover, and polish.It is much nicer to prefer pink and pearlised shades, for the daytime.Nail polish is best applied before you go to bed so that you do not have to worry about badly kept nails in the morning.Purple, violet and other dark shades, are a bit too extreme for formal dressing, but if you find that they suit your personality, as a lady with a mind of her own, please go ahead! After all, individual tastes, differ.
Manicure Steps:
A.First, remove your older nail polish and then file your nails.Long nails are best suited to people with long slim fingers, and if you have short, sturdy singers, please make sure that your nails are shaped to an oval, and not more than 1/16 th of an inch past the fingertip.
B.Next, soak your hands in the soapy water, for 2 minutes.Press back the cuticles, very gently with your towel.They are very delicate, and need moisturising.To remove any soap deposit, wipe your nails again with nail polish remover.
C.Apply a base coat, beginning with the thumb.Base coats are normally transparent nail polishes, which are either strengtheners, or just present to stop the chemical products of the nail polish, to yellow your nails.
D.After it has dried, apply nail polish.Use only 2 light coats, allowing the first to dry completely before applying the second.
E.Finally, when the polish is completely dry, massage the coconut oil/ Almond oil/ olive oil into your hands up to the wrist.
A manicure once a week keeps your hands feeling good.As it is always preferable to use natural products, rather than expensive creams and moisturisers, go back to nature and every night, use a bit of milk cream, or milk as a natural moisturiser.A little bit of salt added to it will bleach your hands beautifully.

If you have to use your hands for washing up, gardening, or any work which needs hand care, it is always best to use hand gloves.And if you think that it is too tiresome, what is to stop you from oiling your hands too well, with coconut oil, or milk, and then washing up? For gardening, always make sure that little soap pieces are placed under your nails, so that dirt does not get caught between fingertips and nails.

Remember that very hot and very cold water is disastrous for hands.Make sure, the water is at room temperature.In the winters, it is always preferable to wash your face and hands in cold water, to keep the naturally moisturizing oil in, but make sure, you apply some oil after a wash.

Exercise For The Fingers And The Wrist:Fingers are best kept supple by exercising upon an imaginary keyboard.Put your hands out, and flap them like wings of an ostrich, then rotate your wrists, clockwise and anticlockwise.If you happen to be doing a lot of writing work, exercise your fingers by clenching your fists, and then opening out your fingers, fast.This close-open, close-open exercise can not only relieve finger fatigue, but it’s also useful in keeping your fingers from gaining deposits at the joints.

2 15-ounce cans cannellini or great northern beans (about 3 cups), rinsed and drained
1 head garlic (the whole bulb–15-20 cloves)
2 tablespoons water
3-4 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium yellow onions, chopped
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
2 bay leaves
1 cup water
1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup fresh parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Break the garlic bulb into cloves and peel off the skin. If you’d like, chop one of the cloves, but leave the others whole. If some of the cloves are very large, you may cut them in half lengthwise.

Spray a large, non-stick pan lightly with olive oil. Add the onion and sauté until it turns a rich, medium-brown, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and carrots and sauté for 1 more minute.

Add the beans, tomatoes, bay leaves, and water. Cover the pot and simmer for about an hour, adding water if it gets too thick.

Stir in the salt and pepper. If you’re serving the stew right away, add all the parsley and the lemon juice. If you’re serving it later or at room temperature, add the parsley and lemon juice right before serving.

Serve over brown rice.

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p.s. I’m so happy that I found this www!!!Susan makes THE BEST vegan recipes!EVER!

Prep. Time: 0:35

1 ripe peach - peeled, pitted
1 egg white

-Whip peach and egg white together in a blender until smooth.
-Gently pat mixture over face.
 -Leave on for 30 minutes.
-Rinse off with cool water.

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Fad diets are like “get rich quick” schemes where the results achieved seldom match up to the promises made. The results are temporary at best. In a nutshell, one thing that you need to know about fad diets is that the positives of a fad diet regimen are outweighed by the negatives.

A brief look at the concept of fad diets, after reading this article you will have a clear understanding of what fad diets are and should you be going for one.

Fad diets work on the basis of the following three points:

* Promoting a food group as a panacea for losing weight

* Eliminating foods considered harmful

* Lifestyle-related diets

These premise are not scientifically verified though the diet promoters may have some anecdotal evidence to back it.

Food faddism can be taken to extremes, as in the case of Zen Macrobiotic diets that promised more than just weight loss, they offered a spiritual rebirth as well for the small price of giving up animal products including milk, fruits, and vegetables and living entirely off cereals.

Why are fad diets popular?

Given the fact that we are all intelligent folk, why do we fall for these fad diets? I guess for the same reason we buy a pack of cigarettes even though it has the Surgeon General’s warning printed on it.
Fad diet promoters prey on our gullibility, desperation, and vanity and do it quite successfully. Another reason why these diets sell is that they do show some temporary results. However, a lot of weight loss that occurs when following a fad diet is from losing water and lean muscle and not body fat.

How to recognize a fad diet?

If an advertisement for a diet has any of the following characteristics, it’s a fad diet.

* A promise of quick results

* Easy to follow

* No restrictions on what you eat

* No exercise required

* Elimination of entire food groups from the diet plan

* No mention of any scientific backing but a lot of jargon used

Some (in)famous fad diets
3-Day diet – This diet restricts calorie intake to around a 1000 calories each day for 3 days in a week. For the rest of the week, you may follow your normal eating routine. This is one of the more extreme diets with severe calorie restrictions that lead to a breakdown of muscle. Also, plunging the body in and out of near-starvation routines can do more harm than good. The diet claims an ability to bring down weight by 10 pounds in a week or 40 pounds in a month.

Hollywood diet – What can be a better tool than adding “Hollywood” as a tag to your product? There is a strong chance that sad and down & out individuals will be willing to put reason aside and try out this extreme diet plan which promises rapid weight loss. The diet basically asks you to survive on a concentrate made of water and fructose, pineapple, orange, apple, prune, white grape, and lemon juices, and extracts of bilberry, green tea, ginkgo biloba, and grapeseed, along with a few preservatives and stabilizers. Good for cleansing the system once in a while but not recommended as a weight-loss diet.

Moon diet – It would be difficult to come up with a diet more gimmicky than the moon diet. The diet claims that the phases of the moon can help you lose around six pounds in one day. You need willpower, the ability to read an Almanac, and a suspension of belief before going in for this diet which is basically a form of scheduled fasting.

In conclusion, it would be fair to say that there is no gain without pain; the only real way to lose weight and stay healthy is diet control and exercise.

Last night’s Access Hollywood featured a non-surgical face-lift alternative that made me nostalgic for my grade school days. Some days, my hair was braided so tightly, that I ran to the school bus bleary-eyed, with an oncoming headache, and an itchy scalp. Little did I know, one day such braids would be used by stars like Madonna to achieve a face-lifted effect.

Watch this video to see how the method is done. It takes only four, strategically placed braids, that are hidden by your overlaying hair, so no one knows your secret. The procedure costs around $100 and lasts four days. The braids tug and hurt a bit as their being pulled into place, but the pain before the result is much easier to get through than recovering from an actual face-lift. And as they say in the video, this is the perfect quick fix for a high school reunion, or perhaps a grade school reunion where you’ll still look like that little girl whose braids are too tight!

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Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox Arquette share more than a friendship, they also share an affinity for a fantastic natural skin care line called LATHER.Curious as to what was behind these fragrant treasures, I tried and was recently wowed by the Bamboo Silk Foaming Face Scrub with Lemongrass. Washing my face has literally become an enchanting experience with this product, as my skin is exfoliated with powdered bamboo from hill forests in India. So many facial products on the market claim to leave skin with the ubiquitous “healthy glow,” but I kid you not, after three minutes of rubbing this scrub onto my face, my skin is more radiant and bright and actually looks and feels clean.

I followed-up my cleansing with the Sweet Almond Face Moisturizer, which boasts sweet almond and macadamia nut extracts and is formulated with a high level of antioxidants, making it an ideal choice for dry, mature skin. I love that this moisturizer is light enough for use during the day under makeup, but also rich enough and (infused with vitamins) to be a night crème which revitalizes skin overnight.

And facial treatments aren’t the only way to indulge in this line. LATHER has every base covered with body and hair treatments, soaps, aromatherapy products, a baby line and a men’s line.

My personal affinity for LATHER is also based on the fact that I share something in common with its Founder and President, Emilie Davidson Hoyt. We have both been migraine sufferers. When Emilie’s father gave her a gift of lavender soap from one of his business trips, she discovered its healing properties and ability to diminish her migraine pain. This discovery led  to her interest in aromatherapy, which eventually spawned into the entire skin care line, LATHER. Lucky for us!

LATHER is moving to a brand new location in Pasadena, CA in September, has a full service spa in New York City as well as stores in San Jose and Scottsdale. Visit www.lather.com or call 877-6-LATHER and get your suds on!

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How does this diet sound? Eat all the bread, potatoes, pasta and cookies you want and quit counting calories. Jump for carb-loaded joy! Okay, there is a catch: no meat, dairy, sugar, refined flour or artificial sweeteners. But after reading Skinny Bitch by former Ford Models agent Rory Freedman and former model Kim Barnouin, going (dare we say it?) vegan sounds less like the lifestyle of crunch-granola hippies and more like a recipe for becoming slim and gorgeous.

What do “skinny bitches” eat anyway?What makes this diet easy to swallow is the book’s tough-love attitude ?- part best-friend counsel, part drill-sergeant abuse and a dash of sailor mouth, wrapped in a pretty chick-lit package. “Say goodbye to soda and hello to a sweet ass,” “You are a total moron if you think the Atkins diet will make you thin” and many priceless-yet-unprintable dictums certainly make you laugh in a way few diet books can. “If we wrote a meek, apologetic diet book, it would go in one ear and out the other,” Freedman explains.

The basic concept of the Skinny Bitch diet is surprisingly simple: “You need to get healthy if you want to get skinny.” And to be healthy by the authors’ definition, you should eat foods that are easy to digest, rich in nutrients and free of harmful additives.

That means saying goodbye to sugar (aka “the devil”) and products containing it, and not just because of empty calories. “When sugar enters your body, it’s acidic,” Freedman says. “When you put acidic foods into your body, in order to protect your organs, your body produces fat cells.” Just don’t turn to NutraSweet or Splenda to satisfy that sweet tooth. Artificial sweeteners have been linked to everything from cancer to diabetes. And if weight is your only health concern, Freedman adds, studies have shown that these chemical substitutes actually stimulate your appetite.

Never fear. Freedman says you can still get your junk-food fix, ironically, at your local health food store. “Kim and I are pigs,” she declares. “We live to eat, and there’s no reason you should have to live without cookies. We just read the ingredients and look for better substitutes for sugar, like evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup, molasses, raw sugar, beet sugar, maple syrup, things like that.”

Along with sugar, toss out anything made with white flour or white rice. The nutrients are stripped out during processing and then added back in, but the body doesn’t absorb those additives as well as it sucks ‘em up from the whole grain stuff. So go for brown rice and whole grain pasta and bread.

In a decidedly direct manner, the book reminds us that in order to be thin, what goes in must come out. And one of the easiest ways to ensure such regularity is to eat a lot of fruit. Cribbing an idea from the book Fit for Life, Freedman suggests eating fruit alone for breakfast, since it passes through the body fastest when there’s no interference from heavier foods.

For the steak and cheese addicts among us, all of the above sounds easy enough. Then we get to the bit about giving up meat and dairy. Freedman and Barnouin are passionate animal-rights advocates, but again, for those of us more concerned about our waistlines, they offer a believable argument for going veggie: Meat takes a long time to break down in the body, and much of it ends up just staying put, blocking the intestines and slowing the metabolism. Plus, Freedman says, the growth hormone given to most animals could affect your own body the same way it’s intended to affect theirs.

As for dairy products, by age four, humans (like all other mammals) lose a large amount of the lactase enzyme that helps us digest milk, because that’s when we’re supposed to have switched over completely from breast milk to solid foods. That’s why dairy consumption as adults leads to digestive problems, which lead to weight problems. So why does it feel downright unnatural to go a day without eating cheese? “You are physiologically addicted to cheese because it contains casein, which breaks down into opiates in your body,” Freedman explains.

Luckily, there are plenty of cheese and meat alternatives out there made from soy. Though less processed soy, as in tofu, is better for you, the processed fake-meat products are fine for curbing your flesh-eating habit. Also, try to find organic products, since soy is often genetically modified. That goes for just about any other food too. “Read the ingredients” is practically a Skinny Bitch mantra, because the fewer artificial ingredients you consume, the healthier and skinnier you’ll be.

Freedman advises approaching this diet very gradually, giving up one bad thing at a time and setting achievable weekly goals. Best of all, you can cheat. “Just pick and choose what works for you,” she says. Well, that’s not a very bitchy attitude, is it?

Just what does a “skinny bitch” eat?

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Squats are my favorite lower body exercise. They recruit more of your large leg muscles than any other exercise and are great butt toners. You can do squats in the gym or at home. You can do them with your own body weight, while holding dumbbells in your hands, or, for more resistance, with a barbell across the back of your shoulders (use a spotter when you do this).

Here’s how to do a squat:

Squats are a power exercise, and you should eventually do them with some added resistance. There is a lot to keep track of while doing squats. It is very helpful to do them in front of a mirror.

One tried and true floor exercise that works your butt is the kickback. Start out on a mat on your hands and knees, with your weight evenly distributed among your points of support. Draw one knee forward underneath you as far as you can, and then extend your leg straight behind you. Although the exercise is called a kickback, the extension of your leg should be smooth and gentle. Avoid excessively arching or rounding your back while doing this routine. Do this on one side for 15-25 repetitions, and then change to the other side. When this gets easy, wear ankle weights for more resistance.

For more exercises to do at home, check out videos pertaining to this area from The Firm series and Kathy Smith.

Finally, if you want to have fun and work your butt at the same time, try in-line skating. If you skate with good form (back flat, legs tucked under the body before the stride is initiated), you’ll get a tremendous glute workout, as well as important aerobic exercise.

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Combining a medicine ball with an exercise ball is a great way to strengthen your abs and work on endurance and stability. Check out the exercise below to learn unique ways to work your entire body.

• Warm up with 5 minutes of light cardio
• Perform each exercise as directed, clicking on the pictures for a closer view
• Beginners, do 1 set of 10-16 reps. Intermediate/Advanced, do 1-3 sets of 10-16 reps
• Steady the ball against a wall or chair for extra stability in some exercises
• Combine this workout with regular cardio exercise for maximum results

Leg Extensions with Medicine Ball
Position the ball under upper back to engage your abs and to stabilize the hips while. Hold a medicine ball straight up over chest and make sure extending the right leg straight. Return to start and repeat, alternating legs for 10-16 knees are at 90 degrees. Lower arms behind you while simultaneously reps. For less challenge to balance, do the leg extension without the medicine ball.

Sit and Squeeze
Place your back against a wall with hips & shoulders squared. Slide down until knees are at 90 degrees, knees over ankles and weight in heels. Squeeze a medicine ball or towel just above your knees and hold for 15 or more seconds. Repeat 2-3 times.

Ball Squeeze & Lift
Lie on right side with ball between shins, squeezing it to hold it in place. Keep hips stacked and abs tight to stabilize your body. Squeeze inner thighs and contract the waist and hip muscles to lift the ball in the air. Lower and repeat before switching sides.

Medicine Ball Lunge
Begin in a lunge position with right leg forward, knee over ankle. Lower into a lunge bringing the ball down towards right hip. Straighten knees, bringing ball straight up overhead and then lower back into a lunge, sweeping the ball towards the opposite hip. Movement of medicine ball will be like a figure 8. Repeat other side.

All Around Crunches
Lie face up on ball and hold medicine ball in both hands. Begin with body draped over the ball, arms extended behind you. Contract the abs to lift upper back off the ball and bring the medicine ball towards your right thigh as you twist to the right, contracting the right side of waist. Repeat for all reps and then

Ball Balance
Sit on Exercise Ball with strong abs and straight spine, arms extended on either side of you and one foot resting on medicine ball. Once you feel stable, lift other foot off floor and hold it for a few seconds, then rest it on the medicine ball with the other foot. Hold for 15 or more seconds and repeat.

Chest Squeeze with Med Ball
Sit on ball or chair, back straight and abs in. Hold a medicine ball at chest level and squeeze hands to contract the chest. While continuing to squeeze the ball, slowly twist towards the left while simultaneously pushing the ball out a few inches. Pull the ball back in, return to center and repeat on the other side, alternating sides.

Medicine Ball Crunches
Lie on your back with knees bent, medicine ball right below the knees. Squeeze inner thighs to hold ball in place. Put hands behind head (cradle your head gently) and without straining the neck, lift shoulders and hips off the ground in a crunch, flattening the belly like a canoe at the top of the movement. Lower back down without completely relaxing and repeat.

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If you’d like to make a pie, but you still on a diet,or you just wanna eat proper healthy food,this recipe is what you need!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups soymilk
1 tbsp. Ener-G egg replacer*
1/4 cup water*
1 tbsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups pureed or mashed cooked pumpkin (or cushaw or winter squash)
1/2 cup rice flour (or flour of your choice)
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. ginger powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray a 9-inch deep dish pie pan with cooking spray. (I used a Pyrex pan, and it came out with no sticking.) A deep dish is recommended because this pie will rise a lot during cooking but will fall back down as it cools.

Put the first five ingredients in the blender, and blend well. Add the pumpkin, and puree. Add the remaining ingredients and blend on high for 2 minutes, stopping to scrape the sides a couple of times to make sure everything is thoroughly blended. Pour into a pie pan and bake for about 60 minutes. The top and edges should be brown, but the edges should not be over-done. (Since this is a custardy pie, using the standard toothpick or knife test does not work; it will remain somewhat moist in the center, but it shouldn’t be uncooked.)

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the counter. For best results, refrigerate until chilled before eating.

*If you don’t have Ener-G egg replacer, you can omit it and the 1/4 cup water and use any other replacement for two eggs. Of course, if you’re not vegan, you could use two eggs, but why not give the vegan version a chance?

When you serve this pie, don’t feel obligated to tell your family or guests that it’s crust-free, fat-free, gluten-free, or vegan, but if they do wonder what’s left after so much is left out, tell them “Flavor, pure, delicious flavor!” source.