Yuzen December 2012 edition

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I’ve been putting off this post because I didn’t have adequate pictures, but I managed to get some of all but one product so I’ll go ahead now. I know it’s super late but sometimes you’ll get a different item from the same brand so if you subscribe to Yuzen, you can become more familiar with these brands. Even if you don’t subscribe, perhaps you’re curious about one of these products before you purchase!

Yuzen is $26 per month and comes with around 5 or 6 eco-friendly beauty, skincare, food/snacks, and home products. Boxes are sent monthly with no option to skip. Sometimes there’s a waitlist to get the subscription. They do not offer a referral program.

*Disclosure: As a super fan, I was invited to be the Yuzen Ambassador to help them spread the word about their brand. Starting with the October box, I began to receive them for free. I was not compensated otherwise and all opinions are my own, irregardless of my relation to Yuzen. I just happen to think they’re awesome (as does everyone else I’ve heard from). :)

items in yuzen december 2012 box laid out

I got so carried away with the products that I didn’t even take proper unboxing photos!

Click on the pictures for the full sizes so you can enjoy all the details of each product!  You can even zoom in to read all the messaging.

collage of sibu beauty cleansing face and body bar included in the december 2012 yuzen boxSibu Beauty – Sea Buckthorn Cleansing Face and Body Bar: One of my absolute favorite products has been this Sibu cleansing face & body bar. It smells AMAZING and feels so good on your skin. It’s gentle enough for your face, but effective for use on your entire body. Sea buckthorn is an up-and-coming superfruit that has rare Omega-7s, which are apparently good for you. This brand in general is pretty great – their products are cruelty-free and contain no parabens, preservatives, etc. They also source their sea buckthorn through fair trade agreements. Love it!

collage of red flower candle in ocean included in the december 2012 yuzen boxred flower – ocean little flower candle: This is a cute little candle with unexpected burning power! You probably wouldn’t guess that it can burn for about 15 hours! When I first read that, I thought it was supposed to be 1.5 hours. But true to its word, I started burning one and it lasted hours upon hours. I didn’t track exactly how many hours it burned for, but I logged at least 12 before I lost track. I didn’t actually burn this scent yet so I don’t know how it fills the room, but it has a subtle scent that I think I’ll enjoy. One thing to note – due to the small size, the glass can get quite hot so be careful when handling.

collage of tara bath therapy bath salts included in the december 2012 yuzen boxTARA Bath Therapy – stress relieving bath salts: This pouch of bath salts is very fine-grained. It’s practically powder, which I imagine would dissolve well in water. It smells nice and relaxing – a sweet but not overpowering scent. I rarely take baths, so I’ve actually yet to try this, but I’m really looking forward to when I do. I’ve been bringing it with me on my travels just in case I happen to get an opportunity for a bath.

collage of spa technologies hydrating laminaria oil included in the december 2012 yuzen boxSpa Technologies – Hydrating Laminaria Oil: This oil has a lovely faint scent that I guess is the laminaria? I’ve never heard of that before and apparently it’s a type of brown algae. Actually, I don’t think algae really has a scent, so it must be the essential oils they used. There’s a hint of citrus that makes this oil refreshing. I’ve been massaging it in after my showers and it makes my skin feel great. I never really tried oil before this, but now I’m hooked.

collage of ambre blends essences included in the december 2012 yuzen boxAmbre Blends – essences sample pack: These are small samples that I wish came with little spritzers so I could mist them over myself. The names of the scents don’t tell me much – ambre, solace, invoke, and unmasque essences. They are very faint scents that I could barely pick out. Solace is my favorite because it has a fresh yet warm sort of scent. Invoke reminded me of the outdoors, like grass and water and other greenery. Unmasque was a warmer scent and I really couldn’t pick out a scent for ambre. They certainly meant it when they said their scents are delicate! I love that they’re vegan and I think you’d get a far better sense once you start rubbing it in your skin and letting your body heat bring out the scent more.

collage of sparitual nail polish in hunk of burnin' love and multi-tasker base & topcoat in one included in the december 2012 yuzen boxSpaRitual – nail lacquers in Hunk of Burnin’ Love and Multi-Tasker Base & Topcoat in One: These nail polishes are so cute and apply really well. I love the bright red color, which was fitting for the holiday months when I got it. SpaRitual makes vegan polishes that are at least 3-free, if not 5-free (aka they don’t use some of the harmful chemicals in older formulas). You can feel great about your nail polish and look great too!

Missy J’sMint, Lime, Sea Salt Truffley Treats: This is the one item I can’t photograph since the remaining pack I have is at my parents’ house. It’s crazy that these chocolates are vegan, with no dairy in addition to no caffeine, refined sugar, or wheat. It’s slightly more crumbly than chocolate I’m used to and perhaps it’s the mint+lime+sea salt combo, but I wasn’t a huge fan. For those who like that flavor combination and/or are looking for a vegan chocolate, this is a great alternative. I’ve seen plenty of other people who enjoy the taste and are very grateful for all the ingredients it manages to keep out. Perfect for those with dietary restrictions!

365great Day 110: Inko’s tea

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365great challenge day 110: inko's teaThis is probably my favorite brand of bottled tea, ever. I love white tea and I love blueberries, so I try just about every white tea or blueberry tea that I can find. Many years ago, I saw Inko’s on the shelves at Whole Foods and I love how light yet flavorful it is. I started getting it as a treat every now and then. When I discovered the case discount offered at Whole Foods, of course I had to start buying this amazing drink by the case. After all, the sealed bottles can sit for a long time so why not buy in bulk and save? More recently, in the past year or so, I started trying their other flavors and fell in love with the white peach one as well. I’ve always been a sucker for white peaches and this is a great tea to have when I want something a little sweeter and stronger than the blueberry tea. Between these two flavors, I have no need for any other bottled tea. They’re both so great!

Disney World haul

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Remember when Panda and I stayed at the Hilton Anaheim to earn Disney gift cards? Maybe not, since I only mentioned it in passing. Well, we actually stayed for two visits of 4+ nights, which earned us a $100 gift card each time. With $200 to spend on Disney gear (or tickets, if we had wanted to visit the theme park), we had quite a bit of shopping to do on our trip to Orlando. Totally coincidental that we had a trip to the Disney World region right after earning those gift cards, but it worked out perfectly. 🙂

disney products laid out including beach towels, tshirts, trucker hat, tank tops, scarves, coffee scoop, foot scrub, and golf balls

What $200 can get you at Disney.

We spent hours wandering the stores at Downtown Disney and also making trips out to the outlets to see what those Disney stores had to offer. We ended up with two Walt Disney World beach towels, a ladies tshirt, a trucker hat, a set of 3 Mickey golf balls, two scarves, a men’s tshirt, a men’s Hawaiian shirt, an h2o+ foot scrub, two tank tops, and a coffee scoop. Not bad, eh? We got items from three different stores and managed to find something for everyone – ourselves as well as his parents, my parents, his brother, and my cousin. Pretty proud of our haul!

What would you have gotten with $200 to spend on anything Disney?

disney golf balls, coffee scoop, and h2o+ foot scrub

Closer look at the smaller items.

365great Day 109: mustache glasses

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365great challenge day 109: mustache glassesThese things crack me up. They add their own charm to sunglasses, each in their own way. It’s amazing how the shape of a mustache can really change the impression you get. I’ve seen curled ones that remind me of circus folk, small ones that remind me of French men, large ones that remind me of that Looney Tunes cartoon, even digitized ones that remind me of video games. They’re a ton of fun to play with and they’re quite a conversation starter. Pretty simple and small for such an effective prop! Actually, a mustache in general is pretty cool. I’ve seen soap bars, home button stickers, t-shirts, and even cookie cutters with a basic mustache design that add an extra pop to the product. Isn’t that just great?

FMSPhotoADay June 2013

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Here’s my final FMS Photo A Day pictures for now. I’ve done it for three and a half months and I’m ready to try my own challenge. Check out my previous months’ postings too.

365great Day 108: noodle cables

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Learn more about 365great here.
365great challenge day 108: noodle cablesI wrote about the noodle cable I got recently. I think it’s a better design than the standard circular cables that most charging cables come in. It’s less prone to wear that exposes the wiring inside, unlike the standard Apple cables I’ve gotten. It’s much more resistant to the bending pressures by the USB plug, which is where most of my cables start to fray. I’ve had to tape many of them, but the flat noodle cable design doesn’t have that problem! It rolls up nicely into a small disc shape yet smoothes out easily into a long cable. In addition, it is rather tangle-proof so it’s a lot easier to handle when I need to constantly take it in and out of bags. This sort of design is such an improvement I wonder why it isn’t adopted more widely. It works great!

How to: Manage Facebook Pages

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First on the agenda: using the correct “voice”

facebook voice use as page dropdown menu choiceWhenever you are on Facebook interacting with content, you have the choice to use your personal profile or one of your Facebook pages. By default, you use your personal voice whenever you’re on people’s profile pages or business pages and you use your Facebook page voice whenever you’re on your own Facebook page managing it.For example, when I go to http://facebook.com/littlefatnotebook, if I like or comment on something, it shows as littlefatnotebook doing that action whereas if I go to some other business’s page and comment, it shows a comment from my personal Mary Qin account. If you want to comment as your page, then go first to your Facebook page and click the “Edit Page” dropdown menu. The last option, “Use Facebook as” is what you want. Now if you navigate away from your page, you will find that it preserves that setting and won’t switch to your personal profile as it normally would. Along the top bar, you can see which voice you’re in.

Getting more likes with exclusive content

To get more likes you could always run an ad or hold a giveaway, but if you want to up the ante for free, try setting up a tab with exclusive content, which can only be unlocked if people like your page. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of bigger brands doing this (though they mostly do it for giveaways). “Like us to enter!” they say. For the technical details on how to create locked content, check out Kira’s tutorial. You can get creative with what you offer and a lot of it depends on your brand. If you’re a blogger, you can include a list of resources for free stuff. If you sell things, you can include a special discount code. If you’re a musician, you can include a free download for your latest track. You get the idea!

Using the Facebook Pages app

Facebook created a Pages app that you can download for free to your mobile device. This makes it much easier to manage your pages on the go and it allows you to check out the Insights for your page. This also shows you notifications for your pages so you can tell whether there’s been action there lately. It’s a nice little app to keep handy!

Bringing out “posts by others” into your stream/timeline

facebook posts by others allowed on page

Have you ever noticed that when visitors comment on your page, it gets relegated to a tiny box on the side called “Recent Posts by Others” that is barely visible? Well, if you want any particular post to show up in your timeline, go to your page and choose Edit Page>>Use Activity Log. Find the post that you want bring out into your timeline stream and click on the little pencil icon on the right to edit. You can choose “Allowed on Page” or “Highlighted on Page” to have it show up mixed in with your posts. Highlighting it will just make the box bigger and more obvious in your timeline. Of course you can also choose to hide any post as well.

Have fans set up “Get Notifications” for better visibility

facebook liked button get notifications optionIt’s hard to get people’s attention in the vast sea of posts being added to Facebook every day. You can encourage fans to get your updates by scrolling over the Liked button on your page and checking “Get Notifications.” This will ensure your posts don’t get overlooked as often and will count towards the total notifications that person gets, so each update on your page is shared with them. Facebook actually doesn’t show everyone everything in the news feed, so your updates may never get much visibility otherwise.

Using Facebook Debugger for posts

Facebook Debugger is such a neat tool for those of you who may want to dig deeper into the details of your posts. If you’ve ever found that an image is not being pulled when you try to share a link to your page, you can come use the debugger to figure out why. If any errors are found on your page, you’ll see yellow boxes outlining the issue. Maybe the image was too small or you just updated it and you need Facebook to pull the new data, but it hasn’t updated yet. Try doing a hard refresh (press Ctrl+F5) and see if that fixes it.

Networked Blogs & similar auto posting programs

If you’re a blogger, you probably want your posts updated to your Facebook (and Twitter) feeds but you don’t want to manually do it every time. That’s just extra work, as if blogging wasn’t time-consuming enough! You can easily set up automated posts with Networked Blogs, dlvr.it, or RSS Graffiti. I tested these and found that Networked Blogs worked best for me because it can pull an image when there’s only a video in the post, whereas the others either have no image or pull my picture from the sidebar. Additionally, Networked Blogs allows me to manually publish a post in case I needed to do that and I’m picky enough about my posts that I sometimes have to edit the post. Some of the others only publish when a new post is up and don’t allow you to republish manually. You can also use these to set up updates to your Twitter feed so you don’t have to worry about promoting new blog posts there either!

Setting up featured likes

facebook page likesOn the right side of your page’s timeline, you will find a “Likes” box that showcases some of the other pages that your page has liked. These will rotate randomly unless you choose to feature certain likes. To do that, go to your page and navigate to Edit Page>>Edit Settings>>More…>>Featured. Here you’ll see the option to Edit Featured Likes (up to 5). The ones you choose will always show up in that list on your page. If you look at mine shown to the left, the first three are featured likes that always remain the same. The last two continue to change randomly each time someone loads the page.

 

So those are some of the random tips I have for managing Facebook pages and getting the most out of them! Do you have any tips to share?

365great Day 107: feeding animals

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365great challenge day 107: feeding animalsOne of the things I love most when I’m outdoors is being able to feed the creatures that I encounter. This may be various forms of birds, fish, or mammals and sometimes even insects. Usually it’s fish, turtles, ducks, and squirrels. It’s really cool how just about all of them love some bread. Is bread some sort of universally-loved food for all animals? Sure seems like it! In areas where there is a ton of foot traffic, I can luck out and get animals that will actually eat out of my hand. This happened with the ducks pictured and previously with squirrels and small birds. I get such a kick out of semi-domesticating them by training them to get so close and get the food from my fingers. It’s great!

Treatsie June review

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I got my very first Treatsie box for this month and I’m super excited! I love sweets, especially chocolate, caramels, fudge, and the like. Exactly what Treatsie offers. 🙂

Treatsie got started recently, after being successfully funded on Kickstarter. They’re down in Arkansas, which is refreshing to see since you don’t get many startups from the south. They cost $15 monthly and they send a lovely box of artisan candy from confectioners around the country.

Each box comes with artisan candy from 3 brands. That usually means 5 or 6 different flavors of treats. Boxes are sent monthly with no option to skip. They offer a referral link program.

Here’s what came in the June box:

treatsie carboard box with sticker logo branding

treatsie box tissue paper wrapping with sticker

june treatsie box contents with liddabit sweets, askinosie chocolate, and lambrecht gourmet products

june treatsie box contents laid out with lollipop, caramels, toffee, and chocolates

june treatsie box contents backs including lollipop, caramels, toffee, and chocolates

I loved the fig caramels the most due to the fun chunks of fig in them. I’ve yet to try the lollipop and I’m slowly working through the toffee, which is huge! I love how it’s crisp but has soft portions. The chocolate is super cute and rather bitter. Great little bite size.

So far so good! I would definitely want to get more caramels and toffee if they’re not too hard to find or expensive. I can’t wait to continue discovering amazing confections through Treatsie!

[This post contains affiliate links. Signing up through them helps support my subscription and I’d be ever so grateful. 🙂 All opinions are my own and I received no compensation for this review. I just purchased this box and wanted to share what I got!]

365great Day 106: soap

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365great challenge day 106: soapSoap is such a fascinating thing. How did people come up with the idea of creating something out of animal fat that would actually clean? It’s a mystery to me, between the glycerin that could be harmful to the lard that is rather odd. These are not exactly ingredients I would have considered if I wanted to make something that would clean my clothes or cleanse my skin. Yet, here we are in a society filled with these products, where most people use them daily. It makes me wonder how they understood these complex chemical reactions back in the day. Personally, I love a good foaming soap and I’m a total sucker for buying cool soaps that smell good, look cool, or are supposed to do this and that for my skin. A good clean feeling is just so great!

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