Decembers—especially Decembers at the end of the decade—are weird. They’re the flat climax of a holiday season that began in July, and a disheartened effort to turn each holiday gift guide into a five-minute charitable donation instead. (The magic, of course, of the internet). In this case, Decembers are weird because they’re a mix of highs and lows: a green gift guide and an emptied-out living room with enough space to hold a tree. 

This is a different kind of love; an awful, calculated longing. A twist of the body in the way that it exists in the world: not that you and I are both here and took a stumble together, but that you wanted X, and I needed Y, so we compromised a little and carved out the space within our bodies. Not so much to grow into, but just enough to leave the other feeling like there was a battle that they had lost.

So now, things are just—well, they’re different, aren’t they? We argue constantly about who’s keeping track (but we’re obviously both keeping track) and pretend like maintaining a working balance isn’t terribly onerous. You joke about which one of us is telling lies (me, you, the cat) but it’s all of us, screaming in the kitchen for dinner.

In you, I keep carving: until my lips are rough and bare, and the space in you is wide enough for me to crawl inside.

Lavido Thera-Intensive: The height of a green gift guide

The first time you review a brand is always special. If you’re lucky (as I have been), you often get to submerse yourself in it. The packaging, the designs, the ingredients; everything down to the feeling itself is new, and half a dozen odd items make you feel as if you’re being casually tossed directly into the bitter lap of luxury.

I’ve been posting so infrequently this year that each review is like a little snapshot of my month. So, delving back into a brand that I fell in love with in the spring is… odd. When I cracked open my first jar of Lavido, everything felt new. My body craved the fresh feeling of the moussey daily moisturizer, and the crisp blue lettering on each jar. Every product fizzed into being along fresh-picked lilacs, brimming terrifyingly with life. 

This time, in the middle of a week swathed in constant cloud cover, I needed something different. Something less bright, and more soothing, as needed for a green gift guide in the most stressful season of the year. Lavido provided. Their heavy jar of Thera-Intensive Body Cream ($60.75 CAD) coddles your skin like a baby; like you need it; like you deserve to be held. Each cold-pressed oil blends into its shea butter base (with lots of caprilyc/capric triglyceride—my favourite) to create a texture like grass-fed butter: soft but elastic.

The Body Cream pairs gorgeously with their Thera Intensive Skin Balm (equally lovely). Rich and fine-grained, it’s easy to take a smooth, non-greasy scoop of this fatty balm with your fingertip. Both products are blended with tea tree, lavender, and black cumin seed oil to nourish and balance the skin, and they feel expensive and heavy in their glass packaging.

A little Lavido extra

I’m forever looking for new eye creams, and Lavido generously included one of their best in my package. Their Alert Eye Cream ($66.15 CAD) is lightweight but hydrating: the perfect eye cream, honestly. Even more importantly, it packs just over an ounce of product into its precise container—so it’s clean and easy to use in any amount, but also (also!!!!) large enough that you aren’t constantly rationing out your eye cream. Though it’s just for your delicate eye area, it’s the size (and honestly, price) of a standard foundation. 

It’s always a struggle to make space where there isn’t any, so give your loved ones something we all want at this time of year. Replace the bath balms and woolen socks of your green gift guide and, instead, ply them with vegan creams to settle down their puffy, red-rimmed eyes in this ironically trying time.

More mouthwatering than mulled wine: IV Skin

When there isn’t any space left for you in your life, don’t do what I do. Set down that overflowing glass of dark red wine, and instead, opt for a facial oil that smells so impossibly good that you’ll leave your own wife for it. 

I think that using scented face oils is pure insanity, but I’m here (masochistically) for it anyways. When they’re well-formulated, I find that a natural scent just enriches the experience; an intentionally perfumed oil often ends in disaster, but a delicately-balanced blend of natural oils can perk up your mood for the entire rest of the day.

(It occurs to me now that there’s something just slightly off about creating an entire green gift guide that aims to simply make your recipients slightly less absolutely miserable.)

Longstanding misery or not, I cannot get enough of the IV Skincare Infusion Serum ($65 CAD). I love the combination of black and gold; the nourishing oil that disappears into the skin; the matte black finish of the bottle. And above all else, I love the way that the fragrant oils make me feel—hopeful, and wanted, and a little less jaded than I am.

(To add to your green gift guide: one DeLorean.)

In this Infusion Serum, you’ll find camellia seed oil (at a fraction of the cost of a bottle of Tatcha), and the lively scents of blueberry seed, strawberry seed, and cheery cherry seed oils. The blend is packed full of antioxidants, and sits so comfortably on my sensitive skin.

The holiday hair guide

I haven’t owned a travel hairbrush since I was young: an awful, purple, plastic thing from Claire’s that would accompany my sister and I to and from Sunday swimming lessons. This one from Raincry is a clear step up; a fancy tortoiseshell body with flexible bristles and capped off ends.

The stylist who did my balayage constantly berates me for the fact that I use a wide paddle brush—not a detangling wet brush—on my damp hair, and it’s incredibly fair of her to say so. So, even though I’m usually at home, I’ve been using Raincry’s Travel Detangling Paddle Brush ($55 USD) when I get out of a my searingly hot showers. Its soft latex base and flexible metal bristles comb through wet hair a little more gently, and the spread-out tips massage my scalp upon contact.

(I am not as hard on my scalp as I am on myself, but trust me: we’d both benefit from the extra love.)

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you should only feature hairbrushes that were hand painted in France (the RAINCRY paddle brushes) and Italy (their volume brushes) in your green gift guide, because let’s be real: this lacquer brush and latex base aren’t as green as, say, a comb made from recycled bamboo. But I do so much appreciate the fact that these brushes are expensive and intentionally designed to last, and I appreciate that part of RAINCRY’s mission involves compensating their artisans fairly in a way that reflects their decades of experience. 

That glittery purple brush from my childhood swimming lessons lasted barely two years, if even that. So, in honour of the fact that I never once drowned to death on a Sunday, let’s introduce a little less into our futures.

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Disclaimer: These products were gifted to me for editorial consideration only, and I picked them as my favourites on my own.