How to do a spa day at home

By Janet Simons

The holiday season is finally over. Now that the kids are back in school and you’ve taken down all your decorations and sent all your thank-you notes, you deserve a little “me time.”

How about a delightfully self-indulgent spa day? Maybe you could treat yourself to a visit to one of the 10 Les Sources de Caudalie Vinotherapie spas in the world, where you can relax completely under the skilled hands of highly trained masseuses as they give you “Pulp Friction” massages with fresh grapes.

Unfortunately, like most us, you probably don’t have lots cash for self-indulgence after entertaining, traveling and buying gifts throughout November and December. So why not do what the co-founder of those ritzy spas does?

According to the Jan. 2 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Mathilde Thomas, who, with her husband, Bertrand, founded  the Caudalie grape-based skin care line in 1999, takes a spa day without leaving home. While Bertrand takes the three kids on an outing, she unplugs the phone and dims the lights. Then, as her favorite relaxing music plays, she lights a scented candle and sinks into a bathtub scented with relaxing essential oils.

She whips up her own skin scrub, blending brown sugar, whole grape seeds, honey and organic essential oils derived from grape seed and geranium, lemongrass or juniper.  She chooses between two mixtures to replenish her dry hair: either a blenderized mix of avocadoes and olive oil or two egg yolks whipped with five tablespoons of rum.

She follows the hair treatment with a face mask created by blending lemon juice and honey, and ends by rubbing halved grapes over her face.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And if you think it might be more of a treat without all that mixing, juicing, slicing and blending, perhaps you should try the skin-care line that the Thomases created based on the premise that the polyphenols in grapes contain antioxidants that may  help stall the aging process.

The Caudalie grape-based skin-care line is available from our Caudelie site and from all the ShopAtHome.com merchants listed below. We also added any pertinent coupons and promotions from each site. And, by the way, if you make your Caudalie purchases through one of the three sites that are affiliated with ShopAtHome.com, we’ll send you up to 7% cash back.

P.S. Just in case you’d rather select your scented candle from Yankee Candle, we’ve  got a link to that site, too.

•Amazon
-Caudalie products

•Drugstore.com, 6% cash back
-Caudalie products
-Save 20% on everything in our skincare department (exp. 12/31/13)

•eBay
-Caudalie products

•Nordstrom
-Caudalie products

•Sephora, 5% cash back
-Caudalie products

•Spa Look, 7% cash back
-Caudalie products
-20% off sitewide with code (exp. 1/14)
-Free gift with purchase
(the choice varies, check the site)

•Yankee Candle

About Janet

I'm an old-fashioned journalist and refugee of the Denver newspaper wars. I love shopping more than anything, and I'd go nuts without regular doses of "retail therapy."