Is Your Silver High Quality?

Jewelry is amazing and beautiful. It gives us a sense of beauty, and for good reason. It sparkles and adds luster to our appearance. It can be symbolic and of special meaning, especially if bought for or received from a loved one.

But, when buying jewelry how can you know what you are spending your hard earned money on is worth it? Sure, you can bring it to a jeweler and have it appraised, but that costs money and, especially with silver, you can tell all by yourself if it is good or not. Here's how:

• Often silver is marked. Sterling silver should be stamped with 925 on it, usually on the clasp.
• Some manufacturers of fine silver jewelry have their own personal stamp to mark their products.
• And lastly, if you can get your hands on some nitric acid, try this test: File a small groove in an inconspicuous place on the piece. Then we drop nitric acid on the metal and watch the reaction. If your silver is good quality, the drop will turn a creamy milky white color. If it’s silver-plated brass, nickel silver or low-quality silver alloys, it will either turn green or start bubbling and smoking. Depending on the alloy, the reaction can be quite dramatic.

5 Tips for a Perfect Morning

It's early morning, you just awoke and you're in no mood for a heavy session of primping and preening. But, a few minor actions would do you well to fit into your routine. To keep yourself looking your best, you want to fight those free radicals, protect yourself from the sun and moisturize dry skin.

1. Exfoliate. Make sure you exfoliate your entire body in the shower. Accoding to Marianna Blyumin, MD, a cosmetic dermatologist in Hollywood, FL, "Exfoliating your body speeds up skin cell turnover and therefore gets rid of damaged superficial skin and lets fresher skin shine through." How much? Well, that will depend on the type of skin you have. Dry skin: use a mild moisturizing scrub and exfoliate at least monthly. Normal skin: Use a body cleanser containing fine beads and exfoliate about once every week. Oily skin: Three times a week, scrub with an exfoliating cleanser that contains beads, or a loofah. Afterwards, slather on a good moisturizing body cream.
2. Exercise. Get moving as soon as you get up. "Exercise lowers stress hormones, the physiological stress indicators that cause damage to all of our body -- including our skin," says Blyumin. The best exercise for your morning regime? Cardiovascular, anything that gets your heart pumping. It will also help you wake up.
3. Moisturize. Use a light moisturizer so your skin won't feel greasy during the day.
4. Prevent sun damage: Use an SPF 30 or higher to help prevent skin cancer and premature aging.
5. Lip smackers: Don't forget to protect those lips. They take a lot of abuse. The skin on your lips is very thin and this leads to dry lips, chapped lips and cracked bleeding lips. "Skin cancers on the lips are more dangerous than other skin cancers because they're more likely to spread to the inside of our body," says Marianna Blyumin, MD. So select a lip balm with at least a 30 SPF.

Good Rainy Morning; Beauty Tip

Good morning everyone. Still raining here in CT. Here's some advice for you gals: Get a pink umbrella! Sounds funny? Well, there's actually science behind this amusing little statement. Think photography.

When light is diffused through pink, it gives skin a softer more youthful appearance. Pink lighting can make the appearance of fine wrinkles disappear and give your face a glowing hue. So, go out and get yourself a pink umbrella (without patterns or designs, the shadowing will ruin the effect) and look years younger for you older ladies, and for you younger gals, it will give your youthful skin a fabulous radiance.

Oh, and you can use pink lights in your bedroom too. Want a softer, sexier appearance for that romantic evening? Pink light bulbs, or diffuse the light through pink shades (never pet anything directly over any light bulb, though. They get hot).

Get to Know Me

It's a rainy night here in northern Connecticut and I am sitting here trying to decide which project to start on, which project to work on and which needs to be finished. I have three articles to write and it's already 11:30pm, so I doubt I will get them all done tonight. Ok, I will get one done, plus this blog post and maybe one other.

Do you ever get that feeling that there's too much to do and not enough time to do it all? Of course you do, we all do. So, how do you decide where to begin? I have products to put onto my stores, casualrazzledazzle.com and p-a-w-shoppes.com. I have writing to do (as mentioned above), I have videos to prepare, podcasts to figure out (I eventually plan to have a podcast either here or at a different site), a book that is waiting for revisions, marketing and so much more.

My latest endeavor for Casual Razzle Dazzle is offering apparel and accessories for the younger age groups as well as nice gift products from high end retailers (at lower prices), more jewelry and even electronic products and home products at superb savings.

Speaking of savings, you can check out the sale I am having on my Burt's Bees make up.

You'll like the products I am going to be adding to my small store. I am paying attention to what people want and trying to offer these products with super fast shipping and great deals. I'm looking forward to speaking to you further.