90's kids will know...

My Cien Favorite Products

A while back, I ranted about the Heidi Klum's Collection with Lidl. And, yes, it's true, I prefer expensive products to supermarket brands, but there are from Lidl's in-house-brand Cien that I
find to be super good and just amazing for their prices!

- from left to right -

Eye Contour Cream with Caviar Extract

Aqua Rich Daily Exfoliating Facial Wash

Make up Removal Disks

Professional Heat Protection Spray
-

The eye cream is really good! It really helps me in those mornings that I have extra puffy eyes. It has a very gel-like consistency, slightly serum-y. I like it.

The exfoliating facial wash is very well known already. It's cheap, smells good, and does what it claims. I use it to wash my face in the shower. 

The face disks -- I've talked about them before. These are my favorite. For me, these are the best in the market and they are the cheapest. 

But the big surprise is this Heat Protection Spray. Fist of all, I was so surprised to see that Cien had a Professional line! And this works super super good. It's super cheap as well, and so far I feel like it does it job perfectly. 

Dry Shampoo | Batiste vs Garnier

The dry shampoo trend has finally arrived to Portugal! And OMG, it was about time! When I was living in France (two years ago) I was able to buy dry-shampoo at any supermarket. All the regular  supermarket shampoo brands sold dry-shampoo, and I could even find Batiste on my grocery store. 

Since I've tried it for the first time, I became an huge fan of dry shampoo -- I really hate washing my hair... and having to deal with all the hassle of drying it and straightening it... It just takes too much time! So if there is a product that can make my hair look good for a couple more days, I'm all up for it!

Recently Garnier lunched dry-shampoo and suddenly everybody started talking about dry shampoo. And I got curious! So I went to my local grocery store and picked up a can. Garnier offers 3 scents -- citrus, chamomile and oats. I lightly smelled the 3, and I wasn't really fan of any of the smells, but I ended up picking up the one in the pink bottle. I guess they should all work the same, right?

Anyway, I've been using it for a while now. And it works pretty good. Compared to the Batiste one that I use all the time, I can say that it is pretty much as good. There is, tho, a huge diference between them: the Garner one is much wet than the one from batiste... You can see what I'm saying from the picture. Batiste's product is much more powdery, and if you are not careful with the application it can leave a white residue on your hair. However, I feel like the powder absorves the oils much more effectively. The one from Garnier is wetter and I'm not sure if that's better or worse. I prefer the way the one from Batiste feels, but I honestly cannot say if it is more effective or not.

Overall I still prefer the Batiste one, because of the scent and the texture of the product. It's is harder to come by and I have to buy it online, but is way cheaper. Batiste's 200ml can costs 3,99€ while the Garnier one has 150ml and it costs 7,99€. It's way too expensive. 

Happy Friday!

Review | MAYBELLINE Instant Age Rewind Concealer

Getting out of the bed in the morning has not been an easy process for me lately. Yeah, I'm back to being sad, and feeling alone, like my world is falling apart. The only thing that keeps me motivated is my job -- I really like what I am doing, even though I come home every day very tired. And because I am always tired, I get HUMONGOUS dark circles under my eyes. And because getting ready in the morning needs to be a swift process I've narrowed down the products I apply to my face to 7: Moisturizer, Concealer, Powder, Bronzer, Mascara, Brow-stuff and Lipstick . And that's it -- takes me two minutes tops, and I don't go out the door looking like a zombie. Here, the concealer is the star. I've been using the Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Concealer for a while now and I it's amazing. I love it specially for how easy it is to blend!

It has a dome shaped, dense but really soft, cotton puff, where the product will be disposed. You twist the top a couple of times, and the product rises to the puff. It's cool. 

As for the consistency, it's not to thick nor too creamy, and it blends perfectly. Really fast. It gives me a medium coverage which is exactly what I'm looking for, since I'm not wearing a full face of make up. It just hides my dark eyes, without looking too heavy or cake-y. But you can totally build it up if you want to. It honestly doesn't have any smell. I also like that. I got the shade light. And it works fine for me.
Like so many other concealers, it tends to crease a little bit. To avoid that I just apply a little bit of powder over the areas I applied concealer and it's good for the day. 

BlindBag Madness | Shopkins Season 5

Shopkins are the most adorable and useless thing ever! They’re just too cute! 

Review | ACH.BRITO Pumice Stone Soap

You know how much I love scrubs and exfoliating products. And I've wrote about many different products here on the blog, I've tried many body and face scrubs, but I don't think I've ever encountered a product like this before!

This is a soap from a centenary Portuguese brand - Ach Brito - and it's a Pumice Stone (in Portuguese: Pedra Pomes) Soap. What's so special about it? Well, it's a hard soap that has pieces of stone in it, made for full body scrubbing. It can be used on your harms, legs, feet, hands, and of course, face. It has a supreme decreasing power and it's amazing when it comes to remove dead skin and yucky stuff from your pores.

It is made of coco nut oil and grounded-up pumice stone. Yes, when you are using it you can actually feel a very thin sand being released from the soap. And yes, I've been using it on my face. And to be honest I don't think I've ever tried such an effective and cheap scrub, that really helps me get rid of all the nastiness on my face. Because it's a soap, and a solid peace, it's really easy to reach all the contours of you face, specially around the nose and chin.

The soap can be a bit rough if you are not careful when using it directly on your face. But you can control the pressure you use when exfoliating. I use it directly on my face, but if you have sensitive skin, pron to redness, you should be careful. If you feel it's to abrasive for you, you can always lather it up on your hands and use that on your face. It will work just fine too.

I also really, REALLY like to use it on my body -- I scrub everything. It is really good at removing and helping avoid in-grown hairs. And of course I love to use it on my harm-pits to insure that everything is clean and bacteria-free.

I bought one for my mom too, who is always scrubbing her feet to get rid of callus and dead --yucky-- skin and she said that it works actually very well. It’s not as abrasive as a file but it’s great for some day-to-day scrubby-scrubby action.

And lets just take a second to appreciate the packaging, ok? The soap comes in a beautiful, vintage looking paper box that I just can’t seem to trough away because of how cute and adorable it is. And it smells really good. It has a light warm woody scent that perfectly combines with the coconut oil giving the soap a very soothing scent. Smells of something that will clean you soul. Love it.