Sunscreen for Faces

I am a pale person.  When I assess myself on one of those scales that asks how long it takes you to burn in the sun and if you ever tan, there's never a choice that shows how quickly I can burn and the depth to which my failure to tan can blister.

Not only am I nearly so pale that I almost glow in the dark, but I also have rosacea (a skin disorder that makes me ruddy to florid, depending on the day).  To help out the drugs I take for the rosacea, I need to protect my skin from the sun as much as possible.  Along with this lovely combo of facts, also consider that I take not one but two other drugs (for unrelated conditions) that also increase sun sensitivity.  The result is skin that can burn while I walk from the house to my car.  It's not pretty, and it isn't a lot of fun.

I've tried just about every sunscreen out there, and to be honest, they all work just fine for me as long as there is a physical sun protection agent in the product -- something like titanium dioide or zinc oxide.

What sets them apart to me is one thing: how do they feel on my skin?  I hate the feeling of gooky, gloppy stuff on my skin, and having it on my face is enough to make me perfectly miserable.  I don't wear foundation makeup for this reason -- it feels like a kabuki mask, and I don't like it.  Also, in my experience, the more slippery the sunscreen, the more likely it is to run into my eyes.

I have been wearing sunscreen because I don't like the results when I don't, but I haven't been liking it until the past couple of weeks while I've been using a product that's new to me: Colorescience  Pro Sunforgettable SPF 30 powder sunscreen.  I love this stuff.  

The shade I use is called "fair" on some sites, and "All Clear" on others.  There is also a shimmer version, but I haven't tried that (shimmer face stuff seems very middle-school to me, and I'm approaching 50.)  It has no tint at all that I can discern, but it also doesn't seem to make me look paler than I already am.  I wouldn't pick this shade if you want to look "sun kissed," but it is also available in a number of different tints.

Best of all, it's comfortable.  When I'm wearing it, I don't think about it, which is all I really want from a face product.  It keeps me from burning, and the self-contained brush-topped container is small enough to bring along for reapplication.  Now, I haven't tried this stuff out at the beach or anything, but for just tooling around the neighborhood on a walk or riding in the car (where I have gotten some of my worst sunburns), it works perfectly.  

I note on their site that there is also an SPF 50 formulation, but the SPF 30 seems to be perfect for my needs.  It also looks like the brush powder is only one part of a complete system that Colorescience is recommending, but I've been using the powder alone and will probably continue to do so.

If you need to wear other skin treatments at the same time, like I do, you'll know that many sunscreens seem to grab at other products and roll everything up into little balls of residue, sort of like used eraser crumbles on your SAT bubble form.  This product doesn't do that; it just glides on and sits on top of whatever else you've got on your face at the moment.

It isn't inexpensive: the brush applicator/product combo costs about $50.00 everywhere I've found it.  However, once you've got the brush, the refills are about $20, which is in line with what I expect to pay for sunscreen.  Honestly, given how much money I've spent on sunscreen just to throw it out unused because I hated it, this stuff would have been cheap if I'd found it earlier.

I've never seen this product in a store, but it's pretty easy to find online everywhere from Amazon to Drugstore.com.   Hope you like it as much as I do.

Water Bottle Brush

We are reusable bottle people at this house.  Either its a water bottle that one of my kids had in their room overnight, or it's a Nalgene that went camping two months ago and has been festering away ever since, or its a Sodastream bottle that needs cleaning.  To get at the insides of these bottles, I've been using an old baby bottle cleaning brush left over from when the boys were tiny.  Given that they are now well into teenager-hood, this brush has seen better days.  And since it is pink, the boys won't touch it.

When I found myself at Bad, Bath and Beyond the other day killing some time before an appointment, I thought I'd see what improvements had happened in brushland during the past decade.  I found lots to choose from -- and they weren't in the baby goods department but instead stashed along with the other kitchen tools.  I brought home the long thin one shown in red in this group picture.  (It's only sold as part of a set online, but you can buy it alone in one of a range of colors in the bricks and mortar store).  The manufacturer is Casabella, and although they don't show it on their site, the product number is 057-15521, and it's called the "Loop Slim Water Bottle Brush."


I love this thing -- it's the perfect length, the bristles are stout enough to feel like they're actually dislodging scunge, and the entire thing is flexible and thin enough to easily fit through the top of every bottle I've tried it on.  I keep it standing in a vase next to the sink, where it looks quite fetching and can drain and dry.  The shape is just right to fit the bottom of rounded bottles, and it also nestles beautifully into that curve from neck to bottle proper.  Highly recommended.

Welcome

It feels like too many of my recent Facebook status updates have been about THINGS - namely, products I've found and liked enough to recommend to my friends.  I'm what's known as an "early adopter:" I'm willing to take a risk on something new to the market, or just new to me.  Often, these things end up being mistakes, but every now and then, I find something that completely rocks my world.  But I really don't want to feel like I'm a shill, and I'm afraid that's how my Facebook persona is starting to come off.

The sort of item that I love is hard to generalize about; either its functionality is ideal, or it serves its purpose especially well, or it makes me smile to look at it.  The best things are those that somehow embody all of these.  I can go through 10's of items just trying to find that platonic ideal of the thing I have in my mind. 

Perhaps due to the time and expense I invest, I have found myself becoming almost unnaturally attached to things that make my life better -- and it's that sort of item I want to write about here.

These are the things that, as Baby Bear said in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, are "just right."