Gift Guides

Product: Breakfast For Your Face, a set of three all-natural powders for concocting different face masks.

Research:
I have a confession: I am a beauty product junkie. For the past 9 months I have been addicted to BirchBox (they just emailed me to remind me of our anniversary) which means a bounty of new cosmetics every month, and numerous orders in between. I was the kind of kid who would rather spend her Saturday night perfecting a smokey eye or dumping a bottle of Sun-In on her hair than go out with friends. As an adult I approach finding the best eye cream and dumping my paycheck at the Dry Bar with the same enthusiasm.

I am going home to spend a weekend with my cousin Annie in New Jersey. Annie is 14 and has Down’s Syndrome–we’ve been best friends pretty much since she was born. Although she is a veritable mini-me and loves everything I love, I’m not completely sure if she will enjoy slathering something strange on her face.

Hypothesis:
There are two parts to this hypothesis–how the experience will go over with Annie and what I will think of the product itself. I knew selling this idea to Annie will be a test of my marketing skills. I should tell her we were going to have a girly sleepover with music, movies, snacks, and face masks. Special needs children can be fussy and I anticipate she might not be down with something strange on her face, so I hope the tactile experience of picking her mask and mixing it herself would make it less strange when we apply it.

When it comes to me, I am hesitant about the mask itself. I have had reactions to masks in the past–the worst resulting in a huge burn on my face the night before my first modeling shoot (I have one of those moms). However I have learned a lot about my skin at recent facials and think I am better at making decisions on what my dry skin can handle. Also, this kit is all natural–I can literally see all the ingredients–which makes me trust it even more.

Experiment:
I pull out the almond milk, honey, coconut oil, and yogurt from the kitchen as these seemed to be the ingredients we will be using to mix our masks. Each mask has suggestions for how to mix the mask for different skin types–normal, oily, and dry. I already prepare to mix whatever Annie picks for normal since her skin tends to be very reactive, and the ingredients for dry skin for myself. I let Annie chose which mask she wants to make–not surprisingly she chooses the Cafe Mocha (it looks and smells delicious!). This leaves Yogurt and Oatbrasion for me. Since I am in the midst of an oil-pulling detox (told you I had an addiction) and my face is broken out, I choose the Oatbrasion mask which is exfoliating and can offer me a fresh layer of skin.

I pour Annie a tablespoon of Cafe Mocha and some almond milk and tell her to mix. The bottle didn’t tell me how much almond milk to use and it turns out I poured too much. I add more powder but the mixture is never anything but runny. I clean out her bowl and add yogurt this time which works out a lot better and I imagine it will have the same hydrating properties of milk.

In my bowl, I pour a tablespoon of Oatbrasion, a teaspoon of coconut oil, and a glob of honey (I have a bad habit of not measuring honey when I bake so I figured why start now). Mixing this reminds me a lot of the all-natural face scrubs my mom used to make when I was a kid. It smells amazing and although I give most pleasant-smelling concoctions a taste test (like these in a sample meeting, which was a mistake) I refrain since the bottle is one step ahead of me and suggests that it not be eaten. Okay, bossy bottle, you win this time.

Now for the fun part–slathering this all over our faces. I apply the mask on Annie’s face since I foresee lots of messes if I leave it to her. She giggles incessantly at how cold the yogurt is and steals glances in the mirror to see her face transform into a mud monster. I’m barely done when she runs away to show her brother her face. My mask is a lot less noticeable–there are some clumps of oat bran but overall it’s a really clear mixture. I was feeling a little lazy, and proud of my blow-drying skills, so I didn’t pull my bangs back to apply the mask onto my forehead.

We wait for ten minutes while the masks do their thang. In case you were wondering how to measure ten minutes–it is approximately 7 selfies, or four “Let It Go”s.

After our ten minutes is up, we go upstairs to the bathroom to wash our faces. I clean my face first to show Annie how it’s done. The mask comes off very easily, but I scrub a bit to take advantage of the exfoliating properties of the mask. Annie’s is a lot tougher to remove since it dried a lot more on her face than mine did. I help her with a washcloth but the coffee grounds in the mask are kind of a pain to get off her face.

We head back downstairs for the rest of our sleepover activities–strawberries and cream, Monsters University, and texting boys (well, only I do that last thing). Uncontrollable giggles commence once she realizes I am texting a boy, and I can’t help but wonder if her energy is at all caused by the tablespoon of coffee that just soaked into her face.

Conclusion:
Breakfast For Your Face definitely created a successful girls night. We had a project and a beauty treatment all in one. Mixing was easy and fun for Annie which makes me believe girls of all ages, and developments, would really enjoy doing this too.

I loved the way my face felt after I removed the mask. It was smooth and fresh. I totally wish I had pulled back my bangs because I could feel how different my forehead felt (umm, gross)–I got them wet anyway. My worries were for naught–no terrible reaction to my mask. However, I wouldn’t consider the Oatbrasion mix a mask, it definitely is more of a scrub. My aunt loved the way Annie’s skin felt after the mask, which was a relief, so I left the Cafe Mocha and Yogurt mixes for them to enjoy.

This product gets my two gel-manicured thumbs up!