Oh Shit, It's Christmas: Amazon Prime Lifesavers!

Amazon Prime Christmas! by elbonner featuring dr martens boots

Who didn't realize that Christmas is next week? Own up! It's ok, you don't have to buy a bunch of poor quality chocolates and crusty eyeshadow palettes from Walgreens, there is still plenty of time when you have Amazon Prime! Amazon Prime is the greatest invention of the 21st century: $70 a year for free, two-day shipping to most places in the US (sorry Hawaii, that's what you get for being TOO PERFECT). What makes Amazon Prime even better is that you can sign up for a free 30 Day trial and cancel it after you've bought all your last-minute gifts!
Now, I scoured Amazon for you, finding the best stuff for your favorite lady, or fabulous male, friends/family to appease them and not look like you rushed and got them a sub-par gift. If you order today, everything should come by Friday the 20th so get to shopping! All of the items listed are available with Prime two-day shipping! YOU'RE WELCOME.

1. Wild Ferns Manuka Honey Hand Cream: New Zealand's Manuka honey is known for it's healing properties and this hand cream is great for dry, winter hands. Great for moms, nurses, or generally scaley people like myself. 

2. Burt's Bees Superfruit Lip-Balm 4pk: Great for stocking stuffers, everyone needs lip balm, no matter what the season. And just about everyone loves Burts Bees! In fact, most Burts Bees products are available with Prime shipping. 

3. The History of Surfing by Matt Warshaw: A big book with pretty pictures all about the best sport ever created. Perfect for beachy dads, history buffs, surfer boyfriends/brothers, or a creepily obsessed beach girl like me!

4. What is the What by Dave Eggers: The perfect book to remind you why you should be thankful for everything you've ever been given. A powerful story that made me a better human!

5. The Game of Things: great as a couples present or for a family. I love this game and whenever there's a big group everybody really likes playing. Board games are ALWAYS good presents!

6. Deborah Lippmann Get Nailed Manicure Essentials: Have a diva princess in the family? Get them this fierce manicure kit with a fancy polish remover, top/base coat, and basic nail colors all in a cute little bag. I always love getting fancy nail stuff!

7. Dr. Marten's Original 8 Eye Boot: If someone got me a pair of Dr. Marten's I would hug them until their head popped off. Guaranteed to be in your closet forever, they are a no-fail gift. You CANNOT go wrong with this one, people. Amazon has them in a variety of colors, but beware, not all colors and sizes may be able to ship Prime. Most are though so get to it!

I hope this helps you late shoppers cope with the impending doom which is the end of the acceptable Christmas shopping season. Don't kill yourself, shop smart! Happy holidays, y'all!

Things That Heal

Things That Heal by elbonner featuring ahava

It's getting to that time of year when you're going to be showing off a lot more skin than you have in months. If you are anything like me, you may have neglected your skin a bit in favor of sitting, eating, and watching X-Files reruns all winter, but it's time to soak up that vitamin D! My skin is neglected; if there were skin protective services, they would have taken my skin away to a home that could better care for it a long time ago, but not before I bust out my secret "blow your nads off" spring/summer skin savers! 

1. Lucas' Paw Paw Ointment: A bit like petroleum jelly, this stuff helps heal cuts and scrapes while also providing a protective moisture barrier for cracked skin. I have horrible dry skin left over from a winter full of work-related hand washing and this is helping mend the cracks.

2. Burts Bees Coconut Foot Cream: Not so much a cream as it is an ointment, this stuff needs to be put on with the idea that you need to put sockson afterwards. It's sticky, but really does the trick.I put this on before bed, throw on some socks, and wake up with smooth feet. Because ain't nobody want to see your crusty feet ruining a cute pair of sandals!

3. Earth's Best Non-Petroleum Jelly: I don't like using petroleum jelly because it's a byproduct of crude oil refinement aka the sludge at the bottom of the barrel. Luckily, there are a bunch of plant-based products that work in the same way, but without using petroleum as a base.

4. Badge Balm Bali Balm: If you are a person with skin, you will ecru some sort of sun damage this spring because everyone assumes that sunscreen is for summer, not spring. WRONG! If you do screw up and get burned, slather on some of this stuff and keep your skin for peeling and get to healing (so proud of that one). Badge balm is great for all sorts of stuff. I bring their sore muscle balm when I go backpacking to sooth angry shoulders and every one that I have tried has been awesome. 

5. Lush H'Suan Wen Hua Hair Treatment: I bought this on a whim about 13 years ago, before Lush was even available in the US of A at the location in Cambridge whilst visiting family in England. From then on, I was a Lush convert. This stuff, after placed on dry hair and left on for about an hour, made my frizzy mess of heat damaged hair super soft, shiny and manageable. Get some, you won't regret it!

6. Aveeno Skin Strengthening Body Lotion: I try and try to find body lotions that keep my ungodly dry skin from looking like a drought-ridden corn field. I try expensive stuff, I try hard-to-find stuff, but I always come crawling back to Aveeno. It really is the only lotion that keeps me moisturized for 24 hours and this formula helps thin skin (check) beef up a bit.

7. Ahava Mineral Hand Cream: We use a similar formula to this hand cream at my office and it moisturizes and heals the hell out of your hands due to the dead sea minerals. It stays on after at least one washing and helps keep you from getting cracked knuckles. I keep this by my bed, and when I remember I put it on so that once I get toasty warm it will really sink into my hands.

8. Egyptian Magic: BEES! Bees make life possible and everyone should worship them. If it weren't for bees there would be now Egyptian Magic cream! Supposedly based on something Cleopatra liked a bagillion years ago, it's full of royal jelly and olive oil to help moisturize and heal things like cuts and sunburns. Honey is known to be very healing and this stuff has a cult, almost hive-like following! (I really can't help myself)

9. Burts Bees Lemon Cuticle Butter: Slap this stuff on your cuticles before bed and wake up to lovely nails. I never knew I had bad cuticles until a very vocal Korean manicurist told me how dry they were, over and over again, I decided to invest in this cream. Smells like a lemon bar too!

10. Mary Kay Satin Hands: This is a great set for people who want a hand-care system all together in a cute tote bag. If Mary Kay leaves you with memories of powder pink compacts and blue eyeshadow-filled neighborhood makeover parties, throw that all aside.This system is great for your hands and my mom and I have sworn by it for years, I tell you! It contains a vaseline-like cream, and exfoliator, and a final hand cream. This makes your hands super soft and smelling like peaches (or nothing if you like to be boring).

Hope this helps get your entire being back into tip-top shape before you force people to look at your naked skin all summer. Make the world jealous of your radiance and get it on with some dermic healing!

Bad Ash: Lip Care

Lip Care by elbonner featuring a lip care

One thing I haven become straight-up addicted to is lip balm. I figure being addicted to lip balm is a step up from eating someone's face off whilst high on bath salts so I endulge this addiction from time-to-time. Above are a few of my favorite lip care items that I use throughout the year, but they really get the most use in the winter time where I'm drinking lots of hot coffee and then walking around in the cold.

1. Burts Bees Lip Balm in Pink Grapefruit: This stuff is a classic and comes in like 12 different formulas. My favorite smell in the universe is grapefruit, so when this stuff came out I bought it immediately. It smells and tastes great and it works. 5 stars!

2. EOS Lemon Drop Lip Balm with spf 15: I like this stuff because it's got spf in it so I wear this when I go on my runs. It's got the citrusy smell/flavor, but is a little more sugary like lemon curd or custard. So delicious and you can find it just about everywhere. And who doesn't love the little round packaging?!

3. Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment in Passion: I really like the whole line of Fresh lip treatments, but this gives you a little color with some top-notch moisturization. It's sort of a berry color, but it comes off pretty sheer and won't make you look like some kid who just drank a ton of black cherry Kool Aid.

4. Lush Bubblegum Lip Scrub: Made out of sugar, bubblegum flavor, and a little bit of moisturizing oil, this stuff gets all the flakes off AND you get to eat it off when you're done. If you're craving a bit of sugar, but don't want to eat a block of fudge (psh yeah right) then get some of this. It will make everything soft, smooth, and delicious!

5. Hurraw Raw Vegan Lip Balm: This cocoa butter and coconut oil based lip balm is made from all organic ingredients that have never been heated, so all of the good stuff inside is potent and great for your lips. Sometimes I use this stuff on my cuticles and any rough patches I have on my hands because it's all natural and packed full of moisturizers. They come in a ton of different flavors and so far I've tried the chai and orange flavors with much success. This stuff goes on smooth and is reassuringly free of bad stuff.

I know there are a million different lip balms out there, but after a decade of looking for the perfect stuff these seem to fit the bill seeing as how I buy them over and over again. Don't spend your winter looking like Tyrone Biggums, get yourself some lip balm now!

Whip Yo' Hair

Hair Care by elbonner featuring a Batiste hair shampoo

Beauty product / Burt s Bees hair shampoo / Haircare / Bumble and Bumble styling product, $33 / Sebastian Professional haircare / Batiste hair shampoo, $7.91

After reading over my last post I feel like I was kind of a whiner. Let me clarify:my life does not suck, this is realy the only thing I have to worry about. Sorry for being depressing and/or annoying, but that post wasn't so much for people to understand what I was going through, but more as something I needed to do to get myself through some stuff. Writing as therapy as you would! 

This post hopefully isn't in the running for most depressing post ever and it is about my everyday hair care! I have blonde, non-colored, dry, frizzy-yet-flat hair. It's also fine on the top of my head and wirey and coarse underneath. It's hard to catagorize as one textture which means I have to use lots of different stuff to keep it not looking crazy. 

For shampoo I use a combination of Burts Bees Super Shiny shampoo and Deva Curl's  No-Poo shampoo. Super Shiny is a sulfate free, foaming shampoo that smells like grapefruits and gets all of my build-up out. I use it probably once a week to get my hair super clean. Every other to every three days I use the No-Poo which is non-foaming and more like a cleansing conditioner. Since my hair is so dry I don't like to strip it so I really like that cleansing conditioners are so popular now. 

For conditioners I use deep conditioners almost exclusively. Thin ones just don't do the job. My favorites are Biolage's Conditioning Balm that I've been using forever. I actually buy the generic kind from Sally Beauty Supply because it's the same thing, but waaaay cheaper. My second favorite is Sebastian's Penetraitt which makes me hair super soft in the shortest amount of time. 

As fot styling I always use a leave-in conditioner or my hair will be a dry frizzy mess that will just snag and break off. My new found love is It's A 10miracle leave-in with keratin. It makes my hair super soft and shiny without making it greasy and the keratin keeps it from getting damaged. I have natural waves and when I want them to hold better I use Paul Mitchells Awapuhi Wild Ginger Hydrowhip which is like a mouse but it has conditioning elements to it that don't dry things out like normal mouses do.

When I want beachy hair, I only go with the best: Bumble & Bumble's Surf Spray. I've tried every surf spray under the sun and this is the only stuff that gets me the texture I get after spending a day in the water. It gives me more volume and hold than hair spray and when I curl my hair it holds them better than hair spray too. This stuff id the BEST.

Sometimes I'm lazy and I don't even want to shower. With my bangs on my forehead all day they can get greasy and ropey and look all-around gross. To combat that without the inconvenience of showering I use a dry shampoo like Batiste. Another one I like is Suave's dry shampoo which smells like grapefruits and costs like $2.50. Can't beat that!

Those are really the only things I use on my hair. I used to be a hair care addict, but I've found what works and kept with that. If I find new treasures I will update, but that's all for now. Happy Labor Day everyone!