Review: Fragrant Jewels Sugar scrub

All righty! As the title suggests, this is a review. Fragrant Jewels is a company located in California, according to their "About Us" section, that makes things like scented candles, aromatherapy waxes (tarts), bath bombs, and now sugar scrubs, and donates part of their proceeds to various causes such as Toys for Tots and The Ocean Foundation. I got their Earth Day bomb last year, but I don't remember the organization they raised money for. Also, each of their products comes with a shiny ring. That's their thing, besides being a pampering product.
Here I will be focusing on their sugar scrubs. At the time of this writing, scrubs aren't one of their main products. To find them go to the "Collections/Birthstone" section. Edit: At the time of this writing (Feb 2018) I can't find them, which is a damn shame. Maybe if enough people email them, they'll bring them back. It makes sense since each of the items they offer seems to be limited time as it is. Excellent business model really, if there's always something new people will keep coming back to check it out, right? Only draw back is when you find something you really like, like sugar scrubs, and when you go to tell people about them, they're gone. So, with that in mind.

I did buy a couple of sugar scrubs from their birth stone collection. It was new and I wanted to try it out since I had already tried out a bath bomb and liked it. Last night I finally got to break one out, the amethyst scrub. I'll admit, I am impatient and went ahead and dug out the ring. I cheated, so sue me. Picture included at the end. Now, there are a couple of important things to know here:
- I am not girly. The fact that I even bought this would rock most folks' perception of me to the core.
- - I have been gifted such items, but never end up using them, or if I do go to use them the overwhelming smell turns me off.
- - I've only ever really liked maybe two perfumes. One was Clinque Happy, if that tells you anything.
- I have two little kids. One is 2.5, the other is 11 months. If you're wondering why this matters I think you may not have kids or you have a phenomenal support system. Or maybe I just suck at momming while maintaining my humanity. I don't know.
Kids that small means I don't get to bathe all that often, much less indulge. Most showers are once-a-week speed competition events. Outside of that sometimes I have to do what maintenance I can with wet wipes. This is the nitty-gritty stuff they don't tell you folks. Thankfully that doesn't happen all that often.
Last night though, magic happened. I told my spouse I needed a shower and he took over both kiddos long enough for me to do so! A real shower! Now, you can't use a bomb in a shower very well, can you? This is why the scrub.
A scrub can be indulgent, but quick. No bath tub to fill, no time to wait for the bomb to disintegrate, no need to have time to soak to actually enjoy it. A scrub takes as much time as your soaped up shower puff. But it leaves you feeling silky, girly, and smelling good.
And feeling good about yourself is *SO* important, especially for new moms and moms with young kids. There are about 151,351,685,413,210 (give or take) ways to feel crappy in our society, so something that is quick and leaves you feeling a little better about yourself is amazing.
Anyway. The smell is nice, not overpowering, and I still gently smell good this morning. The scrub is also moisturizing, like their bombs. Since this was at the end of my shower I did kind of rush it, I'm not used to being able to do more than the bare minimum, and only used it on the really rough and dry parts of me (I also hate lotion, so I have a dry skin issue) and it really made a difference! I will not be posting before and after photos. You don't want to be scared like that, trust me. Suffice it to say that I must be part dragon. But I'm  a little less scaly now :)

In sum, this 'tom-boy', lotion-hating, 'I don't like smelly stuff', frazzled mom gives the sugar scrub two thumbs up. And I REALLY hope they bring it back. It makes me sad to think my mom friends can't buy it now, and no, I'm not sharing. Maybe that gets me bad karma, but I'll risk it. That's how much I like this particular girly product.

The prize: A shiny ring. This one is amethyst themed to match the birth stone collection it comes from. It's CZ and crystal and the ring is either silver or silver plated, I can't remember which, no turning. This ring is valued at $25 according to the code it came with. Each ring you get with each product comes with a code that you enter on the website. The code tells you the value of the ring you received (most of mine have been $10, but I do have a couple of $25 ones now), gives you reward points you can redeem more for shinies if you wish, and gives you a chance to win an additional ring valued at $100, $1000, or $10000.

So, I'm trying some new things

To catch up real quick, in the past four years I've had two kids. Really that's all I can remember. Because of previously mentioned kids. I'm sure some things have happened, but they all truly fade to the background.

Currently I've got a couple of things going on as I try to find meaningful ways to contribute to the world around me. Since I have two young kids and a full time job I find I don't have much time for anything and I don't have much energy either, physical or mental, so I focus on smaller scale things I can do.
Like writing a reminder for people to register to vote on my car's rear window. Seriously, vote.

I've also been trying to contribute to an online "village" I found by 'accident' aka via serendipity. These folks are awesome and you can find the results of this village effort on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/themominars/) and on the web (https://www.themominars.com/). I've been trying my hand at writing, interviewing people, and reviewing things. It's been pretty awesome and there are so many great contributors to the project. So far I've written one piece on my experience with trying to find the unicorn known as "self care" and I've done one book review (An Eye For An Eye) and an interview with the author Caroline Fardig. I'm currently prepping for my next review and interview for The Mominars and hopefully I'll have that done soon. I'm also reviewing things outside the Mominars platform to get in some more practice on Amazon and on NetGalley. Practice makes perfect, right?

So maybe that's where I should leave this: my experience with reviewing. How I approach book reviews. I approach book reviews cautiously, like an animal in the wild. I don't want to write a book report. Boring. I don't want to write a synopsis, that's already there on the book's digital listing or back jacket. A review is about your opinion and experience as the reader. I also don't want to give away any plot points. So, what to do? I've read a few guides and this is what I've managed to adopt so far:
-title and author. There are a lot of books out there with the same title. Just look up "fire and fury" and you'll get a couple of very different results. Authors are important.
-Could you relate to the character (if told in the first person)? I read for escapism, so if I'm fighting with being able to understand the actions and motivations of the person from whose point of view the story is being told, well then it's not a very good escape.
- What about a story/writing is important to you? Turns out I care about writing devices and scene transitions and dialogue organization. I'm probably not the only one. What you care about is probably not a unique concern of yours either, so write about it. I recently read a short read purely to have something to do while the baby was going to sleep and I was trapped and if I had seen a review that talked about all the peeves of mine that this set off I would have saved myself the trouble. And vice versa, you could really help an author out by singing their praises.
OK, now I'm rambling even to myself.
Next up, a bath bomb company review. Because why not?