Although I am trying to curb my shopping habit and stop relying so much on “stuff” to make me happy, there are a few things I’m loving this week (all paid for with my very own money!).

Spanx Tights (I can’t find them on the Target website, but the same ones are listed on the Spanx website).

I went to Target in search of navy blue tights, and the tights section looked like the milk and bread aisles in the Northeast right before the blizzard last week.  I don’t know if they are getting rid of winter items and bringing in spring or what, but the selection of tights was slim pickings.  Anyway, I also needed gray tights and found these.  Not only are they Spanx tights, they are reversible: one side is gray, one is black.  Genius.  They were also marked down to $12 from $18.

Method All Purpose Cleaner in Pear Ginger

This cleaner smells like ginger ale.  It, and the dish soap, smell fantastic and I use it to clean pretty much everything.  The Method mint cleaner is also amazing.

Moving Comfort Fiona Sports Bra

I’m not exactly unendowed in the boob department, and I’m always searching for a good sports bra.  This one is great.  Everything stayed in place and it was comfortable too.  I wore it for the ultimate big boob sports bra test–running, and it passed with flying colors.  I actually ordered mine off Amazon and it was on sale for $27.  These can be kind of pricy at full price, but given how good it is, I would order it again at full price.

 

Polar Heart Rate Monitor

This is my second Polar monitor.  I had my last one for about 4 years and it finally crapped out (secretly, I was not too upset as I have been wanting to get a new one).  I got this one and used it for the first time this weekend and I love it.  It is pretty basic; give you your heart rate, calories burned, keeps time on your workout, and I think can do a few other things that I haven’t figured out yet.  My big thing is to use it for heart rate and a stop watch for planks and other timed exercises.  The strap is pretty comfortable and the color (although called pink/purple and although looking like it is purple online) is much more pink than you would expect.  I didn’t really care much about the color, but I don’t think it looks purple at all.

Coconut Oil

I jumped on the coconut oil bandwagon after I read that it can help with keratosis pilaris, which are tiny little bumps that people often get on the backs of their arms, legs, etc.  They are painless and you can’t really seem them too much (on me at least), but they bugged me enough to ask my dermatologist about them.  He gave me a prescription for a cream that I never really liked because it was too sticky.  When I saw on Pinterest (of course!) that coconut oil can help with this, I decided to give it a shot.  I have been using it daily since October and I will never go back to anything else.  It took a few weeks for it to really clear up the bumps, but since then, it is completely effective.  This is something that never truly goes away either (at least in my case), so you have to continue to use something on a daily basis or the bumps will come back.  The only other thing that works as well is getting sun (the bumps are best eliminated when I am on vacation somewhere warm and sunny or during the summer).

It is sort of odd at first, as coconut oil is solid at room temperature, but will melt on contact with your skin.  I usually just scoop some out to use on my arms and the backs of my legs and it melts very easily.  It definitely smells coconutty, so if that is not your thing you may not like it.  It doesn’t smell all day though; it eventually wears off (usually by the time I am out the door for work, I can’t smell it anymore), so you won’t smell like a macaroon all day.  There are a ton of other uses for it as well, including cooking, as a facial moisturizer, diaper rash and cradle cap, etc.  This is a great article with 101 uses of coconut oil.  I recently started using this exclusively as my facial and body moisturizer.  Your makeup will go on like a dream with this stuff.  I don’t even have to use primer anymore.  I plan to also try the coconut hair moisturizing process that I read about here.  I buy mine on Amazon; they seem to have the best prices, although I have seen this in the grocery store and a few health food stores.

Wow, I didn’t expect to write a novel on my love of coconut oil, but there you go!  Is there anything you are loving these days?

 

 Today I’m linking up with What I’m Loving Wednesday.