Happy New Year!!

Goodness it has been a busy season! Obviously I've fallen off the bandwagon and failed to post anything on my blog for... well, ever. Mostly because I didn't have time with the crazy rehearsal schedule for the Nutcracker and my two other jobs but it's 2014 now! Things will be different right? Right?... Yeah I don't think so either but I will do my best. It's one of my new year resolutions along with:

1. Starting to pay off my student loans
2. Figure out a method of skincare that will actually clear up my skin 

Ya'll remember that I have had a lot of issues with my skin and I have tried so many products out there. Acne cream cleansers, oil free washes, masks, 3 step systems, etc, etc, etc. Now, my skin has never been bad enough to warrant going to the dermatologist for a hard core prescription of accutane or whatever but I don't ever remember a time when my skin was completely clear. Even if I only had maybe one pimple there are still all the acne scars to deal with. So then I bought another cream to put on to diminish those. It got to the point that on any given day I would use a cleanser, toner, a day moisturizer, a night serum, an exfoliating scrub and I thought... there has to be an easier way to take care of my skin. And that's when I found the oil cleansing method. 

I found this method on Pinterest (of course. Where else do I find these things?) and it just made sense to me. Your face has a natural system that protects your face, oil. There's a lot of things that can cause that system to not work properly (over cleansing, overactive hormones...) and the results are acne, dry skin or oily skin, red patches, and a heck of a self esteem issue. We've been told that to get rid of acne we need to steer clear of oil and slather our faces with chemicals that were developed in a lab somewhere but women have been using oil as a beauty supplement for ages. Women in Greece used olive oil because of it's moisturizing effects. So I decided to give it a try. 

Here's a great video to show you how to do the oil cleansing method http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=z8JJI7LGPLw

I do something a little different, I only use jojoba oil instead of mixing it with castor oil. I've read that castor oil can be very drying if you use too much and since it's winter I'm skipping that but I'm following the rest of the method as described in the video. I chose jojoba oil because it's the most like our natural skin oils so I thought that was a good place to start and thus far, I've had very promising results! My skin feels hydrated ALL day long, my acne is healing faster than normal and the dry, irritated patches of skin that suddenly appeared over my eye have all but cleared up. And I've been doing this method for a week. I'm still a little skeptical about the long term but if this continues then my scars will actually have a chance to heal and fade. Woo!! We'll see if I'm still this happy at the end of the month but so far, I'm sold. Oh, and did I mention a bottle is only around $10 and lasts forever? A little goes a long way so it's extremely cost effective and fits right in my budget. 

As for my student loans, I'm still working on a plan but I'll work it out. Maybe I'll be able to afford payments with all the money I'm not spending on acne products?