SPF - Sunscreen is NOT Optional!

Be sure to wear a sunscreen everyday!  As careful as I have been with my complexion, it is not something I have always done.  Going about day to day life, I often used a foundation with an SPF of 15, but often I didn't.  Now I know that you can prevent signs of aging by wearing a sunscreen year round, yes, even in the winter when all you do is hop in and out of your car to do errands. And remember, your foundation may have a sunscreen, but most people do not wear enough foundation to get true protection.  The answer is a moisturizer with sunscreen and a foundation with sunscreen. Wear both - everyday - even in the dead of winter!

Don't Forget Your Ears

One of the often neglected body parts are our ears!  Oh, yes, we adorn them with cute dangly earrings, expensive baubles; we try to keep them clean, but we forget that our earlobes can show age, too.  Every night when you put on that special cream to lift, moisturize, and/or erase your wrinkles, don't forget your earlobes!  They need all the moisture they can get.  In the morning, when you put on daytime treatments, and especially when you apply your sunscreen (you do wear sunscreen everyday, don't you?) make sure that you pull your hair back securely and slather your earlobes and the outside edges of your ears with moisturizer and your daily SPF.

Remember also not to sleep in your earrings since doing so will pull your earlobes down.

Foundation: Armani VS. Estee Lauder - and the Winner is...

 

There has been so much hype about the new Giorgio Armani silky foundation that I felt that I had to try it.  Armed with my Neiman's charge card (or rather, in this case, my husband's) I set out to Tyson's to see if it was all sold out.  It wasn't!  It had a nice silky finish and I bought a bottle and took it home.

Now at this point it is probably important to add that I have stuck with Estee Lauder's foundations since the 1970's and been ever so happy with them  My favorite and the best all-time foundation is Estee Lauder's Fresh Air Make-Up Base; for a while in the 1990's I couldn't find it anywhere, but luckily it's available again and I am happy again!  During the interim when it wasn't available, I had used Double Wear by Estee Lauder and was happy enough with it, but nothing beat the Fresh-Air make-up.
So I paid by $59.00 to try the Armani make-up (over twice the price of Fresh-Air's humble $24.50 price tag). The result: it looked fairly good, and it was different.  Very light, but there was coverage unlike most "light" make-ups. However, after wearing it for about 5 hours one day, I happened to look in the mirror while I was wearing my reading glasses and noticed that I had a bit of flaking near one side of my nose and a rather dry looking patch on the other side. I no longer had that refreshed look of well-moisturized skin, but rather skin that said, "I've been on the overnight from Heathrow to Dulles and my skin feels it!"
I washed off the Armani and put the Estee Lauder back on.  It looked wonderful; the color was richer, but matched my skin, and it gave me a half-dewy, half-matte look that requires no powder.  I've been checking everyday since with my reading glasses to see if the look is lasting after 5 hours, after 10 hours... and it is!
If Estee Lauder ever gets rid of Fresh-Air, I may have to use the Armani, but until then, the winner is - Estee Lauder's Fresh-Air make-up base.  Never fool with a winner!!
  P.S. You can find Fresh-Air make-up in the standard department stores that sell Estee Lauder, but they don't seem to stock a lot of it.  I usually buy it directly from the Estee Lauder website.