My Adventure with BB Creams

Self-conscousness is something that I do not have when I was younger. The clothes I wear are brandless and cheap to suit my meager allowance (when I was a student) and salary (when I started working). With my slim-built, it is easier for me to buy things from bazaars. Local brands are my favorite because even if it is not obvious, I believe that buying local made products can help the country and my countrymen.

The same rules apply to personal hygiene. I buy cheap and local. I am a chemical engineer so basically I understand that soaps have the same reaction to dirt, expensive or not. The cost increases because of the perfume added on the soap. So I buy those with mild scent or no scent at all. I like the squeaky clean feel and most of the time, I sleep from exhaustion, skipping the facial washing routine. Expensive anti-acne stuff that I have in high school was sponsored-bought (aka Mother).

Lately, I have been buying different beauty products particularly skin products. I've noticed that my hair is drier, my skin have discolorations. Bad vibes that I have to resolve as soon as possible. I tried different moisturizer (and expensive one!) but the only thing that made my skin happy is this:

Then I also tried using BB Creams. My first try was SkinFood Peach Sake. Although it look good on the skin after awhile, you have to wait for at least 15minutes for it to settle and blend with my skin.

image from SkinFood Website

BB cream by the way is supposed to refine your pore and regulates the secretion of oil and supposed to create a flawless matt complexion.

My observation is, it does make your skin look flawless but oily. You can take advantage of the oiliness by achieving the dewy look.

With SkinFood, my face is like a white mask because of my morena complexion. I have to find another BB Cream that will not take too much time to blend. Hence the Maybelline BB Cream. It comes in a very small container and blends in two minutes. The result is a flawless, morena look. It is cheap as well, for a small bottle it cost me around P249 from Watson's. Not bad for a very small bottle with wonderful result.

Pregnancy and What-Nots

I am on my fourth month of pregnancy.  If my energy keeps on improving, a new blog will be launched soon: baby & motherhood blog! Let's just hope my energy keeps up.

So what's up with being pregnant:

photo source: unknown (internet)

1. You have to drink more water. 
2. Be careful with what you eat. Bacteria from foods can cause harm to your baby.
3. To prepare yourself for the birthing, you have to do some exercise. Under the supervision of your doctor, of course. 
4. Read labels carefully. Especially on beauty products. Although I have started on the greener products way before I became pregnant, carrying a child emphasized it more. 
5. No aromatherapy.
6. Even if its a natural product doesn't mean you can use them. With sharper smell and taste bud, some products that you use to like would smell bleh. 
7. You got to sleep more. Not only for healthy reasons, but because you run out of energy fast! The hormonal changes makes you slow down and eat up energy fast.

You must prepare yourself for some body changes like acne breakout. Have you experience any changes on your body lately?

Water: The Secret to Reducing Weight

There are different diets recommended for weight reduction. Since high school, I have been sort of obsessed on my weight. I stopped being concerned with my weight when I became 29 years old. The reason? I can't lose weight the way I used to. It's age, baby. We have to admit that there is a certain age where your metabolism would suddenly slow down. Even if you starve yourself and workout yourself to death, the metabolism would adjust and keeps accommodating that unwanted fat on your body.

I used to lose weight (I do yo-yo dieting) in three days. That means cutting on sugar and salt. Then I started exploring Pilate's. Its nice for the body but when you are busy and travel a lot, you start failing to do the exercise. Then you stop. There are also the list of 3-day diets, fruit diets and I even resorted to Xenical and slimming teas. The Xenical and slimming teas does not have any effect at all, or if there are, they are negligible.

image from flickr

 Lately however, I started drinking water in the morning. Water is the first thing that goes into my body. For two weeks, I have been doing that expecting nothing. My goal is to hydrate my skin. I have been experimenting with water as skin regimen because of lazyness on applying BB cream on my face. I want the dewy look of BB cream sans the cream itself. Yesterday, I stared at the mirror and noticed that I am slimmer. My face is thinner in a good way. May skin, of course looks healthy!

image from flickr

I have been recommending water to the hubby since then. Start with a half glass for the first three days until you get used to drinking in the morning. Then increase based on how your body dictates.

Try it.

And smile, of course.

image from flickr

 Nothing beats a happy soul when it comes to looking great.

Losing Weight: Replacing Food and Increasing Physical Activities

You would have noticed by now the lack of post. I was busy with my current projects: job hunting and weight reduction.

My office colleagues/friends and I have  started jogging at around 3pm in the afternoon. It take us around an hour to finish the exercise, which includes changing clothes.

{photo credits here}

For the food, we can't just stop eating rice. Two years ago, I increased my food intake to catch up with my workload that seems to drain my energy. With not much work to do, the food diets no longer applies and I am starting to gain unwanted weights. To address the issue, we started buying brown rice. Currently, I feel full even in the morning. Maybe we will continue eating brown rice for now and have earlier dinnertime than usual.

{photo credit here}


There are no secret formula on my diet and exercise routine. We ran the uneven road of the office compound. The place offers shade that is good coverage to avoid the sun. We just have to increase our sunblock application because of the sun radiation.

This is the usual scenery when we jog around the compound. Find the photo familiar? I have posted it here before and this is the road that leads to where we use to have classes during my masters.


Do you have any diet right now?

Sleeping Eight Hours A Day

Since December last year, we focused on new habits. One of them is turning off the light when sleeping and the most important of all, sleeping early {around eight in the evening and around nine thirty for a late evening}. I added some new steps on this like drinking at least one glass of water before heading to bed.

Lately however, it is very difficult to sleep. I noticed this when things gets excited at the office. Like news on my job prospects and other things that I have to do for the transition in case my applications passes through the search committee.

One culprit that I also consider is the trip to Cebu on a weekend. It left my body clock in chaos and currently adjusting back to normal schedule.

Another issue I guess is the eating habits. We have been eating rice at dinner and I am gaining weight. It has been stressing me out.

Do you eat rice? I hope it is brown rice because between white rice and brown rice, the latter is the nutritious one. An article says brown rice has more fiber and nutrients and minerals such as selenium that lowers the risk of colon cancer. And of course, the fibers helps in the digestion and keeps you trim and healthy. Provided though that you keep also a healthy lifestyle : no smoking, occasional drinking and lot of sleep & exercise.

{images from here, here and here}

Simple Acne Preventive Routine

In high school as a freshman, my face is covered with acne. 

Although look does not matter to me during those days {I am more concern with attending a new school in a new place while I can not speak their local dialect}, it did bother my Mom. 

My Mom came up with a routine that I have to follow every single day, until all those acne are gone.

After coming home from school, I would be doing chores until around 8pm and have to start with the beauty routine before bed. 

She would instruct me to wash my face. 

Back then she gave me a lactacyd liquid soap. 

The blue one.

{there's no feminine wash that time so it is impossible to get confused when buying}

After the simple water and soap washing I would proceed on using a toner on my face. I used the Extract cucumber or avocado facial cleanser. 

after drying my face, i apply eggwhites and of course, there will be lots of teasing around because it really look like a skin of an old woman once it dries up and cracks when you smile or laugh. We would have around thirty minutes of laughing {and most of the time I am the subject of the joke}.

Then I will rinse off the dried eggwhite from my face and apply cold cream.

It is supposed to be the moisturizer but since I read directions and follow them {even if Mom says so}, I wipe off the cream using cotton pads or facial napkin. 

Since I am doing the routine every night because of my fear that my Mom will yell at me if I missed doing it, I did not really noticed the difference on my face until I started the sophomore year. All my pimples and acne are gone and well, I had reason to ditch the routine. 

I kept using the avocado facial cleanser though and eventually stopped when I entered college.

My Take on This Regimen:

1. The lactacyd is mild but I don't like the smell. 

2. I used the Extract Avocado facial cleanser for years until I switched to Pond's, which I also changed to another brand later. I made myself believe that since they are not that popular (compared to eskinol) back then, they contain less chemicals. But they really made my face zits free until it started to dry my skin, of course it has to go.

 3. Egg whites minimize the pores. It really does. the con is that it takes time to dry and well, on my case, my siblings makes fun of me. 

4. Pond's cold cream. It feels too oily even after I wiped it off with facial napkin. And with the tropical weather, my bottle of cream would end up like a coagulated mess. 

I never used face pressed powder at that young age and the common baby talc powders that girls my age (then) used. 

Do you have any regimen? 

Loving this week. 

(Tomorrow I will be receiving a Certificate of Merit. Not sure if because I am a scholar or I made it to the Dean's List - Masters related)

Hope you are enjoying the week too. 

Technology Management and Marketing Discussions

I know that this blog has been decided to change topics but since the foundation and purpose of this blog is more on the technology management degree that I took for two years, there will be a portion of this blog dedicated to those topics. 

However, I cannot promise a weekly post on technology management/marketing. 

I might be posting at least twice a month though. 

So please bear with me.