Travel finds: La Chinata

I was traveling this summer in Europe and stumbled upon a little store in Sevile that specialized in olive oil goods. This little store stocks everything related to olive oil products from chocolate to bath and beauty products. 

La Chinata

I have been using the purifying milk cleanser (€7.60) for a couple months now and my skin is soft. At first, I wasn't too crazy about this product because it feels like there is residue left on the skin. This cleanser is gentle on the skin and would be perfect for the dry winter months.

To combat the residue feeling, I use a calming cleansing water as a toner for extra cleansing yet won't strip my skin dry. 

My favorite product from La Chinata is the body lotion(€4.95)

The smell is light, the lotion is hydrating yet not sticky or too creamy. I can even use this lotion before going out in warm and humid Singapore. It melts into your skin. 

Every product in this line uses organic extra virgin olive oil and it is always nice to support a small business. Especially one that has affordable prices! 

All opinions regarding these products are my own personal opinions alone. The pictures are taken from the companies websites which are linked to this blog. No companies or product endorsements here. 

Scents that evoke memories

My very first foray into purchasing a perfume was when I was in 6th grade. I was obsessed with CK One and Gap Dream body spray. Scents evoke memories of a time and place. Even to this day, if I get a whiff of either of those two scents, I am transported to my 11 year old self. That loud, giggly, blushing, confidant, and silly 11 year old girl who would recite lines from monologues and plays.

Over the years, I've obviously changed and experimented with many different types of scents. High school was a heady mix of sweet fruity smells but most notably Elizabeth Arden's Green Tea and all the Bath and Body Works body sprays were a main fixture in my dance bag. College was definitely Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue and Coco Chanel Mademoiselle. Very sweet scents in my opinion. Post-college life in New York was definitely Burberry Brit then later on Fresh Sake; Sugar Lychee, and Jo Malone's Jasmine White Tea. 

I am currently on rotation with Fresh Sake, Jo Malone's Jasmine White Tea, Jo Malone's Lime & Basil, and recently acquired Bvlgari Omnia Coral for the summer scent.

Fall in Central Park 2009

We associate different scents with different things and times in our lives. With that said here are some of my favorite scents:
Roasted chestnuts on a wet and rainy day.
The smell of my pet bunny Heppi's head.
Mint
Eucalyptus
Lavender
Earl Grey
Sephora smell
New shoes
A crisp fall morning dew
Sambal
Coconut flavored rice

Daytime pretty natural look

Eyes: Mac shroom, Laura Mercier chocolate

No mascara. Only curled with shu uemura's lash curler

Cheeks: NARS multiple in orgasm

Lips: Fresh sugar lip balm in honey

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Photo Credit: Ji Yoon Kim

Product Review: Apivita's Ginger + Orange body scrub

Apivita is a Greek skincare and bodycare line that uses mostly natural ingredients. I wasn't familiar with this line at all and walked into their pretty store looking for a body scrub. I try to exfoliate my body once or twice a week (depending on the city grime level). I don't particularly like strong scents in my skincare or bodycare unless its minty or eucalyptus. Unfortunately, Apivita's line does not have either of those two scents and found the Ginger + Orange body scrub titled "Body Energy" to calming. My favorite aspect of this scrub is the creamy feel of the scrub with smaller granules than a rough salt scrub. I prefer creamy scrubs than abrasive scrubs.

According to their website: 

91% natural ingredients

• Dead sea salts, bamboo and luffa grains remove dead skin cells and invigorate the skin
• Propolis and olive offer antioxidant protection
• Orange and ginger essential oils revitalize and lift the mood

Exclusive Innovation: APIVITA replaces water in the body care line with organic witch hazel infusion to enhance the antioxidant and soothing action.
Excludes synthetic ingredients that may pose harmful effects to your health and the environment.
Free of: Parabens, Propylene Glycol, Mineral Oil and Ethanolomine.


Results: I used a loofah with this product and my skin feels cleansed, soft, and buttery soft after using this scrub. I would purchase this product again and recommend it to my friends. 




All opinions regarding these products are my own personal opinions alone. The pictures are taken from the companies websites which are linked to this blog. No companies or product endorsements here. 

Beautiful Faces of Athletes that are Queens of Ice and Snow

With the Winter Olympics in Sochi underway, I am somewhat glued to my screen watching as much tv coverage, reading articles, looking at images, and watching videos online. I love Winter sports and always excited when the sports I really enjoy are put on the center stage. I want to stress that I admire athletes who train and compete in the Olympics because they sacrifice so much to be the best they can be and the best the world has ever seen. It is truly amazing! These women are strong beautiful women athletes and deserve to be recognized. :-)

The following pictures have links to the original sites. I do not own any of the photographs. 

Ashley Wagner

Blowing kisses to her friends, family, and fans in the kiss and cry area in Sochi after her skating her short program

 

Tessa Virtue

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir compete in the team ice dance short dance figure skating competition at the Iceberg Skating Palace during the 2014 Winter Olympics on Feb. 8, 2014, in Sochi, Russia. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sochi/virtue-and-moir-finish-2nd-in-short-dance-canada-gains-on-russia-in-team-event-1.1677019#ixzz2snfl1Xv2

Heidi Weng

Bronze medal in women's skiathlon

Yulia Lipnitskaya

This 15 year old could just steal the show and claim the Gold. She has the maturity of someone beyond her years but the spark and youth with so much going for her. Inspiring for us all!

Jamie Anderson

(Photo: Andrew P. Scott , USA TODAY Sports)

 

 

US Snowboarder Jamie Anderson wins women's slopestyle gold

Gracie Gold

Steven Senne, File / AP Photo 

 

"The 2018 Games may prove to be her moment, not Sochi. But if Gold can truly internalize Carroll's wisdom, that won't enter her mind.
"We're here. There's nothing to qualify for," she said. "It's just about leaving it all out on the table and going for the gold.""

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/07/3920268/gracie-gold-preps-for-pressure.html#storylink=cpy

Julia Mancuso

Photo: Andrew P. Scott, USA TODAY Sports

 

"She has been fast in downhill training this week on the fast, treacherous OIympic women's course at the new Rosa Khutor alpine center, finishing third, 10th and eighth."

Yuna Kim

Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

Kim is one of the most decorated skaters in women's figure skating history. In addition to her Olympic gold medal, she's captured two World Championships, three Grand Prix titles and has never finished below third place in an international competition. 

This is a growing list. Let me know who to add to this list! :-) Strong beautiful women role models for us all!

My Top Beauty blunders of all time

What's your beauty and skincare mistakes?

We all made them... (hopefully we learned from our mistakes and no longer do them!)

Here are some of mine:

• Tanning - ill spent youth of spending hours sitting by the pool under the sun to get a golden brown. I never turned "golden", it was always grey and ashy or fried myself to a bright red and then peel. 
• Not wearing sunscreen. See above. I never wore sunblock or sunscreen as a kid and there are pictures of me as a brown kid.
• Sleeping without washing off my make up. Being drunk or too sleepy are not good excuses anymore to not wash off your face after a night out. I always have face wipes nearby. Even if I didn't wear make up that day, the grime from the day is enough to clog pores and wake up with a huge zit.
• Over drying my oily acne-prone skin as a teen. I had pimples as a teen - yea, I used everything to zap them away. Salicylic acid, benzoyl peroxide, sulfur, willow bark, tea tree oil, clay, even toothpaste! I tried to de-grease and dry everything out. This was counter-productive because if you strip away oil from the skin, more oil is produced thus creating clogged pores that lead to zits. Thankfully, I know better and get regular facials that have paid off  in the long term. I don't break out very often anymore. 
• Not moisturizing. See above. Because I had the oily skin as a teen, I didn't feel the need to put a moisturizer on my face. If it weren't for good genes and good skincare routine, I would have dry irritable skin with some wrinkles. 
• Dark black eyeliner all around my eyes. Panda eyes or Goth. I can't tell. Whoever said this was a good look growing up in the 90s needs to take a good look in the mirror. Dark black eyeliner lined on the upper lashes AND lower lashes closes the eyes instead of making them bigger. If the argument is that it makes the eyes more exotic or mysterious looking, it doesn't do either. Just makes you look a bit trashy or unaware that its not enhancing your best feature of your face. The eyes communicate a lot of nonverbal cues. Why would you want to mask it all with dark liner? There is a way to look smoldering with a nicely applied smokey eye and this is not it.  But ugh, I am guilty for wearing this look as a pre-teen.
• Frosted lipstick/lip gloss. Another unfortunate case of the 90s trends. Just don't do it.
• Matching eyeshadow with my outfit. When I started wearing make up out into the real world, I was probably in the 6th grade and there were a couple school dances where I tried to match my eyeshadow to my outfit. Luckily, I caught on early that this was not a good look and quickly rectified the unfortunate beauty blunder early on.
• Over processed hair with hair dye, highlights, perms. Healthy hair comes from doing less to it. But we're all a bit vain and want our hair to always be something its not. So we put it through extreme heat (ie. curling, flatironing, blowdry, etc.), highlights, hair dye, perms, straightening. Just leave it alone. All of that fussing around to make our hair look different causes lots of damage to hair follicles and creates even more problems. I first had highlights in my hair in 8th grade and throughout high school. In college there were periods of experimenting with hair dye and I would dye my hair with manic panic maroon shades as well as different shades of blue. These weren't extreme because I have dark Asian hair so those colors only came out in the sun as tints or under certain lighting. Post-college, I stopped but started curling my hair a lot which fried the ends. I had a bit of highlights here and there and bleached the ends of my hair then had it dyed fire engine red. That lasted about a good month and a half then the color started to fade and it took two years of constant trimming and growing it out to get rid of all the color. My hair was healthy again until I moved to Asia. The heat and humidity would not hold a curl for very long so I got a perm, it didn't do anything so I got another one a couple months later, then my hair starting rebelling and falling out! So now, I'm on a mission to make my hair and scalp healthy again. I pour serums filled with the promise of hair regrowth onto my scalp and shampoos that promise to exfoliate and cleanse my scalp so the serums work better. *sigh*

New Year's beauty resolutions

Happy New Year! I spent almost three weeks traveling Western Europe for the holidays and have amazing memories, stories, pictures, and met up with old & new friends. Its winter and my skin surprisingly did fine - I slathered lotion all over my body at night before bed time and if its extra dry due to the heating in the room, I'd slather lotion again in the morning. I did the same thing with my face: after cleansing it was always serum, moisturizer, sunscreen, then tinted moisturizer & a bit of make up.

So now its 2014 and a brand new year. What are your beauty care resolutions this year?

My beauty care resolution is simple: take care of my body by nurturing it with care and love. Stay healthy as much as I can, moisturize from head-to-toe because dry skin causes wrinkles, apply sunscreen more diligently, drink A LOT of fluids, smile, laugh, enjoy life!

Prost! Skål! Salud!

New Year's in Amsterdam