More Great Skin Care Products To Rave About!

Whitening Lightening is becoming one of my favorite places to look for innovative skin care & beauty products. Love their lip glosses and now their BB Plus Illumination Facial Creme. And that is exactly what it does, illuminates. It is creamy..you can apply it directly to your skin or mix it with your liquid foundation. I use a mineral make up, so I use it right after my moisturizer/primer. I apply it on my cheekbones, a touch on my forehead, a line right down my nose right on through to my chin. Then I apply my mineral foundation and I am glowing. Not sparkly. Like Bronzy-Glowy:) 

Go to whiteninglightening.com to order and have a look at their lip glosses. 

Miracle Skin Transformer makes some great products. I think my favorite is Treat & Conceal.  It hydrates and treats under eyes, and dark pigments and blemishes. It covers dark circles and also soothes the skin with white chamomile, white rose extracts, and marine collagen.  It doesn't highlight fine lines like some concealers, it actually works to minimize them . 
Go to miracleskintransformer.com, ulta.com, or nordstrom.com. It will also be at Kohl's store beauty counters soon.

Out of all the skincare products we buy & use every day, lip care is probably not at the top of our list. Not lipstick, lip care. 

Yu-Be Lip Balm (formerly Lip Therapy) delivers nutrient-rich moisture to lips to relieve dryness and chapping. Shea butter and beeswax lock-in moisture with an emollient texture that softens lips. Coconut oil hydrates and guards against environmental damage while rosemary extract tones and disinfects. Vitamin E neutralizes free radicals and aloe vera extract soothes inflammation. 

I love applying lip stick after I use Yu-Be. My lips look plumped and moist and lip stick just glides on. Go to yu-be.com to order.

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Publisher Harper Collins launched the Austen Project this winter with the publishing of six novels. Six authors re-wrote a Jane Austen novel in present time, with modern twists.
Trollope has re-written Sense & Sensibility around the Dashwood sisters Marianne & Elinor , with an annoying bit part for Maggie, the youngest. When their father Henry dies quite suddenly, leaving mother Belle high & dry with no will, no money and no marriage certificate to boot, the step brother John and his awful wife Fanny ( a great play on words, because she is an ass!) kick them all out of the Norland manse to fend for themselves.
With no money, no jobs and no skills, the future looks pretty grim. A long lost, wealthy cousin rescues them and sets them up in a lovely house. ( But that doesn't keep them from continually whining about what they don't have)
 Older sister Elinor , the level headed one, gets a job and tries to support the new household. Mother Belle is an airhead who I don't think could hold a job, Marianne is an asthmatic who evidently is too sickly to work and Maggie is in school.
So, Belle sets to pushing the girls on to wealthy men to be married off..doesn't sound too modern, does it?  (At times, I did wonder if this novel was still written centuries behind present day) So both older girls get caught up in painful romances, Marianne gets devastated and depressed and Elinor won't let herself feel the pain.
Author Trollope does a great job at keeping true to Austen's story although now & again she does manage to get in a few good licks of her own.  We all know the story, I really was surprised that Trollope kept my interest.
What I decided after I read it, was that it could very well stand on it's own without the "Austen" provenance. I enjoyed it, but I think I enjoyed it because I let the whole Austen thing go.

Apothederm Hydrating Eye Cream

The tag line for this eye cream on the Apothederm's website is " your skin will drink it up" and that is the honest truth. I have been using this  eye cream for 10 days, and that is exactly what my under eye skin has done. I use it at night and in the morning before applying concealer. Concealer goes on very smoothly and looks more natural..but the best part is the pouchy under eye area has calmed down. First thing I noticed after just a few days. Allergies this time of year make my eyes look awful..but the puffiness is way down.
Apothederm is fast becoming  my go-to skin care line..Smart Peptide Technology…I 'm sold.
Go to their website to learn about all the Apothederm products and order if you wish. I see that it is also available at walmart.com.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

This book is a little gem, you could read it in one rainy afternoon. When I first started reading it a few pages in, I am thinking , this is a book of random thoughts. A woman is writing down her random thoughts is all...and then I kept going. A story started to develop in my head..one thought at a time. How uniquely written.
A young woman, a wife, tells me how she came to marry & have a baby and work with quirky writers on their novels all in little snippets. Like looking at one of those flip books..all these little pieces of her life end up forming a whole. A whole life , if not a completely  happy one.
Through these little paragraphs..sometimes just a sentence long, I got a snapshot's view of a young woman who wanted to be an artist but ended up a writer , of a  young mother who realized her every waking thought was about her child's happiness, about a young husband who grew tired of being passed over for attention…
Such a great book. It will leave an impression.
Published by Random House, on book store shelves now.

emerginC Spirulina Toner

I love toners. I think they work wonders preparing my face for my moisturizers. emerginC's new Spirulina Toner has quickly become my favorite. 

Spirulina has been touted to help the body in a wide variety of ways, warding off free radicals and eliminating toxins from the skin, increasing skin metabolism to enable faster skin cell turnover and skin healing, and helping prevent candida bacteria overgrowth that can cause acne breakouts.

emerginC is a remarkably effective, full line of active, result-oriented products containing a wide variety of pure, potent botanicals and fruit acids, as well as cutting edge medical and cosmeceutical-grade ingredients from all over the world. Their products are paraben-free, as well as free of artificial colors and fragrances, and we try to source ingredients naturally wherever possible. In addition, they do not test on animals or use animal ingredients. 

Love the refreshing smell and feel of the Spirulina Toner. Visit emerginC.com to order products, and have a look at what else they have to offer.