Photo from www.naturerepublic.co.kr/eng/

Before the year ends, I would like to share with you my number one beauty secret, yes, sleep, beauty sleep! But not just sleeping anytime of the day, it is the 10pm to 2am sleep that's the most important, optimal time when our body organs regenerate on their own. Do you also believe this, that our body repairs, heals, and regenerates its own cells? And from this, the skin, the largest organ of the human body also benefits.

photo from http://www.sciencedaily.com

As a matter of fact, I attribute my good skin from sleeping and I made it a conscious effort to make sure I'm not missing it unless I have very important stuff to do. So it's actually just okay if you miss your night creams sometime, just make sure that you remove makeup before hitting the sack :)

Happy New Year to all of you!!

It's holiday season and everyone's on their errands and a couple of holiday shopping rush here and there, or probably doing some event planning, organizing reunions, office parties, everyone's superduper busy at this time of the year And let's admit it, this could really give us a dull face every morning because of lack of sleep and not enough rest. But we want don't want to just to hide the ugliness under the mercy of concealers, right?

So to keep up with this hectic season, we go to a salon to get a facial, or put on facial masks at night. I love the simple facial at Flawless. And when it comes to facial masks, I favor more of the korean brands, The Face Shop and Tony Moly. Now if you do not have spare time to go to a clinic to have a facial, or if suddenly you didn't notice you ran out of your facial masks at home, you can actually do a home-made mask right from your kitchen. How about a turmeric paste (luyang dilaw in Filipino) facial mask?

photo from www.mrsikhnet.com

Skin Benefits
Now why turmeric as a facial mask? Turmeric have high antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Here are some of the skin benefits of turmeric:

1. Anti-aging - it helps reduce wrinkles

Have ever heard of dry brushing? Dry brush, preferably one with soft, natural bristles, for body and for the face. Of course, brush for the face should be a extra finer.

I got my body brush from The Beauty Bar, and my face brush from The Body Shop



The Skin Care Babe Loot I've won at The Beauty Junkee's 3rd Anniversay Giveaway

The Beauty Junkee had its grand 3rd anniversay giveaway last May, and I was one of the 16 lucky girls to
take home a beauty loot, I got the Skin Cage babe loot which is sooo nice. My prize includes: Carmex lip balms, Camaru Naturals soaps, Camellia beauty oil, makeups from Tamera Online, and L'Oreal product samples i.e. 50 spf BB Cream, Revitalift, Youth Code skin essence.

Martha set an informal meet and greet for those who are within Metro Manila so she can give us the prizes face-to-face. We met at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at the Bonifacio High Street, and yes, it was my first

When drank as a regular tea, green tea definitely is ahead of the game among other kinds of tea, simply because it's proven to have, if not the highest, one of the highest antioxidant properties.  It also is high in flavonoids, meaning it has anticarcinogenic functions. Green tea can also aid in weight loss due to polyphenols and caffeine. Thus, it's good for the health, and good for the skin, too. No wonder you can now find it in different beauty products.

I have used Green Tea facial scrub and mud mask by Watsons, and a Green Tea facial emulsion by Ellianto, all of which gave me splendid results.

Green Tea mud pack by Watsons

Let me talk about this mud pack first. This mud pack is very inexpensive and it can even double as your

Aside from having sunblock as part of your summer kikay essentials, definitely a facial mist places second, with or without makeup. There are brands that has special ingredients to set the makeup and make it last for hours, but all the same, they refresh and reinvigorate the face.

Today is actually the first day I'm using a facial mist. Haha! Sadly, all this time, it was kind of new to me, If not for the Etude House Playhouse hype that's going to happen soon, that I needed to make some kind of a haul, I'm not going to be able to take advantage of the benefits of a facial mist.

It's lunch time, and I had to accompany a friend to the near-by building, The Medical City that is, because I work at Rockwell Business Center, it was scorching hot obviously and we didn't bring my umbrella. We went back to the office and I felt I'm melting my make-up, the cream foundation I used. I remember I brought this facial mist with me, the Bamboo Water from Etude House Aqua Cure line:

This is my facial toner story. After trying out so many different toners, I've found these favorites (in order) seen below. First, the facial freshener, or facial toner of the Collagen Moistfull product line of Etude House.

Etude House Collagen Moistfull

Application was a breeze after removing the bottle stopper, make sure you use a cotton to wipe allover the face and neck. The liquid is a little thicker than regular alcohol-based toners. This one is almost gel-type, in my opinion.

Weekends are best spent on indulging on home spa rituals. I did my home spa ritual this past weekend. And to complete the ritual, I did my occasional facial mask, using SkinFood's Black Garlic Mask. It says on the pack that it has allicin fermented black garlic extracts to moisturize the skin.



It is very essential to me to use facial masks to rejunevate and moisturize my tired skin, especially when I

I am just amazed at how ONE Naturales lotion or body butter moisturizes my skin, especially in this normally cold February.

I finished a tube and a half of lotion, plus a tub of ONE Naturales body butter in coconut named, You. How sweet. Now this time, I pulled out my from my stack, this



 Last December, I could not have resisted taking a picture with the huge poster of Kim Hyun-joong at The Face Shop store at SM Megamall, if not for my super kill-joy then boylet.

Okay. Now it's not because of this star why I'm hooked with this korean brand so far. For the record, I hate