Summer Beauty Favorites

I find myself - although it's only one month in to Spring - saying to everybody I know, "How awesome is it that it's Summer?", "Don't you just LOVE Summer?", "Isn't this hot weather amazing?" because it is so incredibly hot here in Brisbane at the moment. The skeptic in me knows that I only have such an obsession with hot weather because I work in air conditioning, and therefore only have to spend time in the heat on the weekends where I can wear cool dresses and laze around by pools and such. But I digress. This post is about Summer Beauty, because I find my regime changing a lot in the hotter months. I've brought my beauty routine down to a finely-tuned art so that I can spend as little time as possible staring at the mirror. And my Summer routine is no different. Here are my top Summer Beauty Favorites, which help me get through the hotter months without looking like I'm overheating.

1. Dove Summer Glow. I only just discovered this recently, and have almost used up my whole bottle, which is very sad. This stuff is super moisturizing (which I haven't found with many gradual tanners), plus it smells nice all day long. Have you found that some tanners smell amazing when you put them on and then smell musky from about two hours in? This one smells nice all day. The only problem that I have with it (and this is probably because I bought the Fair - Normal Skin version) was that it isn't dark enough to build up my tan in the first few days. So I "helped" it with a few squeezes of leftover Le Tan. :)

2. Olay Complete Defence SPF30+ Daily Moisturizing Lotion (Sensitive). I have used both this lotion and it's twin, the SPF15+ Moisturizing Lotion, for about ten years. What can I say? I know a good thing when I see it! I use it on my face and all over my chest, and it's amazingly effective at blocking the sun. So awesome for Summer!

3. Chi Chi Mosaic Face Bronzer. My sister offloaded the early version of this bronzer on me a few years ago when she was clearing out her unused makeup. Needless to say, I am still a huge fan of the bronzer and go through it like crazy in Summer.

4. Juice Blemish Be Gone. I break out a lot more in Summer. I think it's a combination of exercising / sweating more and wearing moisturizers with SPF in them - but a pale girl's gotta do what she's gotta do, right? Especially in the skin cancer capital of the world! So rather than can the SPF, I went hunting for a good pimple buster, and found this little gem after reading reviews by some of my favorite beauty bloggers. I was happy that it had all organic ingredients, so it was something that I felt happy about putting on my blemishes. I found they cleared up quite well - but a warning, the blemishes don't disappear quickly (as the name suggests). I found that putting it on at night before I went to sleep reduced the size of the pimple quite dramatically by the time I woke up.

5. Maybelline Baby Lips. Obviously I had to include a great lip balm in there! Baby Lips are my all-time favorite balm, and Quenched would probably be the one I go through the fastest.

I hope you enjoyed reading my top beauty favorites for Summer! No doubt I'll be posting more as the season progresses and I discover new cosmetics that work when my face is, um... glistening.

- H