Two Weeks' Reviews 2/2-13

So, I missed posting my reviews earlier this week. I take full responsibility for this, as I was on an internship week, and was just too tired to post my reviews.  Also, as of last week, I only had one item to review, due to some disappointments, so it's probably a good thing that I waited.

Speaking of disappointments, since I am uncomfortable saying negative things about sellers on this blog, if I have a bad experience with a seller or sample, they will just not be mentioned by name here (though a general statement about "don'ts" may be based on something I have dealt with from them).  If I review a seller or product here, it will be because the positived outweigh any negatives that I have encountered with the seller, and I feel confident in recommending their products. This may mean that I don't review one of my typical products in a week due to my disappointment.

And now.....On to the reviews!

This week's soap is actually a foaming sugar scrub.  I have had a few foaming sugar scrub samples from The Soap Diva in my soap drawer for a while.  I got them from the Little Black Boxes, and due to my discomfort with using sugar scrubs in general, I haven't used them.  Well, last week's soap from Vintage Soap Shoppe lasted all of last week and most of this week.  Since I like to start new soap samples on the weekend for purposes of my reviews, I had a few days before I broke into the new sample.  For some reason, instead of just pulling out one of my "go-to" soaps, I decided to be daring and pull out one of the sugar scrub samples instead.  Let me tell you, I am glad that I did.

One of the things that had been turning me off of thiese samples was the fact that they were in plastic condiment to-go containers. This makes for a relatively small sample that, to me, looks a little...well.....cheap.  That the Soap Diva had taken the time to print a lovely professional looking clear label on their containers countered much of this impression, and led me to keep these samples.  I understand that money is tight and that sellers don't want to spend too much on samples, however I have just had too many of these containers explode in my samplers, their contents getting on everything for me to feel anything better than ambivalent about their use.  What makes the Soap Diva special is, their choice of sample container is the ONLY negative that I could find with this sugar scrub....oh, and I looked on the website, and their regular scrubs come in a lovely jar.

Here in Houston, we have been having quite the cold snap.  Temperatures have been in in the lower forties for days. This has led to my typical winter nemesis: dry skin on my limbs and a grease slick on my face.  I normally have extremely oily skin all over, but when I am in long sleeves and long pants every day and going in and out of temperature controlled buildings, the skin on my arms and legs gets all dry and scaly.  Inevitably, my face is all broken out and I am slathering on the lotion everywhere else.  After a few days of using this scrub, though, I noticed that my arms and legs were not sucking up as much lotion as normal, and I was getting less itchy over the course of the day.  I give a large amount of the credit to the Soap Diva and their sugar scrub. 

The Soap Diva offers soaps, body butters and lotions, regualr sugar scrubs, candles, and wax tarts all in a huge variety of scents on their website.  Their prices are extremely good, and I look forward to the day that the come up on my "buy today" list.

Since it has been so chilly, I have also been shooting through the lip balm.  I have taken to carrying a pot or stick in my coat pocket, my purse, and my car.  Fortunately, even with my AS allergies, I have had plenty of lip balm, due to a few wonderful sellers.  One of the sellers, I was introduced to through Sampler Village. In last month's Sampler Village box, Luster Canyon sent out a lovely little set of a wonderful lotion and a little mini lip balm tube. WELL!  Every morning, I rub the lotion on my scaly legs, and every day after lunch, I pull that little mini tube out of my pocket and rub on some of the lip balm.

Luster Canyon's Lip Balms are unsweetened.  They do use flavor, but there is no sweetener, so the flavor is very light, though the scent is wonderful and strong.  There is only enough flavor tomake the lip balm not taste like "lip balm".  It's enough.  I also love the tiny little tubes.  They fit perfectly into my jeans.  I might have to go try to bug them to make me a little sampler set of their other flavors in those little tubes.  I have a bad habit of losing lip balms for a few months at a time when they're about half done, because I put them "somewhere special" and start a new flavor, then forget where I put them when I am ready to get back to them. These little sizes are perfect for that!

Luster Canyon's lotion is not oily at all, yet very moisturizing.  It lets off a nice scent that dissipates pretty quickly, which I like, since I don't always want to smell my lotion all day.  I don't feel like I have to slather it on, and it works all day. Luster canyon also makes soaps, and you can get their soaps in coordinating scents with your lotion, which is always nice, since you don't have to worry about clashing scents.

On a customer service note, I wrote an email to Luster Canyon asking them about whether or not their flavors had artificial sweeteners in them.  They got back to me extremely quickly, and were friendly and professional.  You can't ask for anything more than that!

Another lip balm I have been using this week is from Babynme.  I found this seler on Etsy this past Christmas when I was looking for AS free lip balms.  Babynme were very quick getting back to me and were nice and professional.  I ordered their Cinnamon lip balm, and it has a gret flavor and good coverage. They have a good sized pot of lip balm, and a great price.  They shipped quickly and were just wonderful to work with. Babynme offers other bath and pody products on their etsy site, and they have a few other affiliated sites.  Check them out!

Since I don't like putting sweet or strong scented lotions on my face, I usually use unscented Lubriderm after washing my face at night. Well, this week, I ran out and never got tot he store to buy more.  As luck would have it, in this past month's Little Black Box, I got some lovely body butter samples from Main Element Love in a scent called "rise and shine". This lovely citrusy scent is light and airy, so I decided to give it a try as a face lotion.  I think the only people not happy about that decision are the ones at Lubriderm. The body butter perfectly moisturizes my skin without making me break out or become a giant oil slick. The butter is a good consistency, not to firm, yet not too gooey, and perfect for the little pot that it is in.  As an added bonus, one of the things I find most exciting about this lotion find is that Main Element Love is IN HOUSTON!  yes, that's right, they are close by, so I should be able to get their body butter, soaps, shampoos, scrubs, hair care, or bath bombs whenever I want!  Sweet!

Speaking of bath bombs, I tried a new one this week.  Mainely Naturals sent these adorable race car bath fizzies in to The Little Black Boxes, and I used mine in my bath last night.  It was super fizzie, and gave off a perfect amount of scent.  I ahve discovered that, event hough I have a huge tub, I don't like how much oil I get from the huge bath bombs, so this one was just perfect for me. Mainely Naturals scents their race car fizzies with orange oil, which is a nice clean scent. They have all kinds of other lovely scented products in their etsy store, also.  I actually have another fizzie from an additional LBB that I bought, and I think I need to hide it from my kids before they fight over who gets it in his or her bath.

One of the things that I love about Valentine's Day is the CANDY.  The Sampler Village had a bunch of fabulous candies and goodies in it, and I just want to mention them.  There was some fabulous rock candy from Tracy's Home Canned goods, an awesome fondant bear that my daughter gobbled up from CRLCreations, and a lovely heart fondant cake topper from Two Sugar Babies.

Also, as a new feature on my blog, tomorrow, I am going to discuss a few good sellers I have bought from. Some will be repeats of sellers I have reviewed, and some will be sellers I have never mentioned here before. I wan tot bring up sellers of items that I have bought over the years that I have had a good experience with, adn some of those sellers are sellers of the type of thing I might not otherwise review.  I am not sticking with only the sellers I bought from recently because I am on a very tight budget, so I have not had a lot of buying money recently,and I want to be able to mentiona  few sellers every week. I do not make a purchase every week, so I am mentioning older sellers, too.