8 Skincare Products I May Buy Again

When you've had to deal with hormonal adult acne for your 20s, you inevitably accumulate a lot of skincare products. Being mindful of my dry-combination skin, I've finally used up the following products with varying degrees of success. Below are a few of my quick impressions and whether I'd re-purchase a product:

1. CeraVe Hydrating Cleanser - For Normal to Dry Skin
   It feels like lotion and kind of acts like lotion. It's gentle, but it never really felt like it got the grit off my fact. Probably wouldn't re-purchase.
2. Aveeno Positively Radiant - Skin Brightening Daily Scrub
   Gentle cleanser that actually felt it was taking off the residual makeup left over from my first cleanse. The beads are a gentle exfoliation, much less harsh than the St. Ive's Cleanser, and the formula left my skin feeling soft and mildly moisturized. Would definitely repurchase.
3. Origin's GinZing Refreshing Eye Cream.
   I was very "meh" about this product. It's a sample size of a formula that I didn't particularly like or dislike. Didn't really improve the shadows under my eyes, and only kind of helped with the puffiness. Would not buy.
4. Lush Dark Angels Charcoal Scrub
   I bought this when I had moderate-severe acne. It helped at first and then exacerbated my acne. I never used the whole thing and am getting rid of it despite it being half full due to expiry of the product. It did make my skin feel super soft as exfoliants tend to do. Would probably not re-purchase because it kept staining my tub and sink so I had to clean more often than I would like.
5. Michael Todd Blue Green Algae Toner
   I actually really like this product and I think it helped my acne problems. Two big draw packs: 1) I really dislike this smell, and 2) the product stings my face. This is my second bottle and I do think it's a good product, but I'm the lookout for something that doesn't smell like this (lavender?) or sting.
6. Pond's Cold Cream
   I swear by this to take off my makeup. It's second only to Lancome Bi-Ficil which is my one true makeup remover. Pond's is great because it's inexpensive and it works. It does feel like oil though (because they use mineral oil in the product) and is uncomfortable when it gets in your eye. This is my 3rd or 4th bottle and I'll probably continue to repurchase for the foreseeable future.
7. Dr. G Bio-RTx Mentor Cream 3 - Oily Skin
   Didn't like. Probably not meant for my skintype. It's sold at Nordstrom but it's not something I would repurchase. I ended up using it for my neck.
8. Juice Beauty Soothing Eye Cream
   Hated the way this smelled. Fairly average eye cream in that it kept the puffiness away, but once washed off, there wasn't a lasting effect so I had to be diligent about applying morning and at night.

And that's the 8. Hoping my next post won't take 5 years to do. 

Review: Smile House Cafe - San Francico

Wow; this place Sucks. I did not mistype that capital "s". I usually try a restaurant a few times just to make sure it wasn't an off day before I judge; but hey, it was the first time I shook from rage at a restaurant so I guess it's okay to write a review.

The wait was ridonkulous. An ice cream parfait should take five minutes to make. Not sure why scooping some ice cream into a tall cup with some fruit took them an hour. I thought that was pretty weird. And when the waitress finally bought my parfait out:

"Uhm, I didn't order this. I ordered the Mango (some flower thing) Parfait."

"This is the Mango parfait."

"Isn't this the Mango Madness?"

"No. The Mango Madness isn't a parfait. This is the the Mango parfait."

"But isn't there supposed to be (some flower thing) in it?"

"This is the parfait. The other one isn't a parfait."

Unless I'm going crazy (and maybe I was since I obviously don't know better), I'm pretty sure it looked exactly like the Mango Madness that my friend ordered and consumed 20 minutes prior. I gave up arguing because I really did not want to sit another hour there for them to scoop some more ice cream in a new cup.

Also I am absolutely certain the wait staff had more important things to do than check up on us or refill our tea in the 2 hours we were there. Not sure what it was considering there were four of them and they didn't look like they were helping out the kitchen.

I try to not be a shitty customer because I have to deal with shitty, entitled customers all day and I know dealing with shitty people sucks. But the service at Smile was pretty horrendous and superbly slow.

Oh wait, I forgot that one thing came out quick: the check. That was a shocker.


******** TL;DR version **********

Warning: Long wait for food. Shitty service. Go at own risk.

Not good for: people who have a wait threshold for food, impatient people, people who value decent service, nice people

Good for: People who enjoy waiting 1+ hours for food, people who like complaining about service and wait, people who like to slowly test their patience.

My Relationship with Ipsy

You know that friend that you kind-of like, and you want to like, but they just keep doing dumb shit that disappoints you? Yeah; that’s my relationship with Ipsy.

I looked at various beauty box subscriptions for months, trying to decide which one I wanted to do because I’m cheap (the result of growing up on the less wealthy side of the income spectrum and being a broke university student for four years of my life). So I broke it down and it came down to the fact that I like makeup and I wanted an inexpensive way of trying high quality makeup. In the end, Ipsy won my March Madness bracket and I subscribed.

Here I am, five months down the line and I’m still not quite sure what I feel about Ipsy. On one hand, I’ve gotten to try a few products that I’ve been fairly pleased with. My absolute favorite item thus far was a gel eyeliner by CAILYN from two months ago. If I didn’t already have so many eyeliners and didn’t have a bunch more on my “to try” list, I’d probably go and buy another five of the CAILYN gel eyeliners and I will write an in-depth review of it at a later date.

Most everything else that I’ve received from my Ipsy subscription thus far has been on the “okay” part of the scale. But receiving “okay” things do not drive me crazy as much as you would think. The thing that has thrown me into repeated fits of rage has been the fact that in the five months that I have received Ipsy, I have received one lipstick. One.

If there’s one makeup product that I consistently spend money on, it’s lipstick. There have been three months where getting a lip product was possible. I have gotten an actual lipstick once. ONCE. That was last month when they failed to send me Benefit’s Benetint (another WTH, Ipsy) but at least sent me the POP chubby stick.

Nothing could really compare to my absolute disappointment upon receiving not the “Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick” sample, but a lip balm. Not even one of those “Sugar by Fresh” lip balms but some random $3 lip balm. Let it be known that I don’t care for lip balms; I use whatever is cheapest and on sale at the pharmacy which is usually the in-store brand, Chapstick, or Carmex. I spend $1 on chapsticks. I spend an average of $20-$25 on lipsticks because I have a problem.

I very specifically stated that I like lipsticks and not gloss or balms on the Ipsy quiz. This repeated slight feels like that friend who never listens when you tell them that you like something and then keeps getting you things that you have no use for. It’s pretty annoying when it keeps happening again and again.

I’m pretty sure I want to break off this friendship before I go any deeper. I know, $10 is barely the cost of a lunch, but I anticipate a lot of red in the next few months with trips and Christmas around the corner, I think I would rather save the $40 and buy myself that Shu Uemura palette I’ve been eyeing.

Let's Talk Lipstick: BITE

Let’s talk lipstick. I was at Sephora purchasing my Jasmine compact mirror a while back and wandered around Sephora to see what was around. I was going around, swatching lipsticks as I usually do when I noticed an entire display of lipsticks and lip liners dedicated to some brand I’ve never heard of before: BITE

Let's Talk Food: Izakaya Sozai (3.5/5)

Some people eat to live, and some live to eat. For me... well, I do a bit of both. On “my jeans don’t fit oh god why am I such a glutton?!” days, It wouldn’t be at all strange for me to eat just to live. Honestly, if food didn’t taste so good, I would eat only because I had to. Unfortunately, most of the time, I eat because food is tasty. It's all very unfortunate for my waistline and my wallet... mostly unfortunate for my wallet.

Today, I’m going to talk about an extremely tiny izakaya joint located in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco. The establishment is called Izakaya Souzai.

The restaurant is tiny and crowded. Extremely crowded. Some things to know:

1. They don’t take reservations after they open
2. If you want to eat there after they open, you have to go to the restaurant and tell the host your name, party, and telephone number
3. Don’t go if you have to spend your parents money or if you’re struggling to pay rent and/or your bills--that’s a bad idea all around.

That said, I’m also Chinese-American. I grew up eating homecooked Chinese food which means some things I eat are considered weird and gross by American standards. I will inevitably order “weird” meats when I’m at an izakaya joint.

Okay, Izakaya Souzai, food was good overall, as was the service. I can’t really complain about how expensive it is because you know that going into an izakaya. If I were to rate it on Yelp, I’m giving it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars and here’s why:

5 Minute Makeup - 04/07/13

A lot of women who really get into makeup wake up so they have something like 30 minutes to put on their face. It never really made sense to me... until I started getting into makeup as a hobby and realized that it took me at least five minutes every morning to do foundation and concealing. At least.

So I came across something online today; a 5 minute makeup challenge.

That sounded like fun. So despite the fact that I had nothing on my face today besides moisturizer and sunscreen, I gave it a whirl.

Urban Decay Glinda Palette Review

I'm writing this like there aren't already hundreds upon thousands of reviews on this product already. Don't care. This is my opinion and mine alone; it never hurts to have one more review.

Besides, I have been playing with this palette almost exclusively for the last month so I think I can do a proper review of it now.