Saturday, December 27, 2014

Oleavine Facial Moisturizer: A Product Review

So, I meant to post this on my fashion blog, but accidentally signed up to review it here. Whoops. Anyway, if you're a girl (or maybe even a guy,) you might be interested in this product. Face moisturizer! Whoot!

When your a teen, or a young woman, or anyone really, face it... You need moisturizer of some kind. If you don't use it your face gets all dry and it's just bad. That's how it is for me anyway. I've tried several generic brands of moisturizers, but it is so hard to find a good kind for your skin. Often you stuck with a thick or slimy substance that goes on thick and just doesn't feel great at all.

 Enter Oleavine.

 When I had the opportunity to review this, I quickly snatched it up in my quest for the perfect moisturizer. I had been unsatisfied by competitors, and hoped that this would have something special.

 The product description says it is made from organic and natural ingredients. That is the first good sign for me. Anything natural makes me happy in this crazy chemical laden world. It also has anti-aging and rejuvenating ingredients. Apparently it was also made without heat. I guess a lot of companies use heat in the process, but it somehow damages the product.

 So here's my review. Firstly, I love the bottle. It's so cute and feminine. I really love butterflies. They are such beautiful creatures, and delicate pink butterflies flutter along the bottom of this graceful bottle.When you want to use the moisturizer, you simply twist the silver top, and a little dispenser pops up (see photo at right.) With a little pump you can get some moisturizer. You only need the smallest amount--less than a dime--and it will go over your entire face.

 This stuff smells great. I can't really describe the scent. It's pleasant and fresh smelling and a bit like earl grey tea. It just has a nice scent. Like I mentioned, it spreads easily over your face. One thing I love is that it goes on light. After I apply it my skin doesn't feel coated or heavy. I can't even tell it's there and my skin feels great. After using this for a while my skin was better than it had been for a while.

 Basically, I love this stuff. I hope I can buy more of it when I run out. It's the first moisturizer I've actually been satisfied with and that is awesome. It might seem a bit pricy at about $20, but since you only need a little bit at a time and it's such great quality, I think it's worth it. So it looks cute, smells lovely, and works great. What more can you ask for?

 Visit Oleavine here, and you can purchase this product here.

~ a rambling author

Friday, December 26, 2014

3rd Perfect 250mg FORSKOLIN Root Extract Review

Hi guys! I have a couple more product reviews for ya'll. Weird right? Maybe I should start doing these on a specific day and do book stuff on another day or... Do you guys even care about these? Well, here they are anyway. :)

Product description:

NutriRevolution Forskolin 250mg Coleus Forskolin Root
 Extract helps You:

Burn Pesky Body Fat

Increases Lean Muscle

No additional Dieting or Exercise Required

It stimulates the production of AMP (cAMP) - This is a molecule that actually creates the making of a thyroid hormone which a powerful body fat and calories burner. This sends your metabolism into overdrive and produces more energy which lasts you all day.

 More Beneftis of Forskolin 250mg Root Extract:
- Increase Weight Loss*
- Reduces High Blood Pressure*
- Helps with Insomnia*
- Reduces Chest Pains and Many More

 I'd say this is a pretty well made product. It comes in a nice bright bottle that will reach out to you, and the pills themselves are small, easily swallowed capsules. As you can see it offers many health benefits. Even if the weight loss doesn't work for you, the fact that it reduces high blood pressure, helps with insomnia, and does a lot more is a plus.

 I've been sleeping great since I've been taking it. In fact, I've barely lain awake at all, so I think it has definitely helped in that regard. I've never had high blood pressure so I don't check it on a regular basis, but I'm sure it has helped with that as well. I haven't had chest pains either, but don't normally so there's no telling about that one.

 Now to the big thing. The weight loss. If you look at this product on Amazon, you will see many great reviews praising the way it helps you drop pounds. The sad thing is, for me it just did not work. Since I received this product I've thought of the reasons why. I don't think it's the product because the company seems to really care about the quality of their items. It could be my scale is off. It could be because it is Christmas time. (Though I haven't eaten that much more than normal. :P) It could be that I have a condition where its really hard to lose weight. (We can pray it's not the latter.) But for some reason I didn't lose any weight while taking this. In fact I gained some. But I think that must be something to do with me because the many reviews seem to differ with my results.

 It's a well packaged, interesting weight loss supplement. I've never known what to think of the whole weight loss craze thing, but I figured it might be worth a try. If you would like to try it to, you can check it out here

~ A rambling author

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Azure Naturals: A Product Review Part 3 - Ultimate Emu



Lastly, I'm going to talk a bit about Ultimate Emu oil. Now, as dumb as this sounds, I didn't realize that this actually came from an animal. I don't mind it too much, though it is weird to think about rubbing an animal's fat on yourself. :P But my vegan friends might want to steer clear of this one. The Emu oils is in a similar bottle as the Argan and Rosehip, but the shade of the glass is significantly lighter. I'm not sure why, but I suppose the Emu oil doesn't require the same amount of darkness. The oil itself is a grayish white color. The first time I used it I rubbed it into my hands as a lotion of sorts and it worked great! I also tried it a bit as a facial moisturizer and that worked fine as well. It has lots of uses if you can ignore the fact it came from a giant bird. Hehe.

Here are some of them:

Anti-aging - Dramatically helps fight age effects.

Stretch marks and scars - Natural treatment for these.

Hair - Helps reduce split ends and restores natural shine.

Skin conditions - Great balm for healing and moisturizing those who suffer from skin conditions like eczema.

Burns - Helps relieve pain and heal the scars.

Scrapes/cuts - Helps with the pain, and the healing.

Injuries - If you hurt yourself playing sports or something similar, Emu oil can help with the healing process.

Arthritis - Helps stiff muscles and joints. Reduces swelling.

So I think emu oil is pretty awesome too, and another fantastic product. AzureNaturals did a great job. I am very pleased. Buy it here.

~ a rambling author




Azure Naturals: A Product Review Part 2 - Ultimate Rosehip


Let's talk about Ultimate Rosehip. It comes from a rose plant of some sort, in the Andes, I believe. As you can see, it is also in a dark glass bottle. The oil is an amber color, so you can actually see it show up. It has a peculiar scent and doesn't smell a thing like roses! It is not a bad smell, just not what you might expect. I've used it a bit. I've dabbed it on some acne places and whatnot, and tried it as a lip balm. When I put it on my lips, it made my lips feel nice and moisturized for a while. I also put a little bit in my scalp before showering and my hair felt pretty soft the rest of the day. Rosehip has some of the same benefits of Argan oil, but has it's additional charms as well. Here are just a few benefits of this neat oil.

Dry Hair - It helps moisturize your hair.

Dull Hair - Makes your hair shinier. Rich in vitamins that help your hair health.

Dry skin - Great for this as well, so works as a moisturizer too.

Scars - Helps treat acne, stretch marks, age spots, burns, and other scars.

Dandruff - Helps eliminate this with just a few drops massaged into the scalp.

Sunburn - Soothes and heals sunburn. Definitely will be trying this. I'm a poor fair person. Sunburns are almost unavoidable.

Make your skin glow - Gives your skin a healthy glow.

And there are many more uses. I really like this oil, and once again can tell it's quality. I love this company so much. Buy it here.





Azure Naturals: A Product Review: Part 1 - Argan Oil

Hey-o guys! It's me!. :D The other girls on the A Pinch of Classy blog I collaborate on have talked about essential oils many times before, and I've wanted to try some, but have never been able to. Well, the company AzureNaturals, partnered with Tomoson.com, gave me the opportunity to review three of their oils! Technically, these are three separate reviews, but since they're similar products from the same company I'd lump them into one blog post. So here we go! The three oils are Ultimate Argan, Ultimate Emu, and Ultimate Rosehip. Although I only did a bit of testing, I'm planning on using all three much more in the future. It's going to be in three parts for verification purposes, so here is part 1.


I should start by saying that these aren't all essential oils. In fact, I think Rosehip is an essential oil (though I'm not sure) but Emu isn't because it came from an animal (apparently essential oils come from plants) and I read that Argan wasn't either. So these are just some oils that have their uses, but might not necessarily be essential.


Let's start with the Ultimate Argan! This stuff is pretty cool. As you can see it is stored in a very dark bottle, perhaps a shade lighter than the Rosehip bottle, but perhaps the same. This is to keep the oil from breaking down, which light does. So it needs a dark glass bottle. It has a nice shiny paper label on it that proudly proclaims it is 100% Pure Organic Argan Oil. Which is awesome. The oil itself is somewhat clear and has a slight nutty scent because it was pressed from fruits of the argan tree. Another nice feature is the little pump top. You can just squirt a little bit and don't have to worry about pouring anything. It's great.

 I've used it as a moisturizer. It works really nicely. It's a light oil, so your skin takes it pretty well, and it doesn't get greasy if you rub a couple of drops, or a spritz in this case, since it's a spray bottle, on your face. I found my face stayed moisturized for a good length of time after using this oil. I also rubbed it into my cuticles. That felt nice! Argan oil has many uses that I didn't try yet, but plan on, because it is such an amazing product that I'll definitely be putting it to use again. Here are a few other uses of this awesome oil.

Hair conditioner - Argan oil can really make your hair soft and silky. I haven't actual tried it as a conditioner yet, but I've only heard good things about it from people who have, so I'm excited to try.

Styling - Apparently it works well as a hairstyling agent. I just tried it. Even if you have a little bit left on your hands from something else, if you just run your hand over your hair, it calms down the wisps. Being a girl with extremely wispy hair, this is awesome.

Anti-aging - Yep. Argan oil is known to give skin a healthy glow and restores that youthful feeling and appearance to the skin.

Dry Skin - Argan oil is extremely beneficial to those who suffer from dry skin issues. Because it's naturally a source of vitamin E it helps to heal and bring relief.

Acne - Helps clear up acne. Which is awesome.

Healing - Is just healing in general to damaged skin and whatnot. Very cool.

Nails and stuff - Can help brittle and damaged nails grow stronger, also just good for your hands and feet. 

Lip Balm - This explains itself. It works.

Anyway, I really like this product. I'm so excited to use it, especially on my hair. Apparently if you use it on split ends it helps heal those, and it is just beneficial in general. I'm convinced AzureNaturals is selling a quality product. The care taken with the dark glass bottle and 100% ingredient tells me that. You can purchase it here.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Locum Tenens: A Book Review

 Hey guys. It's December now, school is finishing up, so that means a lot of reviews will be coming soon, as well as some other things I hope! Keep posted on that. I'm going to try to schedule out my next semester better so I can get everything I need done, including blog posts. Today I have a review for you! The first two volumes of Locum Tenens, a young adult sci fi story.

 I was unable to find an image of the story for some reason, so I'll just link you to the Amazon page here.

Info:  Mike wasn't meant for military training. He studied hard to get the scores needed for advanced schooling, only to be coerced by his community to take his brother's place, where military Inductees face life and death in the Agoga. Will he survive?

Okay, so I usually review only for Christian publishers, and after reading this story I'll probably be going back to that. But here is my full review to explain myself. This is difficult to write.

 The characters... I liked the characters pretty well. Mike was an adorable, nerdy character. Those are my favorite kind. If a story has a nerd in it, I'm hooked. I just love them to death. There were also some likable recruits and less likable ones. There were many military heads in the story, some I liked more than others. There wasn't a whole lot of character development in the first two installments, but more on that later. But I did like Mike's narration.

The story... The story was intriguing. The idea of some horrible accident happening that required a less than physically fit boy to take his brother's place at an intense and deadly military school was pretty riveting. I wanted to find out what was going to happen to Mike. The fact that all of the technology used actually exists in mind blowing. Like... that is so cool! I really liked the plot and wanted to read more when I finished.

The grammar was pretty good, but there were a couple places that words were omitted, and perhaps some typos placed. That's not a big deal to me. What a reader should know before purchasing is that Locum Tenems is in a serialized sort of format. The book is being released in volumes, and only two are currently out. They're extremely short books. If I focused I could probably read them from half an hour to an hour. That being said, if you're really busy, they're great for just a quick read. It was unfortunate that the stories had to end at climactic times, especially the second volume, but I think that must be the author's intention to keep people reading.

 What I disliked the most about this series are the moral issues. Many might think that sounds so stiff or whatever, but I am a Christian, and this is a Christian blog. Most of my readers are probably Christians, and since I review many YA Christian books, I have to be honest with my reviewers so that they don't read something they wouldn't want to. Once I started seeing some of the content of these books I didn't really want to review them, but I need to post it. There was too much implied sexual content for a book of this age range. It wasn't as if anything happened, but there was crude sexual humor implied. I don't want to go into details on it because it makes me uncomfortable. I suppose the author was making an attempt to show what young boys are like, but I think he could have chosen a better method. There were also a few cuss words scattered throughout, something else I'm not much of a fan of. The point is I can't recommend this to my readers. Because I rate my books half on quality and half on morals, I'll give this story two and a half stars. It would have been three or four without the extra that I had to take it a notch down on.

 Thanks for reading!

~ a rambling author

 I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.