Petworth Festival Window Competition

The Petworth Festival has sponsored a window competition for all the shops in Petworth. I made a linen night shirt play the french horn, but unfortunately this was not enought to win.

Petworth has the most amazingly inventive shopkeepers who have a brilliant sense of humour. I am always striving for the perfectly beautiful window, where my colleagues just know what will tickle a judge's fancy.

The winner was Guilt Lingerie. Georgina created two fantastic windows using the music 'Ain't Misbehaving' and 'Air on a G String'. Last year she put the front have of a Morris Traveller in the window during the Goodwood Revival festival.

Second place went to Tiffins Tea Room. Nicki and Jackie used tea cups as musical notes. They always theme their windows according to local events.

So I am planning my Christmas window well in advance and hoping my lovely colleagues run out of ideas!

Pink grapefruit can make you look younger!

Our pink grapefruit, geranium and lemongrass lotions and washes have been best sellers this past week. The refreshing fragrance has been a hit in the hot weather.

I have just found out that the person who did a study on Pink Grapefruit that suggested the fragrance made women appear six years younger has taken a patent out on it.

The inventor is Dr. Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment ath the Research Foundation in Chicago.

His study showed that middle aged models wearing pink grapefruit were thought by men to be six years younger than their actual age.

Other scents were tried but had no effect including broccoli, pumpkin pie, banana, cucumbers and spearmint leaves!

It doesn't work the other way around. There was no effect on a woman's perception of a man's age. We can't be so easily fooled.

Try out the theory with our pink grapefruit, geranium and lemongrass products. They smell wonderful - a citrus, zesty and zingy- so they will make you feel better even if you don't apperar to look younger.

Lavender, my favourite essential oil

A Petworth resident brought in this lovely bunch of lavender yesterday. I wanted to photograph it before I hang it up to dry and it loses it's vibrant colour. Unfortunately this type of lavender is unscented and not used to make my favourite of all essential oils.

I love lavender, not just because it smells so wonderfully soothing and uplifting, but because it is probably the most useful of essential oils. Unlike many others there is good scientific proof that it has real benefits for the skin and the body. You can read about the proven benefits of lavender oil in our Lavender e-book.

One of my customers came bought a jar of our lavender cream for her daughter who is a professional violinist. She was suffering from excema-like symptoms on her hands. She has recently reported that the cream did the trick. We have many customers who buy our lavender oil to help them sleep. It's really good when we we get such good feedback.

There is much anecdotal evidence saying that lavender is very good for healing burns so when my son, who hasn't experienced sun-burn (or indeed sun) for many years went to the beach this week and came back like a lobster I applied our lavender and rose geranium lotion liberally. Hopefully the lavender will soothe his burnt skin and the organic shea butter and olive oil in the lotion will help prevent peeling.

The lavender oil we use in our products is organic and from Provence in the south of France. It is extremely versatile and blends well with many other oils. Some of my favourite combinations are:

• lavender and rose geranium
• lavender, tea tree and patchouli
• lavender, lemongrass, peppermint and tea tree
• lavender and rosemary.

It is also very 'well-behaved' ulike our organic rose geranium oil which needs to be added with care or it will 'curdle' our lovely body and hand wash base. So all-in-all I can't praise lavender oil highly enough.