FreshFaced sample haul!

After months of waiting, a shiny little package arrived at my doorstep yesterday! You know who it was from? FreshFaced! I cannot tell you how excited about this I am, and not just because my first order got lost in the mail, hence the months of waiting. Luckily, they sent me a replacement that did not get lost.

FreshFaced is a lovely little online shop that supplies a number of great brands, leaning more towards the luxe end of the price scale. They're headquartered in the Great White North of Canada, so Canadian beauty lovers rejoice! Now you can get fancy brands like Tata Harper and Marie Veronique without having to pay for shipping from California or whatever. I don't really know.

You may be asking yourself, why would an American order from a Canadian website? Blasphemy! There are plenty of shops in the good ol' U S of A to order from! Well, I can sum it up in one word...

Samples.

To Tone or Not to Tone?

I have a confession to make.

I am addicting to toning.

Growing up, I never really understood the purpose of toners or astringents. To be perfectly honest, I still don't completely understand their purpose. I think it has something to do balancing pH levels or the skin's acid mantle.

Once I started actually caring about the state of my skin in my teen and preteen years, I happily scrubbed, polished, cleansed, oil-free moisturized, mattefied, and Biore pore-stripped, but never, ever "toned." The only toners I knew of seemed to made primarily of Listerine and flesh-eating bacteria. They smelled like alcohol, tasted like alcohol, and -- shockingly -- were mostly alcohol. No wonder I didn't like them. What sane person would want to slather artificially colored rubbing alcohol on their face? However, sometime around the same time I started reading labels, washing my hair with a lumpy soap bar, and using apple cider vinegar for absolutely everything, I reexamined my relationship with toners.

Oh, how wrong I was. Toning is awesome! Whether they call it toner or not (synonyms include astringent, mist, hydrating spray, clarifying lotion, etc.), it's a great way to refresh your skin, improve the absorption of your moisturizer, and add some great, skin-loving ingredients to your routine.