Summer Essentials Part II

For part II of my summer essentials series, I want to touch on skin/body products, I've never been a "spender" when it comes to body care products, just about any nice smelling, non drying body wash will do, my current favorite is the Aveeno White Peach & Ginger Antioxidant Body Wash, the smell of this epitomizes summer for me, and white peach, is my favorite fruit, ever. For body lotion I usually opt for a body oil, like coconut oil, or the Caudalie Divine oil if I'm feeling fancy.

1. Lavanilla The Healthy Deodorant in Vanilla Coconut: this is my favorite scented natural deodorant, it's light, it smells nice, and it works. There are other scents in the range as well, I want to try the grapefruit one next.  

2. Caudalie Divine Oil: I wouldn't want to be without this, ever. A friend of mine gifted me the divine oil set a couple of years ago and I have been hooked since. This is a light weight, DIVINE smelling body oil, I use this on my legs, arms and sometimes the ends of my hair, the sheen it leaves on your skin is beautiful, glowy, but not greasy, just perfect. 

3. Lucas Papaw Ointment: This Australian made ointment is a miracle worker for dry, chapped skin. I stocked up on these during our honeymoon to Australia, gave a few tubes to my girlfriends and they all swear by it now. You can find it on ebay, 25g for under $9 shipped. 

4. Paula's Choice Resist BHA 9: This contains 9% BHA aka Salicylic Acid, normally OTC BHAs only go up to 2%, so this is potent stuff, it works amazingly well for unclogging congestion and clearing up zits, while remaining gentle on the skin. This is my summer skin savior, when sweat and hyperactive oil glands set out to wreck some serious zitty havoc.

5. Mon Jasmin Noir L'Eau Exquise & Omnia Cystalline by Bvlgari: Two of my favorite summer fragrances. I love Bvlgari's approach to fragrances, it's always subtle, understated, simplistic, and never overdone. The Omnia Crytalline has been a staple since early college years, and still remains on frequent rotation in my collection. 

Summer Straps

I have been searching for the perfect pair of summer sandals for quite some time. For the past two, three summers, I lived my gold and silver sperry 2-eye boat shoes on relatively cool days, but for those blazing 100+ SoCal summer days, I resorted to cheap clearance urban outfitters' leather sandals with soles so thin I felt like I'm walking barefoot on the burning pavement. 

With that said, I am also not one to spend an arm and a leg on casual sandals, I don't consider them an "investment piece", for one, I am extremely hard on my shoes when I walk, second, well, my DSW credit is burning a hole in my pocket. 

I picked these up a couple of weeks ago on a spontaneous shopping trip with a gf, they caught my eye, I loved white jagged thick rubbery soles, sans ankle straps (i'm 5'2", ankle straps aren't my friends) AND leather? AND Italian made? check! Slipped them on, my feet were in cushy heaven, took them off, and headed straight for the cashier. 

And the best part is, they were half off at my store, best $24.95 I have ever spent on sandals. (I may or may not have picked up the rose gold pair a week later as well..)

white mountain canal sandal, still full price on their website.SImilar options by dolce vita here, and alexander wang here. 

white mountain canal sandal, still full price on their website.

SImilar options by dolce vita here, and alexander wang here