Product Body Road Wash

I won this a few weeks ago in a contest! It’s Product Body Road Wash, a hand (or body) soap that’s halfway between solid and liquid. Product Body is based in Florida and run by a sweet woman named Joanna, who regularly blogs about the day-to-day doings at her company. I entered a giveaway contest, and actually won! Holy moly! I never win anything! So anyway, back to Road Wash. It’s actually not the first time I’ve used it. Last year I ordered some Whipped Shea Butter from Product Body (review to follow) and Joanna graciously included a small sample of grapefruit Road Wash. It was heavenly and smelled wonderful and fresh, but wasn’t overly scented. Just enough scent—perfect, really. I hate when soaps and lotions go overboard with scents; they either conflict with my perfume or give me a headache. The prize (pictured above) is scented with yuzu, aka ugli fruit, a citrus fruit that smells like a combination of lemon, grapefruit, orange and a little verbena.

It’s terrific! I use it all day at work, and it’s certainly much nicer than the pump soap in the bathrooms at the office. Just a tiny scoop creates loads of suds. It cleans my hands well and rinses clean, too. Pushing paper all day wreaks havoc on my poor hands; Road Wash is very softening. And it smells divine! So citrusy and yum. Not only was it awesome to win a contest (and get a little package in the mail at the end of a crappy week at work), but it’s also awesome winning something that I already loved! Hooray!

You can find the link to the Product Body website here, and Joanna’s blog here.

Here’s what’s nuts: I won another giveaway earlier this week from the perfume blog Sweet Diva! I have no idea what is going on with the universe, but the stars have aligned to my favor. The scent gods are smiling my way. Lucky me! Sweet Diva was cleaning out her numerous samples and will send me a little packet of them soon. Her blog is pretty terrific. She gives excellent reviews seems to like white florals a lot, which is helpful because I do, too. Sweet Diva can be read here.

To rebalance the karma, I finally bought a bunch of tiny, empty perfume vials to make samples for my friends and family. I love reading perfume and beauty blogs, but know how much work they take to maintain. I’m thinking these two random wins are big signs to me to get back into posting regularly on this blog. Stay tuned!

Roger & Gallet Shiso soap

Ugh-- I've been home sick with a stomach bug for the past few days. I've been catching up on tv watching and that's about it. A hot shower when sick, though, is an excellent remedy to feel better. My dear friend Nicole in France mailed me a beauty product care package about a month ago, and in it was this lovely Roger & Gallet Shiso soap. Their packaging is so pretty, I can't bear to recycle it. The empty box is now in my linen closet, scenting the shelves.

I'm not sure what shiso is, or what the notes in the soap actually are. I detect a lot of green, and that makes me happy. The best way I can describe it is that it smells like a bouquet of fresh wildflowers, with a couple of pink roses, too. It's not sweet, or anything like tuberose or jasmine, but more like fresh cut grass and hay and fresh air. Surprisingly, it's reminiscent of Chanel No. 19 lotion- a lotion I bought on a whim last year because I liked how fresh it smelled. (Unfortunately, I didn't wait long enough for the lotioin to settle into my skin the day I bought it. It smells so fresh at first, but later falls flat.) The soap, on the other hand, retains its freshness. It's a good thing to smell in the shower.

Roger & Gallet soaps are luscious and long lasting. They retain their shape throughout. It took me three months to get through the Citron bar and the one I used after that, the heavenly and simple Oatmeal Milk. Roger & Gallet soaps are my favorite. They're a little spendy at $6, but $6 for 3 months is completely worth it.

Violet Moss soap, by Fresh

I had high expectations for Fresh's Violet Moss soap. I just finished the Roger & Gallet Citron soap yesterday (I was spoiled; that bar lasted more than two months, kept its shape, retained its scent and continued to produce a wonderful lather). Seeing I'm on a violet kick, I reached for Violet Moss today.

The packaging is what lured me to buy it, even before the fragrance. It's gorgeous! All those purple and silver swirls, its little wire ribbon; this soap would make a perfect gift. I debated buying it; at $12, and no tester to smell, it was a bit of a gamble. I'm not entirely disappointed, but my expectations got the better of me.

The bar is good sized; in fact, I cut it in half. It's pure vegetable soap "enriched" with shea butter. First sniff, dry: very light and floral, like a sheer violet. I detected the tiniest hints of light greens, and a vague hint of earthiness. More than anything, it smelled like ... soap. Good, clean soap, but nothing special.

In the shower, Violet Moss was virtually unscented. I don't get nearly enough violet, and no moss whatsoever. My skin felt a little dry afterwards. It's nice, but overall, it's plain and unsatisfyingl. I'm glad I'm only stuck with half a bar. Hopefully, it'll go fast.

I feel most Fresh products are all about hype and good packaging. I used to love their soy shampoo, but after a while it dried out my hair. (It smells great, though.) Overall, I wouldn't seek out Fresh soap again, but I would certainly display a bar if I ever received one as a gift.

Roger & Gallet Cedrat-Citron soap

I bought this soap for 4 euros in Reims, France, while visiting friends earlier this month. Cedrat is French for Citron, a type of citrus tree that yields a lemon-like fruit. (Confusingly, "citron" in French means "lemon" in English.)

The soap smells very woodsy and lemony, bordering on Pine Sol, but fresh nonetheless. It starts out with hits of cedar and pine which quickly parlay into lemons; less lemon zest and more lemon juice, or how lemon curd smells. It's more of a masculine scent than I'm used to, and while its scent lingered in my bathroom for a few hours, it only left a light fragrance on my body. The soap itself is light yellow, as big as my palm and about an inch thick. It has a great lather without being too drying or giving my skin an overly squeaky-clean feeling.

Roger & Gallet soaps are long lasting and have a 100% vegetal base. The company created the first round soap; according to their website, up until 1879 all soaps were square or rectangle shaped.

I'm a little obsessed with orange blossom right now, so after using this soap yesterday I wore Neroli by Annick Goutal (review to follow).

*photo courtesy of beautyexclusive.com