Bath Product Review...

A long long time ago I ordered from Praireland Herbs and posted about it here. Then, I used two of the shampoo bars and posted about those here. Well the things are so gosh darn long lasting, that I was never able to use the last bar. I've finally run out of the first two bars (let's see- I ordered mid August, and it's now mid March and I've used two bars... hmm- seems long lasting to me! I wash my hair everyday now that it's short.) So, I just recently tried the Aloe Fresh shampoo. I put this off until last, becasue it doesn't have a pretty smell and just seemed so boring. This was a mistake: the Aloe Vera is AMAZING. SO much lather- TONS of lather, and a great clean feeling without that kind of sticky feeling the peppermint one sometimes left. While I didn't always need a conditioner with the peppermint or the rosemary shampoo, I often felt like I wanted one. With the Aloe Vera, conditioner is completely unnecessary. I still have about 2/3 of the bar left (I shared 1/3 with a friend)- so this is going to last me awhile. I do wish it had a smell though. A pretty smell is a huge reason to love bath produts.

When I went to New Jersey in January I bought some LUSH products. (And talked about them here.) I'm sad to say, these were not long lasting at all. Most seemed to disappear very quickly in the shower, even though I take great care to keep my soaps out of the stream of the water. An intro to the products I bought is here. So here are my LUSH product reviews.




Jungle Conditioner
I love the smell of this! (Notice my initial impression was that I did not like the smell. But I love it!) But I'm not sure it's a product I need. I switched to it from using regular conditioner every other shampoo, and used it every other shampoo, but now I use it just once a week. Honestly, I don't notice any difference. Maybe that's a good thing- and it works as well as regular conditioner, but maybe it means it just doesn't do anything other than smell great. It's a bit ackward to use- you break a piece off in your hand (being careful not to get the rest wet, as it has no preservatives and will harbour gross growth- I broke a medium size piece off and leave the rest outside of the bathroom) and then add water in it making a sort of paste, then I do my best to get it to different parts of my hair and try to rub it in. I'm not sure how affective I am at actually distributing it through my hair, so I try to put it in 3 different parts of my head each time, and changing those everytime. I think I'm going to try to "whip" some of it up and do a leave on conditioner like some websites have suggested. My biggest disappointment is that this has SLS in it. Getting rid of my SLS use has made my head so much less itchy, and adding this back in I haven't noticed that itchy scalp coming back, but I only use it about once a week now, so maybe it just isn't enough. I'm not "scared" of SLS like some extremist websites are, but when I cut it I noticed a difference. I don't really want to add it back in too much.





Karma Soap


An amazing scent! Kind of smells like a flowery hippie. The shape of this made it tough to cut for multiple uses (like I said- these soaps all melt so fast in the shower, even keeping them out of the water. So I cut them up, so as not to expose them to too much water). 1/3 of the chunk I bought lasts about a week. That's just way too fast for me to buy it again even though I really loved it. Whats nice about this one is the scent kind of stays on your skin and you can smell it throughout the day. Soaps are usually "wash away" and only provide scent in the shower. Plus it leaves my skin nice and moisturized.

Angel Delight Soap (not on the website as it's a holiday thing)


I have to admit, I bought this because of the pretty. It was so lovely. The scent was hard to make out. But in the bathtub, I decided I didn't really like it. Another review called it "flintstones kids vitamins" that seems about right to me. Kevin says it smells like green tea. Maybe, but I don't like green tea either... This one 1/3 of the chunk lasts about a week and a half. The chunks are larger than the Karma, so I don't think it's necessarily any more long lasting. With this one though I'd be okay if it just melted away, but it's too expensive not to use. The good news here is that this one is a wash-away soap, I don't smell it out of the shower, and though I don't like the smell it leaves my skin feeling nice, and not too dry.

Honey I washed the Kids Soap

They say caramel and honey scented, I think it's toffee and honey- either way the scent is light, but very very nice. This is definetly my favorite bar. The honey come on top was too rough for me, so I removed it, but this bar produced a very very light lather (all of the lush soaps were very low lather- almost in a "did I get it on me" sort of way) but an incredible result. Super soft skin. Kevin quickly stole this one from me, as he has super dry skin. The bar I had lasted only about 2 weeks, which was very disappointing, Like I said, I take great care to keep my bars on draining soap racks out of the stream of the water, and these just melted away. This is one of the best soaps I've ever used, but just way too expensive for that use rate.

Wiccy Magic Muscle Massage Bar
I have mixed feelings on this one. First- I love the idea. The melt against your skin softness of the massage bar was excellent. It was the perfect amount of moisture to get a great massage going, without being drippy like oil. And it was really moisturing to the skin, so it acted as a lotion too. The thing I didn't feel happened was anything promised by the LUSH advertising. They almost make it sound like an alternative to icy-hot ("Cinnamon will warm things up, peppermint will stimulate sore bits and the aduki beans will massage in like little finger tips to loosen knots. Once you get used to the minty tingling")- there was no warming, no tingling, and the beans are really too small to do anything at all for the rubbing. (Also, they fall out and get everywhere). Last, the smell, especially as it was rubbed in was completely overpowering, and kind of sickening. Way too much cinnamon, not enough peppermint. I think I'd like to try other massage bars, just not this one.

Overall, I'm not as in love with LUSH as I thought I would be just looking at their products. Not a bad thing, since that stuff is expensive! (I am very glad I caught a sale on the soap. Otherwise I think I'd have a pretty negative impression overall)

What I did on my winter vacation: Part 1

Hey look! I still exist! I'm going to try to do 3 or 4 posts about my super trip to NJ. We left New Years Eve (Kevin and my 5th anniversary) and came back on the 4th.

So what will post 1 be about?

SHOPPING! My Aunt Nancy needed to return something to Macy's and I jumped on it. Their Macy's carries LUSH! products: something I've been dreaming of getting my hands on since I found out solid shampoo exists. Although many of their products still contain "bad" ingredients, LUSH is a socially conscious company. They've eliminated SLS from some of their soaps and shampoos. (I didn't pay attention to which ones though) and recently they've eliminated palm oil from others- in an effort to help save the orangatans. Additionally, if it's possible to not use plastic to package their product, they don't!

Since I love my solid shampoos from praireland herbs, I didn't get any of theirs (man are they pricey! And no sale on them this time around). I did get the one thing I was really hoping to try. Jungle conditioner. It's a solid conditioner- one place I haven't gotten rid of plastic bottles yet. The smell is, uh, different. But my shampoo right now is rosemary, so I tend to smell like a pizza, so I think it will be okay. I'm not sure how to describe it. But when I think "organic" (even though I don't think it is) this smell fits right in. The website says to slide it along your hair, like a shampoo bar, but the saleswoman recommended getting a small amount in your hand and mixing it with a tiny bit of water to make a creme.

Then I got a solid massage bar. It's basically just massage oil. Your body heat melts it, and then it rubs in just like any other oil. Very cool! This one is supposedly good for sore muscles, which is why I picked it. The smell might be a BIT strong for me. A massage right before bed and the sheets smelled yummy for 4 days- which means that first night it was really strong.

Then I got soaps! The soaps were buy 1 get 2 free. And thank goodness, because they are expensive. (The one I paid for was almost $12 and the two free ones were about $10) I've been told their soap is hard and lasts though, and it all smells amazing. I went with "Angel's Delight" a Christmas special, "Honey I washed the kids", and "Karma"- their most popular scent. They are all "bulk" products, and they are all so pretty. Some of them were precut so I picked an affordable piece of Angel Delight, and when the other two didn't have any pieces close to the same price, I asked her to cut some that would cost abou $10. (The conditioner was like that too).

No pictures, but I also got 4 new votive candles. Aunt Nancy burned tons of candles and it made me wanting yummy scents in my house too. I got Christmas scents from Yankee Candle- a store I usually don't go in because the smell is too strong!

A somewhat expensive foray into bath and body products, but I don't do it much, so I'm thrilled!