Beauty Tricks Blog

I was re-reading a book which I bought earlier and found another piece of article which might be of your interest:

“Q: All-in-one shampoo-conditioners are easier to use and more economical, but are they as good?
A: I don’t recommend shampoo-conditioners for the simple reason that they build up quickly and they weigh down the hair. Plus, they should never be used on oily hair. One notable exception is Finesse.

Q: Why shampoo twice?
A: Some experts claim that the first rinse removes dirt, oil, and product buildup and the second adds volume. But it’s really not necessary to lather twice if you do it well.

Q: Are special shampoos for colored, permed, or processed hair really necessary?
A. Yes, they are. Chemically processed hair has special needs. Shampoos for color-treated hair won’t strip the color out the way many other shampoos will, and they contain ingredients that are gentle and moisturizing.

Q: What is clarifying shampoo, and what does it clarify?
A: Clarifying shampoos contain an acidic ingredients, like apple cider vinegar, to cut through built-up residures left by styling products and shampoos. If one is used before you color, perm, or relax your hair, the treatment will absorb better nad go on more evenly. However, they’re too drying to use every day.

Q: What is volumizing or body-building shampoo?
A: These contain proteins that bond to the hair and literally add volume, strand by strand. But if used too often, they can build up a residue that weighs down the hair. If your hair is flat or fine, these work well to create volume, but be sure to alternate them with a regular shampoo.

Q: What does a highlighting or color-enhancing shampoo do?
A: These shampoos are designed to keep your color from fading and add tone to the hair. They can work beautifully to extend the life of your color. They will also add shine to gray hair and help reduce the yellow; and they are good to use after a perm because the peroxide in the neutralizers can lighten the color of your hair.

Q: Do I need sun protection for my hair?
A: Even though studies conducted by Rene Furterer, a French haircare company, show that after three days of unprotected UV exposure, the scales pull away from the hair shaft and make the hair brittle, styling aids and your regular conditioner will coat your hair and give it sufficient protection without additional SPF products. If you spend a lot of time in the sun, do wear a hat to protect your scalp - you should wear one anyway, especially if you color your hair, because the sun will oxidize it and your color will fade.”

(sources: extracted from Beauty The New Basic by Rona Berg.)

Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all would have a wonderful and fabulous new year ahead! *winks*

I was talking to a friend earlier that we have all gained a few pounds because of this happy holiday season when the best food would be served and we are entitled to have a fun eating time with our families and stuff. I am against having a few more pounds on me since I believe in fuller curve and good healthy. However, if that few pounds make me feel heavy and not as enegetic, then I will plan to shred them off in an easy and healthy way.

I won’t go on crazy dieting or on a fast as some extremists! I think balance dieting and eating something light for a few days would help. I have been exploring these salad recipes which offer a great varieties (so that it wouldn’t be boring to me if I eat those for a couple weeks in one-go), easy to make and look very delicious. I believe something light for a few weeks would help detox the inner system too. The thought excites me and I am going to start my “salad diet” after the new year and shred that a few pounds off my body.

Well, I hope if you are planning to go on a diet, try some of the salad recipes to make it more interesting to you. Hope that after you look at/ try out the salad recipes, you wouldn’t associate the word “boring” with “dieting” *winks*.

Not sure if you are into tea, but I am. I am more into tea than water (well, I know water is good but I like to have a bit of “taste”). One of the reasons I am in love with tea because tea offers different functions of health into the body. Talk about beauty, not only the outter beauty counts, being healthy is one of the beauty aspects I am talking about too.

If you are not sure where to start or if you want to know about more functions that tea offer, please check out some tea recipes and functions. Try something which interest you, stick with it for awhile and you will notice the difference. *winks*

Right after the trip to Taiwan and I have been picking up a few things in life and start to be on track again. Of course, I have been using every single product which I bought from Taiwan and excel my best judgment on each of them (but there are still a few items which I haven’t put them to test yet, since I am focusing on using up the “old” ones before opening the “new” bottles.):

Here are some of the items I have used and reviewed so far:

Beauty Skin Group Pearl Moist Cleansing Foam
Dr. Wu Intensive Hydrating Serum with Hyaluronic Acid
Manis Anti HIP Aging Collagen Cream
L’Erbolario Restructuring Hair Cream
Pola Skin Laminate Moisturizer Moisture EX

And the other items will be on their way really soon *smiles*.

Well, also, since you are here spending your time reading my beauty blog, I am sure you are a beauty fan yourself and have some beauty advices of your own. If you would like to gather in a community and share your knowledge, do and don’t and skincare or makeup experience. Why don’t you join the wonderful beauty group in mylot and we could all chit-chat and get some of the most up-to-date information in the beauty world? The bonus is we all get a few extra bucks to post there. Give it a try and I am sure you will enjoy the fabulous community there. In case you wonder, I am there very often myself too! *winks* Now I heard your heart whispering, “have you been paid?” Oh yes, I have been paid. Like all the beauty products, I wouldn’t recommend without trying me, you should all know it by now *laughs*.

Just click the link below and start experiencing yourself! Have fun and see you there.

Calling all beauty fans! Join me on myLot! Discuss beauty topics and make a little money while you’re at it.

Looks like I have disappeared for a while! To where did I sneak away? Taiwan! I was planning for the trip and spent a wonderful week there. It was both fun and amazing at the same time.

Taiwan has actually imported quite a lot of Japanese beauty products and some of them are not available in Hong Kong. Of course, I haven’t forgotten my mission of finding some interesting and amazing products to review during my lovely “vacation”. So I ended up going to a couple store and spent almost a fortune there (as shown in the picture!). There is a doctor brand in Taiwan called Dr. Wu and I have been reading so many good comments from the Taiwanese magazines that I bought myself their hydrating set. And also, I found another slimming/ body firming brand called La Defense whose products are focused on firming up different body parts. My crazy beauty product seeking trip ended in a store selling Japanese goods, and I felt like I had utilized all my knowledge gained from the Taiwanese beauty magazines because I recognized almost all the products in store and ended up buying almost everything I recognized *laughs*. It was definitely a good treat to myself. I am looking forward to trying them one by one and maybe they could be for your reference next time when you are visiting Taiwan!

The people who know me know that I am a shopaholic in the blood. Though my shopaholic spirit doesn’t happen everyday, it definitely happens more than once a full moon time.

These days, I have been obsessed to catch up with my beauty product stock. I used to have so many stock that whenever I think of doing a facial mask, I had to literally spend 5 minutes to pick through my stock. Yea, call me crazy. If I am not that obsessed, how could I even build a beauty product review site? I guess you all benefit from the review site to a certain extent, at least you have something to make reference to when you want to try a new product.

Since I reckon that my stock was getting less and less, I decided to splurge some money in the category. Some of them I did some research on, and some of them I just felt like buying along the way. The attached photos are my new “family members” added to my beauty family in the past 2/ 3 weeks (of course, reviews will be added to Beauty Product Review once they are thoroughly tested by me *smiles*).

Talking about mushroom maniacs, I am definitely one of the mentioned kind. I love mushrooms mostly because they don’t taste “grassy” and they give out “meat”-taste but are regarded as one of the most healthy food to eat, mainly due to their abilities of reducing cholesterol level in our systems. Sounds good huh?

“Mushroom Ragout

Prep and Cook Time: 3 hours, including soaking time
Makes: About 10 to 12 servings
Notes: You can make the recipe through step 2 a day ahead. Cover beans and chill in the cooking liquid. Before proceeding with step 3, drain beans, reserving liquid.

½ lb. dried cannelloni or small lima beans
1 whole carrot
1 whole celery stalk
1 peeled halved onion, plus 1 chopped onion
4 whole garlic cloves, plus 3 chopped cloves
2 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, plus ½ cup chopped leaves
2 sprigs thyme
6 black peppercorns
3 tbsp. olive oil, divided
2½ lbs. Wild mushrooms, trimmed, cleaned, and cut into large bite-size pieces
About 1 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. sherry vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Put cannelloni beans in a medium pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Cover and turn off heat. Let sit 1 hour.

2. Drain beans, then return to pot and add carrot, celery, halved onion, whole garlic cloves, parsley sprigs, thyme, and peppercorns. Cover with water by 1 in. and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a steady simmer and cook until beans are tender, 1 to 1½ hours. Discard vegetables and herbs and let beans cool. Drain, reserving liquid, and set liquid and beans aside.

3. Put 1 tbsp. olive oil, mushrooms, and 1 tsp. salt in a large (not nonstick) frying pan over high heat. Cook, stirring, until mushrooms stop giving off liquid and start to brown. Transfer to a large bowl.

4. In same frying pan over medium-high heat, add remaining 2 tbsp. olive oil and chopped onion. Cooked until onion is soft, 3 minutes. Add chopped garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add vinegar and cook, scraping up to any brown bits, until pan is almost dry. Return mushrooms to pan along with reserved beans and ¼ cup reserved bean-cooking liquid. Cook, stirring, until well combined and hot. Stir in chopped parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot or warm.

Per Serving: 128 Cal., 26% (33 Cal.) from Fat; 6.6 G Protein; 3.7 G Fat (0.5 G Sat.); 19 G Carbo (3.7 G Fiber); 200 MG Sodium; 0 MG Chol.”

(sources: extract from Sunset Magazine November 2007 issue)

It’s been awhile since I added a personal entry here, so I thought, “maybe it’s about time to be all about me this time!” Voila.

These days, I have suddenly become superwoman magically and mysteriously to fight against those weirdos, monsters or people who threaten the “world” at my new work place. Too bad, I am missing the movie fun of slapping their faces, gripping their necks or even kicking their butts. I could just deal with them mentally/ verbally but not physically (that’s why my brain cells start to die so fast).

It’s really a struggle at work everyday (I’ll assume many of you feel the same), I start to think in addition to giving myself beauty treats, I should give my stomach good treats from time to time (as I need energy to fight). So, I start developing a passion for cooking, experiencing different flavors and cuisines. I think cooking helps get my mind off the negative thoughts and boost my creativity and sense of fulfillment once the “creation” is completed. I even start sharing our (me and my other cooking buddies’) recipes collection by posting them in our Cooking Recipe Site - I Cook Everything. I don’t know how many of you love to/ need to cook, but I hope you would have one more location for look for your favorite dish recipe when you cook next time. Have fun, the photos in the cooking recipe site are absolutely “delicious”. Browse around and locate your next great dish!

“…that have nothing to do with diet or exercise

1. Open door. Go to park.
British researchers recently found that strolling in a park reduced tension twice as much as walking indoors. Just eyeing pictures of nature has been shown to lower blood pressure and muscle tension within five minutes.

2. Dust off your uno deck.
Bowling, sand-castle building, Scabulous - turns out games are more than fun. ‘Playing seems to improve immunity and help people rebound from illness,’ says Stuart Brown, M.D., who researches the health benefits of play.

3. Love your body more.
In one recent study, women who liked their bodies (even if they were overweight) felt sick about 30 percent less often than women who wished they were thinner. ‘Feeling bad about yourself activates stress centers in the brain that can actually lead to disease,’ explains study author Peter Muenning, M.D.

4. Get to a pool and float.
Recent Swedish research found that floatation therapy in a silent, water-filled tank can reduce pain and speed healing. Lying back in a quiet pool for 20 minutes could boost health too, says the study’s coauthor, Sven-Ake Bood, Ph.D.: ‘Floating produces a deep state of relaxation in the body.’

5. Hug someone.
Cuddling, hugging or even just holding hands can trigger the release of oxytocin, ‘a hormone that has been shown to reduce stress, improve immune function and increase cardiovascular health.’ says James Fallon, Ph.D., professor of human behavior at the University of California, Irvine.”

Personnally, I love Tip 5 the best! It surely gives an excuse to hug more. What are you waiting for? Go hug someone! *smiles*

(sources: Glamour August 2008)

Everyone who knows me knows that I love the sun but hate the humidity in the summer time (it’s really hot and humid in Hong Kong), not to mention the sicky yucky STICKY feeling that comes with it. So, it has always been a headache for me to find the right face cream and body lotion in the summer time, as the stickiness would only make me feel even “hotter”.

I have dry skin, so I can’t really go without putting cream on my face at night, as this would only dry out my skin further. However, when I put on some cream or lotion on my face, it makes me feel like it’s never gotten absorbed and I will have a terrible oily face the next day when I wake up. But since I am not a person who gives up easily, I keep looking and trying. Finally, I found my best friend – Jamieson Aloe Vera Soothing Moisturizing Gel – which could finally accompany me through the summer time.

I have used some of the other aloe vera gels before, but I found most of them leave a sticky feeling on skin afterwards. However, Jamieson’s is quite different. It is of a greenish gel texture and I apply a thin layer on face and massage it in. It is totally absorbed after a minute and it doesn’t leave any trace on skin. I apply it before going to bed at night and I don’t have the oily face next morning; I wake up only to find a moisturized and brightened up face. The bonuses are that my pores appear smaller and blackheads are less stubborn. I even recommended it to a friend whose face is bothered by pimples and she has been using it for a week and she experiences an improvement on her face (which I am glad for her!). Oh, not only it can be used as a moisturizer, it can also be used as a moisturizing facial mask – what a treat!

If you can’t find anything to put on your face in this dreadful summer time, I recommend you try this aloe vera gel and see if you would like it as much as I do. *winks*