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For the last 2 months I have been using oil to wash my face. Yes, oil. I seen a few posts and pins about using certain oils to clean your skin. So I started to reach it. I found out that it’s actually very good for the skin. What kind of oil do I use? Olive oil and castor oil. I did try Coconut instead of olive, but I found that it dried out my skin too much. I know, it sounds silly that the oil would do that.

Here is what you do… 1 tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil and 1 tablespoon Castor Oil.That’s it! I also add a few drops of Jasmine Essential Oil so it smells better. Mix it in a small bottle. I shake it up before I use it. Take about a teaspoon of the mixture and massage it into your dry face. After a few minutes, use a wet hot wash cloth on your face. just place it on and let the heat soak up a bit of oil and it also opens the pores. When the clothes is cool, rise and repeat with wiping until your feel all the oil is off your face.

Your skin should feel clean and soft. I noticed that the blackheads I had on my nose were gone the first time I tried this. They do come back just from the days grime that is in the air plus when I wear make up. This is also a great way to remove your make up.

So there you have it. Oil Wash. You can also add some sugar to exfoliate your skin once a week. In the morning I just splash some water on my face and I’m good to go. If my face feels a bit dry I do put on some moisturizer. It’s simple and cheap. No need for all those expensive cleaners. The best part? No extra chemicals!

You can do a search on this topic and find other recipes that you might like. I just like it simple. No extra crap. It’s just not needed.

This is the video…

And here are my nails. It’s my first try so it’s a bit messy on the edges. I think next time I will try purples.

This is my before colour…. as you can see I had some purple streaks.

And now after….. The purple streaks are gone.

I like it! BUT…it took forever to wash it out. The water took about 15 minutes to run almost clear. I guess it will take a couple more washes. Its semi-permanent, so it washes out in about 6 weeks. Basically it just fades out. Good thing I bought another box!

So what do you think of the colour?

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Why pay for a name brand exfoliator when you have it at home. I have been using my own home made scrub. It’s so simple and it leaves my skin smooth, soft and clean. What is it? SUGAR. That’s right. I add a spoonful of sugar to my cleanser a couple of times a week.  You can also mix sugar, honey and olive oil to make a paste. But I find it’s just a s easy to add it to my face wash. I use cetephil. Yes it has ingredients that I normally avoid, but its the only face wash I have been able to use without getting a reaction.

So, add a teaspoon of sugar and gently rub in circles on your face. Make sure you wet your skin first. Then Rinse. I have noticed that it clears up those tiny blackheads on my nose. Try it and I bet you will like how your skin feels. It also gets rid of dry dead skin on the body.

Have a great day!

I found a set of make up brushes that I had to have. Last year they had a set and I got them and just love using them. This new set has a tiny travel set which will be perfect in my purse. Gregg got Calvin Klein jeans on the clearance rack. We tasted all the nommy goodness from the sample ladies. Grabbed some foods and headed home.

Really, Costco does save us money and its a good deal.

Oh, yesterday I watched Oprah and it was all about shoes. So today I took my thigh high flat boots out and dropped them off to get repaired. Its so nice that they are bad in style again. I spent a lot of money on those in 1989…lol

New show tonight… “V”  hope its a good one.

So this is what I had before I cut it. It was long and heavy. The back of my neck was always hot and damp. It took 30 minutes to just comb out the tangles after washing it and then another 30 to blow dry. Just air dry was 4 hours.

And this is the new me! A little bit of gel, some scrunching and I’m ready! It took 2 minutes to wash another 10 to style! I am a happy camper!

Here are all my hair thingy’s… who wants them? I have kept a few items. Otherwise I am getting rid of them. Any takers?

And I want to thank my niece for doing such a great job. I am so happy with it. I’ll be back in 8 weeks to have it trimmed!

So, the plan is to lighten the load. I have been searching and looking at pictures of haircuts and I think I have decided on what I will be doing. I’m going to get a “shag”. I layered cut but still keep the length. I am not sure what to do with my bangs. I like that they are out of my eyes now, but it would look funny to have them long and the rest layered.

Here are some pics I found of what I am thinking of doing….

I like all of these. I’m still looking. I think out of them all the first one is what I want. My hair is so straight I will end up looking like the last pic which is ok too.

I guess I’ll see what happens tomorrow! Maybe I’ll go really short again!

So that is what it looks like now.It`s a bit dark, but I like it. I used Natural Match 5N by Lòreal. It didn`t get rid of all the color in the back. I guess it will have to grow out. You can see a little bit of difference in the front but not like before. I`m happy with it.

Since I have picked Clinique as my makeup, I did look at getting their creams. I checked the ingredients and tons of reviews and for the most part their line of creams are good, but not what I was looking for. I then found out that Costco was selling a few different brands. I trust Costco with a lot of  brands they carry. Well, they have signed a deal with Borghese and have the “Costco Signature Borghese Collection“. At Christmas time I had bought the makeup brush set and I just l love it. So I figured, it’s Costco, I can return it if I don’t like it, I bought the day cream.

After 3 weeks of using it, I returned it. Not that I didn’t like it. I really think its a great product, but it’s not for my type of skin. I have very oily skin and this actually made it worse. I had so much oil on my face it was producing blackheads and making my skin itchy. I didn’t get back to Costco right a way, so I ended up using a sample set from my Sister-in-law. She sells BeautiControl and swears by the stuff. I figured I would try it.I really wanted this stuff to work for me. It just doesn’t do it. My skin broke out with little white heads and was itchy and the fragrance wasn’t nice.I don’t want to say that this is a bad product, it just isn’t right for me.

Cause I have IC, I have to be so careful with the products I use. Using the set of samples from BeautiControl, my IC flareup with in 2 hours. I was not happy. I tried it for 2 more days and my IC got worse. The pain was horrible. I stopped using it and the pain was bearable. I took 4 days off from all products so I could get rid of this flareup I was having.

It finally went away. I got Gregg to take back the cream to Costco and told him to just grab me a bottle of the Olay again. I knew that I could handle that one and it would be ok with my IC. Instead, he calls me from Costco and says they have a new cream in stock and it was on special and asks if I want to try it. He told me it was Elizabeth Arden. I said sure. I’m such a sucker for a new product.

Well, I have been using it for over a week now. It has cleared up all the black heads and the whiteheads. No more itchy feeling. It’s cleared up all the problems from the other products I tried. Plus my skin feels soft and not greasy. It seems to be working well. The price was great. With the coupon it was under 30.00 for 2 jars. These will last for a year or so. It does have a very faint fragrance(which smells very nice), but its gone with in a few minutes. What I really like, it that its a very simple cream. It only has 6 ingredients in it. No extra crap added.

ALLANTOIN, VITAMIN A, GLYCERIN, PANTHENOL, OLIVE OIL, BEES WAX.

So I plan to use it for a while and see how my skin feels after a month. I have a feeling that this will become my regular cream. I’ll update in a month.

So I guess you can say that it is working. I have been putting it around my eyes the last couple weeks but no change yet. I don’t know if I will buy it again, might try a different brand. It will be a long time before I will need a new bottle. It seems to last forever. Its worth the money that’s for sure.

(I bought new moisturizer, finally! I’ll do a post in a week about that.)

Anyways, I have never liked my natural color. It’s very mousy looking. It looks greasy even after I have just washed it. It’s a dirty dark blond. So instead I have picked a color that has a similar shade but a little bit darker. What I used is L’oreal’s Natrual Match N5. I really like this color. I have also tried N6 but found it wasn’t a good color for my skin tone.

So here is the pic before color and after color. There isn’t much difference. Its a bit darker and even color.

Now I’m going to bleach the hair underneath. I never colored all of it. I tied off a section. The bleaching didn’t go as planned. It was suppose to get blond but it just wouldn’t do it. Plus its hard to see the back of my head so the roots didn’t get done. Oh well I will ask Gregg to do it next time.

Next was the purple dye. I used Punky Colors Purple. Just put it in and leave it on for 30 minutes.

And there you have it! All done!

I really wanted to be able to go with a mineral makeup, but every one I tried felt heavy on my skin and made it itchy and break out in acne, plus my eyes got sore and puffy. Not sure why this happened. I must be allergic to it. So after all the samples and even buying a few small items I gave up on the mineral makeup. I’m not saying its bad, its just not for me.

I’m no longer going to buy any drugstore junk. My skin has changed over the last few years. Wearing  CoverGirl, Maybeline, Revlon or any of the cheap brands just isn’t going to do it anymore. All those brands turn orange on my skin. I might use eye liner from them but not much more.

This Christmas Mom gave us all some money as a gift and I took some of it and decided I would buy new makeup. First, the reason I am going with Clinique. Its allergy tested, fragrance free and they don’t test on animals. These are important to me. I don’t think animal testing is necessary. This company has been around long enough that I trust they know what they are doing. Second thing, I hate it when I can smell my makeup. YUK!  And the third thing, I don’t turn orange! That’s right, the foundation doesn’t turn orange on my face. I knew then that this would be the makeup for me.

I know that the Clinique makeup costs a bit more and I figured I would be spending about 200 dollars. So Gregg said “why not look on Ebay?” Hmmm, so I did. Instead of buying at full price at the store I bought it for a quarter of the cost on Ebay. I is happy!

What did I get? Well, I got all of this…

8 lipsticks and 2 mascaras. 3 of the lipsticks were doubles. The colors are “Beauty, Pink Beach, Rose Spectrum, A Different Grape and Raspberry Glace.

This little 6 pack is perfect! I love all the colors!

And I had to go buy my foundation. I didn’t want to buy it on Ebay. I needed to try colors and find the right one for me. I didn’t want to buy the wrong one.

What did this all cost me? Well, the foundation was 32.00 including the taxes. The rest came to a total of  62.58 that included all the shipping too. If I would of bought this at the store I would of paid about 180.00. I think I got a pretty good deal. The only things I still need are blush and moisturizer. Which I will buy on Ebay if I can find a good deal.

Now what do I do with all my old makeup?LOL

Well, its gotten long. I have let my bangs grow out and they reach just past my shoulders now. The rest is about half way down my back at Bra strap level. I’m trying to decide if I just cut some length off or just let it grow longer. I know I want to add the purple color back in. I really liked how it looked.

Maybe I need a different style? A different cut? Having long hair is easy to take care of, but its also very hot on the neck. I end up having it in a ponytail all the time.  I’ve been looking at different types of updo’s that I can do easily, but there aren’t that many. I do know that I don’t want to cut my bangs. I like having them long and out of my face.

Hmmm…what to do?

I used the teddy bear yesterday. It worked! So today I made a new batch with yellow coloring and Ylang Ylang oil.

I havent tried it in the bath, but I will this evening. They smell wonderful! Plus I made them half the size of the star. I’ll try for other colors soon. I have jamine oil I will put in the next batch.

I have started a new project. Since I love Lush bath bombs so much I decided to see how hard it would be to make them myself. I made 2 bombs last night to test it out. They turned out good so far. Now I will test them in a bath today. See if the fragrance was strong enough. After that I will try adding colors to the mix.

If these work well , I will be making samples for the family and friends. Might make a tiny business out of this. If all goes well and people like the bath bombs I will add soaps and lotions and possibly makeup too. Time will tell. Oh, and its all natural! No bad things in this stuff. I wanted to make sure that I can use all these things and not have my IC flare up.

So now you know what I am up to for the next little while. I’ve also been tossing around a few other ideas. Maybe if this does become a business I will work out some kind of a deal with giving a portion of the money to the Peanut Pet Shelter. I would really like to help them out some how.

Well I’m off to do some experimenting!

RoC is a brand that has been around for a very long time. Its a brand that can be trusted. BUT, they still test on animals. So that was an out for me. I don’t like to use products that are tested on animals or have animal products in them.

I looked up Neutrogena and couldn’t find anything anywhere about them doing animal testing. Joy! All the sites I looked at said that they do not test on animals or use animal products. Good!

I just don’t see why we need to test things on animals. Its just not needed anymore.

Well I bought Neutrogena’s Healthy Skin Anti-wrinkle Cream. It has Retinal in it. Simply put, Vitamin A. I’ve been using it since Saturday and so far I haven’t noticed much except that my skin feels very soft. I don’t have many wrinkles to begin with so it will take a bit of time to notice any difference there. I have had a bit of an outbreak of acne on my chin, but that usually happens when I try something new. It clears up in a week. I’ll do an update in a month.

All the colors are great. I really like the product. This is the best line of all 4 samples. But once again, it was a bit messy. Working with powders is just not for me. I wish it was easier. I always end up with eye shadow on my cheeks when I apply it to my eyes. The only way to avoid this is by adding water. I also noticed that all the samples did two thing the same, enlarged my pores and showed the creases under my eyes.

The foundation colors are a perfect match for my skin. The blush is very subtle. Natural looking. I will order this in the future. I think that any mineral makeup that I will use, will only be done when I travel. It lasts all day and doesn’t melt. So it will be great when we head to Mexico again.

I have decided to go back to regular makeup. I ‘m going to be going to Clinique. I trust their products. I have never had a problem with them in the past. At least now I know more about mineral makeup. I wasted 30 bucks but I have all the samples I can use for traveling. Good thing is, it will never go bad, so it will last and last.

After my morning coffee I was checking my emails. I signed up at a few sites the day before and was waiting to get email back. I got email from Red Robin‘s telling me to come get a free Birthday burger and Dairy Queen saying I can have a 16oz blizzard for free. So my lunch was planned!

We got dressed and headed to Red Robin’s for lunch. I ordered a Guacamole burger with fries.

After that we drove down the road to Dairy Queen where I got a Fudge brownie cookie dough with Reese’s peanut butter cup blizzard.mmmmmm! We took our blizzards and headed back home. Gregg gobbled his up right a way. I still have half of mine in the freezer. I was stuffed from the burger. So I get to finish it today.

As you can see from the picture, the colors are vibrant and a full teaspoon! It cost me 10.00 cdn for 5 samples and that includes shipping. The bright orange one is actually blush. The 3 purples are eye shadow and the white is the free one called “fluff” and right at the bottom in the oil control foundation.

So I now have it all on and I like everything but the blush. The color is nice but you really need to be careful when applying it. A little too much and you end up looking like a clown. I love the eye shadow colors. They are the best purples I have ever had. A bit messy. They flake to the cheeks when applying with a brush. So I used my fingers and it was a much better result.

The white oil control foundation goes on nice and blends in perfectly. Its very light coverage, but thats all I need. It feels good too. No heaviness to it. I think I will be buying this one in the future for summer wear. I didnt try the free sample since I wasnt sure what it was and I couldnt go to their site to find out.

I have one more sample still to come. After trying this one I think I’m getting closer to deciding what I will be doing.

I really liked the Camelyn. It blended well with my natural coloring. The Neutrala is a slight tone darker and was a bit noticeable. It showed wrinkling under my eyes. Both colors did hide the darkness under my eyes so that’s something I was happy about.

This stuff didnt feel heavy or oily. I also didnt put any moisturizer on before hand. I wanted to see how it would feel and look with out it. I had moisturizer on when I tested the Skin FX. I will do the Skin FX without moisturizer tomorrow, might make a difference on my review of that product.

Now I have washed this off and trying it with moisturizer. It feels good. Not itchy or heavy. I tried the Vanisha again, but its definitely not my color.

Now I’m not sure if its me not doing it right or if all mineral makeup does this, but I see more wrinkles in my face. Especially around my eyes. And when I smile my skin looks almost like it has tiny cracks in it. Is it possible that this will change and melt into my skin? Or am I doing something wrong? I blend it in and it still looks a bit caked.

I added blush on top and that did seem to make it look more natural. Still lots to learn!