ProductWhores

The Best Kit, Hands Down

You know you've bought too many products for other people when you discover this awesome hand cream/scrub set in your mother's bathroom, rave about it to her, then feel very stupid when she reminds you that you actually bought it for her last Christmas.  Whoops!  Luckily, I'm not one to allow a little embarrassment stop me from enjoying a great product.  The Perfect Hands Kit from Davies Gate retails for $25 and is worth every penny.  The set consists of the Warming Sea Salt Manicure and the Nourishing Hand Cream, both in the deliciously citrus-scented Pink Grapefruit.  The Warming Sea Salt Manicure is fantastic.  It's a blend of sea salt and botanical oils that you rub onto your hands, but what I love about it is that it heats up on contact with your skin.  The warming helps to condition your hands and nails and relieve tired joints, but even if it did nothing, I would still use it because it's so relaxing, almost like getting a paraffin treatment at a spa.  I never really thought about exfoliating my hands before, but it makes perfect sense since you use them so much.  (I wonder what else I should be exfoliating?)  After you rinse that off, you put on the Hand Cream, which is a blend of certified organic cocoa, Illipe Nut and shea butters combined with botanical oils and plant extracts, all ingredients that make it ultra-moisturizing.  My hands are so soft after using the kit all week, I was tempted to "borrow" it for my trip back to L.A.  I managed to restrain myself though - taking back a Christmas present, even one you don't remember buying, is kind of tacky.   No matter how much better it makes my hands look.

Photo courtesy of Davies Gate

Open This Gate

Lip gloss is my downfall. Seriously. I can (sometimes) walk away from an eyeshadow palette that I want or a perfume I'm coveting, but I'm pretty much powerless against the power of lip gloss. I can only hypothesize that it's because they're generally cheaper, so I feel more justified in tossing one in my shopping bag, but that's just an educated guess. It's also possible that it's a genetic flaw I was born with and no matter what I do, I'll never be able to fight it. I prefer this explanation since it lets me off the hook, so that's the one we're going to go with. My latest lip gloss discovery is the Davies Gate line. I first saw them at Bath and Body Works (my home away from home), but didn't actually own any of them until a friend recently gave me one as a present. I'm only sad I waited this long to discover the power of the Gate. The flavor I got was Pink Grapefruit and it's awesome. It smells delicious and tastes just as good on. It reminds me of those Maybelline Kissing Coolers that we all had in seventh grade because I just keep wanting to reapply so the smell doesn't wear off. The color is great too - it's a sheer pinkish-red that actually manages to do the impossible and not duplicate a shade I already own. That in itself makes the $12 price worth it. It also has three ingredients to keep your lips moisturized - Shea Butter, Jojoba Oil and Vitamin E, so you don't have to carry a separate Chapstick when you wear this on a night out. Yep, it's pretty much the perfect lip gloss, and as such shall take its place of honor in my purse with the rest of the winning lip products. No wonder I can barely lift my bag over my shoulder these days. Well, at least when I'm 80 years old and a hunchback, I won't have to blame osteoporosis like everyone else.