I suffer from overthinking. When you’re in charge of making a family and business run day in and out, you sorta can’t help it. It sucks hearing that worrying voice in the back of my head when all I want to do is try something new. It holds me back sometimes, and truth be told it bugs me. After talking it out with my friend Allison, who runs a pretty awesome online shopping community called City Momma Styles, I realized it was really only myself holding me back from new experiences and I don’t want to sit back and miss out on something that could otherwise be amazing!
So guys, this is what I’m doing: I’m becoming a Beautycounter Consultant.
Beautycounter is a beauty and skin care company that advocates for cleaner and safer personal care products. You can read more about their story and mission here.
But hold up … Beautycounter? As in one of those MLMs with pushy salespeople basically begging you to purchase their product? I know, I know… to be honest, my first reaction too. I love the product but I always felt a little turned off by certain MLM sales tactics. So I always felt a bit conflicted... But as I've learned more about the company, their mission and advocacy work, I realized they're a lot different. Let me explain...
Firstly, family documentary photography and my ‘Day in the Life’ sessions are absolutely still numero uno in my world. They are never going away. I live and breathe documenting the lives of others, it fuels my soul on many different levels. But there are other things I strongly believe in that I don’t talk about much, and clean beauty is one of them.
It all started three years ago when Theo was a newborn. He had terribly dry patchy skin and I was looking for something to help. My friend was selling these skin care products by a new company in Canada called Beautycounter that were free of toxic chemicals, so I wanted to give them a try thinking they’d be more gentle on his skin. I bought their baby bundle collection and fell in love with the baby oil and daily protective balm.
I have to be honest, I wasn’t really thinking about how toxic chemicals affect us day to day, I really was just focused on Theo’s bad skin. As I learned more about the nasty stuff in our personal products and how underregulated the whole industry is, it really got me thinking about all the other products I used on the kids. Their lotion, shampoo, soaps, sunscreen. All over the news, there were stories of sunscreen causing burns on children, why was this happening? So it was pretty much a no brainer for me to switch some of the kid's products over to cleaner alternatives and what I loved about Beautycounter so much was that not only do their products adhere to very strict standards, they actually work really well.
Of course, as a mom does, I put the kids ahead of myself and really didn’t think about switching over my own products for at least another year after that. I never used to wear foundation, but I wasn’t exactly a spring chicken anymore you know what I mean… so when I started looking for a foundation, I knew exactly where to turn. Since then, I’ve slowly been switching my makeup and skincare products over to these safer alternatives and enjoy the peace of mind that what I’m putting on my skin does not contain any harmful chemicals. Just like when I go grocery shopping, I buy organic when I can. That doesn’t mean I ONLY buy organic food, the same with my beauty and skin care. Not everything I use is “clean”, I certainly use a number of things that have ingredients that are considered harmful, but if I can change over one little thing at a time, it certainly couldn’t hurt.
And that’s where it leads me today. I love sharing my daily life with you guys in my posts and on instagram, and that includes the places, brands and products I love. I had to get over my own hangup that people would judge me for joining a so-called MLM, but what I can say it’s different than that. We don’t have to buy a stockpile of product that we then need to sell off. You don’t even have to order your Beautycounter products through a consultant, just shop direct from the Beautycounter website (although adding your purchase to a consultant certainly helps them and doesn’t change your shopping experience). They also have a couple brick and mortar stores to shop at in the States. Not only that, they are actually making real change in the beauty industry by meeting with members of Parliament to strengthen the cosmetic regulations here in Canada.
So my 2019 resolution is to stop overthinking things. I’m closing out 2018 with this new adventure and hoping to start out 2019 with a bang. I’ll be offering a new family yearbook album service soon that I’m sooooo excited about, so that along with hooking up families with some amazing products, I’m looking forward to what the year has to bring. Stay tuned for the photo album announcement early 2019!
If you’d like to check out Beautycounter and their products, you can use my personal link here and select Ashley's Beautycounter Launch in the drop down menu. Some of my faves are the Overnight Resurfacing Peel, Countermatch Recovery Sleeping Cream and Dew Skin Moisturizing Coverage. They have their Winter Sale going on right now with up to 60% off on selected products, so it may be worth checking out if you’ve never tried their stuff before. Their return policy is amazing so you can try out products knowing that if you aren’t in love with them, you can return them up to two months later even after you’ve opened and used them. Any questions, send me a message!
