You don’t have to be a baby to love Buttercup & Jake Natural Skincare for Kids: the creams and balms feel terrific on your skin no matter your age. This organic, pesticide-free skincare line is the brainchild of Patricia Butter of Pleasantville, who started growing calendula in her backyard vegetable garden to use on salads. Her “aha” moment came when she realized the resins in the flowers were helping to heal the eczema on her hands. She developed her formulas to be safe enough to also use on her children’s chronic dry, itchy skin rashes.
“As a mom who fed my kids organic milk and vegetables, I knew the safer, more effective solution would come from nature,” she says, noting that a baby’s skin is 80 percent more absorbent than adults’ skin. “If we couldn’t eat the ingredient, it wasn’t safe enough for a child’s skin.” The line has recently earned “Champion” status from the Environmental Working Group for far exceeding the current safety standards in the United States and iDiaper gives samples of the products to its cloth diaper customers.
Today, Butter “shops” for her ingredients from the fields at Stone Barns and local beekeepers, and the line is sold at Whole Foods locations in New York and Connecticut; Greenleaf Pharmacy (544 Warburton Ave, Hastings-on-Hudson 914-478-0004); and Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture (630 Bedford Rd, Pocantico Hills 914-366-6200). Check buttercupandjake.com for additional locations.
