Crucianize

Author: Lynnette LaPlace

  • 23andme Update and More!

    Like my previous posts, which you can find here, here, and here, I’ll be showing off my new Ancestry Composition (AC). In the last post Phasing my 23andme, you read about how my AC changed when I got a test kit for my father and he finally got his results. This update is, interesting to say the least. My AC I felt was improved but my father’s…well I guess it was improved a bit but the percentages and the categories they ended up in was less than ideal. I know that it is difficult to separate French & German from British & Irish and then you add in the small percentages of Spanish & Portuguese as well as Italian. It makes sense when you think about how often borders have shifted but my father’s AC. I’ll just show you below.

    His F&G and B&I quite literally switched positions and for someone who just got a DNA test, it would seem like his father wasn’t actually his father! It is nice to see most of the Broadly gone and I hope in future updates they can attempt to break down the African regions because there are so many different ethnic groups in Ghana alone. Just by statistics alone, you’d assume that Ghanaian ancestry would be Akan but there’s just no way to tell. Try searching for records you say? That is nearly impossible when you have no idea who the father of your great-grandmother was or not being able to go past a certain point. For instance, my Father’s mother was born in the US Virgin Islands, her mother in St. Croix and her father St. Thomas, her father’s line is a giant mystery. I have been able to track back to my Great Great Grandparents Joseph Alexander Boyles born about 1869 but I have a dead-end there, I don’t know where he was born or who his parents were and I don’t know why the last name went from Boyles to Boynes. Sarah Holm is also a complete blank, she was born about 1880 but I don’t know where or who her parents are. I keep looking in my DNA relatives but those names don’t appear to be shared with anyone else. Makes you wonder. For my other Great Great Grandparents, one side is more researched than the other, George Petersen born in St. Croix (assumed) around ?, I currently have a George Petersen born on August 29, 1881, to Thomas Petersen and mother is unknown. Thomas was born in St. Croix around 1856. Here the line stops, Petersen is a very common surname on the Island and everyone assumes that they are all connected but there’s no proof to this, I don’t even have any DNA relatives with the last name. The more researched side belongs to Maud Hines born in St. Croix on July 28, 1899, to Ann “Annie” Eliza Dorothea Boldt (See the baptism record below)

    https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61567/images/31974_B018842-00011?pId=180825

    Unfortunately, Maud’s father is unknown and the baptism record provides no clues. Ann was born on August 8, 1872, the daughter of Joseph “Joe” Boldt born about 1842, and Christina Chamberlin born about 1846 (Baptism record below)

    https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61567/images/31974_B018798-00047?pId=34581

    I have a lot of DNA relatives for my Boldt line so I was able to verify that I had the right parents. Joe and Christina were married on October 28, 1869, just two months after the birth of their first child Ancilla, who was born on August 7, 1869.

    https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61567/images/31974_B011989-00116?pId=900209832
    https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61567/images/31974_B018795-00023?pId=40889

    So all my Dansk Vestindien lines end here and I have no idea how to break these walls…yet.

    Speaking of Dansk Vestindien, I’m kind of surprised that 23andme still doesn’t have an option for there in the Recent Ancestors in the Americas category. They didn’t have Saint-Barthélemy before but I spoke about it on the forums and they added it. My father and I don’t have that but I have Dominica and Trinidad and Tobago. My father has no regions for the Caribbean at all and I find that weird because you’re suppose to have at least 5 DNA relatives with all 4 grandparents from that area to get the region but he has more than 5 for Saint-Barthélemy and he doesn’t have the region. What gives 23?

    I know of relatives in Trinidad and Tobago from my father’s side but to actually get the region is surprising until I checked it, I have as many relatives on my mother’s side as I do on my father’s, who knew!

    I’m assuming most of the people from Trinidad and Tobago are from my father’s paternal side because there were a few people who left Saint-Barthélemy and moved to Trinidad. I was contacted by one a few years ago and it was a revelation to me, I had always thought that most left St. Barts for either the States or the Virgin Islands, I was wrong, so wrong. I learned about those who left for Australia, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, those who moved back to France. They are quite literally everywhere.

    Here’s my AC update, like I said it was an improvement unlike my father’s.

    Yes, I have Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occiataine regions for France just like my father, imagine when I first took my test I only had 3.3% French.

    I look forward to seeing what the future will show because they almost always offer something interesting to look at.

  • Finding My Roots In The Caribbean

    I was thinking how crazy it is that I began my genealogy journey in 2006, that’s 14 years ago, way older than my oldest child. I was barely a child myself, 19 years old and I had no clue what I was doing. I just jumped on Ancestry and started putting in names my parents gave me. I hit a huge brick wall because there were so many people with the same name and people frequently used only their middle names or nicknames. I did a google search for my great grandparents’ names which lead me to a thread on Ancestry about a family with that name. It looked correct so I put it in my tree. Biggest rookie mistake ever!

    Luckily for me, it was the correct couple and that lead me to a distant cousin who had all kinds of information on my grandfather’s mother’s family. This was the first time I’d learned that her name wasn’t Josephine but Marie Josephine. The tree of this cousin took me all the way to Joseph Simon Turbé my 5x great grandfather. I assumed he was born in St. Barts as well since everyone else seemed to have been also, another rookie mistake. I did another google search which leads me to Anne Marie Danet’s post on her blog 3 – First French in the Antilles, you can see on line 24 there is a Joseph Turbe who married Anne Rose Greaux and he is the ancestor of all Turbe on the Island. This Joseph is my great grandfather. This suggested that he was from Nantes but he wasn’t born there which was a brick wall I had for a long time.

    To break this wall I scoured all over the net, looked at several family trees, and then I found a reference somewhere that said he was born in Couëron, I had never heard of this place before.

    Couëron is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France. It is part of the historic French Brittany. Couëron is one of the 24 communes of the Nantes Métropole.

    It makes a bit of sense why he would be considered a Nantes native but it is very unhelpful for a novice. So, I now knew where he was from but I had no idea where to find information about his parents. I asked a question on Wikitree in 2018 asking if anyone could help me find his Acte de naissance or Acte de baptême. A very helpful person pointed me in the right direction and I found not only his Acte de baptême but that he had a brother! I haven’t explored much of his brother’s descendants, maybe I should do that sometime soon.

    There’s a really nice blog about my great grandfather that you can read here: Capitaine Simon Joseph Turbé

    Now I work on all the families of Saint-Barthélemy, sometimes I find a link to my family and realize this stranger suddenly became a distant family member. I spoke a bit about it in my post about my Saint-Barthélemy Project last year, I actually have an update on that post that I just never posted about. I now have the ancestry of my 3x great-grandparents Anne Louise Chapelain and Pierre LaPlace thanks to the author of The Saint-Barth Islander. He was very helpful and I was able to make connections on those lines in my brother’s Ancestry DNA tree. The Joseph Chaplin that I thought was my grandmother’s brother was in fact her brother and someone made a typo on his age.

    For now, I’m working on the Governors of the US Virgin Islands/Danish West Indies. It is much more challenging work compared to researching my French ancestry. A lot of them were descendants of slaves and those records are not so easy to go through.

    If you’re also looking to do some research in the Dansk Vestindien I suggest this site Caribbean Genealogy Library or CGL for short, I find myself using the records for St. Thomas a lot when working with my French side because many of them left St. Barts and ended up in the Virgin Islands. I’m particularly fond of the:

    St. Thomas and St. John Government (archive no. 693), Reports of births, St. Thomas and St. John, 1859-1918 (nos. 30.1.1-6) and St. Thomas and St. John Government (archive no. 693), Reports of marriages, St. Thomas and St. John, 1828-1918 (nos. 30.2.1-7), these two have proven very very helpful.

    For census records, during Danish time you can find those on Ancestry which of course requires a subscription to use but you can also find the St. Croix census on the Dansk Demografisk Database by Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives), all you do is enter a name and it will bring you up all instances of that name appearing in the Census records.

    Show Household will display everyone that lived in the household.

    Show all Fields will show you all the information about the person you were looking for.

    It is a pain because you have to search for everyone one by one but it is free so I can’t really complain. I should note that not everyone can be found this way, the record you are looking for might not have been transcribed or the name is spelled differently than you are looking for.

    For the more recent Census records you can find them on Ancestry or you can look on FamilySearch, FamilySearch is free to use, you just have to sign up for a free account. It is a very useful site because you can also look up their free world tree to see if your relatives are already on there. If they are you will be notified when you search for records about them. You can see it circled in the photo attached.

    There are not that many of us doing Caribbean genealogy on Wikitree so if you are interested in helping I’d suggest joining and helping put our Islands on the map.

  • What Made My October Interesting

    What Made My October Interesting

    So, it’s October…

    The month of both Naveen and his father’s birthday as well as several other family members. The month of Halloween which I have to admit I don’t really pay attention to. We’ve never celebrated it when I was growing up but Naveen has been big on doing the whole dressing up and trick or treating but not this year for obvious reasons.

    Since the 25th of September, I’ve been using the Multi-Restore Gel Cream and Multi-Restore Facial Sleeping Oil from Garnier Bio. I spoke a bit about it here. This was my first time using a Gel Cream and a Facial Sleeping Oil, normally I wash my face and apply a cream then go to sleep so this really was a new experience for me, here are my thoughts on the products:

    Multi-Restore Gel Cream

    First of all, what is a Gel Cream?

    A Gel Cream is water-based, it has a lighter and more fluid texture compared to regular creams which is why they provide better hydration without leaving your skin feeling heavy or greasy. They are aimed towards people with oily skin.

    The first thing I noticed about the Gel Cream was how light and easy it was to spread it on my face and neck, the second thing I noticed was the scent, I really don’t like the smell of hemp and this was no exception, whenever I get a whiff of hemp it reminds me of some kind of musty old thing you’d find in the back of your grandmother’s house. Disgusting.

    Thankfully the scent does not linger at all.

    Once the Gel Cream is applied it absorbs into the skin rapidly and you forget all about that terrible scent and are left with a very moisturized face.

    Multi-Restore Facial Sleeping Oil

    Facial Sleeping Oils or Night Oils are oils designed to be used before you go to bed. They are usually too heavy to wear during the day or under makeup.

    When using a Facial oil a little goes a long way, trust me, when I first applied the oil I used it like I would a cream and it left my face feeling very very greasy, the next day I applied less and it was much better. Once again the scent is terrible but doesn’t last long. I never remember that I applied anything with Hemp let alone two products which in my opinion is great.

    Reactions

    I can’t say for certain that the products were behind my lack of PMS pimples, PMS is the only time I get pimples, and this month I had 0 pimples! If it was because of the products then great but it could easily have been just a coincidence. I will only have to keep using it for a couple more months to see if I skip the pimples for the next two or three months to see.

    Voxbox Update

    Now onto my Voxbox or should I say lack of Voxbox…

    I know, it’s been 4 weeks since my last post and I’m still without my Opi Rainbow Voxbox…

    A lot of people in the UK as well as some in France for their boxes but I’m among the unlucky few who have still not received their boxes. The campaign ended earlier this week and literally disappeared off my dashboard, I was pretty anxious, to say the least. If you don’t complete your missions for a campaign you can be excluded from ever receiving one again and I really didn’t want that to happen. Two days later the campaign reappeared and has been extended again! It should last until November but to be honest I’m losing hope that I will ever receive this box. I’ve been a member of the site for 6 years and this is the first time I’ve ever had this kind of problem. I don’t know if Covid is to blame for the terrible shipping or if this will be the norm now.

    So, you remember those false nails I bought to use with the Voxbox?

    I already started using them. I have painted my nails a few times thinking “Oh no! What if my box comes now?” It never does though so I’ll continue to use the nails and color my nails something new every few weeks.

    The nails are very long in my opinion, I can’t leave them too long or I start to feel like I can’t do anything so I trimmed them down to the perfect length for me.

    Nailfies 💅

    Cien in 15 Nude Brown
    Spartoo Glossy Nail Polish in Red Beauty
    Opi Tokyo Collection – I’m on a Sushi Roll

    I guess we’ll see if I get my box next week or if I never get it…

  • Getting Ready for my OPI Rainbow Voxbox

    *Includes Affiliate links

    Hey guys!

    So it’s been almost three weeks since I posted about looking forward to September, usually, I would have had my OPI Rainbow Voxbox at least two days after receiving the You’re In! email but…Covid.

    The days were passing without a box and everyone was getting worried because Influenster doesn’t provide International tracking so the tracker never moved past this:

    This campaign is active in the US, UK, and France and it seems the US got their boxes but the UK and French boxes were nowhere to be seen. I sent a message asking if the boxes had been shipped yet since no one in the UK or France received their boxes and afterward I received this email:

    Basically, the email is saying they just learned that I hadn’t received my box yet and they were experiencing shipping delays and I should expect my Voxbox in one to two weeks.

    My nails are jacked and I said I would look for some falsies to do the campaign. I honestly didn’t know what brand to get so I searched Amazon France for one with the best reviews. I found these by a brand called Vixi.

    https://amzn.to/3774v4M

    This set includes 600 nails of 10 different sizes. My hands are small, size 2.5 ring! With all these different sizes I know I will find a good match (I hope so anyway).

    The set comes with a little tube of glue but I’m not overly fond of the glues that come with false nails, they have a habit of being very weak. My nails will pop off the very next day if I don’t continuously reapply glue.

    I decided to buy a pack of glue made especially for false nails.

    https://amzn.to/3x8t6ks

    The pack includes 5 bottles of glue and a nail file. The set of nails also comes with a nail file and I have a few of my own already. You can never have enough nail files.

    It’s been about 5 days since the email about the delays so now it’s just a waiting game. I’m guessing I’ll get it around the same time as the package from Le Lab.

    Maybe I should say “What’s up, October?” or maybe not. I might jinx it again.

  • Why September Will Be An Exciting Month

    September is looking like it will be a very interesting month for me. I have a lot of new products coming my way to test out and I am excited!

    On August 6, I received a survey about a Voxbox from Influenster, I’ve spoken about them before, it’s a review site where you have the chance of getting a box of products to review. There’s a wide range of things you might be chosen for, food, clothing, beauty products, I haven’t seen any for books, video games, or toys but you never know. I’ve been with the site since 2014 and to my knowledge, they never sent boxes to the Virgin Islands but when I moved here to France I forgot about the site. They didn’t ship here and I had other things on my mind but I decided to go back to it and review stuff just because. In 2018 they sent their first VoxBox to France and I got it!

    The Marc Jacobs Velvet Noir Mascara Volume Spectaculaire VoxBox was my very first Voxbox and I really enjoyed the product. You can read my review about it here Finding happiness in the little things. When you complete the campaign you earn a neat little badge that you can display on your profile.

    In 2019 I got into another VoxBox, I got into the OPI Tokyo Collection VoxBox, I spoke about it here New Voxbox! and here New OPI Tokyo Collection Voxbox. I wasn’t really expecting to get this box because France seems to get two surveys a year and I hadn’t gotten into the last one for 2018 or the first one for 2019. I really loved this box because I almost always seem to pick up purple nail polish and this allowed me to venture out a bit.

    If the trend stays the same the survey I got from Influenster on August 6 is either the first or last survey of the year. I’m unsure because I received a survey on April 14 about Rexona deodorant but nobody even mentioned receiving it on Instagram or online anywhere. Usually, you can see what everyone has received if you follow the right hashtag on Instagram but there has been no real activity on the French Influenster hashtag since last year.

    This survey that I received was about a product from OPI, I’m going to be really honest even though I opted in I kind of hoped I wouldn’t get it because my nails are really terrible right now. I picked and peeled them until there is nothing. I’m going to have to get some falsies to do this campaign. While I was hoping not to and hoping to get the VoxBox, it showed up on my profile but I haven’t received a You’re In! email yet. I’ve heard of this happening to people before but this was the first time it has happened to me. With my first campaign, I got the email and it took a while for it to show up on my profile and I was worried it had been a mistake.

    The other products I’m waiting for are from Le Lab by Doctissimo. On August 5, I received an invite to apply for their Garnier Bio à l’huile de Chanvre Bio (Hemp Oil) campaign. I’ve never been accepted to any of the previous campaigns I applied to so I wasn’t really hopeful but on August 14, I was accepted!

    I will be receiving the Hemp Multi-Restore Gel Cream and the Hemp Multi-Restore Facial Sleeping Oil. I was supposed to receive the package very soon but there were unforeseen delays and I won’t get it until late September. I’m not really a fan of the Hemp smell but Garnier makes really good products so I’ll just have to wait and see about it.

    There’s one other thing I’m hoping to hear about but I can’t say whether or not I’ll be reviewing it yet. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t so I’ll wait until I hear if I’m actually getting it before I say “I’m going to be reviewing this!”

    So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to September.

    I’ll obviously be reviewing these products so keep an eye out for those posts next month. Since I’m supposed to receive the Garnier one in late September it will probably end up being posted in October.

  • Phasing My 23andme With My Father

    Hello there!

    As you guys have read about before here, here, and here. I took the 23andme test in June 2018 and got my results back on July 18, 2018. I was left very underwhelmed, there was not much to learn from the results.

    Take a look for yourself:

    Over 100€ for that, I thought my brother’s Ancestry test was much more informative. It was fine though, a couple of months after there was an update and it broke down the African. It still wasn’t the best but at least it wasn’t just West African anymore. My .3% African Hunter-Gatherer was gone while Nigerian, Senegambian & Guinean, Congolese, and Sudanese were separated from the broad West African category. Coastal West African while narrowed down from just West African is still a broad category not to mention the Broadly West African, Broadly Congolese & Southern East African, and Broadly Sub-Saharan African. Just a lot of Broadly.

    My European stayed mostly the same. Scandinavian at .4% was added send it made sense since my brother had Norway and Sweden which I assumed came from my Father’s mother. My grandmother’s family has been in the Danish West Indies since the first slaves were brought there. There’s also a mulatto ancestor with the surname Boldt, I admit it’s not much evidence but a cousin who descended from that same line also has Norway and Sweden. Unfortunately, Ancestry DNA doesn’t have a Chromosome browser so I can’t see where that Norway and Sweden are located and if my brother and this cousin match on that same chromosome. Since doing my research on my grandfather’s place of birth Saint-Barthélemy, I realized that Swedish could come from that side since the Swedish colonized the Island from 1784 to 1877.

    I should note that my African went up and my European went down, not by much but I found it interesting nonetheless. My Native American stayed the same and I gained Western Asian and North African.

    In May 2019 my results went through another update, they called this a Beta update, my African portion was broken down, even more, I lost the Sudanese but gained Ghanaian, Liberian & Sierra Leonean, the Congolese & Southern East African got a break down showing Angolan & Congolese but there were still those pesky Broadly categories.

    My European had a revamp, the Iberian category was renamed to Spanish & Portuguese, I lost the little bit of Italian I had. My Native American once again stayed the same. Strangely, I had Central & South Asian added at 0.1%, seeing how categories at that level seem to vanish I didn’t expect to see it at the next update.

    Now we’re at my most recent update before I phased with my father. It was updated around September 2019 but if you remember I was pregnant and sick during that time so I didn’t see the update until April of this year. My African Hunter-Gatherer is back at the same percentage too. Southern East African was added at .1%. My Western Asian & North African went up. I had a location for France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine which lines up perfectly with my paper trail, and I had a Caribbean location Dominica, which is right on the money since both my Mother’s parents were from there.

    For Father’s Day, I decided I was going to buy my father a 23andme kit, it wasn’t a surprise since I had spoken to both parents about it and they were interested, my father got his kit in July and his results were ready earlier this month. I’m not going to lie but I didn’t expect anything in his composition other than European and African. What he received shocked me.

    My father apparently has Native American ancestry. Never in my life has anyone ever mentioned him having Native American anywhere in any of his family lines and since both his parents have passed I have no one to ask about it and will probably never find out where it comes from. Even better?

    My Native American comes from him. All my life I was told my Mother’s mother had Kalinago ancestry and when I saw Native American in my composition I assumed it came from my Grandmother, jokes on me though, it could have come from a Grandmother, just not the one I thought.

    My Father has two regions in France and six in the United Kingdom. Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie line up perfectly with our paper trail but all the United Kingdom regions are a mystery.

    Here are my results after phasing with my father. My African Hunter-Gatherer is gone once again. Italian has reappeared. My West Asian & North African has gone down again, this time they are trace ancestry.

    I guess my course of action now is to test my Mother and see what secrets her DNA is hiding.

  • My New Kylie Skin Routine

    My New Kylie Skin Routine

    Le post d’aujourd’hui sera spécial, mon premier post en français sur l’essai de la Kylie Skin Routine. J’ai utilisé le nettoyant moussant pour le visage, le tonique au lait vanille et la crème hydratante pour le visage. Ma peau n’est pas du tout problématique, ce dont j’ai parlé ici dans What I Use To Keep My Skin So Smooth. Si j’utilise quelque chose, c’est peut-être un nettoyant et une crème. Vous pouvez voir les produits que j’ai utilisés dans Peau lisse et Dry Shampoo for Natural Hair.

    Permettez-moi de commencer par dire que j’ai entendu parler de Kylie Jenner, mais que je n’ai jamais rien acheté chez elle ni regardé “Keeping up with the Kardashians”. Honnêtement, je ne savais pas à quoi m’attendre avec les produits. J’ai essayé de ne pas regarder les critiques ou les commentaires afin de pouvoir être aussi impartial que possible et me faire ma propre opinion. Pour tous les produits nécessaires, j’ai cherché les ingrédients et deux des produits m’ont fait réfléchir. J’y reviendrai plus tard.

    Ma phase d’essai a commencé le samedi 1er août 2020 et s’est terminée aujourd’hui, le samedi 15 août 2020.

    Ma routine de soins de la peau comprend ces étapes :

    • Se laver le visage avec le nettoyant moussant
    • Appliquer le toner de lait
    • Appliquer une crème hydratante

    Juste pour voir si je pouvais repérer une différence notable, j’ai pris une photo avant de commencer ma nouvelle routine.

    Ignorez les cheveux, s’il vous plaît. C’était le jour du lavage.

    Mousse Nettoyante Visage Nettoyant Visage

    La première chose qui m’a inquiété dans ce produit, c’est qu’il contient de l’huile de kiwi et que je suis allergique au kiwi. Je n’étais pas sûre de ma réaction à ce produit car je n’avais jamais utilisé de produits de soin contenant du kiwi auparavant. J’ai quand même essayé et j’ai espéré que tout irait bien. Lors de la première utilisation, j’ai remarqué qu’il avait une très bonne mousse, ni trop ni trop peu, il a laissé mon visage très doux, mais j’ai l’impression qu’il ne m’a pas vraiment nettoyé le visage.

    J’ai l’impression que cela convient mieux à un nettoyage en douceur plutôt qu’au démaquillage.

    Pro :

    • Le visage était doux après l’utilisation
    • L’odeur est légère et non accablante

    Contre :

    • Je n’avais pas l’impression de m’être vraiment nettoyé le visage
    • Huile de graines de kiwi

    Vous pouvez acheter ce produit ici :

    Nocibé

    Lait Tonique à la vanille Tonique

    Ce produit est vraiment bon, il a une belle consistance et j’ai l’impression qu’il enlève vraiment tout ce que la mousse laisse derrière elle. Le parfum est très léger, presque sans odeur. Je n’ai vraiment rien de mauvais à dire à ce sujet.

    Pro :

    • Enlever l’excès de saleté du visage et du cou

    Contre :

    • Rien du tout

    Vous pouvez acheter ce produit à l’adresse suivante :

    Nocibé

    Hydratant visage Hydratant

    Je n’étais vraiment pas sûr d’utiliser cette crème. L’un des ingrédients est un extrait de peau d’orange et je suis allergique aux oranges. Je me suis dit que si c’est sur la peau, ça ne devrait pas être si grave puisque mon allergie est plutôt à la consommation de produits à base d’orange. J’ai essayé et je dois dire que je n’ai eu aucun problème. La crème a une bonne consistance, pas trop épaisse et pas trop légère, elle s’absorbe très bien dans la peau ; malheureusement, je n’ai pas trouvé que ma peau se sentait hydratée après l’avoir utilisée. Elle était assez sèche. Au début, il était assez facile de faire sortir du produit, mais après l’avoir utilisé pendant un certain temps, il est devenu plus difficile d’obtenir du produit, parfois je devais pomper plusieurs fois ou secouer un peu le produit.

    Pro :

    • Bonne cohérence

    Contre :

    • Le visage ne se sent pas hydraté
    • Extrait d’écorce d’orange
    • Il faut pomper plusieurs fois

    Vous pouvez acheter ce produit ici :

    Nocibé

    Réactions

    Le tout premier jour où j’ai commencé cette routine, deux heures après avoir appliqué les produits, mon visage me semblait légèrement brûlé. J’avais très peur d’avoir des boutons ou de voir mon visage devenir très rouge, alors j’ai continué à regarder dans le miroir pour voir si quelque chose changeait. Heureusement, je n’ai vu aucun changement.

    Le deuxième jour, je n’ai pas eu de sensation de brûlure, de rougeur ou de boutons.

    Deux semaines après avoir commencé la routine, mon visage est lisse et doux.

    Mon visage après ces deux semaines, je sais que vous remarquerez que mon grain de beauté est de l’autre côté maintenant mais c’est parce que j’ai enlevé le réglage du miroir de ma caméra frontale, c’était un peu de la vanité. Je voulais que ma chaîne Cruzan Girl se lise vraiment comme Cruzan Girl quand je prenais des selfies et j’ai oublié de la remettre en marche.

  • Trip to Correns and more

    Welcome back or if you’re visiting for the first time hello.

    The last time I posted “The Last of them” my grandfather had just passed away and I was not in a good frame of mind. I’m doing better now, not 100% but I don’t feel like closing myself up in a deep dark hole, I got the space I needed to grieve and I’m thankful for that.

    One of my nieces went on vacation to the beach and my son wanted so badly to join her but the closest beach to us is almost 5 hours away! There’s no way we’d travel that far to go to the beach. Or so I thought…

    On Monday, all smug like, my son said to me “we’re going to the beach tomorrow”, Yeah right, I thought, we’re not going anywhere but his father didn’t say anything to me, then again his father waits until the very last minute to tell me anything. I’m sitting there contemplating this information and whether or not I can trust it when Marvin comes home and asks Naveen if he told me.

    Told me?

    Told me what?

    Naveen said “yes, I tell Mama”, you mean it’s true? We’re going to the beach tomorrow?

    Apparently.

    I had a rough night, Oyanie kept waking up even though she was sleeping for a good six hours, this night she decided four hours was good enough. So there I was on Tuesday morning, tired as hell and have to get up to start packing and making sure we don’t forget anything.

    Everything checked and double-checked, we were on our way, on our to where? I didn’t know. I just knew we were going to the beach. I mentioned before that my husband doesn’t tell me anything until the last minute? Well for trips he doesn’t tell me where we are going at all… I think he works under the misinformation that I like surprises, nothing could be further from the truth, after 10 years I’ve just accepted that he likes surprising me. I’ve never hated any of his surprises so I’ll allow it.

    First, we stopped to get gas, can’t drive for so long on an empty tank eh, that done we started our long drive to the beach, at first I was admiring the scenery as we drove but that quickly turned to fatigue as we continued driving, we’d been driving for almost two hours when I felt the car slowing down, I didn’t see it ok, I fell asleep, it was a very long drive. We took a little break so we could stretch our legs, eat and drink, and just rest for a bit. We still had about two hours left of driving to go. I was curious about what kind of hotel we would be staying in this time and anticipating just dropping onto the bed and staying there for however long I would need. Sitting in the car for so long had made my back ache like there was no tomorrow.

    With our little break over we were back on the road again, this passed by like a blur, I remember a lot of trees and buildings and then water, some of the water was greenish colored but the closer we got to our destination the bluer the color became.

    Finally, we arrived at our destination, this wasn’t like any hotel I’d ever seen before because it wasn’t, we were staying in someone’s air b&b?

    It was an apartment of sorts, the door was one of those really old European doors, an ancient wooden panel with a round knob that looks like it might fall off at any moment, it didn’t though, these doors are pretty strong despite their appearance. Inside was a kitchen slash dining slash living area. Kind of like what we have at home, there’s no definition of space in the homes I’ve visited here in France. There was an upstairs, where I assume were the bedrooms and bathroom but there was one problem.

    The stairs looked like something out of my worst nightmare…

    Apparently, Naveen felt the same because he refused to climb the stairs, we had no choice though, the beds were upstairs and the toilet which we would need sooner or later. His father helped him climb the ladder, I refuse to call it stairs, I followed behind gingerly placing my feet on each rung and holding onto the railing as my life depended on it. If you think going up that monstrosity was bad, going down it was worse, each rung was so narrow I had to try to climb down sideways so my feet could find purchase on each slender step. The worse thing about this was when I had to go up or down with Oyanie in my arms, There I was with my tiny baby held tightly in one arm and the other wrapped around the railing and trying to gauge how far down each step was from the other.

    Naveen became a pro at the stairs, he went up and down like they were nothing, me? No such thing, I took the stairs only if I really needed to otherwise I was fine to stay upstairs or downstairs wherever I was at the moment.

    We didn’t end up going to the beach the first day because it would take another hour and we had reacher too late to go to the beach. We did visit an old wash station where there was a river flowing through. Naveen told his father he didn’t want to go to the beach anymore, he was content to stay here and enjoy the river, we didn’t come all this way for the river though. We were going to drive to the beach the next day.

    A semi-good night’s sleep, Ms. Oyanie was up every four hours again, we had breakfast and relaxed a bit before heading to the beach around noon. The drive was interesting, we followed a canal of water along a very small road, you literally had to ride the wall to let another car pass, at the end of the canal was the beach.

    I’ll be completely honest, being from the Caribbean I grew up with white sand, blue waters, literally beaches of your dreams, this, was not it. First things first, the sand, more like dirt was speckled with something gold that felt like dust on your skin if it touched you. The water was not beckoning at all, add in that there were so many people there, my anxiety went sky high and I was content to stay on the bench we scored under the very shady tree. Marvin asked me if I wanted to go in the water and it was a big no. I’m fine love.

    We spent about two hours there, Naveen enjoyed himself immensely, Oyanie stayed with me most, and Marvin went in the water with Naveen, everybody enjoyed themself and it was time to drive back to the apartment.

    Had an okay night, it was time to head back home which meant another long drive, strangely, going up and down those horrifying stairs gave me muscle aches in my legs, I will not miss them at all. And because I completely forgot that Oyanie made five months yesterday I decided to take some pictures, she was not cooperating at all so I got many many very similar pictures lol. I thought I had settled on the best picture but I felt like the background was too busy and you couldn’t see her face well enough so I moved locations and voilà, the month 5 picture.

    This drive I did better, I didn’t fall asleep so I saw some cool things like this church? on top of the hill, not sure you can really see it in the picture.

    Also saw this really cute tiny castle on a roundabout.

    Finally, we were back home!

    This trip wasn’t the only thing I was up to, I also found this really interesting app on the app store, you upload a picture and people try to guess where you are from, it said to input the furthest back your ancestry went so I entered France and Nigeria. Trying out the app I realized that I really can’t tell where people are from, I get lucky sometimes but for the most part, I guess very wrongly.

    Here’s what people guessed for me:

    The last interesting thing I have to talk about is a secret campaign I was selected for. I can’t say what I’m supposed to review yet but when the package arrived I’ll write a post about it. Stay tuned for that!

    Alright, that’s all, for now, see you guys later!

  • The last of them

    Leen

    That’s what my grandfather would call me. Said in his Dominican (Dominica) accented English.

    I have so many wonderful memories of him and with him. I can still hear him calling my brother Andre Champagne or hear him playing the guitar with us children gathered round in that little house in Peter’s Rest.

    I can see his photography hanging on the walls of my parent’s home. It was through him that I developed a love of photography, I always hoped that I could someday be as good as he was, I haven’t used my camera in a very long time and that makes this so much worse to me.

    I remember the Werther’s candy he always had for us kids. I loved them and will always think of my Grandpa when I see them. They don’t taste the same but I’ll buy a pack the next time I see one and just pretend for a moment that it’s the same one you used to share.

    I remember that one year when you had so many Sonic the Hedgehog tops, my brothers and I would color on a piece of paper, cut it out to fit on top of the top, and watch the pretty patterns it would make as it spun in a circle.

    I remember the last time I saw you, 2015, my mother brought me and my son to see you before we left the island for France. You held onto us and prayed for our safe journey.

    I didn’t grow up knowing my great grandparents but I’ll be damned if my children don’t know about their great grandfather Norbert.

    My grandfather was my last living grandparent, he fought that cancer for 18 long months, every message from home I dreaded those words, I knew it was coming but still…

  • Getting My Skin Summer Ready

    Last week I received two samples in the mail and today I finally got to try them out.

    I’ll be giving my thoughts on erborian’s Ginseng BB Cream and both the Minéral 89 Daily Booster and Minéral 89 Eyes from Vichy.

    I want to state that I’ve never used a BB Cream before but I have heard of them and I’ve heard that some of them can be drying so it’s best to use a moisturizer before applying your BB Cream, I decided to use the Daily Booster first so here is what I thought of it.

    Daily Booster by Vichy

    I applied little drops on my face and spread it from the center outward, the product felt a little thicker than water and I had no problem spreading it on my face or throat. It absorbed quickly and left no residue behind. The scent is very agreeable, it’s not cloying and once applied it doesn’t linger.

    You can purchase the Daily Booster for 21,20€

    I have terrible dark circles around my eyes and having a 4-month-old who doesn’t sleep hasn’t helped so I used the Eyes serum next.

    Eyes by Vichy

    I took less than a pea-sized amount and applied it under both my eyes, the product felt creamy and thicker than the Booster but quickly absorbed into the skin, like the Booster the scent is not overly present and doesn’t linger.

    You can purchase Eyes for 13,50€

    And finally, I applied the BB Cream.

    Ginseng BB Cream by erborian

    The BB Cream I received was in the shade Caramel, it has a very pleasing odor, it smells lightly floral, you really don’t need that much product so I applied some pea-sized drops and spread it from the center outward. I wasn’t sure if Caramel would match my skin tone but it’s hard to tell that I have anything on my face.

    You can purchase the BB Cream for 16,90€

    As you can see both Vichy and erborian have helped me achieve Summer-Ready Skin.