Local, Seasonal Products for Your Skin
Ladies, let me go out on a limb here: Your skin gets dry in the winter, and oily in the summer, as it has for millions of women over millennia. Yet it took an art historian in Boerum Hill to finally create a skincare line that changes with the seasons.

Over the past seven years, Cora Michael has taught herself how to formulate natural, organic products using botanicals and essential oils, until, she says, it finally hit her: “Nature provides what your skin needs at certain times of the year.” Pumpkin and cranberry seed oils make rich moisturizers, while lemon, lavender, mint and cucumber are refreshing purifiers.

These ingredients, respectively, are in her fall/winter and spring/summer suites of Perianne products — the “peri” equals round and “anne” stands for annual — which she developed with the help of a lab in Oregon. I’ve only tried the spring/summer trio of foaming cleanser, toner and moisturizer — tried the free samples, that is, and loved them so much I dropped $84 on all three. (For skin that stays dry year round, you can stick to the fall/winter line.) The fact that Perianne is 80-85 percent organic, with no parabens or sodium-laurel-whatevers is a definite perk, but the bottom line is it’s good to my skin, and smells vunderful.

Only complaint? The year-round products like eye cream and spf lotion are still in the works, and not due out till end of 2008 or early next year.

Ordering info and more details at perianneskincare.com

And Totally Green Storage For Your Stuff
At first glance, Clinton Hill’s Hall Street Storage looks like any storage facility, and for years it was. The warehouse provided cold storage for grocery stores and restaurants, a huge energy suck until its owner, Jeffrey Sitt, decided to renovate, add self-storage units, and power it all using 100 percent renewable energy to make Hall Street the country’s first green storage facility.

That’s great — but of all the ways to “go green,” why on earth should you do it with storage? Because Hall Street is damn cheap compared to other spots — a 63-square-foot space, for instance, is $140 a month — at least $30 less than most facilities (including one just down the street).

Hall Street is also the only place in Brooklyn where you can buy cornstarch “peanuts” (which dissolve in water!) and wood shavings recycled from the warehouse’s old beams, to pack with. They even sell $1 recycled boxes (in good condition of course) alongside new ones. So even if you don’t store with them, you can pack up your place without creating a ton of waste.

Grand opening specials include two months free with one year pre-paid and a tote filled with eco goodies like a CFL bulb. There’s even a contest for a free year of storage: hallstreetstorage.com.

Sent by Nicole