Thursday, August 12, 2010

Firm and Suck!

St.Ives Timeless Skin
Wow, am I excited to get to talk about this product! Well its the St. Ives apricot scrub Renew and Firm. Says to "exfoliates to help visibly tone and firm skin". I love this brand: natural extracts, not tested on animals, and has no parabens and phthalates in the products. But man, do I hate this one! I first bought this one because I was looking for a good exfoliater that did a little more. I thought this one would be good with the toning and firming of my skin. Man was I wrong! Well the actual formula is good, its a real gritty texture, which you have to get used to, or like the manual feel of exfoliating. I don't mind this to much. It smells ok, nothing special, but definitely have smelled worse. As for an exfoliater, it works amazing, just what it needs to do. After washing with this one, my skin felt smooth, soft, just how it should after a scrub. I used it about 2 to 4 times a week, and after about a month, my skin was getting so bad with breakouts and I had no idea what I was doing wrong! I tried cleansing more often, tried new products, but didn't change this one, so I finally got a clue, and stopped using the St. Ives scrub, and little to be hold, my skin was clearing up, no more breakouts. It don't matter how toned my skin is, if I have pimples all over it, im gonna stop using the product. And to be honest, I did not notice any difference in the firmness or tone of my skin what so ever. I even tried using on my legs and arms so I wont waste the product or my money, but even my arms started breaking out. So I will ABSOLUTELY NEVER WILL NOT buy this product again!

Its gonna take longer than I thought...

Samsung SL105

It is so hard to find a good camera, I've been looking for about a hundred years now! The good ones are to much money, and the more around my price range ones are horrible quality. So I've been trying out lots of cameras. Then all of a sudden I just walk around the camera section, and see this camera, not on display, but below in the glass cabinet, just sitting there. I look at the price, $74, think to myself, "thats not horrible". Then I look at the box, see about the camera. At first look, the camera looks good, nice and shiny, very chic looking. So I find out that its 12 megapixel, and gasp. You can not find a camera for 74 dollars with 12 megs. anywhere. So I have to get it. I bought it, took it home, and had to try it out. When I open it up, it comes with a cute case, and a 2GB sd card, witch is bonus. The first thing I had to notice was the feel of the camera. And I have to say, that its probably the worst, cheapest feeling camera I have ever held in my life. It feels like I can break it with my pinky, just gripping it a little bit. But I needed to at lease test out the funtions. I look at the pictures, and they are not bad. Not at all great, but not the worst. It has the normal modes, face detection, red eye fix, (which works amazingly by the way), image stabilization (eh), and movie mode. I tried to take a close up of my eye, and the picture would not focus one bit. The picture was either really blurry, white, or just a big blog of nothing. The movie mode is ok, nothing to get worked up over. The video quality is only VGA, which is the least favorite of mine. So when push comes to shove, Im still on my camera hunt.

Does they Hype win?

I have heard so many things on this product, I just had to go out and get it myself. Like always. But enough about me and my room full of "internet made me do it's", lets talk about this foundation. I was really looking forward to trying this. What got me was light defusing particles in the foundation, supposing to make your makeup look airbrushed and flawless. So the bottle is 1 fl. oz, and it has a nifty little pump on top, so say goodbye to lost product you don't use. I love the pump. The whole bottle is glass, and very high end looking, my favorite foundation bottle out there right now. They have lots of selections, and when I bought my bottle, it even came with a free mini foundation brush. As for the price however, I dont think I'm too excited about 12 bucks for a drugstore foundation, but hey, if something works, does it need a price tag? So before work on day, I decided to use this foundation, see how it held up. The formula is very watery and light. I did need to layer a few spots to get the coverage I wanted, but did not see anything bad with the makeup. So the end of my day came, went home, and took a look in my bathroom mirror. And to my amazement, my foundation looked horrible. Spots where it had come off. and all over my nose, cheeks, and chin there was flaky ugliness. My skin looked like it was 2 different colors, and my skin was peeling off. So from then on, I refused to use this foundation ever again. The next week or two, I didnt want to waste my money, so I tried mixing this PhotoReady foundation, with a few of my others, to kinda use this one up, and for some reason, my makeup stayed on all day, with my skin flaky. I really have no idea what happened that day, but I can tell you that I will never use this foundation on its own. Ill stick with using it with 3 others!

Kodak Easy Share is not that Easy!

I was looking in the marketplace for a new digital camera, and did not want to spend more than 90 bucks on a decent one. So I came across this camera. At first glance, it was the cheapest, and it was ok looking, nothing great. But it was in my price range, 12 megapixel, and could do video. So I gave it a try. I did not realize that it took AA batteries, which is the worst idea I ever saw for a camera. There is no point in buying a cheep camera that takes batteries, when you have to buy batteries every few days to keep your camera running all day. That is the first downfall. The second thing about that camera that I did not like was that it was so heavy! With and without the batteries! The camera as a whole is a little bulky, and kinda awkward to hold in my hand. But it was cheep, so I wanted to test out the camera. So I go to turn it on, and all of a sudden, I hear a weird static y noise coming from what seems to be the inside of my camera. It would not stop, at all. It was brand new out of box, so I know I didnt do anything to make it do this. I changed the mode to video, and still the static noise continues. I took pictures, and a video. The pictures didnt look bad really, but that noise kept bothering me. On the video, if you want to play it back on the camera, it doesnt have sound, at all. I was disappointed in this. And hooking it up to my computer was such a hassle just to look at my pictures. I had put in a SD card I have previously used in a different camera, and when I go to look at those pictures, I get a message saying that it was a unrecognizable format. What!! So now not only do I have a annoying sounding camera, I also cant view my pictures on my SD card. To look at the pictures you took from the camera, you have to first import all photos, you cant pick and choose, and that took forever to do that. Overall I really did not like this camera. I still have no idea why it made that static noise. I was upset that I had spent all that money on something that I would not use.

Are you Mr. Right?


Well, most of you can tell that I'm a camera and camcorder junkie. I can never find a good one I like. One with a good video quality, AND good pictures. So here I am, again, reviewing the Kodak Zi8 camcorder.




First of all, the camcorder has at the highest 1080P HD video in it, which should show up amazingly. And at the lowest video quality WVGA, which still is not a horrible quality of a video. And a camera function with 5 megapixel pictures. Well, like I said, you can not find one device with the best everything. And this camera is a prime example. I do have to say the video quality is good, for all the different ranges it has on it. But the pictures just look like a camera cell phone took them. Definitely not what Im looking for. I was so disappointed it the pictures. But the video is good, it has a button on it for macro focus, which is the best I have ever seen on a camcorder. Very nice. The only thing I would have to say about the video is that its really close, and wide screen, so I cant get much background in my video. Which is not the worst thing ever. I delt.
As for the overall functions and model of the camera itself: the camcorder is very hand-held, not as small as some others, but I still like it. Im not going to be putting it in my pocket of coarse, since I have a purse. But for men who do stick things in pockets, this wont really fit well. the layout of the buttons ar nice, they are big, spaced right, and work well with each other. The camcorder as a whole looks very nice and sleek.


It comes with a built in USB arm and its own software. Let me tell you its the worst software I have ever seen. First of all, it makes my computer run so slow. It lets you edit your movie, but only cut things out and trim the video. And you cant cut more that one little section of the video out, which is very annoying. It also takes forever to save the edited video to computer or upload to anything. It took literally 3 hours for upload to youtube through the software. Also to change formats of the videos to be able to edit it in Windows Mover Maker took about 5 hours. Im not joking.






So I am going to have to return to looking for my MR. Right Camera.

Free Makeup!

So if you are a Sephora junkie like I am, you know if you are a Beauty Insider, you get a free gift on your birthday. This year the gift has changed from the 3 little lip glosses, for a set of different eye things. Rumors spread about the sephora lip glosses that they were making people have reactions to them, and hurting their lips. I am so excited that my birthday had come around this year when they decided to change the gift. I was not going to use the lip glosses anyway.



So the free gift this year is a eyeshadow, an eyeliner, and a mascara. All three things in a mini form. But hey, you cant complain, its free.


It comes in the cute little box, smaller than I had hoped, but what can I say. First off is the eyeshadow, called Aspen Summit, its a pearlesent white color. Really pretty and kinda sheer. It has a good pigmentation on my finger with a swatch, but when I try to wear it, it doesnt really show up that well. Its a tiny little compact looking thing, but the actual pan of eyeshadow is 0.053 oz, which sounds very small, but has the same roundness of a MAC eyeshadow, just not as deep I guess.


Next is the eyeliner. Its in the color 11 Silver Green, and is 0.02 oz. Id say its about the length of my middle finger. When putting the color on, its not silver at all. Just a plain really dark forest green. And does not really go well on the waterline.


And last is the Mascara Lash Plumper at 0.01 fl oz. Really skinny, but a good way to try before you buy. It has a fat brush, which is good for making my lashes seem thicker. Overall the mascara is ok. Dont think I will buy the full size tho.


Overall, the idea of getting free makeup on your birthday is the best idea ever. Dont complain that you dont like the product, but enjoy the present!!

On the road for a new camera!

FujiFilm Finepix JV-100

I am so disappointed with this camera. I hear the brand name "Fugifilm" and think of great things, and that this camera is going to great. But I was sadly mistaken.




I just want a good camera so I can take pictures of my family!


First the specs of this camera: 12 mega. panorama, smile/blink detection, and can do 720 HD videos.






So for a camera doing all this, with a price tag of only 119 bucks it does sound to be like a good deal. Lets see whats more inside this camera before you be the judge of that. So I started taking pictures, and was amazed of the quality. Details were vivid. I liked the panorama mode on it, and it works quiet well. I would just never use it again in my life, well maybe to show off to my friends. But the video, oh man, was horrible. I did a 4 minute video, went to play it back, and all my sound and voice was static. Nothing but static. So I thought I just got a bad camera, and hopefully it was going to be ok sounding on my computer once I upload.


And now Im taking more and more pictures. I realize that the pictures are not turning out the best anymore. They are good about 20 percent of the time.


Speaking about uploading, none of the pictures or video will upload directly to my movie editing software, which is such a hassle, I have to copy everything to my computer first. But when the videos were on my computer, I tried to edit them, and to my unhappiness, the video was still nothing but static. Very disappointed, this camera looked and sounded amazing. Defently do no recommend this camera to anyone.