Tag Archives: Palm Jumeirah

Children's Products

Billieblush Dubai | One of Sofia’s favourite clothing brand.

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Billieblush Dubai | Summer is fast approaching and Sofia and I were lucky enough to be introduced to a lovely brand called Billieblush, and having had a look at it’s Spring Summer collection we are both hooked.  This is Sofia’s mood board that she put together herself, and it looks like the perfect wardrobe for our family’s summer holiday.

The clothes are designed with children in mind, but parents will be happy that the clothes are stylish too especially if we have strong headed children who insist on dressing themselves, and the results are not always what we hope for (I am sure most mothers have a story of what their kids chose to wear to the birthday party).  With these clothes you can mix and match them, and still look cute whilst wearing age-appropriate fashion.

The brand is a fabulous fun girls wear brand that offers pet-a-porter fashion at affordable prices.  The new collection has enough sparkles and lace to keep all girls happy.  They have thoughtfully designed t-shirts, leggings and dresses that Sofia struggled to narrow her selection to just these items as her favourite items from Billieblush.  Sofia’s sequin t-shirt cost retails in the UK for around GBP18, and a dress costs from GBP30 and up.  They are great outfits for children to wear to birthday parties as well as being great to give as birthday gifts for children and family.  Most importantly, Sofia thinks the clothes are comfortable.  (What a relief)

Stockists in the UAE:

Lollylop- Dubai Mall

Courcelles- Dubai Mall

My little Angel- Abu Dhabi

Tryano- Yas Mall

Children's Fashion

PUMA x Sesame Street | Iconic Footwear collection for children

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PUMA has partnered with Sesame Workshop, the organization behind Sesame Street, to introduce a kid’s collection inspired by the well-loved characters of the long-standing show.

The PUMA x Sesame Street collection includes an array of adorable and iconic footwear styles from the PUMA archive in mini versions coupled with designs featuring Sesame Street’s adorable set of characters available for boys and girls from age 1 to 12 years. For babies 3 months to one year, they can frolic in the Crib Sesame Street infant bootie.

Also featuring the Sesame Street crew are T-Shirts, sweat jackets and pants, bermudas and leggings as well as backpacks, water bottles and play sacks for boys and girls from 2 to 12 years old.

The PUMA x Sesame Street collection will be available in PUMA stores and select kid’s stores globally, beginning in January 2016.

For more information, visit

PUMA.com

Beauty & Trends

SensAsia Urban Spa | Indulge for a good cause |In the Pink treatment in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month

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October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Salina Handa, founder of my favourite spa, SensAsia Urban Spa, is one of Seashellsonthepalm’s Mums of 2015.  She places a strong emphasis on organic living, loves Pilates and  a huge supporter of charity.  She highlights this good cause by launching the In the Pink treatment.  Breast cancer, shockingly, still accounts for 30% of deaths in women in the UAE.

The 1 hour and 50 minute treatment costs 565 dirhams and every single dirham is donated to the local non-profit organisation, Friends of Cancer.  We applaud Salina and her team at SensAsia Urban Spa for this brilliant initiative.  They also have their best-selling signature oil that costs 99dirham, and all proceeds will also be donated to the same charity.

What we tried: In the Pink Treatment 1 hour and 50 minutes 565 dirhams

This treatment is ideal for Seashellsonthepalm.  If time was on our side, we should all follow the rule of thumb and use treatments on our bodies that we can consume, and this is one of those amazing treatments that is good enough to eat.  The treatment is a combination of a scrub, a mask and followed by a soothing Balinese massage.

The scrub – treatment time 25 minutes.

It is a homemade receipe created by the SensAsia Urban Spa Team of ground rice, rose hip, lemon juice, lemon essential oil, and fresh yoghurt.  Anna, my therapist, applied firm pressure to remove all the deadskin, and the scrub definitely brightened up my skin.

The body rub mask – treatment time 25 minutes

This is another homemade receipe made from clay, coconut, milk, fresh yoghurt, honey and rose hip.  The mixture is rubbed all over the body, and you are wrapped in plastic sheets and towels to allow the ingredients of the mask to absorb into your polished skin.  I was told that the coconut milk is absorbed better into the skin after a good scrub. During that time, Anna gave me a much needed relaxing head massage.

Balinese Massage – 1 hour

After a good polish and scrub, it is then time to indulge in a wonderful and relaxing massage.

Top tip: Ask for Anna.  She is a very experienced therapist from Indonesia, and applies the right and appropriate pressure

Results: It has been two days since the treatment, and before the treatment I had extremely dry skin on my legs because of the hormones from breast feeding.  I have since stopped breast feeding but my hormones are still readjusting, and one of the effects has been scaly legs and dehydrated skin.  The scrub and clay treatment definitely helped improve the my skin’s complexion, and it is a novelty compared with your typical sugar scrubs.  It is more hydrating and soothing on the skin.  Love the smell of the ground rice mixed with rose hip.  It smelt like a mochi ice-cream.  Yum.

Five minutes with Salina Handa – Founder and Managing Director of SensAsia Urban Spa.

It is generous of you that you are donating all In The Pink treatments revenue to Friends of Cancer and we love supporting businesses that give back. Why is raising breast cancer awareness so important for you?

Honestly, it was Dr. Sawson at Friends of Cancer. From the moment I met her, I was bowled over by her passion for the cause. Her relentless drive for helping and detecting underprivileged breast cancer patients, and what she was doing for the UAE community, is what made me want to do start the partnership. We’ve been working together for 10 years, and it has never felt like a charity arrangement, where you’re not actually sure where the money goes. I know every SensAsia dirham is being put to amazing use.

Why did you choose this particular charity?

Dr. Sawson! But another story that completely strengthened my choice is quite a personal one for SensAsia. We suspected one of our attendants, Evelyn, who worked at the Palm Jumeirah spa, had a lump in her breast two years ago. Dr. Sawson diagnosed her, so, that year, instead of giving our October donation to Friends of Cancer, we gave it to Evelyn to get the treatment she needed. Dr. Sawson has also visited the spas and taught our therapists how to conduct a self-exam, and also how to guide clients how to do this for themselves. She is truly amazing.

What exercises do you do to keep yourself fit and healthy?

I’m a huge advocate for Pilates. I will actually do the Stott Pilates Teacher’s Training at the end of this year. I don’t plan to teach, but it’s just something that really interests me in learning more about, that I know will complement everything I do with SensAsia. Also regular EXTEND Barre classes, and I’m a member at the Emirates Golf Club gym to get my cardio bursts in.

Do you believe in organic foods? If so, what products do you ensure that your family chooses organic?

Yes! I order organic chickens and eggs from The Farmhouse in Souk A Manzil, which is conveniently a few doors along from SensAsia! We have weekly deliveries from Ripe; I make my own granola… The list goes on, and the general rule is that nothing comes out of a box. Food is just so much more refined than when my husband and I were kids, and it is so important to me to educate my daughters to know the difference. They use the term “factory food” now, which is actually a little something we picked up from Jason Mraz when he was in Dubai for the Jazz Festival two years ago.

Describe a typical healthy meal in your home?

I love to cook. It really soothes me. A meal that would suit the whole Handa family would be Shepherd’s Pie, made with lamb and cauliflower mash instead of potatoes. I love to make sweet potato fries with a dusting of cinnamon sugar and parsnip shoestrings too. I have a great cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld called Deceptively Delicious and love to make her zucchini meat burgers, healthy Bolognese and quinoa salads.

SensAsia Urban Spa has four locations, The Palm Jumeirah, Emirates Golf Club, Souk Al Manzil Downtown Dubai, The Village.  For more information about the spa and locations go to www.sensasiaspas.com

Children's Education

Adventures in Art with Children: knowledge and thought | Sarah Palferman | Minerva London

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Sarah Palferman established Minerva London to share her passion for culture and arts with young people of all ages and comes highly recommended from friends I know.  She likes to inspire her pupils outside of the classroom to enrich their education and to teach them life skills by helping them to formulate their own opinions and ideas as this can only increase the children’s self-confidence and to broader their minds.  Sarah developed this business on the back of an experienced history with children having worked for the last twenty years with children and young people on an individual or group basis using her background in education and psychology.  You can spend the day with Dragons at the British Museum or find scenes from Shakespeare at Tate Britain.  Sarah tells us in her own words more about how exposure to art can benefit your child.  If you are in London this summer and looking for new activities for children, join Sarah and her team for one of their tours.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited” – Plutarch

The quality of a child’s earliest encounters with culture is of paramount importance. A poor experience of anything can alienate the most open-minded among us. Done with sensitivity, however, an introduction to art offers the perfect opportunity for children to begin to formulate their own ideas and preferences, to develop skills of critical thought and self-expression, and to cultivate a livelong enjoyment in arts and the process of learning itself.

It is tempting to regale children with facts and figures in a gallery or museum; to focus on names and dates and a chronology of artistic movements. This is an almost sure-fire method for switching them off. That’s not to say that knowledge is unimportant. Knowledge, the logic that stitches facts into a meaningful fabric of understanding, provides context from which children can begin to explore concepts and ideas independently.

Teaser nuggets of fascinating fact provide the springboard from which we can encourage young people to think about what they are seeing. We can prompt with questions and withhold our own views to provide the space for children’s opinions and judgements to feel both valid and valued.

Children encountering Monet’s Antibes, billed by the artist as ‘sweetness itself’, and Degas’s Two Dancers, who have graced many a greetings card, will be startled by the fact that these works were once decried as ‘unfinished wallpaper’; the half-heated efforts of ‘lazy’ artists. Works by these radical rebels, admired by nearly 200,000 visitors annually in London’s Courtauld Gallery, are now revered in blockbuster exhibitions (such as that recently at the National Gallery and now to be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art) for their spontaneity and the enchanting play of natural light.

Meeting Ophelia in Tate Britain (and the unfortunate model who may have caught the illness from which she perished while lying in a cold bath as Millais’ muse) serves as an introduction to the initially secretive Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Therein lies scope for discussion of the potential clash between artistic realism and responsibility, framed by this group’s tackling of morally ambiguous subjects and the contemporary Victorians who reeled from them. Exploring moral dilemmas in art, as research shows, helps children to confront the challenges they encounter in their own lives.

Younger visitors to London’s galleries can find so much pleasure in such enigmatic works as Holbein’s The Ambassadors with its spookily distorted skull, in exploring the weird and wacky installations of Tate Modern, and in identifying the saints of the National Gallery’s abundant Renaissance panels once they have been given some simple hagiographic keys with which to unlock these (and even further delight in augmenting their vocabularies with the word ‘hagiographic’!).

With an appreciation that every creative decision made by an artist is a deliberate and conscious act, children will develop a spirit of inquiry in their encounters with visual art. The skills of independent thought thus acquired help children to develop their personalities, abilities and imaginations. They encourage them to form a sense of their own identities and to express themselves fully. All these foster an interest in the process of learning itself and have a demonstrable influence on wider academic attainment.

There is enormous pleasure to be found in exploring culture with children; in watching curiosities spark into life and fanning the flames of creative and independent thought. Far from silently contemplative spaces for adults already initiated in the joys of cultural exploration, then, art galleries should be teeming with young people and open minds.

Sarah Palferman is a private tutor and educational advisor. She is the founder of Minerva London Ltd, offering tailored adventures in art and culture to young people in London.

To find out more, please visit

Minerva London

or email

sarah@minervalondon.com