I love my essential oils. I use them to help my anxiety, I use them to wake me up, help me sleep or even to just smell nice. They're good for cleaners and Febreeze style fresheners. The only thing I'm not big on is that they aren't super portable unless you get the smaller bottles. Most of my bottles are the larger 4 oz. glass ones, so they aren't exactly going with me.
So when I found out that such a thing existed as essential oil roller bottles, I was so excited. These ones in particular are cobalt blue glass vials with roller balls at the top. you basically just fill it with whatever oils you want and pop the top in, that's it!
I decided to go with a combination of Jasmine and Bergamot. Jasmine for anxiety and help sleeping (I've had a bit of insomnia lately), and also because it smells nice enough to pass as perfume. I filled the bottle half way with each.
At first the roller ball seemed a bit stiff, but after sitting for a few days, it rolled much easier. It works exactly as I had hoped it would and leaves a wonderful smell behind.
I would definitely recommend these bottles for whoever might want to be able to bring their oils around with them. To learn more, check out 2PM Essentials. Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
My dental hygiene habits are not great. I blame it on my childhood... can I do that? I do remember being asked to brush my teeth once in a while and I remember in high school, I brushed almost every morning and tried to get myself in better habits. But to be honest, I am terrible at anything that's "routine". My teeth are so bad now, brushing hurts and I hate flossing. I've always hated flossing. the picks don't bother me too bad, but the string turns my fingers blue and slips off my finger tips. I hate everything about it.
Until now. Why? Well, because I have a water flosser. It's a device that creates a very strong stream of water that blasts through the gaps between your teeth and essentially flosses your teeth for you. It's amazing. I'll be honest here and say that if the water isn't warm, it hurts my teeth. So although I do try to keep the flosser by my bed to remind myself, I can't use it without going to get warm water... room temp water is too cold.
The flosser doesn't run on batteries like you might expect. It runs on an internal battery that you recharge by plugging it into the wall, much like your cell phone does. I haven't charged mine once and I've used it for at least a week on the charge it came with!
The flosser has three modes. It has a normal mode, a soft mode, and a pulse for massage. More brutal honesty, the normal mode actually made my gums bleed a little. It's a powerful stream of water. My gums are very unhealthy though, so it's no real surprise. The soft was fine and I should use it until my gums are more healthy. The pulse was interesting. I prefer a more steady stream, personally.
It holds the water in a removable water tank. you can either fill it up by taking the water tank off or just flipping up the cover on the top of the machine and using that. Both work just as well, it's all just a preference thing.
I would absolutely recommend this flosser. It even comes with an extra tip for couples and they have separate colors so you can tell them apart. To learn more, check out Gurin on Amazon. Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
This is me a week or so ago. My hair was horrible, I had almost given up on it. In fact, I had asked my husband if I could shave it off. Every time I turned my head, it seemed like the area at the nape of my neck would snarl right up. Of course that's the most painful area to brush and every morning my hair was a rat's nest all over again. If I didn't brush my hair for the day, I'd wake up the next morning with actual mats. If I did brush, it was painful, took forever, and was for naught. It was AWFUL. The worst condition my hair has ever been in in my adult life was what you see in that photo above. Messy ponies were it for me. All hope was lost.
Well, through my job I get to try out some pretty interesting things. This week I tried out a revitalizing shampoo from Keeva (LOVE them... remember them from before?) with Argan Oil, Coconut oil and Tea Tree Oil. To be honest, just the word "oil" in a shampoo seemed unnatural to me. Isn't the point of shampoo to REMOVE oils? My hair gets oily fast, but I do love coconut oil and tea tree oil... so I gave it a try.
Oh. My. Golly gosh, gee whiz. This stuff... there's no words that could do it justice. My hair is silk. When I woke up the morning after using it, I could brush my fingers through the underside of my hair without a single snag. Not a single one! My hair has been completely transformed with just one washing!
Okay, so it comes out white and lathers only a little. It feels amazing. I used it just like regular shampoo, just lather, rinse, condition. Same old conditioner as always, nothing special. I have this insanely huge gallon jug and I've been using it for months, so the change definitely came from the shampoo. After my hair dried and I brushed it, it wasn't puffy, wasn't frizzy, wasn't hard to brush, wasn't dry or stringy, it was just hair. Beautiful, silk, soft hair.
What's even better about this shampoo is that it comes in a big 28.2 oz/ 800ml bottle. It's a brown bottle to protect the oils, in case you were wondering 'Why brown?' It has a pump top and you don't need to pump it a million times, just a few. I find the pump tops to be really helpful. I hate closing covers with soapy or full hands.
I just can't say enough about this shampoo. It's a game changer. No other shampoo will ever live up to it. Ever. Is it the Argan Oil? The Tea Tree? The Coconut? I don't know. And I almost don't care, so long as Keeva keeps manufacturing it. Oh, and it's organic. To learn more, check out Keeva Organics on Amazon or on their new website. Also, check out their sister company, Essential Oils Informer. Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
I've carried five children to full term. I've spent a good 47 months of my life being pregnant. I've also spent about twice that amount of time being overweight to such a degree that I'm technically obese. I was a chubby kid, slimmed out just in time to start motherhood and after the birth of my last child, I fell back into my big normal. And because of all this, I am no stranger to stretch marks. I wish I were, but alas... it was pretty unavoidable.
I can look back now at a time when I was too embarrassed to wear a bikini because of stretch marks. It was the thinnest time in my life... I look back now and I want to slap myself. I was so thin, I wish I'd let myself be confident. Instead, I wore the kind of bathing suit that has a tank top top and short bottoms and still covered with a towel.
I don't think I will ever get to that level of confidence where I can step onto the beach in a bikini, and I'm okay with that. But I would like to have a little more confidence. One thing that would boost my confidence a little bit is if I could get these stretch marks to be just a little less obvious.
That's where this Stretch Mark Smoothing Cream by CLIA Beauty comes in handy. It comes in a 4 oz. tub with a screw on cover. The texture is about the same as Noxzema, you know... the weird firm and soft at the same time weird kind of cream. I like that.
After the texture, the first thing I noticed was that it smells EXACTLY like chocolate. It smelled like I was smearing myself with melted chocolate chips, like maybe I should be making cupcakes with this cream instead of rubbing it into my skin. I liked that too. Mmmmmm!
That's probably due to the Cocoa Butter, first ingredient after Deionized Water. Other awesome ingredients to note are Shea Butter, Coconut Oil, Glycerin, and Vitamin E. With all those amazing ingredients, it's hard to go wrong.
I haven't been using it long enough to say whether it will smooth out all the stretch marks or not, but it has a 100% satisfaction guarantee for all the CLIA products and as a lotion is sure works well. I have a feeling it will work great and I hope to check back in a few weeks with some great news in the way of improvements. To learn more, check out CLIA Beauty on Amazon and on CLIAbeauty.com.
Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
I adore scented soaps. Unfortunately most people in my family prefer liquid soap and I don't often get to enjoy scented bars. And when I do have them, I enjoy them for long periods because one bar usually lasts me a long time. So I get to change scents maybe four to six times a year, depending on the size and density of the bar.
But I just came across a nice little solution to that. It's a sampler box! In this particular sample box by Fleur D' Extase, you get nine smaller soaps, each with their own scents. All nine come up to about 25 grams, so they are about 2 2/3 grams apiece.
You'd think being boxed so close to another that their scents would all become rather lost, but when you take them out one by one and smell them, their original scents stayed intact. They smell great! Some smell floral and sweet, some more earthy and herbal. Some are smooth and some contain texture pieces to give it a nice look.
I love that these are small enough so that I can use them fully and move on to a new scent within the month instead of waiting for the big bars to be done. And I love that the soaps very so much, yet none are overwhelming.
What's cool about this set is that they're free of toxic chemicals. They have no parabens, ethyl alcohol, phenoxyethanol, or DEAand they aren't tested on animals. I like that.
I think this set would make a great gift for a holiday party with a 'white elephant' type gift swap or for anyone with a guest bathroom. There's lots of possibilities and I would recommend this set for gift giving this holiday season. To learn more, check out Fleur D' Extase on Amazon. Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
Punk ran off with my konjac sponge. When I found it, it was a week later, I had gone through Thanksgiving and chapped lips that required Chapstick... my chin was is broken out. I did find my konjac sponge, so I expect my breakout to clear up quickly. But it made me realize how quickly breakouts can happen.
Luckily now, I have the Blackhead and Blemish Remover Kit from Aotearoa Beauty. It's meant to help clear your face of those pesky pimples and such by means of different sized loops and holes. I'll leave a video below so you can see what I mean. Basically, you place the loop or hole over the black head or pimple and apply pressure, then slide to pop or pull the blemish out.
The kit comes with a pretty little black leather-like zipper case that look a lot like a bill-fold. Inside are five different double ended tools. The inside is bright red and very eye-catching. The tools are surgical steel.
I found the kit to be pretty successful, of course practice makes perfect. I was able to remove a few "bumps" from my kids' arms. It's benign baby acne type stuff that they will always have. It took minute, but I got them to go away.
I am definitely going to keep this on hand and use it whenever I get a breakout from this point on. The only thing I'll say is: be careful how hard you press. I didn't think I was pressing any harder than the lady on the video and I bruised my daughter's face. So, yeah... be careful.
I'm definitely glad to have it, have you ever tried one? To learn more, check out Aotearoa Beauty on Facebook and Amazon.
Except for the product(s) given to me for the purpose of reviewing, I received no compensation for this post. All opinions are 100% my own.
