Skin Deep

Three years ago, I hardly used any beauty or makeup products at all.

I had some drugstore mascara, a random eyeshadow color, and some chapstick. I could have put my entire makeup collection in my pants pocket.

I used an off-brand face cleanser and lotion, and my best skin care habit was that I always took off my (minimal) makeup before I went to bed.

Then I started taking more photos of myself for my blog, and I started noticing that my skin wasn’t seventeen anymore. Nothing like editing close-up photos of your face to make you realize you’ve been living in denial.

It was kind of a huge shock to me, although this was basically akin to never doing anything aside from doing the bare minimum of hair brushing and wondering why your hair doesn’t look like a shampoo commercial.

I mentioned to Bart how unhappy I was about my makeup/skin situation, and he said (very nicely), “Well, why don’t you do something about it?”

And so I slowly started dipping my toes into the world of makeup and skin care (approximately 15 years after everyone else my age – I lucked out by having really clear skin and I’d basically kept riding that wave for years).

I started trying out a few new products here and there, asking my makeup guru friends questions and making Merrick walk me through some different techniques when I’d visit her.

I feel so much happier about the way I look on a daily basis, and it’s been kind of a fun challenge for me to find products that work for me.

But a tiny part of me feels kind of shallow about what a difference some good foundation has made in the way I feel about my looks or that I even care about how long my eyelashes look.

Which is one reason I love OUR Skin Cares.

It’s an anti-aging serum (how am I starting to get wrinkles around my eyes and forehead? Wasn’t it about ten seconds ago that I was 25 and getting asked if my parent was around to give me permission to get a grocery store sample?) and it is physician created and tested.

It also combines 12 different skin products in one, which is lucky because I don’t have room for twelve more bottles in my medicine cabinet.

But it’s not just about having better skin (although who’s going to say no to that?), but OUR Skin Cares is also working to reduce nutritional-related childhood deaths.

For every product they sell, OUR Skin Cares provides two children with a month worth of meals through Food For the Poor.

Their slogan “Nourish Your Skin, Nourish a Child” makes me feel caring for my face doesn’t have to be 100% self-indulgent.

P.S. You can get 20% off the OUR Skin Cares Advanced anti-aging serum with the code “everydayreading”.