A Beautiful Life

Monday, 31 August 2015

Palladium Foodhall - A Gourmet Destination :)

Mumbai Lower Parel is my haunt, that is where I work, that is where my office is and thus,on any given day,you can find me roaming around High Street Phoenix, usually after office, chilling with some colleagues or even during office hours, chilling with my colleagues.. err..my boss is not on the net,right? *Checking around* :D

So anyway, one of my favorite places in High Street Phoenix is -Foodhall at Palladium :) It is a premium gourmet destination with a variety of offerings-cheese, wines, cold pressed juices, bakery, ice-cream, health drinks, dips, nachos and so much more. More importantly,I love the samples that are always on offer-a variety of dips, sauces, snack items AND the amazing chef classes, food festivals that keep happening intermittently keep the scene fresh & vibrant. Suffice to say, this is THE place to be if you are a foodie :D

So it was natural that one day I would also try out the gorgeous pasta that they serve. And I DID!

Look at it :D

Beautiful white sauce penne pasta with corn, mushroom, broccoli and zucchini served with warm toasted garlic bread. YUMMMMMMM is the word!

Loads of veggies just the way I like it, creamy sauce that is lip-smacking, quantity enough for lunch for a hungry hippo like me, this is PERFECT! I must admit, I did not think that I would get such great pasta not in a gourmet restaurant but in Foodhall but oh boy, now this is where I wanna be all the time! And all this,for less than 300 bucks :D

I will be back :D ♥

Vaseline Healthy White Lightening Visible Fairness Lotion Review

Okay, don't judge me harshly just because I am reviewing a 'whitening' product here :P I am Indian :P AND I am tanned :P AND in India,almost every second product is termed 'whitening' even if it is just to prevent tanning or reduce tanning or..you get the drift! So yes,I use a lot of products with this label of 'whitening' but that does not mean I believe that they will turn me into someone as fair as Katrina Kaif or Kareena Kapoor :P

Now Vaseline has this whole bunch of Skin Lightening lotions! There is something called 'Triple Lightening', something called 'Complete 10 Lightening' & so on. Why can't there be 1 lotion at the end of the day? I do not get this! I have used almost all of them and cannot discern any difference between them, the ingredients list is also the same and they are all about preventing tanning and removing the tan that is already present! Aaaaargh!

Anyway, so I bought the first one I saw :D From Flipkart where it is available for Rs. 230 for 300 ml which is veryyyyyy affordable and quantity is enough to last nearly 1 & 1/2 to 2 months for a normal skinned person.

Packaging is very sturdy and very travel friendly too. Claims is basically generic i.e. it lightens skin tone by removing tine, fine lines, gives smooth soft skin. Ingredients list is again what you would expect from Vaseline-full of chemicals that I cannot pronounce :P And somewhere in there, Glycerin & Yoghurt are also mentioned though what is the percentage of their existence within this mesh of chemicals? Who knows? :D I am just gonna assume it is a big pile of chemicals and nothing else :P

It looks a little pinkish in color which would make a lot of women happy,I know my mom is very happy with the color and the Fragrance which is pleasant and reminds us of Pond's Talc :D It is fresh and nice.

My hand is not actually this fat :P The camera adds 10 pounds :D

Okay,I guess my hand IS this fat :P Fine, get over it :D

I applied it regularly for a month and so did my mom. On applying,it gives an instant cool feel and gets absorbed in the skin within 10 seconds and gives a little glow. Now,my skin is extremely dry and parched for moisture while my mom's skin is very normal. On most days.she does not even need a moisturizer while I need it like someone in desert needs water! So this lotion made my skin feel dry within 4 hours and I needed to reapply it. But my mom loved it and actually felt that this made her skin feel plump and healthy for a good 7-8 hours. It also protects us like a sunscreen effectively and I could see no more new tanning on my hands. In terms of reduction of tan,it wasn't that effective for me but as I said, my mom was happy. So I ended up giving this lotion to her only for daily use :)

YES-

Non-greasy, absorbs quickly and gives instant glow
Pinkish lotion looks cute, fragrance is fresh
Reduces tanning to little extent and prevents new tanning
Lasts for a long time, very affordable
Did not lead to any allergic reaction on my super-sensitive skin in any way
Easily available everywhere, offline as well as on Flipkart, Amazon etc. :)

NO-

Works good only on normal skinned people like my mom or oily skinned beauties, Dry Skin please stay away!
Full of chemicals, but I guess most people do not care about that,we have chemicals in everything anyway :D
Nothing lightening or healthy about it, there is no 'instant fair' or 'illumination' or anything like this :P They should have named it a simple sunscreen lotion :)

Recommended- Umm, MAYBE! I am giving it a rating of 2.5/ 5 for my extremely dry skin but my mom's normal skin gives it a 3.5/5 rating. So you can try it for yourself and see how it fares :)

Puro Body & Soul Hair Masque Review

Like every other person on this planet, I am plagued with stress, pollution on a daily basis the effects of which show up on my skin & hair. Add to that a year of battle with Jaundice that left my hair dry and damaged beyond recognition and led to massive hair-fall too :( In past 2 months,I finally tried to get back on track with a renewed hair & skin care regime. Tried a lot of conditioners and hair masks in this quest and this Puro Hair Masque is one of them :)

Never heard of this brand before,but on searching and asking from friends, came to know that it is a natural beauty brand coming up quite nicely on the radar of many beauty bloggers. They were raving about some of its products so I decided to give this a try :) Bought it from Flipkart for Rs. 600 for 200 ml which is surely expensive but then again, all organic/ayurvedic/natural brands nowadays are quite expensive. It is the price of purity we pay which is so difficult to find nowadays and we always have the option of going for the chemical laden cheap products too :D

Packaging is good but I don't think it is travel friendly because of the pump dispenser.I am sure it will spill some product over if we went on a long journey and it got smushed in the bag. Claims include protecting and nourishing hair,especially dry & damaged & also colored ones. Ingredients list,I feel is incomplete as it does not indicate percentages or weight of different ingredients. However,it is impressive and includes Aloe Vera, Rosemary oil, Lavender oil, Vitamin E etc. It is 100% vegetarian AND cruelty free + chemical free product. Also, proceeds from the sale goes to this organization Sa'Ni'Sa which is devoted to economic empowerment of women. Nice!

Fragrance is different and strong. I have a sensitive nose and anything too chemical-y (Like Clarins' products) annoys me. But the fragrance here is not chemical-y. It is strong but I guess it is because of the presence of essential oils of Rosemary & Lavender. It lingers for quite some time but is not unpleasant. I like it. The texture is not completely watery but it is not thick like a lot of conditioners. Look above, it is just a bit thicker than water which might make you think, hey, how effective can this be in taming dry hair, since we are accustomed to thinking that we need creamy conditioners for dry hair :)

It says to apply from roots to tips. But since I have such an itchy scalp,I do not apply any kind of conditioner or mask on my scalp at all. I simply apply it on my hair and leave it for 20 minutes or so. Then I simply rinse it off completely and let my hair air dry. The thing is,it does not have silicones like normal mass conditioners, so while rinsing it off,it does not give that slippery feel. Earlier, I used conditioners like Garnier, Sunsilk etc. that always gave this slippery feel and a very soft touch while rinsing only. But now I realize that it harms our hair in the long run. On rinsing this off,I felt nothing like that but after my hair dried,it became smooth and got de-tangled very easily :) My hair was soft to touch and easy to comb through for next 2 days. What more could I ask for!