Winner of the Bioelements Skincare Giveaway! + Long weekend with Flight of the Conchords & Beard Papa's

Hi everyone! Before I head out today, I'd like to congratulate Rocaille Writes for winning the Bioelements Skincare Wardrobe Giveaway. How exciting it is to pick out a new Bioelements skincare regimen tailored for your skintype! Happy skincare-shopping, Rocaille.

A big THANKS to Bioelements for providing such an amazing opportunity and thank you to my blog readers for participating. I'm looking forward to more exciting giveaways so I can share with you other farmgirl-approved skincare products. Stay tuned!

And happy long Memorial Day weekend to all my U.S. readers! I'm heading out in a few hours to see Flight of the Conchords live at the Hollywood Bowl- very excited! We'll also be having some pre-concert dessert at Beard Papa's (Best cream puffs EVER.). Make it a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Bioelements Skincare Wardrobe Giveaway! + My Fave Beauty Tip of the Moment

Can you believe it? It’s been a year since I started my blog! To celebrate, I’d like to revamp your skincare routine! Get your skin in tip-top summer shape with Bioelements, one of my favorite skincare lines. (1) blog follower will be randomly chosen to win a Bioelements skincare wardrobe worth $250. The lucky winner will speak one-on-one with a Bioelements Esthetician about his/her skintype, skincare concerns and select their ideal skincare wardrobe.

How to qualify:

1. Be a Brilliant Farmgirl’s Beauty Secrets™ blog follower!
2. For an additional 3 entries in the drawing, share your favorite beauty secret! It can be anything pertaining to skincare, makeup, health and fashion. Simply leave a comment with your beauty tip of the moment.

That’s all there is to it! Contest will close on 5.29.10 at 11.59pm PST and winner will be announced by 5.30.10. This giveaway is open to all U.S. Residents (For international blog followers: most of my future giveaways will be open to all, so stay tuned!). If winner is under 18, parental consent will be requested.

To kick things off, let me share my favorite beauty tip of the moment. I've been looking for ways to add volume to my thin brows so a friend recently shared her brow-perfecting secret: apply brow powder in 2 different natural shades to add dimensions and natural bulk to brows. Now I know why many brow enhancers often come in 2 complimentary shades (thanks, Susan!).

Winner of the Easy Peasy Farmgirl Beauty Giveaway!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Congratulations to *~Kay~* of Fresno, CA for winning the Easy Peasy Farmgirl Beauty Giveaway, a collection of beauty prizes valued at over $64. I’ll be conducting more giveaways in the near future so stayed tuned for other opportunities to win Farmgirl-approved beauty products!

If you can choose the next Farmgirl Giveaway, what would you like to win?- cosmetics, skincare or a mixture of the two?

Easy Peasy Farmgirl Beauty Giveaway + Must-share H&M Find.

It’s time to win some beauty freebies! One lucky blog follower will be randomly chosen to be the owner of:
Smashbox O-GLOW Intuitive Cheek Color With Goji Berry-C Complex ($26 value)
100% Pure Fruit Pigmented Mascara ($21 value)
Juice Beauty Oil-Free Moisturizer Deluxe Travel Size- 1oz. ($12 value)
Juice Beauty Green Apple Peel Sensitive Try Me Size ($5 value)

My loss, your gain. I’m also including the Giorgio Armani samples I got from my last Bloomingdale’s haul. They’re such nice samples but I’ll never use it:
Deluxe Samples of Giorgio Armani Rouge d'Armani Lipstick
Deluxe Sample Tube of Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation
Sample packets of Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation

How to qualify:
1. Be a Brilliant Farmgirl’s Beauty Secrets blog follower. Simply click on the "Follow" tab on the top of the Right-hand sidebar.
2. For an additional entry in the drawing, share thoughts on your favorite post! I’d like to get an idea of what you want to read more of. Place (1) or more comments, questions or suggestions on your favorite Farmgirl Beauty Secret or Product-analysis under the comments section. All previous comments will qualify.

That’s all there is to it! Contest ends 3.16.10. Winner will be chosen and announced on 3.17.10.

Also, I wanted to share my recent find at H&M. I dropped by H&M to check out the newly launched Sonia Rykiel Collection. Didn’t find anything that floated my boat but I did discover another new collection called The Blues. If you’re a denim lover, you must check this out! I got the cutest denim style button down shirt. It’s made of the softest fabric with an authentic denim look. It has the most adorable puff sleeves and also fits like a dream! But what made me do a double take was the $9.95 Original Price tag! They also have the most handsome cropped denim jacket for $14.95 (also regular price). Kudos to H&M for accommodating to the economy. I tried to capture the true shade of denim that the top comes in, it's something between the 2 images below leaning more towards the one on the right. If you are interested in the top, please note that it runs small. I'm wearing a size 6.

Must-share Etsy Finds: Spork & Teacup sterling silver necklaces from Marymaryhandmade!

Squeal!! Look what I got in the mail! They are absolutely too adorable for words. Marymaryhandmade from Etsy makes the cutest sterling silver necklaces. I usually do pretty well resisting the adorableness that is Etsy, but as soon as I laid eyes on these one-of-a-kind kawaii trinkets, I knew I had to have them. Each of these custom necklaces were made fresh upon order. I can’t stop grinning back at the happy spork and teacup!
Ok, I’m sorry I just can’t get over how cute the spork is. I’m a HUGE fan of eating, which is why I chose this necklace (you can eat ANYTHING with a spork; it’s the ultimate utensil!). Definitely going to buy a few more for the holidays- this is the perfect gift for proud foodies like myself. Mary also makes a friendly ghost necklace(!!).

Marymaryhandmade’s necklaces have gotten me all riled up for Etsy once again (we all know Etsy frenzy comes in spurts). Tell me: what else I should check out on Etsy?

**Edited to add: I showed my necklace review to Marymaryhandmade today and I'm very excited to share that she is offering 15% OFF when you type "farmgirl" in the message to seller section @ checkout! 15% will be refunded via your PayPal. Enjoy, fellow farmgirls!**

Mineral Makeup 101

Mineral makeup’s growing popularity has been counterbalanced by some of its shortcomings. While mineral makeup is definitely more natural and simple in its ingredients, it is messier to use and its high physical sunscreen content often causes the makeup to look thick, chalky and “kabuki-like” when worn. Some of the more well-known mineral brands, such as Bare Minerals, contain an ingredient that causes itchiness and irritation called bismuth oxychloride.

Once you have knowledge on it, mineral makeup is not difficult to figure out. It’s basically a concentrated version of regular makeup without the emollients, waxes and filler ingredients. Here are some guidelines to follow if you’re venturing out to the world of mineral makeup.

** Read the ingredients and ALWAYS avoid bismuth oxychloride.
** If you still itch after avoiding bismuth oxychloride, you may be mica-sensitive. Contact me if you need recommendations. I'm always searching for mica-free minerals!
** Use minerals that are NOT “micronized” or “nano-particles”. While they’re not always advertised, these are to be avoided and a reputable brand should be able to provide this information. My top 3 brands of non-micronized minerals are Larenim Minerals (they make pressed minerals too!), Barefaced Minerals and DreamWorld Minerals.
** Avoid food-type ingredients, the most common are rice starch and corn starch.
** Good mineral sunscreens tend to have a lighter-colored finish from the natural physical sunscreen titanium dioxide and/or zinc oxide. To avoid looking too pale or pasty, make sure the color you choose is not too light.
** Minerals are easy to apply. Forget the buffing, lightly dust face with a thin layer of minerals and build up with additional thin layers if you need extra coverage. Use a small taklon brush for a high-coverage concealing effect. If you prefer a liquid makeup, mix a small amount w/ 2 pumps of your favorite moisturizer.
** Some people get oilier while wearing mineral makeup. This is due to the natural physical sunscreen and the fact that there are less filler ingredients to block and absorb excess oils. If you’re wearing mineral makeup, I suspect that wearing something natural is important to you. If that’s the case, blot with powder-free blotting sheets regularly and know that you’re doing something good for your skin.

Must Read: Dinotopia

I don’t care how perfectly arranged one’s skincare regimen is, no one can escape the wrath of bad skin if they don’t get enough sleep. I used to suffer from moderate to severe insomnia but I’ve kept it in check by reading good books in bed. It’s a surefire way to get me started on my beauty sleep every night.

My latest obsession is the Dinotopia series. I was told about it by a balloon artist working at a colorful local restaurant. She had just finished making a balloon T-Rex for me after Boyfriend and I shamelessly gushed about my love for dinosaurs (what? They’re cool.). She asked “Have you read Dinotopia? It’s about a world where humans and dinosaurs live together in harmony”. Well, that’s all she had to say to get me squealing. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Dinotopia. Boyfriend knows that squeal well; he acquires the first book in record time (not to be gag-inducing but Boyfriend is awesome). Soon enough, I was reading that big, gorgeous book in bed. The first book took my breath away with each turning of the page as it contains out-of-this-world illustrations and an equally stunning plot.

3 Dinotopia books later, I am still amazed. I can’t decide which I like most because each book is remarkable in its own way. What they all have in common is a seamless blend of facts and fantasy that delights me to no end. Author James Gurney is genius, I can’t wait to collect more of his books. As long as he keeps writing and drawing, I’ll always have plenty of beauty sleep with fantastic dreams to match.

What’s in my bag?

Take a peek through my go-everywhere stash! In no particular order:

1. Dr Bronner’s Organic Lip Balm in Naked: Why buy Chapstick when a better-for-you option costs the same or less? This USDA-certified organic lip balm glides on buttery smooth. The Naked version is scent-free but I love all of the flavors (which are naturally scented through essential oils). Dr. Bronner rocks.

2. Herb Pharm Breath Tonic: The world would be a better place if everyone had a bottle of this. My sense of smell is freakishly acute so I’m always impressed by people with fresh breath. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t hold myself to the same standards. This is my favorite mint. It is completely organic and made with the best breath-cleansing ingredients. 1 bottle of this little gem lasts forever!

3. Japanese plum candy: This tangy candy has the true taste of plums with an ever-so-slight hint of salt. It really cleanses the palate after having a huge meal, which I’m often caught doing.

4. Coin purse my friend brought back from Japan: I love its intricate patterns. It also contains more than meets the eye.

5. 100% Pure Organic Honey Almond Nourishing Body Cream: While I’m a sucker for anything in glass bottles, this won me over with its top-notch ingredients, intoxicating almond-tofu scent and quick-absorbing formula. $6!

6. 100% Pure Fruit Pigments Lip Gloss in Sheer Strawberry: my favorite Lipgloss, looking forward to owning all of the colors.

7. Boscia Green Tea Blotting Linens: These powder-free blotting linens are embedded with Green Tea extracts that you can see and smell.

8. Spitfire Brand Pepper Spray: Protect yourselves, ladies!

9. Cellphone: doubles as a mirror when I REALLY need one.

My bag- Gryson Tessa in Black: Gryson makes amazingly luxe leather goods. Love the contrast of biker-chic leather with rich gold hardware. I’ve been looking for their classic zipped clutch everywhere but have yet to find it!

What is your essential to-go stash?

Must-visit: Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA.

Boyfriend and I headed up to LA for July 4th. During the car ride, we caught a radio ad advertising our destination. “Hollywood Bowl contains the friendliest people in LA!” And you know what? It really does! Hollywood Bowl is a well-known amphitheatre in the heart of Hollywood. You’ll find amazing live performances under the stars from various artists and LA’s own Los Angeles Philharmonic. It’s hard to believe that beyond the white bowl and its surrounding quiet trees, the insanity and flamboyance that is Hollywood ensue. On one of our first dates as a couple, Boyfriend brought me here to see the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform Mozart under the Stars. It was a beautiful performance. We had seats that were close enough to feel the music dance in our chest but far enough removed from the stage lights to take in the stars and the brisk night air. I loved every minute of it.

Their 4th of July event is well-known so we were really looking forward to returning. I’m a self-proclaimed sucker when it comes to fireworks. You’re sure to find me wide-eyed and smiling like a fool at any type of firework display (sparklers not excluded). You won’t get a hoity-toity firework review here. With that said, The Hollywood Bowl July 4th event is much more than a spectacular firework show. We arrived at our destination finding thousands of people flooding into the bowl, almost 18,000 to be exact. People of all ages, genders, cultures and ice cream preferences can be found within and surrounding the bowl. And they were all having picnics. What could be better than picnicking with 18,000 people?

We brought a yummy picnic as well (you simply cannot go to Hollywood Bowl empty-handed). We had a basket full of fried chicken, cheesy tomatoes & herbs soup (piping hot from an excellent soup thermos), olive oil garlic toasts, our favorite goat cheese, a giant vanilla bean custard cream puff to share (we’re on a diet), peach tea and a bottle of Pennsylvania Chardonnay (to wash down the fried chicken). If that sounded good, just imagine it tasting 21 times better at Hollywood Bowl. Our seat neighbors brought a 17-course picnic complete with a printed menu. Despite everyone being oh-so-civilized, I estimated that 86.7% of the adults in the audience were giddy on wine of some color. This provided the medium for a crowd that is super friendly and jovial. People were swing dancing on the side walk to the orchestra playing Big Band music. Korean moms behind us ate Kimchi before cheerfully singing the entire Star Spangled Banner in Falsetto. I couldn’t help but giggle about the eccentric mix of people that gathers here. I had a blast spending our July 4th at Hollywood Bowl and I’m super excited about future visits to this Los Angeles landmark!

And the winner is...! + Details of the next Beauty Giveaway Contest.

Random.org, schmandom.org- some things are more fun done the old-fashioned way! I printed lists of all you lovely people, cut each name out and in they went into a paper lunch bag! After much shaking and one reach of my hand, we have a winner!
Congratulations, Hollie of Georgia, U.S.A! Jane Iredale Circle/Delete Concealer is one of my stable beauty products and I’m getting ready to write a Product-analysis on it in the next week or so!

This was too much fun for me; I absolutely must do more contests! Next up: I'm giving away Smashbox O-GLOW Intuitive Cheek Color, $26 value! Check blog regularly as I will post the contest dates on top of my “follow” index. Good luck, fellow farmgirls!

Thank you sincerely to EVERYONE who visits my blog. There are loyal readers who contact me regularly but are a bit too shy to display their pretty profile on the “follow” index. I just want everyone to know that I am so touched by your support and I will continue to brainstorm for ideas and submit myself as a guinea pig to my wacky experiments. You guys are awesome :D.

Must-see: Disney-Pixar's Up

Besides squealing from excitement and fear of height, my eyes welled up an embarrassing number of times. Each tearing up was conveniently concealed by my 3-D glasses, which I’m keeping so I can watch the movie again at the $2 theater (I rarely watch anything a second time). Up is a must-see!

Must-visit: Tanaka Strawberry Farm, Irvine - Orange County, CA.

For our 1-year anniversary, Boyfriend and I had an adventure that I’ll always remember. In the many years I’ve lived in Orange County, I’ve wondered about this elusive strawberry farm more than just a few times. I finally had a chance to visit this place- it was everything I imagined it’d be and so much more. Farmer Tanaka & family have been farming in Irvine since 1998. Having the farm in the middle of this classic suburbia makes it all the more endearing. Strawberry is just one of the many different vegetations thriving on the Tanaka Farm, they also harvest corn, tomato, spinach, zucchini (yellow and green), radish, purple carrot, bok choy and so much more! To top it off, everything is organically grown.

Timing couldn’t have been better as we decided to visit in time for their third Cookout Tour. Beyond the traditional strawberry tour they conduct weekly, the smart people there have recently started a guided tour around the farm that allows visitors to pick their own veggies from the earth and cook it on the BBQ grill! We definitely earned that meal, collecting the vegetables was both hard work and great fun! The veggie & tofu feast we had was absolutely heavenly. It felt so good to know that we were eating vegetables we picked ourselves, everything tasted so fresh and flavorful. The meal was perfected by the ambiance as we relished our harvest while overlooking hills and fields in many shades of green.

For dessert, the tour guide unleashed us at the strawberry field and we had all-you-can-eat strawberries fresh from the plants. I felt like a kid set free in a candy store! The fresh strawberries were out of this world; I honestly tasted the sunshine and the earth. For $5 extra, I got a box to collect strawberries to-go. It was worth every penny as I got to take a bit of the magic home with me. The most wonderful and smartest man I know (Boyfriend) prepared strawberries, honey & champagne after the field trip. I was tickled that each bite brought me back to the strawberry field. Words cannot do justice to the enchantment we felt at the Tanaka Farm. If you live even remotely close to Orange County, there’s a definite need to visit this place.

If the Tanaka Farm is out of reach for you, visit www.pickyourown.org for your nearest fruit & veggie farm. Not only is it a great way to help local farmers, you’ll have an adventure that’s both invigorating to the senses and easy on the wallet.

Farmgirl Beauty Secret #24: For a naturally brighter smile, eat strawberries! Strawberries contain malic acid, which helps buff away surface stains for whiter teeth!

About my skin.

My skincare knowledge, collected over the past 10 years, saved my skin. For those that knew me 8, 9 years ago, they probably never saw how severely bad my skin was because I was constantly covering it up: make-up, hair, paper bag, etc. Acne had been a 4-letter word for me since freshmen year in high school and it plagued me to the end of college.

My break-outs were far from conventional. Pimples and blackheads of all sorts were surfacing on a weekly basis, each of them leaving acne scars that marked me for years. Beyond that, I had terribly dehydrated yet oily skin that was also lobster-red due to Rosacea. What really got me down were the hundreds of bumpy whiteheads that literally cast shadows on my forehead and cheeks. I didn’t have the thick, tough skin that many acne-sufferers had, my skin was hyper-sensitive and I constantly break my skin just from scratching my skin on accident. I was meticulously clean, I washed my pillowcases and makeup brushes daily, wiped my cellphone down w/ alcohol after usage and NEVER allowed anything to touch my face unless it was also meticulously clean. I was obsessed because caring for my skin was next to impossible.

Fast forward to now, my skin is clear and healthy. No one would suspect that I went through the skin disaster described above and I intend on keeping it that way. I also have way too much knowledge on skincare to not do something with it! I would love for my knowledge to help people survive through bad skin so they can get on with life. Might not sound like a big deal to people with “normal” skin but most of us know better!

Anyways, it’s about time I get off my soapbox so we can move on to the important stuff.

Brilliant Farmgirl, at your service.

Having grown up snacking on just-picked almonds and bathing in fresh goat milk supplied by our farm, I know there’s nothing better than living well through Mother Nature. Green-living is not about surviving on a raw food diet one sustains with daily trips to a posh West L.A. eatery. Nor is it about the complicated $90 “botanical” serum one slathers on religiously based on beauty magazine claims. Making the best of what nature provides is simpler than that.

True, you got to know what works and what doesn’t- Poison Ivy is natural, but we all know it wouldn’t be wise to incorporate that into your green beauty regimen! On the other hand, when it comes to other “all-natural” ingredients you know nothing about, how do you decipher what is good/bad?

Lucky for you, I am absolutely obsessed about skincare ingredients. Combining nature-respecting values and 10 years of self-motivated skincare research, I’ve accumulated a whole lot of beauty tips & secrets. Whether they are product reviews, unique beauty tricks or raves on must-have body/mind-healthy items, I’m prepared to reveal my head-to-toe health & beauty secrets, without the fillers and fluff.