Welcome to my monthly prattle about all things: skincare, food, self-care, books, and writing. This month’s theme: Beach Daze.

Warm water, sizzling sand and a hot baking sun beating overhead–who doesn’t love beach days?
There’s nothing more quintessentially summer than a day trip seaside. And there’s nothing worse than coming home from the shore burnt to a crisp and more dehydrated than the Sahara Desert.
Luckily, I have the perfect, inexpensive, DIY solutions for you!

Read on to find out how I fend off those pesky summer rays! 😉

In Healthy Eats, Sweets & Treats: a refreshing watermelon strawberry mint drink made with fresh fruit and herbs.

From Do.It.Your Self-Care: An all natural sunscreen recipe that doubles as an anti-aging moisturizer.

At the Book Nook: Three Beachy Books to binge beachside this summer.

In the Writing Corner: A beach-themed piece of micro fiction featuring the black sands of Bali on Lipah Beach; a place renowned for its beauty and recreational snorkeling.

This lip-smacking watermelon refresher drink pulls double duty; quelling thirst and pumping your body full of anti-oxidants. What’s not to love?
Watermelon is actually 92% water, making it an ideal replacement for things like tap and bottled water. It also comes with the benefit of added minerals, A & C.
Strawberries also boast high numbers of vitamin C, offering you 149% o your daily requirement with just one cup full.
The fresh mint in this recipe will not only aid in digestion (a bodily process slowed by heat). It’ll also add that hint of cooling refreshment so coveted on inexorably hot days.

This mixture will keep for up to 3 days in your fridge. It would pair well with rum, if you wanted to take it out of the virgin territory. It’ll also be great as a frozen, blended drink.

Red raspberry seed oil is my new holy grail item for summer. Numerous studies have concluded it offers similar levels of UVA/UVB protection to titanium. The active ingredient in most commercial sunscreens. The protection ranges between 28-50 SPF.

This oil isn’t to be confused with the essential oil. Instead, it’s a cold-pressed oil, not steam distilled the way many commercially available essential oils are.

Not only does this oil protect you from the more harmful aspects of the sun. It also slows the aging process with its high levels of vitamins A, E, as well as its anti-oxidants. These nutrients work together to promote collagen production, which leaves skin looking plumper. Also, reducing fine lines. So, not only does it help protect your skin from the sun’s cancer causing rays, it also wards off premature wrinkles UVA rays cause.

Green tea is another natural ingredient touted for its UV protection, not to mention its anti-aging benefits.
It improves your circulation, which makes skin appear more glowy.
It’s high in anti-oxidants, and it reduces inflammation, meaning you can kiss red spots and splotches goodbye this summer.

That’s your completed mixture. For additional benefits in reducing redness and puffiness, place whipped sunscreen in the fridge before use. This product is shelf stable, but should be used within 3 months of making it.

Here are three beachy titles to binge this summer! 🙂

The People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

The Summer I turned Pretty by Jenny Han

Every Summer After by Carley Fortune

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers and Beach Read comes a sparkling novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Newsweek ∙ Oprah Magazine ∙ The Skimm∙ Marie Claire ∙ Parade ∙ The Wall Street Journal∙ Chicago Tribune ∙PopSugar ∙ BookPage ∙ BookBub ∙ Betches ∙ SheReads ∙ Good Housekeeping ∙ BuzzFeed∙ Business Insider∙ Real Simple∙ Frolic∙ and more!

Soon to be a streaming series in Summer 2022!
Belly has an unforgettable summer in this stunning start to the Summer I Turned Pretty series from the New York Times bestselling author of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (now a major motion picture!), Jenny Han.

Some summers are just destined to be pretty.

Belly measures her life in summers. Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer, a place away from the beach house, away from Susannah, and most importantly, away from Jeremiah and Conrad. They are the boys that Belly has known since her very first summer—they have been her brother figures, her crushes, and everything in between. But one summer, one wonderful and terrible summer, the more everything changes, the more it all ends up just the way it should have been all along.

1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Six summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right.
They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of spending summers in cottage country, on the glittering lakeshore of her childhood, she stays in a stylish apartment in Toronto, keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.
Until Percy receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without.
For six summers during their youth, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm nights working in his family’s restaurant, Percy and Sam had been inseparable. And when Percy returns to the lake, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until she can confront the decisions she made, they’ll never know whether their love is bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.
Told over the course of six years in the past and one weekend in the present, Every Summer After is a gorgeously romantic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.

The mystical black sands of Bali have always inspired me. Though they may seem fantastical, their proximity to volcanic ash is the reason for the darkened hue.
Lipah beach in Bali is a top tourist destination for snorkeling, not just for its marine life, but because of its relatively quiet shores. Despite its tourist pedigree, beach bums prefer to plunk down on more centrally located beaches with their kids, husbands and wives, leaving Lipah to the snorkelers.
This month’s micro fiction is about one of those very snorkelers.

(For those who are unaware, micro fiction is a form of short story spanning less than 300 words per creation.)

Thanks for reading my monthly prattle! 🙂 Check back next month for August’s issue: Gone Camping.

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