Pros: Great shine, easy to hold, inexpensive, easy to use, lasts a long time.
Cons: None I can think of.
Verdict: If you don’t polish your nails, this is a fantastic alternative.
In my daily life, I’m not really much of a hairspray person.
I only use hairspray on special occasions, and lately, whenever I put my hair up in a ponytail or bun because I wind up looking a lot like this:
Minus the vat.
Most days.
So I’d heard a bunch about Elnett hairspray from L’Oreal, and recently saw it at my local Tar-jay. It had been unvailable here in the US for forever, and finally it was decided that we could purchase it here in the US without need of bribing any European relatives. They had a travel size, as compared to the big huge one, so I decided to see what the hype was all about.
It is true that this hairspray delivers firm hold but doesn’t make your hair tacky. Love that. You can also brush your hair and the hold will still be there, which I like a lot.
This stuff comes out of the botttle at a million miles an hour, so beware of using too much. It’s easy to do. But the mist is fine and easy to direct.
My one point of dissatisfaction? Lordy, does this stuff smell. It smellls like a hundred elderly ladies getting their hair done at old-fashioned beauty parlor. It is entirely possible to choke while applying the product, the smell is that overpowering. And it doesn’t go away, much to my chagrin. I could smell it hours later, and to me that is a huge minus. I have a very sensitive nose, and the smell kept wafting around me the entire day and it made me want to go take a shower and wash it out.
So.
Fantastic product, does a fabulous job at holding hair where you want it.
But beware the fumes!
There is a no-fragrance version, but good luck finding it here in the US for a reasonable price.
Yes, I went there.
I went and spent almost sixty dollars on some powder.
What can I say? I was drunk on being away from my children for the first time in a long while and it went to my head. Freedom! The freedom to spend a crapload of money!
Except I sort of regretted the purchase instantly.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the product. I really did.
It was recommended that I purchase Teint Dore, which has golden undertones. It makes my skin look nice, and I love the old-fashioned smell. One caveat is that it is important to use the right type of brush, else the little perles tend to want to jump out of the pretty container. There is a Guerlain brush that is designed specifically for this product, but my wallet could not handle both at once.
It does indeed soften out my lines and illuminates my skin nicely. Soemtimes I wonder if it is a bit too glittery, and then I tell myself to shut up and just go with it. I save it for special occasions, and as such, I expect to use this up in about ten years. Give or take.
But is it worth the sixty bucks? Is there no comparable product for less?
I’m sure there is.
But, I love the idea of this product (one of the first of its kind when first introduced in 1987) so much that even though I planned to return it, I didn’t.
Maybe I’m an idiot who just spent sixty bucks on something she didn’t really need, but I’m happy nonetheless.
I find myself in love with the Illamasqua brand.
They’ve got some great products, and the nail varnish is one of them.
They are full of win due to sheer variety and unusualness of the shades they offer. Neon orange? Forest green? They’ve got it.
Illamasqua really does make some stunning-looking colors. They don’t dabble in run of the mill pinks, but focus more on giving the shades they offer maximum impact. This can be done with the finish, the depth and super pigmentation of color, or all three.
For my tootsies, I chose Grab, which is described as a grape magenta. I wanted something different that what I normally gravitate to, which tends to be light pinks and purples, especially for summer.
The glossy finish on this color is what really makes it for me. It is highly pigmented, as are all their colors, and I wouldn’t be remiss in describing the finish as “mirror-like.”
It is a dark color, and as such, shows chipping and whatnot faster than a lighter color, but I’m happy with the rate of chippage. Because let’s be serious, it is inevitable.
I heartily recommend this nail polish. However, it is pricey at fourteen bucks a pop. If it wasn’t fourteen dollars a bottle, I think I would own almost every single one.
OK, I didn’t really get one, nor did I need one.
But this is what happens when you send your husband to buy you some deoderant. He gets you the wrong kind. Oh sure, he got the right brand, but he bought me Dove’s brand new Ultimate Stay Smooth Antiperspirant and Deodorant. Dove claims that this stuff:
Minimizes the visual appearance of hair over time.
This unique anti-perspirant formula contains Pro-Epil Complex with natural extracts and Dove 1/4 translucent moisturizers.
From first use, it smoothes and conditions your underarm skin.
Within weeks, you’ll start to notice that your underarm hair feels soft, fine, and easy to remove.
Over time, your underarm hair will look and feel less noticeable.
I have seen mutterings around the internets about this deodorant, actually, and most of them were outraged. How dare Dove put out a product designed to make women feel like their armpits are ugly! Just what the world needs, a deodorant that makes your underarms pretty! Armageddon!
While I didn’t really feel one way or the other about the deodorant, I could see where Dove was coming from. Apparently they designed the product because a majority of women felt that their armpits didn’t look all that great, and were self-conscious about them, especially when sleeveless shirts.
Is this some sort of self-esteem epidemic?
I don’t know, it might be. Then again, maybe not.
I figure that for this particular product, the consumer will speak with their dollars and if nobody really cares about what their armpits look like, then this product will slowly fade away.
I had zero expectations about this deodorant, but darn it all if I wasn’t completely taken aback by the reduction of my armpit stubble. Listen, we know each other well enough by now that I can discuss my armpit stubble with you, right? Where there was once sharp, dark, and spiky suddenly became wispy and barely noticeable. It is up for debate as to the smoothness of my underarms as I’m not the type of person to regularly check, but I suppose it looks better simply by way of the hairs being less noticeable.
Now, I don’t know exactly what is in this “Pro-Epil Complex” and I probably don’t want to, but I have to admit, this product does what it says it does.
In this corner: Make Up For Ever Aqua Lip in 15c
In the other corner: Bobbi Brown Lip Liner in Pink Mauve
I’ll be rating both products on four criteria:
1) How long the product stays on
2) How they match up to my personal lip color, since I like a color that is similar to my own lips, just more intense (obviously, this will vary from person to person)
3) How drying the formula is
4) How smoothly the product goes on
I applied both products at the beginning of the day, without any product over them.
Ready, set, fight!
First up we have the MUFE. It stayed on quite a long time, although I’m not really sure I would go so far as to say it was waterproof. It lasted through lunch, which included eating breakfast, drinking a couple of glasses of iced tea, and administering multiple kisses to my toddler. I was impressed. Of course, it didn’t look like I still really had lip liner on, but my lips still had the color stain well past lunch.
Bobbi Brown also lasted quite a while, enduring roughly the same scenario as the MUFE. It didn’t last quite as long, though.
Point: MUFE
When I went to Sephora, I asked for help in finding a shade to match my lips, and this is what the associate came up with. It looked pretty good on my hand (there’s that stupid hand thing again!) so I went ahead and brought it home with me. It didn’t really match my lips at all. It was much pinker than my lips, and it didn’t look as natural as I wanted.
The Bobbi Brown was bought online and was a total shot in the dark. It was almost a perfect match to my own lips, and I should no longer be surprised that I consistently seem to choose better colors for myself than the sales associates at Sephora.
Point: Bobbi Brown
Almost at the first stroke of the MUFE, I could tell this wasn’t going to be good. If there is anything I hate, it is the feeling that my lip liner is sucking all the moisture out of my lips. And that is exactly what this product felt like. It bugged me all day, and the dryness can probably be attributed to the fact that it is “waterproof.” I purposely didn’t apply anything over it, as I wanted to judge the product on its own merit, not how it felt assisted by super creamy lipstick or lip gloss.
Let’s face it, I have yet to find a lip liner that is moisturizing, but the Bobbi Brown was as hydrated as you are going to get for this type of product. I didn’t feel like my lips were going to shrivel off my face, and I count that as a good thing.
Point: Bobbi Brown
The MUFE went on fairly smoothly, but it definitely feels like a pencil, similar to the eye liner, actually. It is a bit dry, and thus does not glide the way I would like. Maybe I’m being unreasonable in my expectations, but for $17, I don’t think so.
The Bobbi Brown went on much more smoothly and I didn’t feel like I was really having to press down to get the color on there. Once over and I was finished.
Point: Bobbi Brown
The Winner: Bobbi Brown by a landslide.
I have wanted so much to love the MUFE products, but so far they’ve come up far short. Yes, the Bobbi Brown is three dollars more than the MUFE, but at that point, you might as well go ahead and spend the three bucks for a better experience.
I have this thing about exfoliating.
I’m sort of obsessive about it. I just sort of love the idea that I am scrubbing away dead skin cells.
Yes, it is a personal problem, but it doesn’t hurt anybody, so I just roll with it. In fact, I cried when L’Occitane had the gall to discontinue my most favorite exfoliating soap EVER.
So when I saw this facial cleansing product from philosophy, I decided to give it a go. It said it was designed for daily use, so all the better in my mind. A thirty second mini peel sounded right up my alley.
There is no doubt that exfoliation occurs when using this product. Whatever they use as the exfoliating “beads” fall somewhere in between gentle and a teensy bit harsh. I suppose it depends on how much pressure you use.
One tip for those with contacts, I found out the hard way that rinsing properly is VERY important. Do not rinse off in a rush, else you will find yourself with little beads embedded temporarily in your eyeballs. Yes, it was as pleasant as it sounds.
As with any new product, and especially an exfoliating one, I expected some inital breakouts. Breakouts did indeed occur, but I thought they would be temporary and go away once my skin got acclimated.
Except, it never did.
I had annoying, icky breakouts for a month, my friends. I kept hoping it would get better, because other than that one side effect, I liked the product. It made my skin soft and smooth and reduced my pores nicely.
Then I stopped kidding myself that the breakouts would go away and resigned myself to the fact that my skin does not react well to this product.
But for those of you who love taking off that top layer of skin as much as I do, this product might be worth a try.
I bought a lipstick that cost $46.00 freaking dollars.
And I didn’t regret the purchase for even one nanosecond.
And that’s really all you need to know, isn’t it?
It seems I am in the very tiny minority of people who don’t like Hourglass Femme Rouge Lipstick.
I got it because I tried it on my hand (see: phobias about applying lipstick in stores) at my local Sephora and the Sephora employee could not stop gushing about how popular it was and how wonderful it was.
I didn’t purchase it that day, but I recently ordered the same shade I had sampled in the store. I had liked Edition, touted to be a “soft neutral pink shimmer,” and hey, it certainly looked good on my hand.
I had also read the glowing reviews around the ‘net and I truly wanted to love this lipstick because I am simply a lipstick collecter and was excited to have found a new (to me) brand.
Unfortunately, when I put it on my lips, I vainly tried to find shimmer, but there was absolutely no shimmer to be found. It didn’t glide on smoothly at all, and instead of hydrating my lips, dried them out terribly. The color didn’t last long and I have bought drugstore lipstick at a third of the price that made me happier.
To say I was disappointed is a vast understatement. Maybe I got a bad batch, but the purty but very heavy tube (which I believe is due to the refillable color cartridge) is going back ASAP.
I’m not really a pedicure person. Oh, the idea of a pedicure sounds heavenly, but I don’t really have time for pampering myself at the moment. And probably won’t for at least another year or so, if not a bit longer.
So in the meantime, I decided to give the Diamancel foot files at Sephora a try. I live in Southern California, where it is possible to wear shoes without socks for at least 330 days out of the year. Some years more than that. This requires that feet be kept in tiptop shape year ’round, and since the birth of my daughter a year and half ago, I’d fallen way behind on the foot maintenance.
I ordered both the Diamond Foot Buffer #11 and the Diamond Foot File #20 because I figured my feet needed all the help they could get.
These files, if you couldn’t tell by the name, utilize ground-up diamonds to scrape those rough spots away. So fancy! They are easy to clean with soap and water, and I imagine that they will last for years with proper care.
I’ve found that the best way to use them is at night, before a shower. Feet must be dry when using, and then after the shower, a nice rubdown with your favorite foot lotion will result in some fairly awe-inspiring feet in the morning. I know you are supposed to sleep with socks after the lotion application, but I cannot STAND doing this. My feet must be free to breathe, and I imagine my results would be even better if I did so.
The Foot Buffer is a well made, heavy-duty tool, and is for an overall foot smoothing effect. It is so nicely weighted that you hardly have to put out any effort to get an almost alarming amount of dead skin off. It is not, however, cheap. But for someone like myself who does not make it to the spa, I would say it is well worth the money in the long run.
The Foot File is made to attack corns and callouses. I don’t have any corns, but I definitely have my fair share of callouses. This lightweight, easy to use file is also a bit pricey, but it is frighteningly efficient at getting rid of hard spots on the foot. Again, well worth the money.
If, like me, you enjoy having soft feet but don’t necessarily have the time or money to spend on frequent pedicures, this tag team of foot tools just might be the answer you are looking for.
*As always, my own money was spent on these products.
