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As we all know, skipping sunscreen is the biggest beauty no-no a girl can make.But for those with sensitive skin, it’s often a case of choosing between the lesser of two skin evils - UV damage, or breakouts and rashes.  Some of the common synthetic sun block ingredients, like octyl methoxycinnamate or oxybenzone can - and often do - cause irritation. I’m one of the frequently skin-irritated, but this spring and summer I’ll be upping my SPF coverage with reckless aplomb using Cliniderm Gentle Protective Lotion SPF 45, $29.

(SPF 45 on the face? I live on the edge, what can I say.)

This is a great lotion for the face and neck that’s been formulated for those with sensitive or reactive skin. It contains no parabens, fragrance or dyes and uses the natural and non-irritating zinc oxide and titanium dioxide as UVB and UVA ray blockers.

By the way, these ingredients are the go-to “physical block” sunscreens to look for if you frequently break out when using sun protection on your face. They’re most commonly known for their whitish colour-on application, but luckily, technology has come a long way from the chalky days of yore. New, micronized versions of these blockers mean you can slather on a higher protection SPF without ending up with a greasy face or looking like a goth-music lover.

www.cliniderm.ca

… and free advice here on More.ca

I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with Margrit Mondavi yesterday - the female half of the team which transformed Napa valley culture and put California wine on the map. One of her tips for getting older gracefully? Never retire. And she certainly hasn’t: In fact she was here in Toronto to promote the Robert Mondavi Discover Wine Tour taking place 11 am - 8 pm at Nathan Phillips Square today, tomorrow, and Sunday. It’s being billed as Canada’s largest free wine tasting ever, but it’s also — in her words — designed to be “fun, because if wine’s not fun, what’s the point?”

I’ll be sharing more of our interview next week, so stay tuned!

This is a sad one: Farrah Fawcett died today. Was she your fav Charlie’s angel?

Update: Michael Jackson died today as well.

I’d like to think I’m sophisticated but you know what? Sometimes I’m just not. Case in point: Sometimes I choose wine based on how pretty the label is. I have made some inroads into educating my palette, but when it comes to confronting the little-boutique-in-the-grocery-store wine selection on a Friday afternoon before a friend or two joins me - I’m the person picking the pretty bottle.

I suspect I’m not alone, because there’s a new fashion-inspired brand of wine: Strut. It offers what the press release calls “fashion-focused packaging” and amusing names: Chardonista, Well Heeled Wine, Cab Couture, and Red Over Heels. There’s a little contrarian part of me that wants to reject the wines for being a little bit too - well - cutesy. But the truth is, put me in front of the racks at Wine Rack Stores (where they are available) and chances are pretty good they’ll be coming home with me.

I bet the wine’s good too - but it might not even matter that much. (Click on the pictures to check them out.)

So how terrible is this? Are you slinking around with pretty  bottles too?

This week’s been a good one for interesting tales around love and marriage. Here are three links I wanted to share:

• “A teenage girl can dream of eloping with the first boy she meets, but parents and her own limited resources hold her back. A mature woman of independent means, however, can throw herself headlong into any ill-conceived venture that she chooses.” - My mother married her prison pen-pal. (Double X)
  
• “I closed the box and cried for her, and for my guilty awareness that her death allowed me, five years later, to marry the man I loved.” - My husband’s other wife (Double X)
• “Sobered by this failure as a mother—which is to say, my failure as a wife—I’ve since begun a journey of reading, thinking, and listening to what’s going on in other 21st-century American families. And along the way, I’ve begun to wonder, what with all the abject and swallowed misery: Why do we still insist on marriage?” - Sandra Tsing Loh Let’s call the whole thing off (The Atlantic)

[Jenn’s note: This post is a guest post from More’s very own editorial assistant, Joana Lourenço, who’s also a Curtis Stone fan!]

I was feeling flush, and it had nothing to do with the temperature in the kitchen and everything to do with the hunky chef preparing my meal. Monday night, I attended a media event hosted by Curtis Stone, star of the hit TLC series Take Home Chef, who has just released his fourth cookbook, Relaxed Cooking with Curtis Stone: Recipes to Put You in My Favorite Mood. To get us in the mood, Stone prepared a four-course feast, which included tuna ceviche, linguini with garlic shrimp and fresh pesto, roasted rack of lamb, and  blueberry clafoutis topped with whipped cream.

The Aussie chef also demonstrated his new line of cookware, recently launched at The Bay stores across Canada.  Stone admitted to having great fun with the cheeky product names, such as the Bump & Grind mortar and pestle, the Hold Me mixing bowls, and the Keep It Clean spoon rest.

The kitchen sizzled, but the real heat came from Stone.  His passion for food was palpable, his energy infectious, and I ate up every word. He dished out jokes and raved about his favorite food, white truffles. “I’ve been told that eating white truffle is a sexual experience,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a sexual experience, but it’s a really good one.”

Stone has us in stitches recounting some offbeat moments from the show (he was threatened by an angry spouse once, and had to improvise in the kitchen when one woman hadn’t paid her gas bill.) During the evening, Stone revealed that he’s currently filming several episodes for the upcoming season of The Biggest Loser. His dieting advice: Focus on the things that you love instead of things you don’t love.

Another helpful tip from Stone: Never cook bacon naked. Unfortunately, that wasn’t part of the demonstration…

I remember grade four as the year of divorce: Keeping track of which night my friends were eating spaghetti at their dads’ apartments; taking Judy Blume’s It’s Not the End of the World out of the library (and trying to rate my days in my journal just like Karen did); and of course, obsessing about whether my own parents were going to be the next to split or not.

I guess if I were going through a similar time today I’d be checking their status on Facebook, or so this article from Time suggests. And according to the article, obsessive kids aren’t the only one: Laywers for the other party get in on the act and collect court-worthy information via social media. Yikes!

The core point is a good one I think: We all like to use social media as if it were a real conversation. But it is a recorded, and sometimes public or semi-public one. A good thing to keep in mind if you want to keep rating your days A+.

So over the weekend CBC reported “Canada’s three main wireless carriers are planning to launch a mobile payment service on Monday, one that will allow their customers to send, request and receive money via their mobile phones.”

I’m all for new tools (as long as they’re nice and secure, and I’m not yet convinced about this one) but I’m pretty sure they’re making me dumb. Some of the evidence:

• I don’t actually know my husband’s office phone number. It’s on my phone. Unless, of course, I’ve left my phone somewhere. This also goes for pretty much anyone I know who moved after 2004. Your number is no longer committed to memory. It may not even be backed up. (Note to self: Back up data.)
• Plan grocery shopping? Why do that when I can make my husband disentangle himself from a badminton game in the backyard to come answer the phone and see if there’s milk in the fridge.
• I recently got lost on the quest for a warehouse sale and pulled into a parking lot to check Google Maps to see where I’d gone wrong. I connected to Google Maps, typed in the address, pulled up the address and cross street - and THEN I looked up and saw I had actually arrived at my destination.
• I think this text message speaks for itself: Am in aisle 6, where r u?

Once the phone takes over the banking, it’ll be official: My brain will be obsolete. Maybe that’s the plan - especially when the cell phone bills come in.

In midst of all this push for technology I was glad to read Kathryn Laskari’s ode to yearbooks over at the Toronto Star. Although I’m not sure where mine is stored - I’m sure I recorded the box number somewhere on my phone though.

I confess that I’m usually a registry shopper: When it comes to weddings and baby showers, I’m a slacker. I have a tendency to pop online and pick whatever looks nice and in within my budget, click yes on “gift wrap,” add an oh-so-personal note, and call it a day. This leaves more time for me to obsess over my own outfit and talk myself into a new purse. But it’s also that I know that my gift is going to be something that the couple or parents actually want.

But here’s a gift that might convert me, at least for recipients in the southern Ontario region: Samba Days.

It works like this - you buy one of the gift packs which contains a variety of activities. The recipient choses one and redeems the certificate to get going. Adventures include spa treatments, yoga classes, hang gliding, and Porsche driving, to name a few. That is so neat! The boxes are pretty (click on the thumbnail to check them out). And the chances are still high that the person who’s getting the gift is still going to be able to choose something he or she actually likes.

I found about these via Aeroplan so I’m going to give them a plug: If you buy Samba days through them you get Aeroplan points, and if you want to buy the gift packs with points (hey…more money for purses) you can do that here too.

So now the big question, since I have family across the country: Anyone know of anything like this outside of Ontario?

Going green has truly hit the masses. Beauty companies are going all out to get our attention with ethically harvested ingredients, eco-friendly packaging and natural is the buzz word of the day. Well, nothing gets more natural than… excrement. (Look, either I said excrement or I said poop. It’s a lose/lose situation here.) Apparently, L’Oreal plans on helping to reduce the companies carbon footprint by installing a biomass electricity-generating system that pulls methane from cow waste. This should generate about 85% of the energy needed to run the factory. Impressive. And, a little icky.

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Less icky, but equally interesting, I recently read about a company that makes diamonds out of human hair: 0.5–2 grams of hair, to be exact. You can have a diamond made from your own hair, your baby’s hair, even a beloved pet.  The Russian-based company creates these truly one-off pieces by mixing hair with carbon and processing it under high pressure and high levels of heat. The end result is a yellow, green or red-coloured gemstone. Kind of cool, but not sure how I’d react if my other half wanted to chop off a handful of my hair as part of a romantic gesture.

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And finally, to round out this trio of odd beauty news, do you know a new mom that has everything? I bet she hasn’t yet gotten around to buying their newborn a set of baby bangs.   To quote from the website: “Our patent pending HAIR+band accessory combination allows baby girl’s (with little or no hair at all) the opportunity to have a beautifully realistic HAIR style in a SNAP!! It’s quick, easy and baby barely knows it’s there… The wispy hair strands have been arranged in the cutest most adorable elfish coiffure!”  Yup, it’s a toupee for a baby.