FIRST IMPRESSION: ORIGINS CLEAR IMPROVEMENT FACE MASK

“When environmental toxins, dirt and debris get under your skin, its waste-filtering system gets jammed, pores get clogged, skin looks cloudy. Nature's complexion clean-up crew gets to the bottom of skins overcast condition and clears the way for it to act its best. Activated charcoal acts like a magnet to draw out deep-dwelling pore-cloggers, White China Clay absorbs environmental toxins, Lecithin dissolves impurities. Without all that "stuff" down there, the skin "breathes a sigh of relief."”

Origins Clear Improvement 

Active charcoal mask to clear pores

Best for all skin types

Available for purchase in two sizes here, here, and several other places as well!

Recently I have been having food allergy flare-ups where my whole face has been getting almost unbearably itchy. As a result I have been scratching way too much and currently my face is nothing but a rapidly growing minefield of pimples. 

This past week I finally decided to give in and go to the doctor to get some medication, but my skin has still been proving to be problematic which is actually out of the ordinary for me because I've been blessed with skin that is typically pretty low-maintenance. So over the course of the last couple days I have been doing some light research on products that might clear up my suddenly ill-behaved skin, and today I finally settled on this face mask by Origins. On Origins' website they have what they call a "purity promise" that states that all of their products "are formulated with natural and certified organic ingredients and 100% natural oils. And formulated without parabens, phthalates, propylene glycol, mineral oil, PABA, petrolatum, paraffin, DEA, and animal ingredients." Then they go on to say that they manufacture their products "using a combination of renewable resources, wind energy, and earth-friendly practices." 

So upon feeling that I had sufficiently researched the company as a whole and the product specifically, I decided to invest! The mask is a little pricey at $24 for 3.4 fluid ounces, but after reading several reviews it seems like the mask lasts an extremely long while and the company's natural, earth-friendly practices really won me over. I figure that if the product really has nothing but rave reviews, it is actually good for your skin, and it will last long, all of the boxes have been ticked! 

However, one thing to be aware of that I read in multiple reviews is the fact that when you first start using the Clear Improvement mask, it will bring your impurities to the surface. Like the product description says, the charcoal "acts like a magnet to draw out deep-dwelling pore-cloggers." But most reviewers note that after using the mask once a week for a few weeks, their facial skin feels toxin-free and the mask does a good job at keeping it clear. 

Now that all of that expository information is out of the way, onto my actual first impression! My first use of the product this evening went pretty much how I expected it to go. I followed the instructions by splashing warm water on my face to open my pores and then applying the mask. I left it on until it was sufficiently dry and then I washed it off in the shower because I had previously read in customer reviews that the mask was a little difficult to get off by just splashing water on your face over the sink which is my usual mask-removing routine. While in the shower my face felt a little bit tingly which reassured me that the mask was working its magic and when I stepped out and looked at my face I did see some impurities that had risen to the surface of my skin. There were some small areas of redness around my nose and on my chin but overall even though there were some newly visible impurities, my face felt a whole lot cleaner. What I really liked about using this was that I could really feel it working AND there was visual evidence of it. I am definitely excited to continue to use this once a week and I'm hoping that if my experience is similar to the reviews I read, my skin will clear up in the next few weeks! After I use this product for a few more weeks and I feel like I have a grasp on how well the product works on my face I will update with a full product review and rating.

If you're interested in learning more about the Origins brand or this mask in particular, I encourage you to check out the Origins website, this YouTube video of beauty guru Essie Button's top ten face masks, and Sephora's customer reviews.

BOOK REVIEW: THE CUCKOO'S CALLING BY ROBERT GALBRAITH (AKA J.K. ROWLING)

“How easy it was to capitalize on a person’s own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree that it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.”

The Cuckoo's Calling

Robert Galbraith (AKA J.K. Rowling)

★★★★★

Available for purchase here, and several other places as well!

There's been a ton of buzz about this book, especially after the fairly recent reveal that Robert Galbraith, the author of The Cuckoo's Calling, was actually a pseudonym used by the brilliant J.K. Rowling. After reading the synopsis on Goodreads, I decided to give it a go and picked up this lovely hardcover copy from Vroman's two days ago. Absolutely absorbed, I promptly finished it the very next day.

The Cuckoo's Calling follows private detective, Cormoran Strike, and the mystery behind supermodel Lula Landry's alleged suicide. John Bristow comes forward a few months after the tragedy and pleads with Detective Strike to further investigate the death of his supermodel sister, believing that what the police thought was suicide was really cold-blooded murder. I can't say too much more about the book, for fear of giving any of the mystery away! But I will say that Detective Strike truly came alive in the pages of Rowling's book; over time the reader gets to know Strike's character and background, and Rowling fluidly and interestingly integrates Strike's memories of fighting in the Afghan war with his modern private eye life.  

I think overall this read was a riveting one, and it truly kept me on the edge of my seat, trying to figure out who the murderer was - or if there was a murderer at all. I also give Rowling kudos because it was so well-written than I didn't stop once to think about the fact that Rowling was the author (and I'm a huge HP fan so that has to say something!) Rather, I found that I was so sucked into the plot and the person of Cormoran Strike that I sometimes forgot I was reading a book altogether. All I can say is I hope this isn't the end of Strike and his crime-solving!

If you're looking for a great crime novel, or just a new read in general, I highly recommend this for a day when you just want to get wrapped up in a book and read for leisure. Check out more reviews for The Cuckoo's Calling on Goodreads and Amazon.

BOOK REVIEW: LIT! A CHRISTIAN GUIDE TO READING BOOKS BY TONY REINKE

"A wide gap separates a reader who simply consumes books from a reader who diligently seeks wisdom."

Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books

Tony Reinke

★★★★★

Available for purchase here, and probably several other places as well!

I used to love to read and I would literally devour books as a young girl. But when I hit high school and college I felt like I just couldn't find the time to sit down and read. Recently I had felt a conviction to read more books, but for fear of not knowing where to begin, I decided to pick up Tony Reinke's Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books. 

The book is separated into two parts - the first part focuses primarily on the theology behind reading and why reading plays (or should play) a central role in the life of a Christian. The second part zeroes in on practical application and how to go about deconstructing and digesting a book. I found that while this book was a great introduction to reading and therefore quite suitable for early teenagers and high school students, it would also serve an older audience quite well in that it is able to refocus and reintroduce one to the importance of reading with a purpose. We live in such a fast-paced society, and I'm finding that more often than not I read my news online, skim through articles and move on to subsequent paragraphs without allowing myself to react to the one previous, etc. etc. While I'm a huge advocate for social media and the web, I find myself wondering how many of us are now trained to read a mere 140 characters in a sitting until we move on to something else, rather than sitting down with a lengthier volume and really sinking our teeth into the text. I fear that this age of information-overload is disabling our attention spans and causing us to place less and less significance on reading.

Lit! helped me reflect on my own current reading habits (or lack thereof) and evaluate what I needed to start changing in order to make time to read and develop the discipline to read. It also helped me make some immediate changes that I am already reaping the benefits of! For instance, in chapter seven, Reinke talks about reading priorities. He shares what his six priorities are, and then encourages the reader to create a list of their own priorities. Inspired by Reinke's, I decided to follow suit and I came up with five major literary groups for my own reading "diet," if you will:

1. Reading Scripture

2. Reading books that teach me about Christ, and help me better understand Scripture

3. Reading Christian Lifestyle books (i.e. books such as Lit! that help me evaluate my spiritual life and initiate changes that need to be made)

4. Reading books that help me pursue vocational excellence; and

5. Reading books simply for leisure

These reading priorities have helped me in choosing which books to read, which books to read at a later time in my life, and which books not to read. One of the points Reinke makes throughout Lit! is the fact that every time you choose to read a book - any book - you are at the same time choosing to reject every other book ever written. Just thinking from that perspective encourages me to be wise in choosing what to read, and to read with a purpose in mind - to be a reader who is diligently seeking wisdom.

Lit! is packed with so many useful application points, and I agreed with almost the entirety of Reinke's book. He also wrote it with so much humor and love, that I found it to be a really easy, light read and I found myself rather excited to pick it up. There are a few other practical things I've been doing since reading this book, and I will definitely be blogging about these in the future. But for now, I will just say that this book is fantastic and this review is so lackluster! I would encourage anyone interested in this book to further check it out on Goodreads or Amazon because I can't seem to properly sum up the excellence that is this book. 

A NEW NEW BEGINNING

I've had a love-hate relationship with blogging pretty much since MySpace was a thing. I loved finding unique layouts and would spend hours and hours customizing and personalizing my profile page. And then in middle school I discovered Live Journal and found myself in the same spot as Harriet the Spy after my friends found my "secret" blog. Later in my high school years I became a Tumblr junkie. I wasn't a fan of "reblogging" and instead insisted on creating my own original content. Thus, my second real "blog" baby was born. However, after four faithful years on Tumblr I just wasn't feeling it anymore. It didn't really seem to function like a blog anymore and it wasn't easy enough for a reader to access your posts. The network was too fast-paced and I grew tired of the format. I took on Blogger/Blogspot (my current platform) in my senior year of high school but could never really find a topic I wanted to say anything about consistently. So I wiped my slate clean, deleted all my posts, and tried again in my freshman year of college. But again, the problem of finding something to continue to talk about that wouldn't end in boredom seemed to keep resurfacing. And that brings me to today. Here I am yet again, having wiped everything clean yet again, trying my hand at this thing called blogging yet again.

Now you might be thinking, Well, what makes this time any different? To be honest, maybe nothing. But I *think* I may have unearthed a reason as to why blogging has failed to keep me satisfied in the past seven years. Simply because I thought I had to have a theme. Some kind of topic that I could discuss the ins and outs of. Something I could become an expert in. But I guess I realized recently that that mindset just doesn't come naturally to me. Take for instance my degree. I'm currently studying graphic design at California Institute of the Arts. But what got me to choose that degree was the fact that design is a multidisciplinary discipline. As a designer you have to have multiple tricks up your sleeve. And to me, those "tricks" are various mediums and styles. You have to be able to use a variety of mediums whether that means different programs - Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, etc. - or different physical materials - screen printing, paints, photography, cardboard, inks, sewing, etc. You also have to be able to produce work in different styles depending on what your client wants or what your project is. But I guess that's what I find so interesting and unique about design. You're constantly switching it up and trying new things and picking up new disciplines to add to your collection, your hat of tricks.

So in the same way, this time around I think I'll try to blog the way I design. Anyway, this concludes my introductory remarks to this feeble attempt at blogging.