Winter Skin Prevention and Repair Guide: All About the Body, Part 1

While many parts of the body are covered once the winter wind starts blowing, don’t forget to keep all your parts deliciously soft all year round! Especially if you’re in the warmer parts, winter doesn’t always mean pants every day! Here are four fabulous solutions to soothe that scaly skin.

vedaMAMA body creams ($50.00) in Relax and Scrumptious are both ultra hydrating, luxe creams targeted to soothe and moisturize the body. Relax is a more typical body cream with a chocolate mint scent that restores the skin’s balance. Cocoa butter is one of the main ingredients that helps to hydrate the skin, while peppermint helps to alleviate muscle soreness (hence the name “Relax”). Scrumptious is a restorative body cream with shea butter to work actively against super dry skin. Both creams contain organic coconut oil, Vitamin E, and Rosemary as some of their key ingredients. Each cream comes in a cute little white tub with pink detailing, but I feel like the amount you get is small relative to the price. I personally enjoyed both creams, but they aren’t far superior to other less expensive varieties.

LUSH Dream Cream ($20.95) is one of the first products I had ever tried by LUSH, and it is utterly fabulous. I really love that it goes on easily, isn’t too thick of a cream, and it dries quickly. I find that it does a good job hydrating my skin throughout the year. I like that it is a year-round product, because I can maximize my usage out of it. The amount of product you get relative to the amount you need to moisturize the body makes this a cost-effective choice. It is lightly scented with a woody/natural scent. If you’re familiar with LUSH products, you’ll instantly recognize it as one fo the scents of LUSH. A part of me loves to dabble into these kinds of products, because I just know that they feel healthier and seem better for my skin because of their organic content.

bliss lemon+sage body butter ($35.00) comes in a large, bright blue tube. The scent is actually incredibly pleasing; a light sweet lemony scent with an undertone of vanilla. It’s a very luxe, thick cream, despite it’s tube packaging–so don’t let it confuse you as if it were a regular body lotion. It contains both vitamin A and E, which are good antioxidants for your skin. I found a little goes quite a ways, needing no more than a one inch “line” of cream for each leg (and mine always get a touch scaly come winter!). Regular use of this completely eliminated any dryness, but if I stopped using it for more than two days, it would begin to return. Although initially it seemed pricey and offended my delicate price sensibilities (okay, not really, these days I’m not usually shocked), knowing that it will last me six months or more makes it much easier to swallow and seem more in line with what I’d expect. I can run through a tube of B&BW lotion in a month or two with regular usage because I find I need at least two inches of product, so it comes out to be roughly the same when the two are compared!

von Natur Grapefruit Whipped Butter ($42.00) is a thick cream (borderlines a solid, really, you kind of “scoop” out product because it’s so thick) with a very nice scent of grapefruit. They advertise that “according to a study by Chicago’s Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, the scent of grapefruit on a woman’s skin can make her appear up to six years younger.” I can’t buy that personally, but maybe other people’s noses would say it about me (then again, I’m not particularly old, so I’m not the best test subject!). Despite its thickness, the cream absorbs fairly quickly, which is always a plus, because nobody wants to sit around waiting for their skin to dry! Lots of essential oils can be found in here (far too many to list), but you’ll find shea butter as a key ingredient, as well as organic jojoba oil. You get a fair amount for your money, better than vedaMAMA, and you don’t need to use much to soothe your aching, dry skin. ]

Stay tuned for part two of our body series featuring Lancome’s Nutrix Royal for Body, Lush’s King of Skin and Running to the Embassy body butters, and Elizabeth Arden’s 8-Hour Cream for Body!