The Art of Showering: Part III

Hi all! In Part III, I’ll be talking about my top 10 favourite shower products Being a real scent junkie, one of my favourite things to buy is shower gels and soap. I’ve tried a ton, and here are my top 10:

1) Lush Sultana of Soap - this is one of the first soaps that I tried since my obsession with nicely scented things started – it smells amazing and feels creamy on the skin, and is one of the few bar soaps that doesn’t leave the skin feeling too squeaky clean.
2) The Body Shop Spiced Vanilla shower gel - This was limited edition – it came out in Christmas 2010 and 2011, and then sadly in 2012 it was nowhere to be seen. The opening whiff smells like coca cola, with a bit more vanilla. Comfort scent.
3) Radox Soul Soother shower gel - I wrote about this a couple of posts ago. In short, it is a wonderfully fruity, creamy blackcurrant scent.
4) Korres Fig shower gel - smells like the shower gel version of my favourite perfume, Diptyque’s Philosykos, but a bit more woody. In short, it smells like what I’d imagine a spring/summer holiday in Greece would smell like.
5) Avalon Organics Peppermint shower gel - the absolute best remedy for headaches / a blocked nose. Just the smell of it causes my eyes to water slightly, but it feels wonderfully tingly and refreshing on the skin. Also great post-workouts.
6) Lush Honey I Washed the Kids soap It smells like milk and honey and is another one of the few non-drying soaps out there.
7) Lush I Should Coco soap - This is a retro soap, I believe. It is absolutely worth ordering online. Smells like a raw, slightly bitter coconut, and is both exfoliating and creamy. If you can’t already tell, I love creamy smells. It’s what a beach holiday in Bali might smell like.
8) Aromatherapy Associates bath and shower oils - I don’t use these directly on my body, but put a couple of drops on my shower floor before I step into the shower. All of them smell great, slightly herbal, and are just wonderful for relieving stress after a long day at work.
9) Philosophy Have a Cherry Christmas 3-in-1 shampoo, showergel and bubblebath - I use this only as a shower gel, and this is going to sound terrible, but it actually makes my skin sting a little. However, it’s made the list because the scent is just gorgeous – it’s supposed to smell like white cherries, whatever that is. The liquid itself is also gorgeous – a pale, shimmery pink. The stinging aside, it really feels very pampering when I use this shower gel.
10) L’Occitane Almond shower oil – feels moisturising and smells great. Probably the last on this list though.

Despite having so many shower products, I’m still itching to try a few more. What can I say? Variety is the spice of life…
1) Annick Goutal Songes shower gel – I love the perfume, and want to try the shower gel but it’s 18 pounds, which is a bit steep.
2) Victoria Secret Pure Seduction shower gel – purely on the recommendation of AllThatGlitters21.
3) Sephora Mango creamy body wash

Check back for more posts!

The Art of Showering (Part II)

This is the second in my series on The Art of Showering. This installment is about enhancing the shower experience.

1) Good shower products

First and most obviously, the kind of product which you use when showering would make the most significant difference to your shower experience. Whether you’re a soap kinda girl or a shower gel kinda girl (or a shower jelly/shower cream etc etc kinda girl), the product you pick should ideally smell good and feel luxurious. It really is about whatever works for you, whether you like a creamy floral or a zesty citrus.

I find that scents really have a big effect in terms of affecting one’s mood. Don’t think about the report you’ll have to finish writing once you get out of the shower. Don’t think about the shitty day you had. Just breathe deeply and enjoy the scent of the soap and the steam.

The third installment of this series will set out my list of my favourite shower products.

2) Layer products

Showers aren’t just about cleansing – you can also exfoliate, condition, moisturise, etc.

Layering products really adds to the shower experience because they complement each other and work better when they’re used together. When you exfoliate, you get rid of dead skin so that when you start to cleanse, the cleanser can really get in there and do a proper cleanse and when you moisturise, the moisturiser can penetrate the skin instead of just sitting on top of it.

There are now a whole host of products which allow you to do just this, and in various forms. Lush alone has body scrubs, sugar scrubs, body butters (which are exfoliators cum moisturisers)…

3) Massage

While you’re in the shower, it’s nice to take time to give yourself a little pampering massage. Since you’re already all soaped up, you don’t need massage oils, and all clothing obstacles would already have been dealt with since you’ll already be in the buff. Massaging not only puts you in a relaxed mood, it aids blood circulation. A cheating way of doing this is dry brushing before your shower.

4) Play music

This might sound a little cheesy, but music really does set the mood. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that playing relaxing music would help you to be in a relaxed mood. For luxurious shower times, I only play my favourites – leave the radio for some other time.

5) Take your time

I know it seems like doing all of the above would already take considerable time, but it is really important not to rush through the shower if you want it to help you relax.

To save some time, on days when I layer, I massage shampoo into my scalp, rub a scrub all over my body and then rinse. And then I work conditioner into the ends of my hair, cover my body with shower gel and then rinse. That’s two rinses in all, and I finish my shower in fifteen minutes.

6) Post shower experience

The post-shower experience is important too – just think, if you came out of the shower wrapped in a thin, ratty towel into a blast of cold air, how that would ruin whatever enjoyable experience you just had in the shower. Small things like these make all the difference. So I’d say, invest in a thick, fluffy towel and a thick, absorbent mat. Turn on the heater in your room so that when you come out of the shower, you still feel warm and toasty.

And that wraps up Part II of my series on The Art of Showering. I should say that this post isn’t about how everyone should shower everyday. It is about using the shower experience to relax, especially when you don’t have a bathtub handy. Therefore, this is not something to follow if you oversleep every morning and have to shower before rushing off to work.

Hope this was interesting, and I’ll be back with the third and last installment – my favourite shower products – hopefully soon!

Woke up at eleven.

Worked out on the elliptical while watching my Youtube beauty videos… all the April favourites are up around this time

Made myself a simple, yummy lunch of scrambled eggs with chopped onions and cheese.

It’s been raining on and off the entire morning, my favourite sort of weather.

And I’m preparing to go watch Iron Man 3!

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a great Sunday

April 2013 favourites :)

April has been a strange and stressful month. Weather-wise (because I always talk about the weather), it’s been alternately extremely hot and stifling, and then rainy. But I guess that’s normal where I live. Work-wise, it’s been a very trying month. Work has made me feel sad, unmotivated, stressed, indignant, tired… and yet I feel I have no alternative, and there are also days where I think it isn’t so bad and that I’ll just hold out for a bit more.

But enough about that. It’s the last day of April (though technically it’s already May as it’s past midnight here), and I’m going to focus on my favourites for the month of April

1) NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer.

I very nearly didn’t get to try this. My friend was placing an order with Sephora USA as her friend was in the US, so I took the chance to order some products. I ordered, amongst other things, Bare Minerals Well Rested, due to my huge problem with dark undereye circles. I’d wanted to try the new Bobbi Brown liquid concealer but it was all sold out in my colour. When my friend saw it, she said she was going to order this NARS concealer which she’d tested at the NARS counter and which seemed pretty good. I thought, why not?

My order came, and the rest is history. Except for today, I literally have not used any other concealer since I opened the NARS one right at the beginning of April. All of my concealers and undereye highlighters which were already in use when I opened the NARS one – Mac Select Moisturecover, Tarte Maracuja Creaseless Concealer, YSL Touche Eclat, L’Oreal True Match corrector, L’Oreal la touche magique – remain untouched. The Bare Minerals Well Rested remains in its packaging. NARS reigns supreme.

The concealer is incredibly pigmented and yet very lightweight and spreadable, making it perfect for under the eyes. I use the shade Custard, though I think I might get Honey as well because it’s more pink-toned which is good for under the eyes.

2) Radox Soul Soother shower gel

This was the first shower gel I bought when I started getting ‘into’ things like shower gel and nice smells. I credit it with being the shower gel that launched a thousand shower gels (for me). That was about four years ago, and I’ve only just finished using it up, which is why it’s going into my Favourites for the month. (It wasn’t a giant tube or anything, I’m just a hoarder.)

It’s a wonderful blend of blackcurrent, cranberries, chamomile and milk. It’s fruity, creamy, sweet and just absolutely lovely at any time.

3) Iced fruit tea

As mentioned, it’s been stifling and hot in Singapore as of late, which makes doing anything not in airconditioned comfort an absolute pain. One thing I’ve really enjoyed this past month however has been iced fruit tea.

I make this myself the simplest way there is – pour half a cup of hot water over a teabag of some fruity tea. Add a good amount of sugar, stir until it’s all dissolved and really sweet, and then add lots of ice. It’s fantastic, especially after exercising.

4) The Neighbourhood (the band)

Arose186 recommended the song Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood in one of her videos. I watched the MV on Youtube, didn’t think much of it but I liked the vibe. I downloaded the song and then proceeded to come OBSESSED with it. Since I liked it so much, I went in search of other songs but was quite disappointed to find that they number less than ten songs as The Neighbourhood is apparently a very young band (young as in new, not as in… OneDirection). Nonetheless, I really liked the other songs by The Neighbourhood, in particular Wires and Baby Come Home. All in all, I’m really pleased! You just need a band with the right vibe I think. The last band I fell in love with like this was probably Deerhunter.

5) Planning for my trip!

I’m going to London and Paris around the end of the month and I’m mega excited. Some things still remain to be booked like day trips and such, but booking is half the fun because you’re anticipating the enjoyment already. Apart from that, all the travel makeup bag / what’s in my luggage / what’s in my carry-on videos excite me!

The Art of Showering (Part I: The History)

I used to hate bathtime when I was a kid. There wasn’t anything in particular about baths or showers I didn’t like, I just considered it a chore and a waste of time which could be better spent playing. Although kids who hate showers may enjoy baths as it would entail playing in a tub, I wasn’t one of them. There was a bathtub in my parents’ room, but I didn’t think anything of it.

It wasn’t until my university days that I started getting into bathtime. I can’t quite remember what precipitated it – all I know is one day I was a regular, ignorant person using whatever soap my mother bought and the next day I had started devouring Lush’s website like a lunatic and fretting about why it wasn’t available locally. I tried to cure my appetite by buying shower gel from Watsons (a local drugstore), but one of the shower gels I tried was so good that it only whetted my appetite and made me want to try more. (I love it to this day, and in fact I just finished using it up – yes, approximately four years after I bought it. My problem with hoarding deserves another post in itself.) The thing about shower gel and soaps and smell-things is that you can’t really get a sense of the thing when it is not physically in front of you, which only serves to force you to get it one way or another, just so you can see (or in this case, smell) for yourself what it is in fact like and whether the reviews describing it as a whiff of heaven or the like ring true. The rest is, as they say, history.

One unfortunate thing and a regret of mine is that by the time I got into soaps and stuff, my parents’ bathroom had been remodelled and a plain ol’ shower stall stood in place of what I now consider the glorious, glorious bathtub (which I never used). I had no more bathtub, which meant that all the delicious sounding baths oils and Lush bath bombs were of no use to me.

It was depressing, seeing pictures of all these wonderful steaming hot baths drizzled with bath oil and scattered with rose petals or what have you. To be fair, in the hot and humid climate I live in, baths aren’t really common. So I had to make do with a shower. And make do I did.

I look forward to my end-of-day shower and consider it my time for relaxing and unwinding after a hard day’s work. I take my time selecting, out of an array of shower products, the one that I will be using that day… For more on enhancing the shower experience, check back in a week or two – I will be posting Part II of The Art of Showering.

samudra pouches

I’m kind of obsessed with these right now. Ordered two over the course of two days (shopbop 20% off sale going on now!), really having to exercise discipline not to get a few more. Maybe by tomorrow morning, I’d have made another purchase…

Travel skincare

When I travel, my skin suffers.

It shouldn’t, I know. My travelling has so far been for leisure, and not for work, so logically, travelling would be a time for me to take better care of my skin. And this is the ideal, and this is how I plan it to be – when I travel, I take along new skincare products, masks, etc. which I wouldn’t normally take the effort to do when I’m at home. And you actually do need to take better care of your skin when you travel – not only do you have to grapple with the after-effects of being stuck in a dry airplane cabin for hours, having round-the-clock air-conditioning (in the hotel) doesn’t help either. (I know, I know – first world problems.)

The thing is, I’m kind of lazy when travelling as well. I just got back from a four-day trip to Bangkok, Thailand, and for this trip I’d brought two sheet masks, a REN glycolic acid mask and various other skincare products in sample sizes.

It ended up that I did not use a single mask and each of my sample satchets lasted the entire trip (that’s 6 applications and they’re still going strong).

Things I’ve learnt? 1) If you want to travel really light, take those sample satchets for your skincare, bath & body, liquid makeup, etc. They last a lot longer than you’d think. 2) Forget all the extras. You’re just not going to use them. Anyway, if you’re on holiday, you should really be spending your time outside your hotel and not inside soaking in serums. 3) On the airplane, take tiny bottles rather than satchets - it’s just a lot easier to handle.