Took this pic from my living room deck yesterday afternoon. The light looks so different in the winter — less buttery and more cool.
Late Afternoon Light Through the Trees
Skincare for the Changing Seasons: Pamper Your Skin with These 3 DIY Recipes for Skincare Treats
This post is part of a series sponsored by Dove.
I have a love/hate relationship with my kitchen…
Sometimes, like when I have a long, lazy Saturday afternoon stretched out in front of me and very little on my plate, I enjoy cooking and preparing meals from start to finish. Other times, though, like after a busy day on an average Wednesday night, even the thought of tearing open a bag of baby carrots is enough to wear me out.
Last Saturday wasn’t exactly a lazy day, but I did have a little time to explore the culinary arts. While rooting around the cupboards, I realized that my pantry contained the fixin’s for more than good eats. It also had some great ingredients to make a number of do-it-yourself skincare treats.
All three of these recipes rely on ingredients you may already have in your kitchen at home, and the best part? — they only call for two ingredients each. 🙂
What do you get when you mix two great things together? Well, if they’re olive oil and sugar, you get one heck of a skin scrub. I like to use this rich, moisturizing scrub on my hands, feet and body at least a few times every winter. The gently exfoliating sugar grains buff the flakes away from even my roughest, driest patches, while the olive oil helps to moisturize and repair.
If you happen to be out of olive oil, substitutions are allowed. You can swap it out for body or facial oils, like jojoba or argan.
The quantities listed here should make enough to scrub both of your hands and feet, but if you’re hoping for a full body scrub, you’ll want to use more.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon of olive oil
Mix the sugar and olive oil into a thick paste, which should just take a minute, and then buff where needed using small circular motions.
Rinse with warm water, and follow up, if you’d like, with your favorite moisturizer for even more hydration.
Heavy Metal
MAC Metal-X Cream Shadow in Obscura ($32), a frosty gunmetal gray from the Gareth Pugh for MAC collection. Available now at MAC stores and also online.
Whatever you do, don’t drop it on your foot because the metal packaging is hella heavy and it hurts!
My Lips Are Tingling Over These New Buxom Big & Healthy Lip Creams
Buxom Big & Healthy Lip Cream in Berry Blast
Applying one of Buxom’s new line of lip creams feels like kissing a peppermint candy cane…
Refreshing!
The seven super shiny plumping glosses in the new Big & Healthy Lip Cream line ($18 each) don’t arrive until February, well after the peak of candy cane season, but if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought they were a Christmas release.
Smelling like coconut buttercream and tasting like mint, they offer sheer-to-medium coverage that lasts about four hours on me. If MAC made a slightly thicker Cremesheen Glass that tingled, it would probably feel a lot like one of these creams, with a similarly smooth, non-sticky texture that feels great on my lips.
Buxom bestowed upon them a host of hydrating helpers like vitamins A and E, and something they call “hyaluronic filling spheres,” which the company claims can moisturize lips from the inside out, but they skipped the preservatives and parabens.
Unfortunately, those hydrating helpers haven’t really worked for me. After my first day with these, my lips began to feel a little tight and dry…
Swatches from the left: White Russian, Mudslide, Creamsicle, Pink Lady, Berry Blast, Purple Haze and Cherry Flip
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NARS Unsung Heroes: Taos Blush
NARS Taos Blush ($27) belongs to an elite battalion of blushes in my beauty brigade called the One Swipers, a group of blushes able to deliver all-day color from a single swipe across the pan.
What makes it special?
These One Swipers pack a lot of pigment, so a little goes a long way — which is great when they’re as expensive as a NARS blush. Taos, here, should last until forever, or at least until Bella and Edward break up (whichever comes first).
A platoon leader in the NARS permanent collection, Taos is one of those vibrant colors that I always notice when I walk by an open pan. A bright rosy red with golden shimmer and a wisp of coral, it’s like NARS Torrid’s darker red doppelganger.
I’ll wear it year-round, typically with neutral eyes and lips, but I find myself reaching for it more often around the holidays because of how much I like the way it looks with red lips.
When darker divas ask for blush recommendations, Taos is one of the first blushes that comes to mind, and I think it looks fan-freakin’-tastic on dark complexions, on both warm- and cool-toned babes.
Sonia Kashuk Went All Out Glam on Her Latest 6-Piece Brush Set
Neat! Now here’s a brush kit that caught my eye. Of course, it’s hard to miss something with so many sparkles. 🙂
What an interesting selection of brushes in Sonia’s new All Out Glam 6-Piece Brush Set ($24.99) for faces, cheeks and eyes! I see a few brushes here that I can’t recall ever seeing before in a holiday brush kit, like the synthetic-fiber domed face brush, which I like for applying under-eye concealer, and the synthetic-fiber eye/concealer brush, which looks to me like a skinnier, stretched out version of the MAC 219.
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I Think It Would Be Both Weird and Rad…
…to have a Christmas wreath decorated with silver and gold nail polish bottles instead of the usual pinecones/berries/whatnot.
NARS Taos Blush
Yes, no, maybe so? Lemme know…
NARS Taos Blush, $27. Available now at NARS counters and also online.