I am so very thrilled with this gentle facial cleanser, and I think you will be, too. It’s thick and creamy, and works into a gentle lather as you massage it into damp skin. It rinses away easily, leaving your face clean and smooth, but not overly dry. And, unlike many similar store bought products, it doesn’t have any chemical surfactants in it.
I think one of my favourite things about summer is ditching shoes and going barefoot. As a kid I’d frequently return home with totally blackened feet that grew tough and leathery over the summer months. Now, sadly, I don’t have months-long summer vacations, which greatly reduces my running-around-outside-like-a-Lost-Boy time, but I’ll still go barefoot at any chance. Whether I’m kicking off my shoes on a walk through the park or tip-toeing through some seriously pokey pine needles on my way to the dock at my cottage, I’m a fan of going nude from the ankles down.
I remember trips to the cottage as a kid with Brin, our first family dog. Like Tobyn, he was a Bernese Mountain Dog, complete with a heavy black coat of beautiful fur. He wasn’t much for swimming, but he enjoyed wading about near shore, lapping at the water and cooling down. And every year, without fail, he would start to smell of warm vomit mixed with expired bleu cheese after a few days of these wading escapades mixed with hot weather. It was truly wretched, made worse only by the knowledge that we had another 18 hour car trip across the prairies ahead of us, and we would be trapped with our affectionate and furry source of wretched olfactory sin for every minute of it.
You only need to look at me for about half a second to know that I burn easily. I ate lunch outside the other day for about half an hour and ended up with a bright red chest, and while I was in Costa Rica my shoulders did a very convincing impression of a moulting reptile (ewwww). And while I am in no way advocating going out and getting a sunburn, if you do happen to get one (as I inevitably will, it seems), this lovely cream helps.
Before I left for Costa Rica with dreams of surfing real waves dancing in my imagination, I made a big jar of chili oil tiger balm. I was pretty sure I’d need it, and I was right. Surfing is hard work, especially when you yank your body out of winter semi-hibernation mode and toss it into the ocean with little to no warning. I was left with many sore muscles, and this tiger balm was downright fantastic.
