Hey guys,
I hope you're doing a lot better than myself. Last Sunday I had really bad chest and heart pain and I had to go to A&E. It turned out that there is something wrong with the muscles around my heart, some sort of inflammation and I've been bed bound and on medication over the last few days. It drove me mad. I had to force myself to stay in bed since stress made the pain a lot worse. Hopefully once I'm done with medication it'll be the end of this. It's been an unfortunate start to the new year but I won't let that bring me down.
I'm here today to showcase some of my beauty favourites of the last year. I decided to show these separately to my makeup ones as I had so many of those and I didn't want to overwhelm you. These are my holy grails products of 2014 so I hope that this post will spark some interest in you and that you'll check them out for yourself. Enjoy.
Skincare
For everyday basis I love using the Garnier Pure Active Intensive Anti-Spot Exfoliating Scrub. Pff what a long name. I have oily to combination skin with a tendency to break out. This product manages to keep my skin at bay and generally spot free. I use it once a day, usually at night to cleanse my skin of face makeup and impurities. It's strong enough to help me get rid of spots but not to the point where it dries my skin out which would cause my skin to produce more oil and so more spots.
After I wash my face I use my Nivea Oil Free Moisturising Day Cream (I use it at night too) to put the moisture back into my skin. It's non greasy and quick absorbing and I think that I've used this product for at least 3 years. I can apply it under makeup and it won't make it go funky and it's just the best at making my skin baby soft and moisturised.
My special skin care products are from the brand Ziaja. I use them every 3 days to keep my skin clean or for a couple of days in a row if I have a bad case of spots on my face and they clear it right up.
The first product is a face paste with manuka leaves for normal, oily and combination skins. It is a grainy yet gentle sort of a face scrub that is super deep cleansing and it leaves my skin literally squeaky clean. It gets rid of absolutely everything that is clogging up my pores and so it prevents spots as well as gets rid of them.
Since the face is super deep cleansing, I need to apply a really heavy moisturiser after to keep my skin moisturised. The one I use is like I said from the same brand and it's the face cream for oily and combination skin with white tea extact. It's super rich but it absorbs nicely. It's not the best to wear under makeup but when my skin is super crappy I do use it for that purpose as it stops makeup form clinging onto the dry skin around spots.
These two products basically saved my skin this year.
Another ground breaking product for me this year was this Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water. I use this to remove my eye and face makeup and it fulfills that jobs extremely well. It's super gentle yet effective. I never realised before using this how crappy makeup wipes are at removing makeup. They always left a bit of residue on my skin or they would sting or require an enormous amount of rubbing in order to get rid of mascara or eyeliner which is supposed to be bad for the skin around your eyes. This however I can just pop on on a cotton pad, place over my eye for about 10 seconds and then gently rub for another 10 and my eye makeup is effectively removed. It's absolute gold.
The haircare line that I loved this year has been the Garnier Ultimate Blends line for dry, dull hair with argan and camilla oils. I have to emphasise that this specific line was my favourite as I used the coconut line from the range and it was crap as it would leave my hair almost greasy and dull feeling. This however makes my hair soft and shiny but doesn't weigh it down. It manages to make my frizzy, dry ends smooth which is as good as it's gonna get as I'm really due in for a trip (scared to do it though). I use the shampoo and conditioner on every third day and I keep the conditioner on my hair for the duration of all the girly things that I do in the shower. Once a week I also use the hair mask on the lower part of my hair and I only apply the condtioner to the roots of my hair and that's basically all I do to make my hair look presentable.
After I wash my hair I also apply a bit of this L'Oreal Elvive Extraordinairy Oil to the end of my hair just to really smooth it down and add shine.
The last favourite of last year was this Batiste dry shampoo. Boy oh boy does this make my life easier. Like I said I wash my hair every 3 days because 1) I have really long hair and a lot of it so it takes it's a chore and a half to do it 2) I'm busy and lazy 3) washing your hair too much is bad for it as it can dry out your scalp and your hair. My hair looks nice and fresh for the first 2 days after washing it and on the 3rd day my hair goes a bit meh. This is when this baby comes in hand. I spray it into my roots, let it sit there, rub it in and then brush it out and then tah dah I have nice fresh hair for another day. It means that I can wear my hair down as much as I like or that I have really voluminous up do's that don't look greasy and flat. I love this to bits and I think this is a lazy girls best friend.
I hope that you liked this post and I'll see you in my next one.
Mollie
xx
