It’s funny how the whirring, whirling, never ceasing rumble of the plane engines seem to intensify your inner thoughts.

“Am I ready for this?…do something bold, unexpected…go outside your comfort zone. You have only 12 days. Don’t waste them.

…Don’t waste them.”

I tried talking to a two Taiwanese girls, but neither spoke English. Alas. I ended up talking with a very interesting grey-bearded nomad from named Bob. Travels all around, the general explorer type that you can easily envision wearing an Amazon hat. Fascinating, with many interesting stories to tell. Never know what can happen when you just great someone with a nice “good morning”

We head out for our last leg - To Pnom PHen in about an hour. Cambodia here I come!

Eyeliner does not have to be something you rock only when you are going formal. Everyday eyeliner can be quick, easy and gorgeous!

Pencils can be smudged for a subtle look. Always hold your head back, look down into the mirror, and apply your eyeliner.

Liquid looks great only on the top, it takes a steady hand and some practice. Try using light shadow and going with a think line on just the top of your eye. If you are feeling fun try swooping the line out a bit farther then you eye. Make sure you have plenty of liquid on your brush to make it smooth.

Angle brush. To make a fine, dark line wet the shadow and brush. For the natural look get the line as close to the lashes as you can. This look looks great on top or all around.

Everyday liner should be as close to your lash line as you can get it. The point is to enhance and thicken your lashes.

Formal eye liner for this season would be smoky eyes. Just make everything a little heavier. Make your line a bit thicker on the bottom, starting as close to your tear duck as you can. To jazz it up put some of your shimmer on the bottom before you add the liner. This will enhance your eye color.
If you have deep set eyes, dark liner might not be the best option for you, try a lighter color, only on the top.

Less is more, a good rule to live by. If you are going all out on the liner balance it with light lips and simple clothing. A simple black dress, hair pulled back and heavy liner is fabulous. A red dress, catchy shoes, big hair, lots of lips and heavy liner is overwhelming. Leaning towards the classic side is always beautiful.

You’ve no doubt noticed that since our beginning we have held a commitment to give to social justice organizations - in particular, Warm Blankets International and the widows and orphans of war-torn Cambodia hold a special place in our hearts.

In order to give you, our loyal customers, a more direct and visible place in the Mission Beyond Business, as a team, we have decided to revise our program to give 5% of every purchase to Warm Blankets International.

Now you can play a personal part in the Mission Beyond Business.

When you make a purchase at Christa-Taylor, 5% of your purchase goes directly to Warm Blankets and the widows and orphans there. When you give a gift from Christa-Taylor, you give two gifts — beautiful clothes, and the gift of life.

But some of you may be thinking…why are they reducing it so drastically?

30% of net profits = 5% of every sale
We are giving the same amount (and will continue to do so), but now YOU can see the tangible numbers

We give no false impressions on our mission beyond business. I want you to understand how important missions is to the company, and to me as an individual. Because of this, my Dad (Chris), brother (Sam), assistant (Jocelyn) and I are making a trip to Cambodia to serve an orphan home there. This will be my second trip to “Campuchea” and I’m eagerly anticipating seeing that beautiful country again that has suffered so much in it’s history.

We are serving on a construction team and though it is grueling labor…it is very rewarding. (Just imagine me swinging a sledge hammer — that is a humorous thought!)

As I make all the necessary preparations, one thought overshadows all others, “What will it be like to see the orphans again?” I remember the affectionate hugs, smiles and laughter that crossed all language barriers.

Each has a beautiful Cambodian name (that is very difficult for me to remember and pronounce!). The widows, whose husbands were killed during the Kemer Rouge regime, by land mines or disease, look over the children — training them in the arts of their culture and ensuring that they are learning necessary life skills.

So we’re going. And though internet is scarce, I’ll do my best to post a few times…so keep checking!

EVERY DAY IS A GOOD EYELASH DAY!

Mascara Basics.

Always put mascara on after your eye shadow otherwise the shadow will fall on top of your lashes giving you a messy look.

If you have clumpy issues try

-A new mascara. Sometimes cheaper is not always the better.

-Wetting your lashes before you apply mascara,just make sure you do not sneeze until they are dry!

-Get the brush as close to the eye as you can and swoop the brush forward in one motion. Repeat until you get the effect you want.

-Get a baby tooth brush or dry mascara wand to break up the clumps.

If you need to lengthen (who doesn’t)

-Brush a little powder on your lashes before you apply mascara. It makes the lashes look very full and long and helps the mascara stay on.

-Put on two coats. Start with a light, smooth coat, let it dray for ten seconds and add another, heavier one.

ALWAYS ALWAYS clean up the mess you made. The best way to remove mascara for under (or on top) of your eyes is a q-tip with a little lotion on it.

Houndstooth is a variation of a black and white trend. The Scottish bequeathed Houndstooth design is quite versatile being worn as a jacket, scarf, head band, hat, ballet flats or wellies. This classic pattern can be worn adorably…and not so adorably.

DO keep it simple. The Houndstooth piece should stand alone,

DO NOT mix and match patterns. Keep it simply beautiful, ladies.

DO add a splash of (one) color. Try a yellow belt or bold cafe dress.

DO be careful what part of the body you put the pattern. Houndstooth has a wonderful eye catching print, and it does its job well. Be leery of skirts, and pants, love scarves, gloves, shoes, boots, and of course the classic Houndstooth coat.

You might have noted the lack of bare or nylon covered legs recently. It does not have to be daunting to pull on some of the bright and daring tights of 2008.

Here are some simple tips: do’s, don’ts and dares as your time to rock these fun accessories is coming to an end.

Which shoes look best with tights?

Any type of chunky-heeled shoes look awesome with opaque tights. Boots, short and long, are a perfect match with woolly hose. You are going to want those peep-toes this Spring, so buy them now and winterize them by pairing with ribbed hosiery(be sure you watch the toe seam).

Do I have to match my tights with my shoes?

Don’t be afraid to have some fun with color and texture. However if you need to gain a few inches try matching your hose with your shoes for a leg-lengthening effect. You can be grateful for this Winter fashion, being that opaque tights are very slimming.

Legs of Color?

Though bright legwear made it big on the runway, don’t try to go over the top! Stick to delicate designs or easy-on-the-eye prints–dark backgrounds. For solids, team your tights with a hue that’s featured in your ensemble. (i.e. If you’ve got a maroon scarf- pull out the maroon tights).

Have fun!

Hello ladies-

Just wanted to give you a “head up” about what’s happening here on the blog. I will posting regularly every Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesdays will be centered more on “Tuesday’s tips and tricks” fashion tips, pictures ideas etc. and Thursday is everything else.

Just so you know what to expect-

As ever,

Christa

Why? Why are we obsessed with physical beauty?

The answer lies in the self-centered desires resident within the human heart

The message is: If you are beautiful you will be happy and successful, you will be popular among the women, and desirable to the men, You will know lasting intimacy and true love. You will be confident, secure, important and significant. These are all things our heart craves! We long for success, significance, approval…therefore women become obsessed with the attempt to be beautiful.

But it’s a lie. Physical beauty does not ensure happiness.

Princess Diana, was physically beautiful and the most photographed woman in the world. She was a celebrity of unprecedented magnitutde. Yet with the world at her feet, her fairy-tale marriage to Prince Charles ended in divorce, she admitted to frequent bouts of depression, loneliness, ongoing bulimia and several suicide attempts. She went through a number of psycho-therapists but to no avail. And then her life ended in her tragic death.

Even the recent chaotic spiral of superstar Brittney Spears is a witness to the emptiness in such a life.

Physical beauty does not deliver as advertised.
Nancy Leigh Demoss in Lies Women Believe, “the deception that physical beauty is to be esteemed above beauty of the heart…leaves both men and women feeling unattractive, ashamed, embarrassed and hopelessly flawed…the pursuit of physical beauty is invariably an unattainable, elusive goal…it’s always just out of reach.”
“If only…”

We need to remind ourselves -Don’t be squeezed into the mold of this culture “ Why do we have to remind ourselves? Because our tendency is to get sucked right back into this downward cycle.

What we believe determines how we live. We need our minds changed; then our lives, our dreams, our pursuits will follow. I constantly am on the alert, fighting to keep my heart from succumbing to the pressures of this culture. Like a true counterfeit expert, we have to examine the genuine bills so the counterfeits are all the more obvious.

Ask yourself: Has my heart been captivated by this world’s definition of beauty or does true beauty mean something more?

In order to answer this question we need to know

Is there another definition of beauty that we should be focused on?

to be continued.

…continued from Part 1
What ideal? What standard of beauty by which every woman is to compare herself?

1. Bodies that are perfect without defect. That pretty much eliminates all of us. If you have an unwanted scar or birth mark, if you have skin disease, acne on your face or spider veins on your legs, if your nose is too big, if you are too tall or too short- these are considered defects by our society.
2. To be beautiful you must be young
now most of us are still young…but may I remind you of something? We may be young, but our youthfulness is shortlived! In fact, have any of you been with your grandmother or great gramma recently? Stop and picture her in your mind. Guess what? Yea, someday you will resemble your gramma or great gramma. Now I know that may be difficult for some of you to fathom, but it’s true. It’s a flower that quickly fades-no exceptions
3. Having a perfect figure.You must be the pefect height, have a large bust, skinny waist, shapely legs, all packaged in a thin body. Again, the majority of us , don’t measure up.
Finally,
4. We must have that covergirl face. We must look like the faces on the magazine racks, or this seasons most glamorous model or movie star.

The fashion industry creates a definition of beautiful so narrow that in comparison the majority of women and girls feel ugly and unattractive.

What’s worse is the deception in this industry. Did you know that most of the models you see in the magazines don’t even look like their picture? More than 95% of photographs have been digitally altered.

Click: HERE to see some eye-opening videos…

Another intriguing clip: Here

If we had this whole entourage- we wouldn’t look so bad ourselves!!

…to be continued…

In an article titled “The price of perfection” the author Marantz Henig gives an overview of the dangerous and mutilating treatments women have undergone in their quest for beauty.

“Over the centuries, women have mauled and manipulated just about every part of their bodies—lips, eyes, ears, waists, skulls, foreheads, feet—that did not fit into the cookie-cutter ideal of a particular era’s fashion. During the Renaissance, well-born European women plucked out hairs, one by one, from their natural hairline all the way back to the crowns of their heads, to give them the high rounded foreheads thought beautiful at the time…

In China right up until World War 2, upper-class girls had their feet bound, crippling them for life but
ensuring the three-or four- inch long feet that were prized as exquisitely feminine. (before it’s demise this practice persisted for more than one thousand years.) “My foot felt very painful at the start,” recalls one woman, whose account was recorded in The Tyranny of Beauty. “The heel of my foot became odiferous and deteriorated. Because of the pain in my foot, my whole body became emaciated. My face color changed and I couldn’t sleep at night.” But this woman put up with the agony, because she was convinced that “no one wanted to marry a woman with big feet.” In Central Africa, the Mangbettu tightly wrapped the heads of female infants in pieces of giraffe hide, to attain the elongated cone-shaped heads that were taken to be a sign of beauty and intelligence. (though that surely couldn’t have been aiding the intelligence of their brain!)

In the Elizabethan age many women, in search of skin that looked like porcelain, whitened their faces using ceruse, a potentially lethal combination of vinegar and lead. Queen Elizabeth herself used ceruse so consistently that it ultimately ate pits into her skin, causing her to pile the paint on in thicker and thicker layers in hopes of camouflaging her growing imperfections. This, in turn, only led to more corrosion, and the Virgin Queen’s face was ultimately so ravaged that she ordered all mirrors banned from the castle. It is said that her servants exploited the ban on mirrors in a wickedly mischievous way: Every morning they painted the Queen’s face white with ceruse, but they painted her nose “a cruel crimson.”

But, one factor has held relatively constant: most cultures, through the centuries, have wanted their women to be slim…

In England in 1665, a health pamphlet entitled “To reduce the body that is too fat to a mean and handsome proportion” noted that one handy technique for losing weight was bloodletting…women, according to this pamphlet, should be bled “largely, twice a year, the right arm in the spring, the left in the autumn”
In the 1930s women actually swallowed tapeworms to lose weight; the opera diva Maria Callas is said to have been one such desperate reducer. ”

Today women are driven more than ever before

Since before Cleopatra’s day, women have been judged by the way they look, and have struggled mightily to make themselves look the way they want to be judged…perhaps Elizabeth I was on to something after all. Maybe the only way for women to get on with things is to banish all mirrors from the castle.”

I could go on and on and tell you of numerous horror stories, but I brought up these examples to show that the pressure for perfection is nothing new!

The temptation to become absorbed with our physical appearance has always existed.

80 years ago girls would compare themselves with the other 10-15 girls in their town. Today women compare themselves to the pictures of the supermodels put on the by the world-wide fashion industry.

Women have always been susceptible to being totally preoccupied with the physical ideal as defined by the culture in which they live.

While authoress Robin Marantz Henig certainly outlines the problem for us…she offers no solution.

Why? Why are we so preoccupied by this quest for physical beauty?