Entries from July 2008 ↓

I needed a change of scenery to work today so I packed my macbook into my backpack and headed off to a bookstore in downtown Toronto.

I love working in bookstores. Apart from the delicious smell of the brand new books (or is that the choc-chip cookies in the attached Starbucks cafe?), I love how if I need to research or look up any information while I’m here, I have instant access to a huge range of quality resources. And before you roll your eyes and tell me “Um, that’s what the Internet’s for …” (duh!), bookstores are great because you don’t have to weed through all the junk that comes with researching on the net. So there.

So of course, one of the first things I did when I arrived (apart from order a green tea and drool at those choc-chip cookies), was to browse the well being and skin care sections of the book store.

Call it fate, or whatever, but every book that I picked up popped straight open to the cleansing page. And every book screamed one key point at me - “Do not over wash your skin”. So unless these skin care experts have formed some kind of special ‘elite’ group and are getting together for herbal tea and note swapping, I guess there must be some truth to this point if they’re ALL saying it.

Why it’s really bad to over wash your face

It’s kind of simple. We were all born with great functioning skin. Skin that left alone does a really good job at looking after itself.

Take how I wash my skin as an example. I probably shouldn’t be publicly admitting this on my blog … but I hardly use soap or any other cleansing method on my body in the shower. That’s right, for years I’ve ditched the body cleanser and I only have a bar of [natural] soap in my shower to cleanse the dirty bits. You know, underarms, feet, and that other bodily part that I won’t mention. The rest I just let the water run over. So why is it that I can get away with completely skipping the cleansing of my arms, legs, stomach, shoulders, etc without any negative effects? Why is it that when I stopped cleansing those areas my skin actually improved. My skin is rarely dry (unless I have super hot showers or I’m in Vegas), and no, it doesn’t smell, and it looks clean and healthy. Continue reading →

Price: US$2.99
Rating:
Website: http://skinvitals.com.au

I’m going to be really harsh in this review, but I can’t help it …this has to be one of the worst products I’ve ever used.

Skinvitals sells a range of cloth masks, each with its own purpose. The G-Energize mask is an anti-stress rejuvenating and invigorating mask with the active ingredients ginseng and ginkgo biloba, both apparently ‘powerful’ anti-oxidants.

The concept of a cloth face mask sounds cool, I mean …less mess and less fuss and all that. But in reality it was a nightmare to use.

The instructions on the back of the pack

The first thing I noticed when I opened the pack was the smell, which was just okay. It kind of smells like cheap oils. Like walking into an essential oils store and asking for the cheapest oils they’ve got, then mixing them all together.

The cloth also felt really cold and slimey. Not that same thick luxurious feeling you get when you dip your hand into a thick clay mud mask.

Placing the cloth onto my face was the nightmare part. It just didn’t feel like it fit! I know I have a big nose for a girl, but it should cater for my kind of people. I had trouble placing the cloth against my skin on the sides of my nose, and it kept popping off my chin and ‘mustache’ area. In fact, the whole time I was wearing the mask it constantly felt like it was half falling off.

AND I looked ridiculous. This girl in the image looks fabulous. She’s gorgeous, relaxed and happy. Her mask fits well and she’s kinda comfortable wearing it. While I felt like some character out of a horror movie. Even after I’d warned my house mate that I’d be wearing a mask so not to freak out if he saw me. Once I’d freaked out after I saw me there was no way I was showing my face to anyone. I did take a photo but I’m too scared to post it.

But, the worst part of this cloth mask is how in no way did I feel relaxed or soothed which is what I usually love about masks. In fact, I felt very uncomfortable. With the mask half falling off my face, a little piece sticking in my right eye, and the feeling that I had wet surgical gauze plastered onto my face like a burns victim, was in no way relaxing or soothing. I was also a little freaked out about the piece that kept sticking me in the eye because there’s a warning on the packet that says “if product gets in eyes, rinse thoroughly with water”. Okay, definitely not a natural product.

And of course after I took the mask off (after 5 minutes out of discomfort not the full 15), I was left with gooey oily stuff all over my face. So my next thought was, “uh oh, are these oils going to break me out??”. Luckily a day later they haven’t, but the scary thought was still there.

I’m sorry Skinvitals for being so harsh. But really, what were you thinking when you made this product?? I’ll definitely be sticking to non-cloth masks in the future.

Fran

I’ve always thought that honey was one of the ’safe’ alternative sweeteners that we could eat in place of refined sugar. Honey, being a natural product is packed full of vital vitamins and minerals and is thought to have a relatively low glycemic index. So essentially it’s a healthy food to eat, and even a healing ingredient to use in our skin care.

I keep organic honey at home to use as a sweetener. I sometimes use it on my oatmeal, on whole grain toast, or even in a mug of warm milk if I need something warm and comforting. And if I ever find a dessert or ice-cream that’s sweetened with honey [and not refined sugar], then I’ll always buy it, because these products are so hard to find.

So here I was, happily eating my honey thinking that it was doing my skin good, and preventing my acne rather than causing it. UNTIL I was doing some research on The Glycemic Index website last night, and discovered that you need to be careful with what type of honey you eat.

It’s true that all honey contains vitamins and minerals because it’s a natural product, but some types of honey have a very high glycemic index (GI). If you suffer from acne or are prone to getting breakouts, then you want to avoid all foods that have a high GI. So you will need to find a honey that has a low GI. Continue reading →

I was totally blown away by Las Vegas when I first flew in. I had a night flight and just happened to be on the good side of the plane. I was trying to spot “The Strip” from looking out the window and figured it must be the strongest little groups of lights, until it just appeared literacy right outside my window. Las Vegas international airport is only three miles from the strip, so it’s an amazing sight when you fly in. As soon as we landed I wanted to go again, it totally felt like a ride at a theme park.

Every single hotel is completely lit up with neon lights and just about every hotel has a crazy theme to it. There is a pyramid hotel here. It’s a hotel that is a an actual pyramid. It’s massive and has a huge light beaming up from the tip of the pyramid into the sky. There’s another hotel that looks like a castle straight out of Disney Land, another that’s a replica of Paris, and another that’s a mini New York complete with a full sized roller coaster that wraps around the hotel, upside down loops and all.

We stayed at the MGM Grand, so it was movie themed and had a huge gold lion out the front. There’s a real lion den inside the hotel too, which I was very upset about until I found out there are actually 30 or so lions that live on a ranch miles away from the strip, and they just come to the hotel in shifts to hang out for a couple of hours at a time during the day. They’re very pampered and very loved by the staff and the den is massive with little caves and waterfalls, and they just play with their trainers while they’re there. I guess that was okay.

Standing in front of millions of m&ms

Vegas is really only good for a day trip for people like me who don’t gamble, don’t smoke and don’t drink. Every single hotel has a massive casino on the lower floor, and it’s very loud and very smokey. It’s worth it to come here just to see how strange the buildings look (sometimes a wander into the hotels is worth it), and how ridiculously elaborate vegas is, but there’s not much more too it than that. It’s difficult to find good restaurants that don’t cost a fortune (you need to look for places outside of the hotels) and there’s not much else to do except see shows. We saw Cirque De Sole Mystere, and I was going to see David Copperfield but strangely ran out of time. Continue reading →

I woke up yesterday morning with a pimple in that space between my top lip and nose (the moustache, or ‘mo’ area on boys I guess). It’s one of those ‘normal’ zits, the ones that start off small and red then after a couple of days form a pussy white or yellow head.

The weird thing is, this pimple has appeared in this exact same spot about four times now in the past 3 months. Yes that’s right, exactly the same spot. The first time it appeared it was really nasty, almost like two of them together, snuggled side by side. It has been getting smaller every time but I’m damn sick of getting it. It’s even weirder that I haven’t had a pimple like this for a while now. I’ve been enjoying clear skin except for this little persistent spot on my mo.

I think my problem is I seem to be a bit careless with this area of my face. I often miss exfoliating there, and hardly ever remember to use spot treatments on pimples in that spot. Perhaps it’s because that area gets lost underneath the curve of my upper lip, or disappears behind the shadow of the tip of my nose. I’m not entirely sure why, but I have been neglecting it, so I guess I’ve been punished with a persistent pimple problem in that spot. At least it’s in a perfect beauty mark location. Maybe I could get away with coloring it in with brown eyeliner and disguising it as a beauty spot. Then again, maybe not.

So yesterday, I finally started to give that area a bit of attention. I pasted my BHA onto my mo, then applied my spot treatment directly onto the zit. This morning when I woke up, the pimple had started to dry out which is great, it means my pimple is healing. Which got me thinking, what active ingredients are in my spot treatment, and does it really matter which ones we use? Continue reading →