Good morning to any fellow beauty junkies who stumble upon this post!
Skin has always been a preoccupation and issue for me. I am periodically extremely acne prone with combination skin. By "combination", I mean either dry to the point of peeling and flaking - mostly at the tip of my nose and the area between my nose, lips and cheeks - and oily on my forehead. I have large pores in some areas, seemingly none in others, and a good deal of scarring. With a prescribed cocktail of Ortho-Lo (birth control pill), tretinoin/Differin cream and the anti-bacterial Cetaphil bar at night, and a benzoyl peroxide face wash with an antibiotic gel in the morning, my skin is pretty much breakout free. Once I stop that routine for a few months, however, the acne returns.
This routine may save me from acne, but (aside from the retinol cream), does little in the way of anti-aging, glow inducing, pore minimizing, or etherealizing. I'm always on the hunt for one or two small products I can include in my regimen to make myself feel a little pampered without disrupting the prescribed routine.
A few months after I had neglected my acne routine for a while, I tried the Yes to Tomatoes Clear Skin daily balancing moisturizer and LOVED it. It is a little pricey for a drugstore moisturizer - about $14 US for 50 ml/1.7oz (especially when I already love and use the Cetaphil regular giant pumper of lotion, which is about $12 US), but it only takes a small pump to cover your face and it actually did help to start clearing up my skin - and smells great to boot. It's not a super thick, overwhelming cream, but it definitely moisturizes well and doesn't wear out like most moisturizers for acne prone skin will. The pump is fantastic - it comes with a tight fitting cap to avoid lotion-bag-syndrome and allows you to pump only as much as you need.
Best of all, it is cruelty free, paraben free, and (as all of the "Yes To" line) contributes to the Yes to Seed campaign, which has created a global community of schools that engage students in planting their own school gardens to help in the fight against hunger (http://www.yestocarrots.com/yes-to-seed-fund.html). Win-win no matter how you look at it!
On a whim yesterday, I also picked up a small size of the famed Caudelie Beauty Elixir at Sephora (a fantastic and expensive line of non-chemical products). I'll write a full review on this after I've had a chance to really try it out, but my first impressions are positive. It smells amazing (fresh and herbal on first spray - but if you aren't a fan of the smell, it doesn't stick around long), feels invigorating and cooling on the skin, and seems to help even out redness. I'm wearing it without makeup today to see how my skin reacts and, so far, I think it's doing well. We'll see after a few days how it really shapes up to the hype!
I'm also in the market for a fantastic eye cream - if anyone has a recommendation for a cruelty free product they love that minimizes dark circles and lines, shoot me a message or a comment!
Xx,
K
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