Archive for January, 2009

Moon Haven's Soothing Salve is fantastic for helping to soothe and repair cracked heels

I would have to say that cracked heels would have to be one of the most common issues that we deal with at Moon Haven.

We developed our Seven Day Cracked Heel Challenge to help give our clients an easy to follow regime for their Cracked Heels.  And from the excited emails, feedback and phone calls we receive it obviously works..and works well.

So here is our simple easy to follow Seven Day Cracked Heel Challenge protocol.

Seven Day Cracked Heel Challenge

Using a large foot smoother - an emery board for feet- gently file down the calluses on your feet

1. Commit to doing the following for seven nights/days in a row and your feet will thank you.
2. Before your shower-Using a foot smoother (looks like a large black emery board using wet and dry sandpaper) gently file down the calluses on each foot.  Just smooth it a little, you don’t have to have a to achieve perfect smoothness in the first night.  A little each day will achieve amazing results
3. After your shower- Using a the popstick supplied, scrape a small amount of  Moon Haven’s Soothing Salve from the jar.
4. Apply the Soothing Salve to the cracked heels in a thin coat.  Do not apply thickly or smother the area thinking that more is better. This is far from that case as what we are aiming for is the damaged skin to absorb all of the salve with very little residue on the surface of the skin after 10 or so minutes.
5. Rest your heels until all of the salve is absorbed.  This should occur in 5 to 10 minutes.  If there is still evidence of excessive slave on the skin after this time just remove the excess and apply less next time.
6. Repeat the above process each night for 7 nights in a row

The feedback we receive from people who have followed this protocol has been amazing.  I think the key is to not use too much salve and ensuring that it is absorbed into the skin.  Excess salve not only  blocks the skin and makes a mess of your sheets at night but also is wasteful and is certainly counter productive.

I also do not believe in using socks (and gloves for dry cracked hands) to help the skin absorb more of the salve.  This technique often results in a build up of heat and makes for unnecessary washing and waste.  The skin will absorb what it needs as it needs it there is no need to force feed it by occluding the skin with gloves and similar techniques.

dry, cracked heels can be extremely painful not just unsightly

A couple of weeks ago Kay came into Moon Haven wanting some help with her cracked heels.  Now I have to say that Kay had some of the most advanced heel cracks that I have seen.

They were very rough and deeply cracked. ..and incredibly sore.

Kay had suffered from cracked heels most of her adult life and now refused to wear sandals and only wore thongs when she was on holiday.

So we offered Kay our Soothing Salve Seven Day Cracked Heel Challenge – and this is Kay’s  email we received yesterday:

Thank you so much.

I purchased your salve for dry feet (Soothing Salve).

my heels are particularly bad and nothing has ever worked, tried yours (salve) and was astounded that within a week there was a marked improvement.
I can now wear sandals with my feet looking reasonable again.

Thanks so much.

Kay

When I phoned Kay to make sure that I could mention her experience on the Moon Haven Website and she then told  me how that only after one week even her husband commented on how good her feet were looking and feeling!

Kay thought that it was the natural beeswax/honey we use in the salve but from my point of view it is the syngeristic blend of both skin softening herbs and healing/soothing essential oils that make Soothing Salve work so well. Of course the natural beeswax /honey we use certainly helps as well!

I will blog all the details of  the Seven Day Cracked Heel Challenge in my next post.

Blue Danube Soap

It’s sad but sometimes old favourites have to go….

So after much discussion we are looking at discontinuing some of our old timer soaps and other Moon Haven goodies

On the list is

• Blue Danube Aromatherapy Soap
• Mint Splash Aromatherapy Soap
• Romance Aromatherapy Soap
• Mud ‘n’ Scrub Body Polish

So if any of  these are among your favourites then please stock up now as they may not be around much longer!

But as they say as one door closes, a new one opens and we have a whole raft of new products coming onto the Moon Haven shelves in the very near future.

Moon Haven's Chickweed & Plantain Salve is excellent to help soothe Excema / Eczema

We had a young boy – about 6 or 7  come into Moon Haven today with a very irritated case of excema.  ( Excema can also be spelt eczema  which totally confuses me and I am sure many others as well!)

Anyway this young chap was scratching away to the point where he was drawing blood.  Localised to only the inner elbows and back of the knees he was obviously in a lot of discomfort.

Anyway we applied a very small amount of Moon Haven’s Chickweed & Plantain Salve to one arm – just to see if it made any difference and so we could compare it to the other.

Well…within 5 minutes the redness was subsiding to a mild pink and the child was much more comfortable and Mum and Dad were back to apply the salve to the other arm.

Both parents expressed relief that they have found something that they can use to soothe their son’s skin and hopefully allow him to sleep without scratching.  They told me that they had tried so many different treatments that they had almost given up hope…and the Chickweed & Plantain was the first to offer such immediate relief!

They are not alone – we have many, many advocates of this salve for helping to deal not only with excema but psoriasis and dermatitis.

It never ceases to amaze me how such a simple herbal salve can bring such profound relief.

Artichoke from the Moon Haven garden

We have never grown artichokes before but after our visit to Turkey in June we decided that life was not worth being artichoke-less ever again.

So on our return and once the garden was prepared in went 10 artichoke seedlings.

I don’t think i have ever seen plants grow so fast or so impressively.

Whats more, you don’t just get one artichoke per plant …but soon after cutting the first head multiple others start to develop where the leaves branch from the stem.

Artichokes have become our nightly apetiser.  Eric prepares them while I get the rest of dinner underway.

Just before dinner Eric goes out to he vegie garden and cuts the days artichokes.  Initially it was just the one and if we were lucky two.  Tonight it was four… with a veritable feast readying for tomorrows harvest!

To prepare, Eric cuts the stalks close to the base of the globe and rubs this with lemon juice to help stop the discolouration.  Then he cuts the hard tips of the leaves with scissors and places the heads in 1/4 cup of water and lemon juice and covers with plastic wrap.  He then microwaves the two heads for about 5 minutes on medium high.

I prefer my artichokes with butter and so slide cold slices of butter into the heart to melt down.  Eric loves a little mayonnaise to dip his leaves into.

I think half the fun of artichokes is in the eating… each leaf pulled from the base and the fleshy partat the base  scaped away with your teeth.  I just love the savouring of the delicate flavours or each morsel.  The reward is finding the heart…all rich and butter like.

Once agian we get to enjoy the bounty from our garden and you just can’t beat eating fresh produce that was growing in your garden not 10 minutes before!

New pototoes from the Moon Haven Vegie Patch

There is nothing like digging your own potatoes straight from the garden,then cooking them ( in my case microwaving them) and just a few minutes later slathering them with lashings of butter, salt and pepper.

What a taste sensation!

This year we grew potatoes for the very first time and while we only put in three 1.5 metre rows it looks like we will get a sizeable harvest out of it.

They are the easiest vegetable to grow – just dig a shallow trench… add some good compost and plant food, cover and water regularly.  Then 8 weeksor so later … yummy new potoates… a definite taste sensation.