December Birchbox

 

The December Birchbox is here and it is so adorable! I love the holiday themed outer and inner box- pink and gold, my favorites! :)

 

This month theme is all about being festive for the holidays and looking and feeling your best for your holiday activities.

 

There is this little adorable tag with the box this month so you can reuse it to wrap a gift! What a smart idea.

 



Now to get started on the actual products!

 

First up is this Juice Beauty Organic CC Cream in Warm Glow. This is my first CC cream and it had a nice, thick texture. The coverage was somewhat like a tinted moisturizer so I did 2 layers for a more even skin tone. This stuff smells "organic" which is not an attractive quality for me. It dissipates quickly thought, and it has a demi-matte finish. This has a laundry list of "tasks" that it addresses with the skin, but my favorites are the chemical SPF 30 in the formula, that it is an "ultimate moisturizer", repairs DNA damage, and firms & improves elasticity. I have to say, it really does moisturize skin with out being heavy or greasy...but I am not ready to give up my BB cream just yet. I will be keeping my eye open for these CC creams though! 

 

 

This sample of Nicole Richie's Parfum was surprisingly nice. It was a sweet/sugary scent that was now over powering and did not smell like food. You can definitely pick up on the notes of vanilla and amber. I liked this scent, but I do not see it replacing my favorite sweet scent, Aqualina's Pink Sugar Seduction. It is just delicious :) 

 

I have started to fall in love with the Balm products and Mary-Lou Manizer aka "The Luminizer" is yet another awesome make up product. This light gold highlighter had a great texture and the color was very universal and complimentary. I love the formula and high level of pigments in theBalm products, and this one is just as awesome as others I have tried. It took just a little dab with my blush brush and a sweep across my cheekbones and temples, bridge of my nose and forehead to make an impact. I still can't get over how great the color of this highlighter is! The card in the box says this is a 3-in-1 highlighter, shadow and all-over shimmer, and I intend to try it every way.

Kerastase Resistance Ciment Thermique Leave in Conditioner and I received 2 packets...yey! I used about a quarter-sized dollop of this through the ends of my hair as I wanted to make sure my scalp did not end up looking greasy. It has a nice, thick texture and a crisp, clean smell (think uni-sex). Throughout the rest of the day, the ends of my hair did not get as knotted and felt very soft. The fomula was not heavy and did not weigh my hair down, but it was thick enough to do its job. It gets 2 thumbs up from me!

 

Finally a fun and unique "lifestyle extra" from Birchbox! This Dark Chocolate Peppermint Fortune Cookie from Emily's was delicious and I loved that the fortune inside was holiday themed. These can be found at World Market stores (which are kind of out of the way for me) and come in adorable little take out boxes. They even have ginger bread flavored ones for the holidays!

Lastly there is this $50 gift card to RentTheRunway.com. It is not something that I am interested in using as it costs about $200 to rent a dress. Also found that you can not use the code to purchase make up or accessories. This was a bust for me :(

And there we have it for the December Birchbox! I was a bit disappointed that I did not receive a single full-sized item, but I do like that they improved on the quality of the "lifestyle extra" and gave 2 packets of the hair product. The size of the sample of the CC cream was enough for me to try it over 3 times and the highlighter powder will last for quite awhile. While I can not give a value on this box, I personally feel it was worth the $10. Sign up for your box now to see what they will be bringing in 2013!

 

Jenn