Emerald City, Brown Butterfly, Rose Oil

Posted by: Emily

How appropriate for my first Green Journey that I went to the Emerald City?  Seattle, known as such because of its lush forests and vegetation, is also a center of Green living and all things organic, sustainable, and local. I loved it!  It was not my first visit there, but certainly my first with our green challenge in mind.

My journey began, of course, at an airport; JFK, to be exact, where I was reminded of the lack of green beauty products available to travelers once past security. Heaven forbid you forget any products and need to buy something in a pinch at the airport– Terminal 5, at least, offers only conventional replacement opportunities.

Duty Free at the JetBlue terminal is full of chemicals

The same challenge exists for food opportunities, but that, my friends, is a different blog!

My time in Seattle was full of amazing green beauty finds, which I will reveal one at a time over the next week for your reading pleasure, but I must start with my favorite find at the Ballard Farmer’s Market: Brown Butterfly Aromatherapy.  

Created by husband-and-wife team Laura and Fran Hogan, this beautiful line of quality bath and body products is made from only the finest natural ingredients and sold at Farmer’s Markets and select boutiques and spas in the Pacific Northwest. Luckily, they also take orders online and ship to those of us East Coasters who so badly wanted to buy the entire line but couldn’t bring it home thanks to the TSA’s 3-1-1 rule, which I know is made for our safety, but is REALLY inconvenient when said traveler LOVES her beauty products! But again, I digress. Now that most airlines charge for checked baggage, it’s getting really hard to bring any products home!

I met Fran Hogan of Brown Butterfly and felt instantly good about this company. A former New Yorker, he and I got to talking and I just fell in love with the oils, lotions, handmade soaps, tins of shea butter, and lip balms they had out to try.

Since the aforementioned limitations on my carry-on space, I promised myself I wouldn’t buy anything, but an hour later, after a lovely stroll through the Ballard Market, I had to come back and purchase the limited edition Rose Petal Lip Service!

It is wonderful! So moisturizing, and it has the perfect amount of Rose fragrance. (And you all know how passionately I feel about the fragrance of my lip products!)

I have a complicated history with rose scent– I love the smell of actual roses, but find that the essential oil (and synthetic approximations even more so) can quickly become overwhelming and give me a headache. So I must applaud Brown Butterfly that this Lip Service is just right. Rose Oil is used in aromatherapy to heal a variety of ills, including balancing hormones in women and healing skin conditions, including cuts and burns. It is costly, because so little can be made during distillation, but when done right in products, as in this lip balm, it is perfection.

I am enjoying the balm, and plan to order one of their Aromatherapy Body Oils that also contains Rose oil. I’m addicted now!

I also plan to test out some other rose products in upcoming blog posts: Jurlique’s Rosewater Balancing Mist and Korres’ whole line of Rose products.

Check out BrownButterfly.com and order yourself a treat from this amazing line of hand-crafted products. You can really feel all the love and care that goes into each item. It’s like what I would make for myself if I only knew how! And while they’re not local to me, now that I’m back in New York, I still feel like I’m supporting a local company, even if I’m not exactly helping the environment by asking them to ship across the country to me. Oh, well, we all have to make compromises. Next time I go to Seattle, I will check a bag on my way home, just so I can buy Brown Butterfly locally! It’s worth the checked baggage fee! Believe me.

Check back soon for my next post, about my visit to the Theo Chocolate Factory in Seattle, where I discovered Sweet Beauty—  a yummy line of Organic Spa Treatments made with incredible Theo Organic Chocolate, which will also include our first GIVEAWAY!