Skin Care

Budget Anti-Aging Skin Care Haul: Retinol Cream, Vitamin C Serum and Niacinamide Night Cream (Each $30 or Less!)

November 18th, 2020 by Karen 11 Comments

neutrogena vichy 1 — A little TLC from Target

If you need me, you can find me buried under all the things I unintentionally bought at Target while under pandemic duress. 😭

DUUUUUUDE. It recently occurred to me that there is much room for improvement in my skin care routine. With everything going on right now (it looks like Marin County is going under lockdown again, and very soon), it’s been a struggle to do the things that were once second nature, like maintaining a consistent skin care routine. I’ve been doing the very minimum it takes for me to function lately — moisturizing face wash, zit cream, moisturizer, sunscreen on most days (when I can remember it).

Anyway, I looked in the mirror last weekend at my bare face ~~and said to myself, “OH MY GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING”~~ and thought to myself, “Hmm… I could do a better job of proactively using anti-aging products every day.”

So, after watching these these very detailed skin care videos by a couple of different dermatologists on YouTube, I couldn’t resist grabbing some things on my weekly trip to Tar-ghay.

Go in depth on retinal with Dr. Dray.

Dr. Maren Locke walks you through the drugstore products she recommends to her dermatology patients.

Vichy Vitamin C serum

Both the derms in the videos had high praise for the Vichy vitamin C serum ($28.50), and so I’m super excited about it. I used the famous Skinceuticals CE Ferulic for a short time a few years ago and had great results with it evening out pigmentation, but I couldn’t deal with the price tag — $166 for one ounce! — so I’ve been looking for a replacement ever since.

vichy liftactiv — Gimme all the vitamin C.

This one by Vichy isn’t exactly budget; a small 0.33-oz. bottle is $28.50, which works out to $85 an ounce, but that’s easier for me to stomach. Both the Skinceuticals and the Vichy serums contain 15% vitamin C, and both are also owned by the same parent company, L’Oréal (which often means the brands share similar technology and resources), so I’m hoping the Vichy serum works well.
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Q & A: What Do You Look for in a Sunscreen?

November 12th, 2020 by Karen 19 Comments

Admittedly, I’m asking this Q & A today partly because I need the reminder to wear sunscreen during the cold months! 🙄

So, here’s what I look for in a sunscreen…

That it absorbs quickly, because I don’t want to sit there rubbing sunscreen into my face for 10 years.
Leaves behind absolutely no white cast!
Doesn’t give me breakouts.
It’s at least moderately moisturizing.
Layers well with other skin care products and makeup.
It has a matte or demi-matte finish (no shimmer, please).
Feels lightweight on my skin.
It comes in a tube or a pump, because I don’t like dipping my fingers into a jar.

Right now my favorite sunscreen is Elta MD UV Clear, because it’s all that and a bag of chips! I’ve been wearing it for about a year now and have yet to stray. I do wish it was less than $29…but it works so well that I’m mostly OK with the price.

How about you? What do you look for in a sunscreen?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

5 Things I’ve Been Loving Lately

October 23rd, 2020 by Karen 5 Comments

1. Vanilla notes (and Lancôme La Vie Est Belle and Idôle)

Isn’t the smell of vanilla so comforting and cozy? I’ve been feelin’ vanilla lately but haven’t wanted to wear anything that smells too much like vanilla. I just want something a little bit vanilla. Like, as much as I love baking, I don’t necessarily want to walk around smelling like cake batter or Play-Doh. You know what I’m sayin’?

Lancôme La Vie Est Belle and Idôle recently caught my ~~nose~~ eye because both have notes of vanilla.

La Vie Est Belle is a warm gourmand scent (a.k.a. a foodie fragrance!) with vanilla, iris (YES), patchouli and praline notes, and Idôle is a floral with notes of citrus, rose, jasmine and white musk layered over a vanilla base.

I hadn’t smelled them in person before they arrived at my doorstep, and I don’t know if it was just dumb perfume luck, but I love them! The vanilla is there, but it’s subtle, and both scents are so feminine and long-lasting, too.

I’ve been telling everyone I know who loves perfume about them!

2. Casabella Waterblock Gloves

You know you’ve crossed into the land of “Adulting Really Hard” when you have a favorite pair of cleaning gloves…but hey, I’ve tried every single brand under the sun, so let me just save you from a lifetime of cleaning glove misery — the Casabellas are THE BEST.

They’re the thickest ones I’ve found, so they’re sturdy and don’t fall apart quickly. I hand wash my dishes in very hot water, and a pair of this will last a good six months, whereas the other cheaper, thinner gloves might last three months, tops.

The Casabellas are also longer up the sleeve than most cleaning gloves, so less water and soap drips into your gloves, which is NOT my favorite thing. These keep my hands and arms dry, dry, dry!

They also have a handy lip at the end of the glove, which also stops water from sneaking in as well.

I bought this pair at a local hardware and gardening store called Friedman’s up in Petaluma, but they’re also available online.

3. The chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of Trader Joe’s

trader joes pumpkin chalk drawings — Chalk art!

It’s all about the little things, right? When I’m standing outside in line, waiting to shop at Trader Joe’s in the socially distanced line — which is never really that long; five minutes at the most — they have these chalk drawings on the sidewalk to tell people where to stand. The drawings are either a cheerful play on words or some sort of seasonally-related scribble like these pumpkins. I appreciate that little touch because it gives me something to look at while I’m waiting. Always brings a smile to my face. 🙂

So thank you to whoever does these drawings every single week… You’re such a treasure!

4. Colorful bowls from Costco

I bought this set of super shiny bowls on a whim last weekend, and I loooove them. The brand is Laurie Gates, and you get six stoneware ceramic bowls for $21.
We’ve been using them for soup, pasta, cereal — seriously, everything. You could probably even use them as serving bowls.

The outside of the bowls are all the same beautiful beige color, but when you look inside, each bowl has a different color and pattern. Everyone in our family has already picked out their favorite. Connor loves the red one, I love the green one, and El Hub loves the blue one… They’re all super cute and fit nicely in my hand.

Oh! — and they’re also deep, but not obnoxiously deep, so when I’m eating cereal or soup, liquid is less likely to splash over the edge.

5. Cleaning tips from Vanesa at Amaros Cleaning on Instagram

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Vanesa (@amaroscleaning) on Oct 9, 2020 at 11:49am PDT

MIND BLOWN! Vanesa and her husband run their own housekeeping company in Texas, and she shares very helpful tips and shortcuts on how professionals clean appliances, surfaces and areas of a home. I’ve learned so much from her feed, and yes, I used the vacuum tip to clean my stove the other day and it totally worked! 😁

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. TGIF! 🎈

Product Spotlight: It Cosmetics Your Skin But Better Foundation + Skincare

October 13th, 2020 by Karen 17 Comments

it cosmetics your skin but better foundation skin care 1 — Well this is a gem!

This is GREAT stuff! I haven’t been this excited about a base product in eons. If you’re into a natural matte look and want a foundation that covers juuust enough, It Cosmetics Your Skin But Better Foundation + Skincare is so on the money.

OK, I get it. Everyone’s masked up, we’re in a pandemic, hardly anyone’s been wanting to wear makeup, myself included, but I’ve been falling back into my face painting groove lately, and part of the reason is because of this new foundation from It Cosmetics.

It handles basically every lighting and photography situation I’ve throw it. It makes my skin look dayum good, if I do say so myself, AND IT FEELS LIKE NOTHING ON MY FACE!

Here’s Tan Warm 42.5 in natural daytime light, without any powder or primer, with a 10-minute makeup look. The eyeshadow is the Urban Decay Born to Run Palette; the blush is Charlotte Tilbury Ecstasy; and the lipstick is NUDESTIX Mystic, in case you’re wondering.

Your Skin But Better Foundation + Skincare is a medium-coverage liquid foundation with a very natural looking matte finish. If you want enough coverage to even out areas of pigmentation and redness, along with some minor pore blurring, but you don’t need to hide everything and the kitchen sink, it’s perfect.

Lazy ladies who still lurve wearing makeup now, this one’s for you, because there’s no trickery required to get it to look nice. I do one pump, and then use my fingers to rub and work it in. Then I quickly blend with a skunk brush, and that’s it. You don’t need a primer underneath it or a powder to set it, either. Use it all by itself, and it stays put all day long (yup, even with a mask on).

For reference, I have combo skin. It’s dry on my cheeks and around my mouth, and oily on my forehead and my nose, and this foundation handles all of the various areas well.

I think it also looks good where I have “experience lines.”

it cosmetics your skin but better foundation skin care natural light blues — Here it is in indoor natural light.

it cosmetics your skin but better foundation skin care natural light green look — Here’s the foundation in outdoor natural light.

I will say that if you’re extremely oily, you’ll probably want to set it with a light dusting of powder. I wouldn’t go too heavy with it though because this foundation’s ability to look like real skin is its superpower, and using a whole mess of powder will just undermine that magic anyway.

Also, it’s super lightweight, which I probably should’ve said right at the beginning, LOL! The formula is on the thinner side, much like Dior Nudeskin Air, so it’s featherweight and feels like nothing, which is actually the reason I started wearing it. After months of barely wearing any base, I have absolutely no tolerance for face products that feel heavy, and this one feels like nothing at all.

It’s available now at Ulta in 40 colors (hello, Fenty effect) for $39.50 each for a 1-oz. glass bottle with a pump. Oh, and speaking of colors, I wear it in Tan Warm 42.5 (but will switch to Tan Warm 41 once my toasty summer tan disappears in month or two), and this is the first time I’ve ever been able to wear an It Cosmetics foundation without having to mix it with something else. Seems like they FINALLY figured out that not every “tan” or “medium” shade has to have a sh*t-ton of peach undertones, and both Tan Warm 42.5 and 41 are pretty good matches for warm skin with yellow undertones.
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Checking In: A CRAZY Orange Sky, Maine Coon Cats and Kitten Fur Perfume

September 10th, 2020 by Karen 15 Comments

orange sky september 2020 — Welcome to the next level of Jumanji!

You guys. When I said that every day lately has been like a new level of Jumanji, I was not kidding. When I woke up yesterday morning, the sky was a terrifying shade of orange.

Yeah, and it was SO DARK outside that the street lights, which are light activated, stayed on till 10, despite the fact that sunrise allegedly occured at 6:40(!).

It was dark. I’m talking pitch black until almost 8, and then it only got dusky dark after that.

There are still a bunch of wildfires in California right now, and the sky over the Bay Area is currently this shade of orangey red.

Oh, yeah, and ash is also falling from the sky like post-apocalyptic snow… It’s all over the cars.

Next stop: vampires! 🧛‍♀️

Is this freaking me out? Totally. Because, of course, being the science fiction enthusiast that I am, I’m thinking, “This is how all post-apocalyptic novels start.” The sun goes away. Then all the plants die, and shortly thereafter, everything goes to sh*t. This is the beginning of the vampire uprising. By the end of next week, we’ll all be bloodsuckers. (See: 30 Days of Night. See also: the Van Helsing TV series.)

I really want to be wrong on this theory, and yes, I know I probably am, HAHAHA! Let’s face it, I do have a penchant for the dramatic. 😁 But, just in case we are on the verge of a vampiric uprising, we had a good run. It’s been a thrill.

Yeah…as if it hasn’t already been said enough, 2020 has been so freaking cray!

Agro exfoliation

Looking at the glass as half full in all this, I’m grateful that my house is currently — knock on wood — intact, and that I have a roof over my head. I’m also thankful that I still feel like laughing at myself (can’t take this for granted, for real). Also glad to have the mental space to contemplate not-so-serious things, like starting a skincare program for dealing with dark spots right MEOW, instead of waiting for the first rains like I had originally planned (because, seriously, I don’t even know when we’re going to see a sunny day again.)

So, yeah, I had this whole plan for aggressive exfoliation and was going to start with some products I’ve been wanting to try that target discoloration and uneven skin tone.

The first: Blue Algae Vitamin C Dark Spot Correcting Peel by Algenist. It’s pricey at $85, but it’s supposed to be good at resurfacing and exfoliating skin to reveal a smoother and more even-toned complexion. I dunno why, but I have this vision of it peeling away all the layers of dead skin on my face to reveal smooth skin on the face of a very crabby, cranky baby. LOL!

(I. WISH.)

I also have the Discoloration Correcting Serum from Good Molecules on deck. They’re kind of like The Ordinary because they have no-frills, stripped-down packaging, and everything is very affordable. This serum is $12, and the primary active ingredient is niacinamide.

Because kittehs make everything better

Since I’ve been low-key anxious over the past few days, I’ve been doing things to sooth the savage beast, and one of these things I’ve been doing lately is watching videos of a Maine Coon cat exploring the wilderness.

The channel is called The Explorer Cat, and it stars a very fluffy, round-faced Main Coon kitty with white, orange and black fur. I really love the video of kitty testing the waters and swimming! Yes, this cat swims. Kind of amazing.

Highly recommended if you need to calm-the-eff down!

Purr-fume!

On that cat-related note, out of sheer curiosity, I had to smell this perfume after reading about it a few weeks ago: Demeter Fragrance Library Kitten Fur.

Of course, the million-dollar question is, “Does it actually smell like a kitten’s fur?” Well, I can tell you what my tubby Tabby’s fur smelled like — like a yeasty rustic bread loaf! — and this perfume smells nothing like that. Rosie’s fur smells like Temptations, and the last real, live kittens I actually smelled, Rosie’s babies, smelled like cat food, laundry and litter, HAHAHA!
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