Sunday, December 21, 2014

(Review) The Christmas Hedgehog: Snooping As Usual I See

I think I have a love/hate relationship with snow.  Growing up in the midwest, it was a given that we had at least one terrible, horrible, no good very bad snowstorm at least once per season.  One where you'd look outside to see fat fluffy flakes gently pillowing on the frozen ground, and depending on your age, would either whoop with joy or groan with annoyance.  Some days I love the snow.  I can just wrap myself in the fluffiest of blankets, park it on my couch with a cup of tea or hot chocolate, and relax with a movie, book, or video game.  Because there's a certain stillness about snowfall.  It's like all the sound outside is muted and it's so still and quiet.  It's peaceful and it's quiet.  Unless you have to drive somewhere.

I consider myself a very down to earth, laid back individual.  Very few things can spike my anxiety to critical mass.  One of those things is driving in the snow.  Back when I was a youth of 19 (get off my lawn) I was in my final year of community college, before I moved out to the city I currently reside in.  One snowy December night, my literature teacher dismissed us early, citing worrying weather as a reason.  "I don't want you getting into any car accidents!" he warned with a chuckle.  Oh the damn irony of that statement.  Twenty minutes later I was in a gas station parking lot with a busted right bumper, standing next to the girl I hit and the two of us glaring at the douche waffle (to be polite) who cut her off, causing her to slam on her breaks and me to skid into her through a patch of black ice.  Though the gas station attendant was nice enough to bring us paper cups of hot chocolate, I was still peeved...and scared.

Though I walked away with a slightly damaged bumper, a bruised sternum, and a doubled insurance rate, it was enough to put the fear of god in me when it came to driving in the snow.  Even years later (not that many, I'm not THAT old) it still scares me a lot.  So after one particularly rough morning where I white knuckled my steering wheel all the way to work, I knew I needed something to soothe my rattled nerves.  Enter this little guy!

 
 

The Christmas Hedgehog is a bubble bar I received in my staff box.  A new product to this year's Christmas range at Lush, Christmas Hedgehog has the same scent as last year's Noriko soap, which was composed of lavender and ylang ylang.  His little body has a thick layer of shea and cocoa butter "frosting" (from the Luxury bath melt) for supreme amounts of hydration for thirsty winter skin.  And when it comes to relaxation, nothing says it better than a hydrating, soothing bath with lavender and ylang ylang.

I'm quite fond of the two scents together, and when I came home I hastily took off my snow soaked boots, threw my coat off, and grabbed this guy out of my ceramic dish of Lush goodies, intent on sacrificing him to the bath gods (for good instead of evil of course).

 

So as some of you guys know, I usually only crumble half a bubble bar into my tub, because my tub is small and it seems to be enough for me.  Well, when I crumbled half of this little guy into my tub, I was met with a disappointing lack of bubbles.  I was actually quite shocked to find there were little to no bubbles at all!  So I did something I never do, and that was to use the entire bubble bar.  Even after the entire thing was dissolved, even after swishing my arms around vigorously to agitate the bubble mix, and even after the tub was filled all the way, there were still way less bubbles than I was used to.  Other small bubble bars that I used half of (like Dorothy) had given me plenty more bubbles than this guy.

The water was nothing too spectacular.  A cloudy snow color with a light dusting of bubbles.  I was disappointed with the bubble turnout, but I can't deny that the scent and the softness it left on my skin were spectacular.  Also it did calm down my anxiety from speeding home at a vicious 25mph in the middle of a damn blizzard, so I can attest to the relaxing properties!


Overall I have to say I was quite disappointed with this bubble bar.  While it worked great as a bath melt and stress reliever, it didn't live up to the notion of a bubble bar, having produced barely any bubbles.  But at my shop we've been selling out of The Christmas Hedgehog quite quickly, so it works for some people!  The hedgehog I got in my staff box was also quite a bit smaller than the ones available to the public, so that could've also been a deciding factor in my less than stellar experience.  Plenty more bubble bars where that came from though!


**The Christmas Hedgehog is certified Vegan
***Purchase The Christmas Hedgehog at your local LUSH store or online here      

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

(Review) Luxury Lush Pud: Effective for Grinchiness


There's something magical about the holiday season at the mall.  Kids excitedly lining up to see Santa Claus, the smells of cinnamon, peppermint, and pine in the air, Christmas carols blasting from the loudspeakers...battling through a crowd of sweaty mall-goers with your Starbeetus praying to any god that will hear you that you aren't late for work so Bossman won't follow you around calling you "Felicia" for the rest of your 8 hour shift.  Oh yes...there is something so very very magical about being a retail worker during the holiday season.  Bumped up hours and fantastic paychecks are definitely a plus, but when you're on your feet for most of the day nonstop talking and dealing with grouchy customers, the holiday grinchiness can sneak up on you pretty fast.  Go into any retail store right now and you'll see behind that smile is a human being who is desperate for a homecooked meal, a clean apartment, and a nap.  At least that's what you'll see when you look at me.  That and caffeine withdrawal.

I don't want you all to get the wrong impression.  I love my job.  LOVE it.  My coworkers, Bossman, my customers, the products I sell, I love all of it.  And as we approach the end of the year, I can't help but reflect and be so thankful that a place like Lush chose me to work for them.  I couldn't be happier.  But oh my goodness my feet hurt and I'm tired!  You might have noticed the lack of posts here lately, and that's mainly because I've been so tired I've gone right to bed after eating, and I might just drown if I take a bath right now.  Caffeine and the will to live are what's been keeping me vertical since Thanksgiving, and so far it's working quite well. But after one painfully long and draggy shift, all I wanted was a nice hot bath.

 

I chose Luxury Lush Pud for my nice, soothing bath since it shared its scent with Twilight bath bomb, one of my favorites and one of Lush's top five bestsellers.  The soothing lavender and tonka scent was practically beckoning me to my tub, and I immediately obliged, kicking off my work shoes and outfit and filled the tub with steaming hot water.  It had been a long day at work, the first busy Saturday in a while, the store filled to the point where I was walled in more than once between customers and could barely move.  My feet hurt, I was covered in dried sweat (because it gets hot in a small store and sometimes human bodies are gross) and I just wanted a bath and my bed.

So I sat on the toilet, watching my Luxury Lush Pud (sidenote: anyone actually know what a Pud is?  Because I have no clue) dissolve into a mellow, sweet smelling hot pink bath, and my mouth practically watered at the sight.  I was thankful for the color change from last year, since Luxury Lush Pud was originally lavender in color with the same polka dots.  I found the pink to be more eyecatching, and the bright color made me forget that it was a grey and dull winter outside. 

Once fully dissolved I sank right into the tub...and promptly popped back out.  The hot water had shut off halfway through and the water was that gross lukewarm temperature it becomes 3 hours after you fill the tub.  I drained the tub, toweled off, and stomped my naked butt back to my bedroom, going to bed in a well deserved huff and wishing I could have nice things.

 
 

So the next day at work I picked up another Lush Pud and decided to try it out all over again.  By some Christmas miracle, I had gotten two days off (in a row!) and decided to use it then.  So all weekend I worked (I like to call it "soap hustlin' ", looking forward to the wonderful day where I could take a nice hot bath and not worry about having to go to work or giving up the bathroom so my roommate could use it (she was out of town).  So the next time I used it was much more enjoyable, the water so hot the steam was wafting up from my damp arms when I lifted them out of the water.  The smell was very potent, but not in a cloying way, in a very relaxing put you to sleep sort of way.  I caught up on my reading, shaved my hairy neglected legs, washed my dirty hair, and smoothed on my Pearl massage bar.  By the end I felt like a sleepy pampered princess...a sleeping...beauty...if you will (shut up my jokes are funny). 

 
 

I have to say Luxury Lush Pud is probably my favorite holiday bath bomb.  It has one of my favorite scents included and the result was a simple, but effective turnout.  No glitter or pop rocks or anything, just a nice hot pink bath that will soothe even the grinchiest of souls and have their hearts grow three sizes that day.

Until you go back to work after your weekend off and have a customer harass you about shower jelly.  But oh well, you take the good with the bad ;)

**Luxury Lush Pud is certified Vegan
***
Purchase Luxury Lush Pud at your local LUSH store or online HERE

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

(Review) Pearl: No Strings Attached

Brace yourselves readers.  The holidays are upon us.  And for retail workers like me, that means little to no sleep and a diet strictly composed of caffeine and the sheer will to live.  I'm more well rested now than I was last week and the week before, which chalked up to a whopping 60 hour work week for yours truly.  Why so many hours you ask?  Two words for you: Black Friday.

For my non-American readers (greetings from the land of McBeetus and baseball by the way) Black Friday is the equivalent of Boxing Day.  It takes place the day after Thanksgiving, sometimes even starting Thanksgiving night.  Was that the case for me?  Absolutely.  I've never much cared for Thanksgiving as a holiday.  There's just something unsettling about the dull brown and vomit orange decorations everywhere, and those pilgrim hats made out of cardboard paper are a total fashion faux pas.  So when I elected not to go home for Thanksgiving and visit my family, Bossman asked if I wanted to help work Thanksgiving night, to which I quickly agreed.  Thanksgiving/Black Friday are fun nights to work.  Seeing people go nuts for $5 off an iPad is always an entertaining thing to see.  I remember once the police were called at my local Walmart due to a four person brawl over tupperware.  TUPPERWARE.  I find more people come out to people watch rather than shop.  

So at a quarter to seven, I arrived in full Lush garb, a plate cookies in hand for my coworkers and I to snack on, braced for the inevitable chaos that was Black Friday.  Once I got into the store, I was startled by a loud banging behind me.  I saw people...customers, were banging on the gates asking why we weren't open!  BANGING!  Like zoo animals!  We explained that we were opening within a few minutes, and sure enough, the floodgates literally and figuratively opened when we drew back the gate at seven o'clock sharp.

That night was absolute chaos.  Loud techno music thumping (courtesy of yours truly and her phone), wall to wall people, laughing, smiling, having a great time and wishing each other a happy Thanksgiving.  It was the most beautiful type of chaos and I loved every second of it.  But by midnight, I was yawning and my shift was up, and knew a bath and a good massage were calling my name (because I'm rambling and need to get to the damn product okay?).


Enter Pearl, the much anticipated massage bar from the new range.  From what I'm told, it's the best seller in the U.K and, I can definitely see why!  I snagged this bar from the Kitchen a few months ago, back when I wasn't too sure what the Kitchen was until Bossman bought 8 (yes 8) pots of American Cream body lotion from them...just to smell...oh Bossman, we love you so.  I remember anxiously awaiting my parcel in the mail, worried that I would receive a puddle of cocoa butter and tapioca pearls, but both massage bars (I ordered Percup as well) showed up intact and not melty in the slightest.  Pearl is scented with the beautiful Rose Jam fragrance that everyone and their grandmother adores, and was inspired by bubble tea (a treat I've yet to try myself).  The fair trade organic cocoa butter (sidenote: ALL the cocoa butter used in Lush products is now fair trade and organic!  Yay!) is super moisturizing while the sago tapioca pearls massage and stimulate your skin, much like the adzuki beans in Wiccy Magic Muscles.


Being exhausted and craving a nice warm bath before I went off to dreamland, I filled the tub up with (what I thought was) nice hot water, dropped a bomb in, and soaked...for five minutes.  The hot water turned off halfway through and I was left with a hot pink, lukewarm bath.  I toweled off and stomped to my room, shivering, naked, and in desperate need of some sort of pampering.  Too tired to do a mask, foot treatment, or mani/pedi...hmmm...how about a massage?!  That's when I busted out Pearl and gave myself a nice, sweet scented rubdown.  

Because I'm tragically single (emphasis on the word tragically) my massage bars are used for the sole purpose of moisturizer.  Once in a while I apply a little extra and rub the stubborn knot in my left shoulder that always comes back no matter what, but that's about it.  Pearl is an intensive moisture treatment for the body, the oil slipping and sliding easily without being overly greasy.  My tired skin drank it in and was left with a beautiful sheen and that rose jam scent everyone knows and loves.  

Overall, Pearl is a fantastic massage bar that smells beautiful and works beautifully as well.  My only complaint is that the sago pearls can be scratchy when melted down a bit too much, and they don't taste nice (I popped one into my mouth one day and my roommate watched/cringed as I bit down and nearly cracked the permanent retainer off of my teeth).  This is definitely a massage bar I will be repurchasing and will continue to repurchase!


**Pearl is ceritified Vegan
***Pearl will be coming to a local LUSH North America store soon!
**Questions for the People:  The massage bars have been out for not too long now.  Which one are you positively LOVING?!  Let me know in the comments below!!**