I have a good friend...

...called Amy and every time I wash my face I think of her! Why? Well it's all because of a great new face wash I found.

Amie (Ok, so it's spelt different)is an all natural skin care range and as well as using yummy floral ingredients and essential oils, it's free from parabens, animal extracts or any ingredients of genetically modified origin.The packaging is also 100% recyclable and they're made locally in the UK.And if all that seems too good to be true it gets even better as it's sold on the high street for really competitive prices, more mainstream than top-end organic.

In fact the only problem I had with these products is their slogan "purely for young skin", it left me in quite a dilemma as I'm not sure if thirty-something counts as 'young'. And I wondered what could go wrong if you used it when you were outside that ambiguous age bracket? Then on a recent shopping trip to my beloved Waitrose, I overheard an assistant telling a customer how the stores own-brand "baby's bottom cream" had sold out nationally after a beauty journal recommended it as a face moisturiser! With this in mind I decided my visage could cope with something for the teen market and am now slapping it on, with great results.

At the beginning of the year I decided to consciously try to cut back on synthetics and chemicals such as parabens after reading Janey Lee Grace's Imperfectly Natural Woman. She writes "the Ecologist listed all the common ingredients in many skin care products including: dimethicone,ethylhexyl salicylate, disodium EDTA, ethylparaben, propylparaben preservatives and parfum. All of the above can cause skin irritation; some have hormone disrupting potential, alter skin structure and allow cheminals to penetrate the blood stream and, in the case of the preservatives, have been known to mimic oestogen and been linked to breast cancer". Such information may be from largely small scale investigations but I decided I have enough problems with my own hormones thanks and I'd rather not risk it! Besides new products that are full of goodies at great prices, like Amie and Daniel Galvin Junior Hair Products, means there's no need.