Cake Beauty | Rush Brush–Your On-the-Go Answer to Fresh-Looking Hair!

I’ve been with Cake Beauty a long time. Our relationship is going on 5 years now and I’ve seen and used some pretty unique products that I’ve seen Cake do first. My VERY FIRST dry shampoo was the Satin Sugar Dry Shampoo and even though I loved that freshly baked cookie smell, I was never good at keeping the powdery mess to a minimum. Then came the Volumizing Dry Shampoo Spray, which I still use and love. Now, I’ve started a new relationship. This time, it’s with the brand spankin’ new Rush Brush ($22 CDN) which features the much loved satin sugar dry shampoo AND there is actually a DARK dry shampoo powder for those with black hair like me! The two shades shown below are for DARKEST and DARK hair hues.

5 Heavy Duty Hydration Hand Creams That Have Kept My Hands Happy!

This past winter has been a particularly drying season for many of us and has left me reaching for some heavy duty hand hydration to alleviate the discomfort of dry, rough hands. My cuticles have also been in rougher shape than I am used to and I have had to pay extra attention to my hands to keep them soft and smooth. Here are five of my secrets! 

October 2013 Favourites

So I’m a little late with this post…probably because I didn’t experiment too much with new products prior to my wedding as I didn’t want to break my skin out with the unfamiliar!

Loose Button Luxe Box | LOULOU Summer Edition

This summer’s Luxe Box wasn’t a surprise as we were all given the opportunity to upgrade to a variety of different boxes prior to ship out. For an extra $5, I decided to upgrade to the LOULOU edition mainly because there was going to be a Cake Beauty product that I had been wanting to try! I have a yearly subscription so while each quarter is $24, having to pay $29 for this Luxe box was quite the steal considering what I would be getting!

April Luvs

After having a couple of pretty unadventurous months when it came to trying new products, I now have a post worthy of sharing with you all! I forced myself to try a lot of new things and use them consistently over the last month. It turned out to be a good strategy and gave me some new products to love!

Let’s get started shall we?

Nail Care 101

I have had a few people ask me how I take care of my nails and cuticles so even though I have been blessed with very low maintenance hands, I thought I would share what makes my nails photo-ready!

December 2012 Empties!

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year’s celebration! I am very full from yet another big family dinner and I feel like I’m all “celebrated out”! I sort of just want to get 2013 started and get those resolutions going! Empties seemed like an appropriate post to end the year with as I’m saying goodbye to both 2012 and product!

Body

September Luvs

This post should have been up earlier, but when someone in the house gets the stomach flu, all resources get pooled for recovery purposes! Well, it’s now officially Fall and I am actually getting more and more excited for the colder days, new holiday collections and of course new favourite products!

Bath and Body

Birthday Goodies!

Phew, it’s hot out today! From what I’m reading, it seems it’s hot out for everyone! I just thought I’d share some of the beauty related birthday goodies I have received from my lovely girlfriends over the last week! I felt so spoiled!

This package is from one of my co-workers and yes that is a delicious Hello Kitty cookie and no I did not win in big with Bingo!

This is from another co-worker of mine. She managed to actually find a nail polish colour that I don’t own! This is Sparitual Conduit and the green package in the back are bath salts with dried flowers in it!

This is from one of my girly-computer science-Diablo friends! Isn’t this the sweetest gift box ever?! She also included a Lancome Miracle gift set as a belated engagement gift! She seriously spoiled me! My fiance keeps asking why HE doesn’t get to benefit from being engaged as so far all the of gifts have been for me!

The gift set came in a cute pink tote with the most awesome print on the inside! I am totally using this at the beach!

                     

I think I have been thoroughly spoiled, don’t you think? Also, thank you to everyone for entering my Birthday Giveaway! I have enjoyed reading everyone’s favourite birthday gifts of all time. Some of you guys have gotten some amazingly thoughtful and wonderful gifts to remember for a lifetime so thank you for sharing!

June 2012 Empties

My first empties post! I love reading empties posts so I thought I’d try it out myself and it’s so much fun seeing what products you’ve tried and used up for the month!

1. Caudalie Vinosource SOS Thirst-Qunching Serum Sample – worst sample packaging ever! 3 uses was about what I got out of it so good job Glymm on the guesstimate! I actually did like the product, but it wasn’t good enough to surpass my current Clarins skincare routine.

2. Caudalie Moisturizing Sorbet Sample – same as above and as much as I liked it, I still think I love my Clarins skin routine more.

3. Clarins Gel Marula Cleanser Sample – Love it. Already purchased the full size and it was one of my June Luvs!

4. The Body Shop Satsuma Body Polish – Love the scent and jelly texture! Will definitely repurchase during the next promotion!

5. Olay Professional Pro-X Eye Cream Sample – I received this in my October Luxe Box. I liked the texture of this eye cream and I would repurchase in the future.

6. Ola Tropical Organics Paradise Plumeria Creme Lotion – I’m not normally a plum scent person, but this lotion actually smelled quite nice. I also enjoyed the consistency of the product and certainly hope to repurchase soon!

7. Lush BB Seaweed Fresh Face Mask – You can see my review where I pretty decided that I didn’t like seaweed chunks on my face even though my skin did feel quite nice after application. Unfortunately, I will not repurchase.

8. Anderson Soap Company Soap in a Jar in Satsuma – This is made my Dennis Anderson who can be found on etsy and I have purchased many many soaps from him. He is a fabulous seller and makes such fun soaps! This one is a whipped soap that you just use on a loofah or in your hands and off you go! This smells wonderful too. I have already repurchased this three times over! My fiance and I cannot get enough! 

9. Mario Badescu Hydro Moisturizer with Vitamin C Sample – I didn’t really like this all that much…some days I found that it just wasn’t moisturizing enough. I will not be purchasing in the future.

10. Mario Badescu Enzyme Cleansing Gel Sample – I really liked the scent! It’s sort of hard to describe…like fresh and sweet-smelling at the same time? I would repurchase, but not through the Mario Badescu site as shipping is pretty expensive. I’d probably do it through Yesstyle.

11. Goldwell Rich Repair Shampoo and Conditioner Samples – I didn’t notice any significant changes with the amount in these sample packs. I’m working on the second set of samples packs I was sent in my May Luxe Box so maybe I will see some changes then. Unsure about repurchasing at the moment…

12. Fekkai Advanced Salon Technician Color Care Shampoo and Conditioner Samples (2 packs of each) – I actually liked these! I would repurchase the day I finally run out of shampoo and conditioner samples!

13. Rahua Shampoo and Conditioner Samples – I received this in my November 2011 Glymm Box and I’m finally getting to it now! Apparently, Gwenyth Paltrow uses Rahua and we know how nice her hair looks . I found the smell to be very earthy which was ok, but I guess I have an idea in my head of how my shampoos should smell. I don’t think I’d repurchase this based on the fact that it’s expensive and didn’t really make a difference to my hair.

14. Korres Cleansing Makeup Removing Wipes for Face and Eyes with Milk Proteins – I found these cleansing cloths to be softer than the Simple ones I tried out earlier through Topbox. They are also paraben-free and worked well to remove my eye makeup as well. Definitely will repurchase!

15. Organx Brazilian Keratin Complex Shampoo and Conditioner Samples – I received these in the mail and didn’t think much of them so I was amazed when after one shower my hair felt silky and soft! I loved it! I would definitely get the full size!

16. LUSH Charity Pot Sample – Smells better on than in the pot! Will get the full size!

17. LUSH Creme Anglais Sample – Smells better in the pot than on! It smelled so good until I put it on my skin…will not get the full size.

18. skoah Aha Mask Sample – I love this guy because it’s a peppermint infused mask that makes your skin tingle! It applies nicely because it’s a gel and just perks up your skin when you need it! I have already purchased the full-sized product!

19. Elizabeth Arden Prevage Day Cream Sample – I believe we all received this in our first inaugural Glossybox and I found it to be a little too thick for my liking. I do have dry skin, but I felt like when I applied it to my skin, it just sort of sat there on the surface and wasn’t absorbed. I will not repurchase.

20. Cake It’s A Slice Scrub – I don’t have the bottle because my fiance threw it out while I was at work…It’s discontinued so I can’t repurchase even I wanted to! I got tired of the scent though. It’s VERY sweet.

I managed to get through quite a number of samples this month and got a chance to try a number of different products so I’m pleased with my very first month of doing empties!

Recent Winners Damage :(

I’m sorry this post is going to be so short, but I’m not feeling very well today so I’m just going to be staying in, curled up with a cat and possibly Diablo 3…? These are just a few things that I couldn’t resist buying from Winners over the last few weeks:

Cargo Lip Gloss Quads ($8.99 each) in Ibiza (left) and Naples (right) and from what I’ve seen, you cannot get these particular combinations anymore from the Cargo website, so I’m guessing they are discontinued. I also saw on both the ebeauty and Cargo websites that there is even a Vancouver lip gloss quad which is all sparkly! Totally not what I would have imagined a Vancouver palette to look like! I must have gotten to the Cargo display pretty early in the game because you can see that these lip quads have no little finger marks in them!

Next up, is a ginormous tub of Lemon Cupcake Smoothing Body Scrub from Cake ($8.99) which smells ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. Lemon is another one of my favourite scents and when it is paired off with “cupcake”, it’s a winner in my books! The last things I picked up were two bottles of my new favourite Out the Door Topcoat. This is where Winners can really ruin in for you. I purchased my bottle of OTD from Nail Polish Canada for $11.50 so when I saw it at Winners for $4.99, my eyes almost fell out of my head! I really should have bought out the entire display at the rate I go through topcoats! Does anyone else find that once it gets to the halfway point, you don’t feel like slanting the bottle to the side so that the ENTIRE brush gets coated with topcoat?

I have been trying to be good and limit how much I’ve been shopping at Winners so these four items over the last 2.5 weeks is actually not bad for me! I keep forgetting that I have this *ahem* wedding to save up for…

P.S. For those of you who wanted swatches of the NYX Crimson Amulet Palette, I’ve got them up now