Friday, September 13, 2013

Spoiler Alert-September Birch Box Reveled



Look what's here!!


Yay! My favorite time of the month-BirchBox time!


So these are the goodies that I received this month:

As you can see, very generous sized samples!

  • Davines Sea Salt Spray
  • Elizabeth Arden Beautiful Color Lip Gloss in Precious Petal
  • Ruffian Nail Lacquer in Fox Hunt
  • Paula's Choice Resist BHA 9 ~what a coinkydink, no?
  • Pearly Wipes Clean Up Your Kisser
So I would say on a scale of 1-10 this box is a 5/6. I'll explain why.

First, I have never used a sea salt spray for my hair, I would've probably loved to have tried this at the beginning of or mid-summer but coming into fall, I am picturing a little more sleekness in my hair styles. Also, the products in the box had a bit of salt on them so I am wondering how this is going to work in my hair. 
I will follow up on this one for all you kitties that are waiting on the edge of your seats. 
I am quite excited about the Elizabeth Arden lip gloss, it is a gorgeous shade of pink with a heavy dose of gold shimmer in it. This gloss looks like it was made for me and me thinks gold makes everything look better! Next, the nail lacquer is ok-I don't generally get worked up over polish as I never do my own nails. The Paula's Choice BHA 9- one of my favorite products but I have a full bottle of it-maybe I will pass this one to my momma. Finally, the Pearly Wipes--wiping your teeth is not exciting at all. Enough said.  

So I will let you all know how these products work out for me. Maybe I will find a Holy Grail product in the mix! 

We shall see~

Until next time, 
Big Kisses to All!!

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

September 11, 2001

I'm going to go off subject today in honor of all the lives lost and forever changed on September 11, 2001.

I was not planning on posting anything but in the spirit of never forgetting, I must always remember. 

I was 31 years old and working on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. After the first plane hit, a headline ran across our news ticker that read "plane crashes into building, 5 people jump". It never occurred to me in that moment that that could be happening a mere 4 blocks away. I remember thinking "wow, that must be in Chicago and the pilot must have been drunk or had a heart attack". A very panicked co-worker alerted me to the situation-"don't you even know what is going on right now? A plane just hit the trade center". The second plane hit with such force, it shook our building. That's when I realized something was terribly wrong and this was no accident. 

September 11th will be a day that stands out forever in our history as Americans and our history as New Yorkers. It's the kind of day where you remember the most minute of details such as what you ate for breakfast (eggwhites and whole wheat toast), the weather (perfect) and what you wore (heels- I have always said pretty jokingly, that if you were going to wear heels, you had better be able to run in them. Never did I think I would ever have to put that to the test.) One of my memories of 9/11, didn't even happen on 9/11. It happened the night before as I waited out a heavy rainstorm while standing in a doorway in Soho. Life was pretty good then and I was taking in the moment. I remember smelling the rainy air completely oblivious to the surreal horror we were all about to experience the very next day. I remember that innocent (naive?) feeling. 

September 11, 2001 will forever for me, be holding onto my mother and yelling at her to not turn around, to just look forward as we ran from one of the tallest buildings in the world crumbling right before us. A building that was part of my landscape my whole life, a building that I had worked in as a young woman and still utilized on a daily basis. It was a vision my brain could not process and for a split second, entertained the possibility that this was not really happening. That it was somehow fake. 

We arrived home safe that night. There are thousands of others that did not. There are thousands who were having a normal morning, attending their usual morning meetings or boarding a plane, who never got to go home. 

I remember every single day. 
I will never forget the innocent people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania who paid with their lives, I will never forget the families who were left behind and still suffer every single day, I will never forget the first responders who rushed in but never came out, I will never forget the volunteers who came from all over the country to try to help in whatever way they could, I will never forget that plume of smoke that seemed to linger forever or the smell of lower Manhattan over the following weeks, I will never forget the ash and semi burnt paper that was floating through the air, personal documents, divorce papers, literally up in smoke floating around lower Manhattan. I will never forget the sadness and the silence that took over, I will never forget the New Yorkers who banded together to help each other, literally stopping to pick each other up while running from a falling skyscraper.
 I will never forget that safe, innocent feeling that I felt during that rainstorm on Sept 10th.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

My Skin

So this is what's going on with my skin.

I have relatively good skin but suffer from breakouts. I feel as I am getting older, it has gotten worse. The first half of this year, my skin was a bit out of control. I am not sure if it was because of stress, hormones or a product I was using but it was constant and in my opinion, ridiculous. I am well past the age of constant breakouts. So in the middle of June, I decided to get real help and visit a dermatologist. I had also become curious about Retin-A. 

So off to the derm I go! After a thorough, up close and personal examination of my skin, she announces:

Your acne is quite unusual. 

Apparently, teenagers and adults break out differently. Teenagers usually breakout on the upper part of their face (forehead, cheeks, nose), while adults have their blemishes on the lower part of the face (mouth, chin, neck). She was perplexed by the teenage breakout I was having and found it interesting. However, that makes absolutely perfect sense to me, as I believe in my head that I am still a teenager and I act accordingly. Could I have possibly tricked my skin into believing it as well? I believe so! Now I will have to work on tricking the rest of my body.OK, back to the subject. 

The diagnosis was Adult (teenage) Acne and the prescription is Retin-A and a topical antibiotic. 

Two months in and so far so good. I am going to do a separate post on the Retin-A as that is a long term process and besides being a blemish annihilator, it is also the best (some say the only besides sun protection) anti-ager in existence. I also want to tell you about the other changes I have made to my skincare routine. There is definitely a difference in my skin and so far I am very pleased.

Anyone have any Retin-A experiences? Please share!

Until next time~
Jessica