I know, I know… I’ve been remiss.  It’s been an overloaded week, and considering my usual schedule, you might say it’s been insane.  I do have a couple quick updates for you, tho!

Firstie, I have finished the first half of my Definity 14-day 3 Phase “ohmigodmyfacelookslikecraphelpme” trial (might wanna refer to my “Time for Me to Face It” post for the backstory).  I ended up starting a bit later than expected because I decided to wait until I had the Definity cleansers so I could give Olay as fair a test as possible.

As a reminder, I bought two different cleansers, the “Olay Definity Pore Redefining Scrub” and the “Olay Definity Illuminating Cream Facial Cleanser.”  I absolutely hate the latter of the two.  There are two things I’m a sucker for… my face feeling CLEANclean and lots of suds.  I got neither from the Illuminating Cleanser.  I would liken it to trying to wash your face with moisturizer, which ain’t gonna fly for someone who has oily skin.  My skin actually didn’t feel clean at all to me after I used it, it’s just too moisturizing.  On the other hand, if I had dry skin I think I would love this stuff.  Definitely not for me, tho.  I couldn’t even bring myself to use it more than once, I hated it that much.

The Redefining Scrub on the other hand, I LOVE.  People with dry skin would not love it.  Unlike squeaky clean hair (which basically means you’ve stripped all the protective oils out of it), I love squeaky clean skin and this stuff certainly gives you that.  Lots of bubbles and very squeaky clean skin.  The perfect base for applying the contents of the little tubes of the 3 Phase Treatment.

After seven days, I don’t have a lot of results to report.  My skin does feel very soft and smooth, more so than prior to the start of the test, but I get that from any good facial care routine when I have the habit of following one rather than my usual “cleanse it and forget” manner of doing things. The first couple days I used the 3 Phase Treatment it irritated my eyes a bit, but I have extremely sensitive eyes to begin with, and it wasn’t something so irritating that I gave it much thought.  It stopped irritating my eyes altogether after a few uses.  I have no skin irritation except for the minor rash I tend to get on the sides of  my mouth and cheeks just to the sides of  my nose every spring and fall (I attribute this to some kind of allergy), which is no worse than usual, and perhaps even a little better than usual.  I certainly can’t say that the Definity products have worsened the irritation by any means, which I considered might be a concern before I started the routine.

I can detect no change in skin tone thus far, though I have to say that the little sunspots on my lower arms that tend to be flaky are not so flaky anymore.  I’ve never put anything on them before, so I can’t say for sure if a basic moisturizer would have achieved the same results, but seeing as that I don’t have a patch of dry skin on my entire body, it could be that this stuff is doing the trick.  I’m happy they are a bit smoother but we’ll have to wait and see  just how much improvement I get.

The best thing I have to report is that the pores on my nose do look smaller… the last thing I actually thought I would see.  I don’t know if I can attribute this solely to the Pore Redefining Cleanser or if it’s the combination of both the cleanser and the 3 Phase Treatment, but I’m likin’ it.  If it works on the pores on my cheeks around my nose, any improvement of which  I have yet to experience, I will be REALLY impressed.

So, we are on to phase 2 and will be expecting nothing less than miracles.

My other update has to do with hair.  I cut mine!

Before anyone who actually knows me has a conniption (or assumes I’m lying through my teeth), let me explain.  After about five years of growing out my bangs and finally having all one-length hair to my hips, I decided my straight, smooth hair was just too boring to keep that way.  I got this idea in my head that I wanted a long fringe bang and some fringe around my face.  I gave it some thought and decided I was not going to trust some stylist I didn’t know (I’ve never been to one in PA, so I don’t know any here… hubby trims my hair while I hold a meat cleaver in my hands to “keep him focused”) to come at me with scissors, but I wasn’t sure how to achieve this look myself.  What to do?  Why, YouTube of course!

After devoting an hour of exceedingly-hard-to-spare time to watching “how-to” videos, I was pretty confident I could do this myself.  I intercommed hubby and told him not to bother me unless he amputated something or a puppy needed emergency surgery (again), and got to work.  I cut less hair than you normally cut for a real “whole length” fringe, I just cut the front two inches of hair from a part I made from the center of one ear to the other (you would normally work a second pass on the next two inches back but even I’m not that crazy).  The first cut of about one and half feet  of hair was pretty, umm… hairy (sorry, couldn’t help myself), and that still left my bangs much too long for the look I was trying to achieve (though it did get easier as far as stress goes after that first cut).  Though it was a good deal more difficult to do than I thought it would be, I succeeded and it looks great!  In fact, I LOVE it and I’m glad I did it (which, btw, is the first time in my life I’ve ever said that about cutting my own hair).

I’m NOT recommending that anyone else do this, I don’t want to be responsible for your new Emo cut (as much as I love them) when you were going for nothing more than a trendy fringe, but if you are already thinking about doing something to your hair yourself, definitely check out YouTube if you aren’t already completely knowledgeable about what you plan to do.  Gotta love da Tube!

I’d post a pic but there’s a certain sociopath out there that made my life miserable (and potentially at risk) for years that precludes me from being able to do that and ever sleeping soundly again for as long as I live, but it looks  just like this:

Kidding.  Though if I were thirty years younger, it probably would look like that.

It really looks sorta like this, only my hair is a bit “bigger” and at least twice as long:

Now I think I need a few white streaks underneath.  I’m just so with it, I tell ya!

Filed under: Style