First Impressions | PHILIPS Lumea Prestige IPL for home use

Summer is coming you guys! And you know what this means? This means that we are all going to start shaving our legs like crazy-mad girls. I hate having to wax or shaving. I hate hair on my body and I've been wanting to go get a more permanent hair form of hair removal done. I've looked into a few options but they all involve appointments and having to be somewhere on a certain time, and I'm not good with that, so I've just been postponing it forever.

But recently, Philips contacted me and they asked me if I was willing to try an at-home IPL device! And of course I said yes and I was super excited to try this out! Permanent hair removal, at home? It sounds like heaven to me!

So far, I've done what we can call one session, where I used this device on my legs, underarms and bikini-line. Philips say you need 5 to 10 sessions to actually get rid of hair, but I really want to share my first impressions and this journey of hair removal.

So while ago, Philips came out with this super cool device -- called Lumea Prestige IPL. IPL stands for Intense Pulse Light and you've probably heard about this term associated with permanente hair removal. Owning a device like this is really nice, because you can do your own treatments, at your own time, your own pace, in the comfort of your home. Any time of day -- you can do it late at night while watching some TV, or on the weekend. It is just so much easier to be able to get your more permanent forms of hair removal done without having to make those commitments.

This devices is super easy to use and it comes with a little booklet that will help you understated all the details about the process and the product. It's really helpful and I advice you to read it because it explains everything you'll need to know.

With IPL technology gentle pulses of light are applied to the skin and absorbed by the hair root. The lighter the skin and darker the hair the better the pulses of light are absorbed. The pulses of light stimulate the follicle to go into a Resting Phase  and as a consequence the hair sheds naturally and hair regrowth is prevented. It's recommended four to five treatments, every treatment two weeks apart and than afterwords a follow-up phase, with touch-ups every four to eight weeks. I think that with this sort of treatments, you really need to be consistent. One session is not going to give you any results! Not every single follicle is going to be affected by that one treatment so you need to do the treatments consistently over time to make sure that you get all the hair follicles. It will eventually start coming back, and that's why you need to do the maintenance stages that Philips recommends as well.

Dark skin is not suitable for IPL, because there needs to be a contrast between the hair and your skin tone -- because the darker colors will absorb more light, and if your skin is the same color as you hair, the light pulse will be absorbed by the whole area, not only just that little string of hair, and it won't have enough intensity to affect the follicle. By this same reason, this technique won't work if you have really light hairs. Therefore, the very first thing you need to do before starting to use this product is a skin test. The skin test will tell you what is the intensity that you'll need to use your device on. To do the test, you need to press the button with the magnifying glass and hold the device against your skin in the area that you are intending to use it. The recommended intensity will start to flash -- for me, it's intensity 4 -- and to accept and tell the device you are ready to use it you need to press the little check button. If you would like to use a lesser intensity, that's totally OK, you can just use the little arrows to go up and down and select the intensity that you are comfortable with.

The next step is to actually get on with the real hair removal. You take the device and you press it against your skin. If the device is correctly positioned, the is a light on the back, that will go on and you can press the trigger button positioned on the handle. You will see a bright flash and that's it.

The device comes with four different attachments, specially shaped for different parts of the body -- one for large areas, like legs and arms, one for your face, one for your armpits and one for your bikini area. It comes with a battery but in my experience one full battery is not enough for you do to one session but it does work plugged in, so I recommend you do that instead. You can use this device on you face, I haven't because I was scared it would could burn my face but I definitely want to try it.

And now the really important question that I know you are all wondering -- what did it feel like?  Honestly, it's, in my experience, completely pain-free, however you do feel something. You feel a pulse, and a little heat. But no pain what so ever. Not even on my arm pits or my bikini area. I was thinking that maybe I would need to lower the intensity for the areas, but there was no need for that.

I've only done one session, and I can't yet say it works but I know that this technology in general works and the fact that you can do it at home is just perfect. I'll keep using it and I'll keep you updated. And if you have any questions or tips about this product, please leave me a comment!

EAT | Amelia, Lisbon

A while back -- It was almost one year I go --  I went for brunch to the mecca of blogger -- Nicolau. And now I finally went to visit his girlfriend Amélia.

While Nicolau is located downtown, Amelia is literally up the hill, in Campo de Ourique. With just a hand full of tables, and cute and trendy decor, both these places are always full. I mean really full. Full of locals and tourists. I would dare to say that *these* have become a touristic attraction of the city.

Amélia is really cute. Outside, it has the most adorable pink awnings that are impossible to go unnoticed. The decoration in side, is really simple but really edgy. Being Amelia a girl of course all the decoration is very girly with touches of pastel pink. There's a small waiting room at the entrance, with a small couch and where you can find the famous Amelia Painting. You have a big counter where you can sit and eat if you want, and at the back you have two eating areas, one inside and another one outside. The decor inside is really similar to Nicolau's. It's the same style. Really really similar, but still cute.

Amelia's menu has a lot of options. I  don't remember exactly but I would dare to say that it's exactly the same as from Nicolau. We thought about asking for the brunch menu, but we ended up picking up a few of the different things that they offer, so that we could end up with a full table. The brunch menu there costs 15€ is a bit different than the ones I've been having. A side from one juice and one hot drink it include one pancake, a yogurt bowl, and an avocado toast. If you want eggs, you have to pay extra: 3€ for scramble, 5€ for Benedict. It doesn't come with a croissants, or mignardises. And since my thing are really the eggs I just decided to "mix and match" instead of going for the brunch menu. So we ordered: Egg Benedict, Eggs Nicolau, Fit Pancake and Regular Pancake w/ Maple Syrup. To drink I had a cappuccino and my friend opted for a Banana Milkshake.

The service was fast. I guess it has to be since they are always packed. The drinks came first, and they were OK. A cappuccino is a cappuccino. A milkshake is a milkshake. I liked the little personalized sugar packet that came with my cappuccino. It's a cute touch, and it makes a nice souvenir if you don't use it up.

Next came the food, and everything came at once. The eggs were OK. My friend really liked hers but they were not that special. She had Eggs Nicolau - two poached eggs on top of avocado toast sprinkled with turmeric granola. Looked pretty. My Eggs Benedict were average. The hollandaise was OK, the texture as good but it definitely lacked some flavor. The eggs come with some slices of **turky ham** that was as flaverul as a piece of paper, and it's served on top of an english muffin that needed to be toasted for a little bit longer. The eggs were well poached.

The pancakes were both really good and it was definitely my favorite part of the meal. My friends' Fit Pancake has made with buckwheat and it was covered with banana, strawberries and a drizzle of maple syrup. Mine, were just regular, simple pancakes hat came with a little dish of delicious maple syrup. In both cases, the actual pancake was not very sweet but it went really well with that earthy-sweetness of the maple syrup. I think this was the best part of the meal. Warm, sweet and fluffy.

Overall, this is type of place that is about good pictures and not good food. And this is the same feeling I had when I went to Nicolau. These places flood your social media feeds with amazing looking food, cute decor, but at the end they serve really over priced average food, that you could definitely replicate at home for a fraction of the price. A really small fraction. It's not bad food, don't get me wrong, but the quality of the food doesn't go with the quality of the space. They have all the trendy clichés on the menu that look awesome and cute on pictures -- chia pudim, bowls, avocado toast, green juice, Matcha... It's a photo op place. I just wish they applied as much attention to details to their food as they did to the decor. We left with some good photos tho.

REVIEW | SEPHORA PILLOW BATTLE Body Mist & Exfoliating Body Granita

I used to be a huge fan of Sephora bath products. I don't know if you remember but Sephora used to have a rainbow wall of bath products! They had five or six types of products, from shower gel, body scrub, moisturizer, hand-wash, hand-cream, and they had like 12 different scents of each product and each scent corresponded to a different color. So you would go to the store and you would see a wall of perfectly lined up colors of products, from lighter to dark. Picking a scent was the hardest thing in life!

But recently when Senhora revamped their own products, they got rid of all this huge mess of colors and scents and they launched only a few products. They still have 6 different scents, but this is way less than they used to have before, of course all color coded. And on my last trip to Senhora, I thought that these smelled so good that I had to bring them with me!

This line is composed by a few different products --  a body mist, an exfoliating boy granita, fresh moisturizing body milk, fizzing cubes and fizzing stars, nurishing shower balm and a melting shower jelly. As far of scents go, they have 6 available online -- although I'm pretty sure my Sephora only had 3 when I got these -- Rollin' Morning, Pillow Battle, Let's Have Fun, Beach Vibes and Moonlight Swim.

I got the Pillow Battle because I honestly absolutely loved the scent, and of curse because it's this cute pastel pink. And I got the exfoliating body granita, because I used to be OBSESSED with Sephoras's body scrubs. And because I absolutely loved the scent so much, I also got the body mist. And I honestly wish I could share this scent with you -- It's fresh and cozy, slightly sweet but not too much. It smells of clean sheets and relaxation.

I was actually very intrigued with this granita. I never heard of anything like this. But it's basically a scrubbing jelly. It fells like gelatin and it has this small red-ish beads to scrub away all your death skin. And yep, I really liked it -- as you can see I have used it quite a bit! It makes my skin all smooth and leves it smelling amazing. I particularly like to used it when I shower at night, because it really leaves a nice light scent on my skin and on my bathroom!

The body mist, well, it's a body mist. I works almost like a perfume but it's lighter. The smell doesn't linger for as long as a perfume would, but it feels really good on my skin. I've also sprayed on my bathroom towel and it just fills my bathroom with this cozy smell that is just so comforting!

I've talked about this before and I don't get tired of saying this: I don't like that whole movement of "It's OK to be fat". It's not OK to be fat. And when I say fat I mean people with obesity, not just a few pounds over. Obesity is a disease, and over eating can be an addiction. Obesity kills more poeple than tabaco does and you don't see people on the cover of magazines saying "It's OK to smoke" so why do you see them saying "it's OK to be fat". It's easier to accept that you are overweight than to do something about it. And for me, advertising this on the cover of magazines, showing that a unhealthy person is fabulous, just makes our society even lazier.

"I don't need to exercise or make healthier life choices. She doesn't and she is on the cover of a magazine. Why would I?" 

REVIEW | CIEN Aqua Rich Daily Exfoliating Facial Wash

Lidl's famous daily face wash has a new packaging! The product is the same -- it looks, the same, it feels the same, it smell the same. But the package is now this light teal color, super cute and fresh looking.

Even tho I really like this face wash, it has been a while since I'd bought it. I was using up some other products that I had bought, but none of them compares to this one -- The Cien's Aqua Rich Daily Exfoliating Facial Wash.

I like to wash my face, and I like to wash my face with something abrasive. I don't feel clean if don't scrub away every little piece of dead skin. And this also applies to the rest of my body. This face wash has micro-beads that do a really good job gently exfoliating you face, helping you to get rid of any death skin and dirt that you may have accumulated during the day.

Also, this is super cheap - 1.85€! It's the cheapest you can find. It's a gel-like consistency, with some blue exfoliating beads. It smells really nice and fresh and really makes you feel clean and nurtured.

I know that sometimes this type of washes are not very practical. You need to wet you face, apply the product wash it off, and that feels like A LOT OF WORK. But I think this is awesome to use in the shower. Your face is already wet, and the steam and the hot water helps open your pores and release all the gunk in there. 

And yes, I know that micro-beads are not that good for the environment, but you can beat this price. Lush has a bunch of really good scrubs, with all natural ingredients but they are super expensive. The only thing I can recommend that is as good as this, at this price point is the ACH.BRITO Pumice Stone Soap  -- a soap bar with pumice stone dust. It's amazing. 

Also on this topic:

-- My favorite Cien products -- My favorite Lush products --