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Beauty Counter

Gaelyn • 1 Comment

Have you guys heard of Beauty Counter? I was honestly surprised I hadn’t heard of it before. It’s an amazing company and their products are right up my alley. I always try my best to buy “natural” products for the kids. But in all honesty, it’s hard to know unless you research your products before you hit the store. But if you find you’re out of shampoo and you are standing in the aisle at Target, you do your best. For some weird reason I can’t say I take the same amount of concern or research into account when it comes to products for myself and I have no idea why.

When Kelly Castady contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying some of the products, I was really excited.

Let me share a video with you guys about the company that I really loved. It does such a good job of describing who they are and what they are about and what you can expect from them, so much better than any ramblings I could do haha.

 

“Our skin is our largest organ and what you put on it matters. It matters a lot.”

Right? That makes prefect sense! But like I said, its hard to know whats good, and whats bad. And how some of your favorite products measure up. One way you can find out is by searching for your items on Skin Deep.
All of Beauty Counter products rank at a 1 or a 2. So really, the research can stop there. You can find out what products you have that rank high in toxins and replace them with Beauty Counter products and have peace of mind about whats in them. Every single one of them available on the site will rate at a 1 or a 2.

I know for me, living in Los Angeles one thing I struggle with is sunscreen. Sunscreens- especially some of those brand that are easy to grab at the local corner store when you run out and haven’t done your research- are often full of irritants and some of them pose high risks for developmental and reproductive harm! I’m not mom shaming. I have put that garbage on my kids and heck I grew up as a baby in the tropics and I probably didn’t even wear sunscreen! But when given the choice I would rather arm myself with something I know is safe and also effective!! I tried out this roller version

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At first I honestly thought it might be a hassle because its so little- but I love that I can keep it in my purse! Most days I forget sunscreen until we are all buckled in the car so this is perfect. Also, Oliver really likes to apply it himself (with a little help). I have even applied it over my makeup before with little disruption.  I will probably try the full tube cream version next.

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We also tried the kids shampoo and the kids body wash. Both of them smell amazing and because they are a quality product a little goes a long way! I gotta say I appreciate the pretty packaging too but I’m a design nerd haha. Elliot has mild eczema so I always want to be sure to use something gentle. I also follow his bath with their baby oil to make sure he stays moisturized at night- especially his face.

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For myself I tried some face products.

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I have normal to dry skin so Kelly recommended a few things. One is this charcoal soap. Soaps are often made with harsh surfactants such as sulfates that are overly drying and irritating to the skin- the last thing I want to do is dry my skin out more. Okay, $24 for a bar of “soap”- you might think that’s crazy but I’m fairly certain its going to last all year (or longer)! The charcoal face bar gently draws out impurities while nourishing the skin with organic safflower and coconut oils, and pure essential oils.

Beauty Counter Charcoal bar

I have been alternating the charcoal bar and the gentle exfoliator every night and then I top it off and seal in the goodness with moisturizers.

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I apply a pump or two if the nourishing night cream and then I ADD a few drops of the Lustro Oil #2. This oil is heavenly! My skin feels so glowy and even. Don’t think that just because you have oily skin you can’t use an oil! They offer 3 different oils. #1 is for everyone, especially anyone with sensitive skin. #2 is great for people like me with dry skin and #3 is ideal for oily/combination or acne prone skin. I highly recommend the oils and I think I’m hooked. Also again they get me with the beautiful packaging!

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Overall, I’m so grateful to Kelly for introducing me to their line of products and our family will be continuing to use them for sure.  Kelly has offered to sweeten the deal for any of my readers who are interested in trying the products!! So I highly recommend that now be time you try!

• For all purchases (up to $125) she will include a complimentary Citrus Mimosa Hand Cream ($18 value)

• All purchases over $125 will receive a complimentary Charcoal Cleansing Bar ($24 value)

• We will be using a unique link specific to my site so anyone who purchases from here will also be entered into a raffle to win the grand prize – which will be Lustro Face oil #1  ($68 value) 

 

Also as part of Stand Up to Cancer Beautycounter has pledged to match fundraising efforts dollar for dollar up to $50,000. For the month of July Kelly has set a goal to raise $1000 for Stand Up to Cancer and will donate $5 for every $100 in sales.

 

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Tosan Knows Best Giveaway

Gaelyn • Leave a Comment

 

My Corner View - Tosan Knows Best giveaway

IN HONOR OF FATHER’S DAY- IT’S GIVEAWAY TIME!

I’ve teamed  up with Tosan Knows Best for a Pop & Tot giveaway! I know you all have some amazing pops and we want to celebrate them!

My Corner View - Tosan Knows Best giveaway

My Corner View- Tosan Knows Best giveaway

Contest is currently running on my instagram @gaelyn. To enter to win matching pop and tot tees , hope over there and leave a comment telling us one thing you love and appreciate about your baby daddy.

My Corner View - Tosan Knows Best giveaway

My Corner View - Tosan Knows Best giveaway

My Corner View - Tosan Knows Best giveaway

ps let me tell you nothing is cuter than seeing your family in these and the kids think it’s awesome and fun to match with Pop! Oliver kept looking at the sweaters and saying “ohhh like papa. and Elliot too!”

My Corner View - Tosan Knows Best giveaway

See how he cant stop looking!

My Corner View - Tosan Knows Best giveaway

Entries open to US residents only- sorry. See you on instagram. xo

My kids are the cutest.

Gaelyn • 2 Comments

Oliver really likes the new Macklemore and Ryan Lewis song “Dance Off”.

We have an Amazon Echo (Alexa) and he is always trying to request for her to play it…although she can not understand him. On Monday morning when he woke up we heard him try to request it. There is not an amazon echo in his room but there is a Sonos so we qued it up to play magically and he jumped out of bed and got his monday started right and we caught it all on the baby monitor.

We had been filming little bits of both Oliver and Elliot dancing to this song because its kind of been on repeat at our house lately. John put all the clips together in a little video. This is all them actually dancing to this particular song, its not tricky editing. Oliver is working on his break dance skills and Elliot has always had amazing rhythm.

Hope it brings a smile to some of your faces, personally I cant get enough.

Sleep. Or lack there of.

Gaelyn • 10 Comments

My Corner View

I haven’t really posted much… probably because I don’t sleep much. For the most part, this blog is often about fashion. But part of my story is that I’m a mother of two and sometimes I like to blog about that too.

So this post, is about sleep…or lack there of. And how, to my disappointment, the Dock-a-Tot was not the saving grace I hoped it would be. And how, almost one year into this whole “mom of two” thing, I still haven’t quite figured it out. And it’s not all the babies fault.

Our oldest son Oliver (almost 3) was always a great sleeper. As a baby, he self soothed from a a very young age and would easily put himself to sleep. Once he learned his schedule, he would fall asleep at nap time on the dot, no matter where we were. Seriously, anywhere.

Our youngest son Elliot (almost 1) has always had a harder time with sleep. If put down he would scream and cry and sweat and get himself all worked up- fast! We spent a lot of nights co-sleeping. I spent a lot of nights as a human pacifier. I spent a few nights in tears. I couldn’t eat dinner with the family. I would have to go to bed at 7 because he did – and he wouldn’t sleep alone. I would spend weeks waking every 40 mins, or every two hours, when he did.

Fast forward to now.

Just a couple months shy of his first birthday and sleep has improved dramatically for Elliot. On week days, after daycare he sleeps like a dream, as far as I’m concerned. He’s asleep by 6:45 or 7 and sleeps uninterrupted until about 3:30 or 4 at which point he wakes to nurse and then goes back to bed relatively easily until morning. “Morning” varies, but I usually just bring him into our bed if he wakes again anytime before 6am.
Weekends are a different story and we are working on that. (MORE ON THIS LATER)

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Oliver, just a few months shy of his third birthday is suddenly fighting sleep like nobodies business. No matter how much routine and structure I have, we have to fight tooth and nail until about 10 PM most nights to get him to sleep. And THEN half the time he will wake us all up at 5 AM!
I’m pretty sure its developmental. He recently upgraded to a big boy bed. He is potty training. His language is exploding. He is more and more autonomous. Its been about a month and a half of this.

Unfortunately, where daycare days are a saving grace for Elliot, I think the opposite is true for Oliver. Both boys attend an in home family daycare, with just one other kid. So schedule is paramount and everyone is on the same schedule. That means Oliver still naps twice a day and I think at his age he would probably benefit from less nap and a normal bedtime. On weekends, we cant seem to get him to nap twice anyway so we typically wear him out and try to get him to bed at a more reasonable hour.

Okay, so…now you know what we are dealing with. I typically spend from about 6 pm to 10 pm putting children to bed. After coming home from my 9-6 job.

me looking exhausted

me looking exhausted

So I recently had a nervous breakdown. No joke. Lack of sleep can and will do that to you. I was uncontrollably sobbing, things felt out of control. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t handle it anymore. It was just too much. Everyone has a tipping point for how much sleep is necessary and apparently 10 months of terrible sleep was my tipping point.

Let me go back to explaining Elliot’s weekend sleep.

You see, Elliot has come to know the difference between daycare and home. And so it seems he sleeps one way on week days and another on weekends.

I know babies and sleep are a hot subject. I know there are strong opinions on what you should and should not do. And what methods are “right” and “wrong”. I think I have tried all methods. And so I feel confident in saying that what’s “right” is whatever works for you, your baby and your family and gets everyone sleeping. This seems to be the best method for avoiding mental breakdowns.

I have tried it all, none of it is really working for us. What’s important to me is that he gets good sleep, it’s key for his health and his brain development. It’s also important to me that I get good sleep. It’s key for me to function as a patient mother and a human.

After months of deliberating. Ordering, then canceling, then debating again and again, I bought a Dock-A-Tot. I seriously could not find ONE BAD REVIEW!!! So many parents described what sounded just like my baby. Reviews like: “He used to only nap for 20 minutes at a time. On our first day using the dock a tot, he napped for THREE HOURS!” — Okay. Stop. Take all my money. I was desperate. And it seemed to work for EVERYONE! So I bought it. Unfortunately, on my first day (nor any subsequent day – YET), it did not increase our 20-40 minute nap time. Que nervous breakdown. Wait, you mean, this random pillow bed thing is NOT my saving grace? COME ON MAN! I needed a miracle. I was hoping for a miracle.

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Back to hotly debated baby sleep techniques.

Our daycare provider “sleep trains”. When they first start at daycare she lets them cry.

I was never opposed to this method per say. It worked fine with Oliver. He never got too worked up and like I said, he was a great sleeper. However, Elliot is quite stubborn and he would get super worked up super fast. So it didn’t seem like the right approach for him. All babies are different. So like I said, I read and tried many different approaches in addition to whatever my own instincts told me for 10 months. But still, no sleep.

Elliot has been sleeping great on weekdays for a few months now. He goes down easy. He can be laid down drowsy but awake. It’s magical.

And so….

I have come to the conclusion that we will have to let him “cry it out” – to some degree.

Last weekend I started trying it. I’m not going to let him cry for hours on end. In fact, I wont let him cry for more than 20 minutes before going in to reassure him and hold him and settle him again. And in fact, last weekend, he only cried for 20 minutes one time. Each time after got shorter.

It’s always hard to hear you baby cry.

As he gets older, its reassuring for me to hear that his cry often sounds like his brothers cry (when he is really tired) and with his brother I know “he’s just tired”. Its also reassuring for me to know that he is capable of doing this and HAS done this at daycare. And that once we get past the hard part, he sleeps better!

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I felt prompted to write this post for two reasons.

1. Because seriously, there was not one bad review to be found on the Dock A Tot. And even this is not a “bad” review. But if like me, there is a mama out there searching the internet for answers in the middle of the night. Don’t put all your eggs in the Dock-A-Tot basket or you might be headed for a nervous breakdown haha. I do think in time, in addition to other sleep “training” techniques, the Dock A Tot can help him settle and feel secure and cuddled. And I like to think that it can only help our sleep situation.

2. Because parenting is really really hard. No, really. It’s insanely hard. And sometimes we don’t talk about it. And we see people on social media and think they all have it together. And so I’m writing this to help out that one mama who feels alone and helpless. To reminder her that she is not.

If you do feel like trying the Dock A Tot…I mean, why not, I’m apparently the only one on the internet saying it didn’t work.. here is a discount code for you , because they are pricey.

Year in Review

Gaelyn • 2 Comments

Yikes, allow me to dust off the ol’ blog here. There appears to be QUITE A LOT of dust! I apologize. But if you have been wondering what on earth we have been doing…..here is our year in review. Its been a busy busy busy year. There was a lot of coffee involved haha.

Happy New Year! xo

Well Rounded NY feature

Gaelyn • Leave a Comment

Hello friends, I’m happy to report, that if you didn’t see the news on Instagram, we welcomed our second son on May 20th: Elliot Floyd Jenkins.

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A few days before giving birth to Elliot I did a little interview with WellRoundedNY.com where I talk about my maternity style, nursery inspiration,  being a working mama and more. Hop on over and check it out! Keeping this entry short and sweet because I’m currently nursing Elliot and typing with one hand. haha.

xo

My Corner View

Final Stretch

Gaelyn • 2 Comments

I’m in the final stretch now! I’m finishing out my last week in the office. Next week I will work from home for one week. Then after that I start maternity leave whether baby shows up or not! With Oliver, I planned on spending all of my leave with him so I didn’t plan on leaving work until 39 weeks. I figured, hey its a desk job, its not like I’m on my feet all day. My leave is not paid (aside from California state partial pay for a few weeks) and as a first time mom I knew that I wanted to spend as much time as possible with the baby. But little did I know he would show up at 38 weeks on the dot! Luckily for me, he waited until Friday night after work to start labor. So this time around, I decided I should be working at home starting at 37 weeks just in case I have another early arrival. I’d really rather not go into labor at work. But who knows, every pregnancy is different. Maybe baby number two will decide to be stubborn and wait till 41 weeks (dear god, please don’t haha). We shall see. But I’m excited about potentially having a little down time- a little me time- this time around. Maybe I’ll get my nails done. Maybe papa and I can catch a mid day movie date while Oliver’s at daycare! It’s the little things guys. I might never see a movie again.

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

As my mother said when shes saw these photos “Yeowza! He’s looking ready to arrive!” or my mother in law when she saw this photo titled “final stretch”  said “Literally- Stretch!” Haha.

Baby is measuring exactly as he should be. But Oliver didn’t measure large either so…we shall see, I’m a tiny lady.

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

Always with that damn tongue Peeps!

My Corner View - 36 weeks- Maternity Style

Pregnancy Status: 36 weeks and some change

Dress: NOM maternity (nursing friendly for post baby!!) Similar (non nursing friendly version) here
Headscarf: Levi’s
Denim Vest: another one from the Target little girls section
Shoes: not converse, in fact, these shoes were literally $3 at RiteAid pharmacy! haha

Produce Peeps Pup

Gaelyn • 3 Comments

We are having electrical work done at the house and Kujo.. er… Peeps hates unexpected, unknown visitors so she has been with me at the office all week. As a rescue she can be anxious and unsure and not all too social sometimes. But I have to say she has done a great job all week. Sleeping peacefully under my desk and being pretty open to making new friends. So, good girl Peeps! At the end of my last pregnancy I tried bringing her into the office and she was so weird. I think she was just being overly protective of me or something but I’m so happy with how adjusted she has been all week at work! We went out to lunch recently and snapped a few pic here, pretending we were on Mexican holiday (if only.)

My Corner View- Maternity Style- almost 36 weeks

Wearing that dreamy Ingrid & Isabel LBD from Chloe Rose Maternity again- here with more of a casual look. See, I told you it could easily be dressed up or down!

My Corner View- Maternity Style- almost 36 weeks

My Corner View- Maternity Style- almost 36 weeks

My Corner View- Maternity Style- almost 36 weeks

My Corner View- Maternity Style- almost 36 weeks

Pregnancy status: 35 weeks 6 days

Dress: Ingrid & Isabel via Chloe Rose Maternity  –  a serious maternity staple!
Denim Vest: Target little girls section. Thats right. sorry, I’m petite and kids clothes are cheaper.
Hat: Urban Outfitters
Purse: Kate Spade (thanks John!)
and…although my silver/turquoise jewelry is barely visible I can’t wear it and not mention that it was my grandmothers. It was handmade by her brother. She wore them daily and I remember her veiny olive wrinkled wrists in them as a child and I cherish them dearly.

Sleepy Grump

Gaelyn • Leave a Comment

Poor me. Woe is me. Pregnancy is tiring. Pregnancy with a toddler is tiring. Pregnancy while working is tiring. Woe is me. Pity Party. Hahaha. But really though, the general sentiment today was ” is it bedtime yet?” But I imagine you don’t have to be nearly 9 months pregnant to agree with that sentiment.

My Corner View - 35 weeks- Maternity Style

My Corner View - 35 weeks- Maternity Style

My Corner View - 35 weeks- Maternity Style

Pregnancy Status: 35 weeks

Top Knot Hair courtesy of “mama aint got time to wash that hair”

Top: Old Navy Maternity

Jeans: Target Jeggings (non maternity- fully buttoned and comfy! No Maternity price tag…..so…basically…. they are magic!) More info and link in this post

Flannel: Uniqlo

SHoes: Birkenstocks (via Nordstrom)

35 Week Black Shift dress

Gaelyn • 1 Comment

Playing a little bit of catch up here. This look from last week :

My Corner View - Maternity Style

My Corner View - Maternity Style- 35 weeks

My Corner View - Maternity Style- 35 weeks

Cant see that watermelon from the front! haha

My Corner View - Maternity Style- 35 weeks

My Corner View - Maternity Style- 35 weeks

Pregnancy Status: 35 weeks

Dress (turned pregnant lady tunic)- Forever 21
Chambray shorts: Forever 21Panama Hat: J.Crew
Shoes: Birkenstock’s (Via Nordstrom)

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Hi, I’m Gaelyn


In short; I'm a graphic designer/illustrator by trade who moonlights as a mama, a wife, a blogger and a filmmaker. I'm really into fashion. And puppies. Definitely into puppies.

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