review: Forever Red by Bath & Body Works

Fragrance is such a personal taste thing so its somewhat hard for me to review this because I know it has to be more subjective than usual. I have a few things to comment on, but you should just know that you may have a completely different experience with it than I do.

On their website, Bath & Body Works describe Forever Red as "A passionate blend of pomegranate & red osmanthus with a sexy surprise of vanilla rum". I believe this perfume would be categorized as "floral". Even though I love flowers I tend to prefer perfumes and colognes that are "woody". I think floral scents are considered more feminine, but I tend to find florals too sweet and they make me nauseous after awhile. This almost always happens with Victoria Secret perfumes. However this one is balanced out by that vanilla rum. I personally would wear it on a date with my husband or in some situation where I don't have it on all day. 

My sister gave me several Bath & Body Works products last year and I was quite surprised at the perfumes. I had always just thought of that store as hand soaps and lotions, but my mind was changed. My favorite one so far is "Twilight Woods" and I now wear it most days. My other favorite perfume is "Shi" by Alfred Sung, I just absolutely love it but it is not woody, it is actually floral but it has a much more delicate scent than average. 

*Influenster sent me this complimentary product for free.

review: Pilot FriXion Erasable Gel Pen

Just two CosmoVoxBox reviews left and then back to skin. 

If these pens just wrote, they would be good. They are gel ink which are always fantastic in my opinion. But they don't just write, they erase too! Perfectionists of the world join me in a unified cheer. You can write in pen and then erase it. It is not the type of erasing where you don't see anything, you can tell a thing was written there. However, it is the type of erasing where you make a mistake and erase and rewrite and it looks beautiful. I love to write in pen and have learned to be okay with the permanence of ink errors, but this changes that. No more compromise.

I cannot wait to try the FriXion Erasable Highlighter. I'm completely serious, I don't joke about writing utensils. 

Watch out for my FriXion pen doodle, coming soon. 

*Influenster sent me this complimentary product for free.

review: Ghirardelli Gourmet Milk Sea Salt Escape

Let us stray from the beauty theme for a bit to talk about chocolate.

I absolutely love chocolate and consider myself a connoisseur. At my wedding reception my husband and I opted for a "chocolate bar" featuring many choices of chocolates instead of a cake. When my family and friends travel they bring me new and sometimes exotic chocolates to try.

I used to be much more into milk chocolate but find my tastes are changing as I eat less and less sugar. I used to obsess over varieties of Belgium milk chocolate, but now I find myself trying chocolates that have alternatives to sugar, which seems more likely in dark options. (If it is cheap chocolate I think milk is better, dark chocolate really needs to be a good quality.)

Ghirardelli is a great chocolate. I find that even their unsweetened bars have a silky smooth quality that other similar chocolates do not. When going to San Francisco, Ghirardelli Square is pretty much a required sojourn. You might even say I am a Ghirardelli fan.
Therefore, I was so excited to see this in my VoxBox:

So it is with a heavy heart that I report I was slightly disappointed. The majority of the problem was my fault because I kept thinking it was Sea Salted Caramel but then I looked at the package after sampling it a couple times. The reason there was no caramel flavor is that it wasn't salted caramel duh! hahaha

It is a very good chocolate bar. The milk chocolate is superb as always, the almond pieces are delicious and the sea salt rounds out the flavors quite nicely. But even after I repeatedly told myself there wasn't caramel I still wanted there to be caramel. I can't say it was bad in any way but somehow it was just missing something. If someone offered me this bar I would not refuse a square but if I was standing in the chocolate aisle I would likely buy the Dark & Raspberry filled, the Dark & Orange filled, or the Milk & Caramel filled. 

Before I wrote this I went to the Ghirardelli website and discovered they do in fact have a Dark & Sea Salt Caramel bar that I will need to try now, if nothing else to fulfill that missing piece of the puzzle. I just remembered that I think I've seen it in the store recently so maybe that is why I was so confused with my assumptions. I also noticed they have a Gourmet Milk Coconut Rendezvous... oooh I love coconut and chocolate. I am not generally a white chocolate fan but if you ever see their white chocolate coconut, give it a try. It may have been a different brand or a limited time one, I dunno, but it was good.

Dear Ghirardelli, this wasn't a complete miss... keep at it buddy. 

*Influenster sent me this complimentary product for free.

review: Gillette Venus Embrace and Venus & Olay Razors

Ok to be perfectly honest I've never liked Venus razors and for some reason I really want to. Every few years I try the latest iteration out to confirm I just wasted my money on pretty packaging and an unpleasant experience. So when there was a Venus Embrace razor and Venus & Olay razor refill in my VoxBox I instantly rolled my eyes but also wanted to try it. Ha!

The current marketing strategy seems to be that all the different blades work with all the different razor handles. This really doesn't impress me. In fact I would think it was ridiculous if that was not true. 

Venus razors rarely ever nick and cut, which is a great asset. However my problem has always been that I don't feel like it is a close enough shave. With 5 blades how is that possible? I don't know. I just have found better results with a razor that I unfortunately can never remember the name of unless I see it and can rarely find refill blades for. *Ah because the Bic Soleil (of which I was speaking) apparently no longer sells razor refills, just disposable versions of the original which are really not as good. Grrr

So I tried my new venus razor out, the Embrace blade on one leg and the Venus & Olay blade on the other. In the shower I really liked the Venus & Olay blade. Am I convert? I don't know yet but it felt really nice and it felt like a closer shave, but I can't compute how that is possible... look at the blade, it's surrounded by pillows of Olay?

 

Afterwards I let my legs dry and did not put lotion on them. I wanted there to be a difference but there really isn't. I have to say they did not feel stubbly at all, but the hair is there on the verge of coming out. Maybe I'm too razor critical but in the end my favorite hairy leg solution is waxing. I will probably continue to use these razors and may even buy in the future but I wasn't wowed and I'm not running out to praise them to my girlfriends. :)

*Influenster sent me this complimentary product for free.

Influenster Cosmo VoxBox

I recently joined influenster.com and qualified to receive the Fall 2012 Cosmo VoxBox. They send out these boxes containing a selection of free products to try out, then review and recommend. My next few posts will be focused on these products.

You can find the reviews in the archives or just click from here:

• review: Gillette Venus Embrace & Venus & Olay
• review: Ghirardelli Gourmet Milk Sea Salt Escape
• review: Forever Red by Bath & Body Works
• review: Pilot FriXion Erasable Gel Pen