Image: Gabriella Fabbri

As you may recall from a previous post, Christoffer and I had the pleasure of spending a day and night at a lovely spa the other weekend. It was a really lovely thing to do, and what I found interesting about the experience is that while the actual physical part of being at a spa is, of course, simply heaven, the simple act of being treated to something is equally as wonderful.

This is very exciting, because I don’t feel that the feeling of self-worth carries a price tag. The fact that the spa cost quite a bit of money wasn’t particularly relevant (lucky for us, our stay there was a gift from someone!). Of course, it was divine to use the luxurious facilities, but the fact that we had taken time off work, time away from our daily routines, in order to ‘treat’ ourselves was the most significant thing.

We may not have someone who will treat us to a stay at a spa. In fact, we may not always have someone who’s thoughtful enough to make us a cup of tea, to offer to make dinner, or give us a foot rub, so we need to be even more aware of gifting small things to ourselves.

It’s so easy for us to get swept up in the tidal-wave of life, whooshing along between work, household duties, family responsibilities, studies, growth…everything, that we can forget to just take time out and thank ourselves for all that we put into our existence.

For me, once I tasted this sense of the extra-ordinary, it left within me a glow of knowledge that for others to love and respect us, and value us even, we need to love, respect and value ourselves.

Yesterday, for probably the first time since I started work on my Miss Best projects last Autumn, I actually took a proper tea break. I made some tea, (and some raw treats, of course!), sat on the sofa (well away from my computer) and just took some time out. Apart from the minimal cost of the tea and chocolate treats, it didn’t cost me a penny. But damn! Did I feel like I had wrapped up an hour’s spa session and presented it to myself!

And I returned to my desk, relaxed, invigorated, productive, and feeling just a little silly that I don’t do this more regularly.

Inspired by this, I decided that it would be a lovely gift this morning to treat myself to some yoga before I did anything else. And so, when it was time for me to make my morning smoothie, and sit down at the computer I felt really rather special. Like it was my birthday! Or a ‘Me’ day! Every day should be a ‘Me’ day! I think we are cable of giving more to others when we nurture ourselves with rest, relaxation, Life-Loving food, exercise and self -appreciation.

As Tinu Su once wrote: “I must prioritize my day to do things that nurture my soul before anything else.”

And so, fueled by all these inexpensive, easy-to-do little gifts of self love, my lovely Christoffer and I have decided to spend this weekend in our home version of a luxurious spa.

OK, so we don’t have a swimming pool, hot tub, or private chef, but we are going to treat ourselves to a liquid feast of fresh juices, smoothies, shakes and raw soups to energise our bodies. We are – or at least I am – also going to enjoy doing more yoga, soaking my feet in my lovely foot bath that Christoffer’s sister gave me for Christmas, massaging our feet, walking in the forest with our dog.

I am also planning on trying out some natural, home made beauty treats such as hair masks, facial scrubs etc. This is where I would LOVE your input. If you have any that you can recommend, please post them below.

I am really excited about this weekend. I am very interested in what this experience will trigger, and to see if I can continue with my little gifts of self-love.

l will let you know how this weekend of relaxing self-love goes in a future blog post. In the meantime, have a fantastic weekend, full of little treats. And do let me know your favorite home-made natural body treatments, below!

Oh, and I would love to take this opportunity to let you know about a yummy, introduction to raw food class that I am holding near Stockholm on 24th April. Perhaps this is a prefect opportunity to give yourself a gift of self-love? Please visit this page to find out more!

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Forget The Celebrity ‘X Factor’ – It’s Our ‘Appreciation Factor’ That Counts!

I have to admit that I avoid reading and listening to the news. I feel that it delivers us just a teeny tiny fraction of the world’s events and are highly manipulating. I prefer instead to read optimistic and inspiring news such as Ode magazine.

But since I am hard-core Facebook user it’s hard to avoid hearing what’s going on the world. To be honest that’s good in a way as it would have been a bit weird if in 5 years I discovered that Michael Jackson had left planet Earth back in 2009. It would have been like that part in ‘Dumb & Dumber’ when Jim Carey’s character sees a framed article of man landing on the moon and runs out of the bar shouting ‘We’ve landed on the moon, everybody!’

I have to admit that Michael Jackson (MJ) was probably my first crush. Back in the late 80s he was much hotter than of late, and I have fond memories of listening to him in my bedroom as a kid, dreaming of seeing him in concert. I never did, and by the time I was old enough for such a possibility I felt his best period had passed and never made an effort to go.

I don’t know much about MJ but if anyone who isn’t causing harm to others dies – famous or otherwise – then it’s a sad thing. And regardless of who he was or wasn’t in his personal life, he did bring the world some great music. But guess what? So have so many other people. And guess what? So many non-famous people bring us fantastic things every day, but are not appreciated on the scale that people like MJ are.

It’s just the mass scale that intensifies the appreciation of these people. Take this little anecdote for example. A few weeks ago I had a naughty celebrity dream. Come on hands up who has NEVER had one of those dreams? I know you have! Well, me being me, didn’t dream of steamy passion with the latest heart-throb. No I dreamed of , let’s call him ‘Mr Celebrity’, serving me cake. Yes, it’s true! He was making a big effort to score me some vegan cake. Fully clothed. Cake – that’s all it was. Nothing to make the vicar blush what so ever. Nothing. But when someone gives a girl cake in her dream, it’s hard for her not to wake feeling rather fond of that person. Funnily enough a few days later my friend was having a cat-fight on Facebook about who gets to ‘have’ this celeb. I refrained from joining in on this public declaration of fondness for ‘Mr C’, knowing that he had served me cake and all was good. I knew where his loyalty lay.

And being the loyal girl that I am myself, I started to feel guilty for going around feeling fondness (and that’s all it was) for a chap that wasn’t my Christoffer. So my little mind went into analyze mode and I realized that Christoffer was actually very much like this celebrity. The character this actor played is a slightly nerdy but funny, kind, smart and handsome young man. He is the celebrity version of Christoffer! And I thought that if Christoffer and I had never met and he was a celeb I would definitely be having cakey dreams about him.

And am sure I wouldn’t be the only one. I am certain my friends would be fighting over him on Facebook. So what stops them from doing that now? Well, apart from the fact that I would scratch their little beady eyes out for lusting over MY man they don’t really know who he is! It’s all a numbers game. If you are a non-celebrity and say you score an average ‘appreciation factor’ (how much people appreciate your gifts to the world) of 7/10 then your total ‘appreciation rating’ would probably be (bearing in mind I am a creative person and not a numbers girl!) n x 0.7 where n is the number of people who know about your existence. The more people who know about you, the higher your total score will be.

So what’s my point? Well, let’s look at people’s ‘appreciation factor’ rather than the total score. Let’s look at our partners, friend’s, colleagues, neighbours, family with the same adoring eyes as we have when stroking pictures of our celebrity idols. Let’s assess our own ‘appreciation factor’. How can we better deliver our gifts to the world so that people can benefit from what we have to offer. How can we up our ‘appreciation factor’ to live a more fulfilling and giving life?

And since we are suddenly being bombarded with MJ songs on the radio when we hadn’t really heard much about him recently let’s remember to celebrate people now. How many people make a special effort to go to a funeral, but wouldn’t make the time to go and see that person when they were alive and well? Let’s appreciate the gifts that are given to us by others (and ourselves) on a daily basis – now! Let’s not allow ourselves and each other to become ‘famous after they died’ figures. Let’s love life now!

Oh, I guess you may be wondering who ‘Mr Celebrity’ is? Well, if you hadn’t already figured it out, the chap who was going to great efforts to bring Miss Best vegan cake in dream land was in fact Adam Brody, who played Seth in the series O.C.

Now if I can just get Christoffer to bring me vegan cake in real life then that would be something to make the vicar blush

My Lovely Christoffer - better than cake!

Vegan Cake!

Booja Booja

Have you ever tried a Booja Booja truffle? I already had a bit of a crush on Mr Booja Booja for bringing us amazing and decadent dairy-free truffles but now that he has brought us raw truffles I am positively head-over-heels. Seriously – wow these are amazing. The raw truffles come in two varieties: Raspberry and ‘Plain’. Both are so incredibly good.

These little babies are sweetened with agave syrup instead of sugar, which I am so happy about since I avoid regular refined sugar. Agave has a lower GI, and is much easier on the blood sugar levels. Other ingredients include raw cacao (which is just exploding with antioxidants) and raw coconut butter. Whip these together and you get sublime melt-in-the-mouth cubes of lurve to get all excited about.

It’s the kind of thing that you want to lock yourself away from other people when eating, nibble off the outer coating and then lick and suck away at the soft chocolate inside…which should probably be x-rated…but since it harms no one (not even the cacao farmers since it is fair trade) I think one can be quite forgiven. Even on a Sunday.

In fact I was so loved-up from one secret Booj-session, as I like to call them, that I sent a little mail of appreciation to Mr B himself. It went something like this:

“Dear Mr Booja Booja

I am in love with your raw truffles.

It is amazing how much you can pleasure a girl with such a small packet…

Miss Best x “

I think everyone needs to be shown appreciation so that they know that they are putting out good things in to the world. Don’t be shy…even highly successful people are boosted from hearing the positive outcomes of offering their gifts to the world!