The Triumphant Return!

Well guys, it's been a whopping 15 months since I've posted to this blog and not only am I still alive, but I'mmm baaaacckk!

You heard right, this quick post is just to announce my triumphant return to the blogging world. I'm thrilled to once again start sharing my favourite beauty, fashion and skincare with you guys! Be on the lookout for product reviews, DIYs, monthly subscription boxes, new releases and more.

It's gonna be a fun ride and here's to hoping you guys are just as eager to jump back on the wagon with me!

Stay tuned!

XO Sarah

Fortune Cookie Soap - Summer Lovin'!

They did it AGAIN folks! Just when we thought the ever-expanding line of Fortune Cookie Soap products couldn't get anymore to die for, they went above and beyond to create a fun, fresh, fruity and highly addictive summer collection.

In an ideal world, I would purchase the whole she-bang, let my cellphone bill rot and close the curtains when the landlord shows up, but it's just not a pretty situation if ya get my drift. BUT - I did have the chance to get a nice assortment of brand-spanking-new goodies and I'd love to share them up close and personal with you guys! 


[click the pictures to see them even better! ]

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You know that distinct scent you get when you open a full box of FCS stuff? That needs to be made into a signature scent!

3 new Whipped Cream Body Butters!

'Private Beach' - A very soft, subtle jasmine fragrance with just a touch of barely-there pineapple.

'Pool Party' - Sugary-sweet meets aquatic, with barely a hint of refreshing mintiness.

'Pinky Swear' - Girly and sweet! Strong notes of banana & cotton candy, with a finish of not-too-sweet sugar candy.

Solid Shampoo Bar in 'Pool Party'

Expecting an ocean-y blue colour, I was shocked to find it comes in a dusty charcoal-gray!

Nevertheless, it smells absolutely incredible. So fresh, sugary sweet with a minty kick.

Bubble Bar in 'Pool Party'

If you couldn't tell by now, I harbour an unhealthy obsession with this scent in particular! No surprise it went from underdog to crowd favourite! This bubble bar is about the size of my hand, is definitely heavier than I thought it would be and in your hand feels like a straight-up bath bomb. It smells fan-freaking-tastic, and I'm looking forward to seeing how easy it is to crumble under running water due to it's dense/solid nature.

Hydrate Me! in 'Pool Party'

This scent & I are currently planning an elaborate pool-side wedding (too much? hah) but in all honestly.. HOLY CRAP, it made it all the way here to Canada UNMELTED! It must be a work of magic, and I'm ecstatic to receive it with the gorgeous design still intact. This bar is buttery-smooth on the skin with just a single swipe, SUPER moisturizing and when used after shaving, leaves you with the most unbelievably soft, glowy summer skin. 

Gelato Fizzy in 'Wish You Were Here..'

Another stunningly adorable bath fizzy shaped like a gelato ice cream. Packed with moisturizing and softening ingredients and scented in a deliciously girly fragrance. Exotic, tropical flowers and fresh mango give this a super sweet, candy-ish scent. They say to break it up for 2-3 baths, but I honestly drop the whole thing for an especially indulgent bath. Enough fragrance to scent me, the entire upstairs of my house and left me with calming, milky pink water.

Gelato Fizzy in 'Summer Sweet Tea'

I was expecting a yellow colour for this bath bomb, but I actually really like the green. It's a soothing, deep mint colour and smells just like the name! I get notes of sugar, lemon, sweetened green tea and just a touch of zest. It smells almost overpoweringly strong out of the container, but is relaxing and mellow in the warm bath water. Leaves a pale, milky green shade in the water.

Bar Soap (with loofah) in 'Pinky Swear'

I've been seeing loofah soaps popping up everywhere and was ecstatic to finally see my favourite brand release some of their own! My camera doesn't do justice, this soap is a SUPER vibrant, almost neon pink with the real, natural loofah imbedded inside. It has that same sweet banana, sugar, cotton candy scent and will be amazing to say bye-bye to rough, dead skin and leave your brand new skin sexy, smooth and smelling amazing!

Fortune Cookie Soap in 'Pinky Swear'

Besides the intoxicating scents, the fun colours used in the summer collection products are a stand-out hit for me! Done in a neon pink with cream coloured patches and also scented with sweet banana, cotton candy and a hint of sugar. These are the ones that'll get the most 'ooohs and ahhhs' if you splurge on a bunch for your friends and family. (Let's be realistic, if you only buy one, you aren't going to share. I guarantee it.)

Fortune Cookie Soap in 'Road Trip'

A pale, creamy yellow colour, this may be the most normal/muted of all the new signature soaps. It smells like soft honeysuckle flowers and a touch of fresh lemon. This will be a great pick-me-up in the morning, enough zest to wake you up but the perfect blend of florals to leave you clean and feminine. It's also very complex, the scent really evolves once you get it wet and later it up. Must try!

Fortune Cookie Soap in 'Pool Party'

As far as visuals and scent combined, this one wins me over hands down. The gorgeous pink to blue to purple swirls/vein design is so stunning and unique! This is one of those scents us girls will find excuses to wash with, and the fellas will find it hard to keep their noses of us. ;)

Fortune Cookie Soap in 'Wish You Were Here'

A pretty peach shade, drizzled with baby pink and scented with tropical florals and juicy mango. It's bright, fruity, sweet and addictive! I swear the soap formulas get richer & creamier each time I buy more. These clean even the dirtiest of us, but don't leave skin dry or tight.

Fortune Cookie Soap in 'Sugar Britches'

Wasn't sure I would love this, but I definitely need to purchase more in this scent! Coloured a gorgeous pinky-purple with whitish-cream veined throughout, it smells like juicy, sweet watermelon and soft, feminine violets. I can't stop smelling it!

Fortune Cookie Soap in 'Private Beach'

This soap is a creamy-white colour with hi-lighter yellow drizzle and has the most subtle of all the new summer fragrances. Soft jasmine, a hint of pineapple and although not in the description, I swear I get faint notes of creamy coconut. I'm saving this for the disgustingly hot days when the stronger scents can be too overpowering!

Sample Bath Bomb in 'Private Beach'

Yayyy for freebies! I haven't opened this but I'm sure it's going to be lovely and force me to go back and order the full-size bath bomb. :)

OCD Hand Sanitizer in 'Pool Party'

These clean my hands so well (especially important having a 2 year old who catches colds like they're goin out of style!), the alcohol scent dissipates in seconds and I'm left with germ-free, sweet ocean-y scented hands. :) It's also the perfect gel/serum consistency. Nothing worse than chasing drips of runny sanitizer down to your elbows!

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I'm just so excited with how amazing the summer launch was, how hard our amazing friends running Fortune Cookie Soap worked to provide so many unbelievable new things for us and I can't wait to start digging into them all! Thank you Shannon, Justin & team for all you do, the joy I get from choosing and regularly receiving such fun, exciting packages is priceless! Already looking forward to what's coming next! :-D

xo Sarah

Disclaimer - All products were purchased by me (with the exception of the Pool Party Sugar Scrub & Pool Party Whipped Cream, which I won during the BlogTV launch trivia contest)  with my own money, and all opinions are my own!

Check out Fortune Cookie Soap at the links below, you'll love them!

Fortune Cookie Soap Facebook Page

Fortune Cookie Soap on Twitter

Fortune Cookie Soap Website

Fortune Cookie Soap - Summer Soap Box Review!

Ladies & gents, the wait is over! In case you haven't heard, the awesomely ingenious folks over at Fortune Cookie Soap introduced a brand new quarterly subscription service back in March, lovingly titled The Soap Box. Many of us are often hesistant to empty our wallets for everything that strikes an interest, in fear of receiving a bunch of products that just don't quite tickle our fancy. Don't get me wrong, I'm thoroughly convinced they couldn't make something unpleasant if they tried, but scent is possibly the most personal thing in life and you just can't please everyone! At the start of each new season, Fortune Cookie Soap launches a whole boatload of new products & fragrances, and The Soap Box is cleverly shipped out to subscribers in the few weeks beforehand. You pay a little, get a box packed with brand-spanking-new travel sized products and when the launch happens, you're all set knowing which fragrances and such are your must haves!


So with that said, and as the title says.. It's Summer Soap Box time! The company is based in the U.S. and decided the second time around to ship the International boxes a little earlier and to my surprise, it's here already! Let's get right into it! ;)

When you first open, you are greeted with neatly wrapped bright blue tissue and a fun Soap Box sticker!

On top is a card welcoming you to your Summer Soap Box experience! It features an awesome Fortune Cookie Soap tattoo flash-style picture (kudos to the artist!) and the details of a special contest for subscribers.

The back of the card lists the 9 new products/scents you will be enjoying and gives a brief description. Love the beachy vibe!

An awesome Fortune Cookie Soap temporary tattoo! Infinitely cooler than the ones my parents had to scour off me as a kid, hah ;)

Once I convinced myself to rip the pretty tissue/sticker, I was met with a whole bunch of awesome! When someone finally invents scratch-n-sniff monitors, come back to this picture, it will blow your mind. Serious. 

For the Spring Soap Box, each box included a bright fabric flower. For Summer, it's a cute seashell :)

Up first, a brand new signature fortune cookie soap in "Sand Dollar". It's a very pale peachy-pink with poppyseeds and is described as "a succulent peach scent". It's not at all one of those super sweet peach candy scents, it's a soft, natural, feminine peach and has a hint of clean soapiness at the base.

Next is a flip flop-shaped bath fizzy in the scent "Private Beach". I've seen tart melts in this shape, but how they managed to make a fizzy of it and have it survive Canada customs in one piece is completely beyond me! lol The scent to me is a perfect 50/50 blend of fresh pineapple and tropical florals. Neither overpowers the other and you can easily pick out the seperate fragrances.

A brand new body wash in the scent "Road Trip". I'm loving the new bottles! They're shorter/wider and just up the cuteness factor 1000%. This scent shocked me! If you sniff it straight from the bottle, all you really smell is lemon, but after trying a drop on the back of my hand and rubbing it around, the lemon COMPLETELY disappears and I'm left with soft, beautiful florals. The name couldn't be more fitting, think being on a road trip and flying down a back road past a field of summer wildflowers. The windows are down and a warm breeze surrounds you with the uplifting and carefree fragrance of nature. 

OCD Hand Sanitizer in the scent "Summer Sweet Tea". It's a germ-killer, so naturally sniffing straight from the bottle gives a clean, alcohol scent. After the 3 seconds it takes to dry on my hands, I get a sweet, slightly tart lemon-y ice tea scent. More lemon than ice tea, but very refreshing! This is also where I decided I might like the old bottles better, it was reeeeeeally hard to squeeze out. I think the shorter bottle has denser plastic and it was a bit of a struggle.

With the Mist Me! Body Sprays still being relatively new, I was surprised and excited to see a glittery body spray! This is Sparkle Me! in the scent "Beach Bunny". It's an itty bitty, totally adorable bottle filled with light blue spray (almost a gel consistency) which is LOADED with glitter! Looks pretty scary at first, but isn't nearly as outrageous on my skin. I'm imagining using some on my legs and shoulders for the summer just to give that perfect hint of sparkle! The scent is very light on the skin and smells just like the coconut suntan lotions we all know and love.

FINALLY! I'm a regular user of dry shampoos, if I wash my hair more than 3 or 4 times a week, I wouldn't be able to get a brush through it if I tried. It's horrrrrible, and unfortunately almost every brand I've tried has either left a white cast, smelled gross or just did nothing at all. The scent is "Wish You Were Here" and is descibed as "exotic, fruity and floral". It reminds me alot of the "Private Beach" scent, I get a kick of pineapple, maybe some mango and a finish of feminine florals, very fresh and pretty! The sample bottle is surprisingly big and will probably last a really long time. The powder made me nervous at first, it almost seemed a little chunkier/rougher than the others I've tried. I was worried it would leave white pieces in my hair but it didn't at all! It brushed through beautifully and left my hair shiny and soft :)

Next is a brand new Whipped Cream in "Pinky Swear". These are still my all-time favourite products and definitely the ones I look forward to most when new scents are released. This does not disappoint! It's a pretty pale pinkish-lavender colour and to me smells predominantly of sweet, fresh watermelon with a hint of strawberry and a touch of floral. Could be jasmine, but I'm not positive! It's super girly and fresh.

Another completely new product! This is the Hydrate Me! body conditioning bar in "Pool Party". I'm not sure if this is supposed to be used in the shower after washing, or simply as a solid lotion, but I'm convinced it would be wonderful either way! It's super buttery smooth, glides on and rubs in without any nasty, greasy feeling and leaves a lovely amount of scent on my skin. It almost has a lip balm texture if you just run your finger over the bar. This fragrance is hands down my favourite of everything in this box and coincidentally, the one I just can't quite describe. To me, it's a mixture between fresh air/ocean and warm, woodsy vanilla. Highly recommend!

Last and surely not least is another new one - Sugar Fix solid sugar scrub in "Sugar Britches". Not a word of lie, if you put a handful of these cubes in a bowl on your coffee table, people would eat them. It looks exactly like a chewy, sugary candy and even has that gummy candy squish if you pinch it between your fingers. Even better, it smells like a sugary gummy candy. It's a light pink colour with a bright, sweet melon scent. Be careful where you leave these! :)

So that's all the amazing new things we can look forward to when the Summer products launch in a few short weeks! I'm so thrilled and excited for all the fantastic, fresh & fruity new fragrances! I'm not sure if it's past the point of signing up for the Summer Soap Box , but if you aren't already a subscriber, don't hesitate to make sure you get on the list for the rest of the upcoming boxes! For such an awesome price ($19.99 shipped to the U.S., $28 shipped to Canada, $34 shipped overseas), you can try out a whole bunch of awesome things and be confident in your favourites for the official product launches. And even if you can't afford to order full sizes, it's still a totally fantastic way to fully treat yourself or someone you love to the Fortune Cookie Soap experience. Check out the links below to get in on the summer action! ;)

Sign up for The Soap Box here!

Fortune Cookie Soap on Facebook

Fortune Cookie Soap on Twitter

Fortune Cookie Soap Website

xo Sarah

FTC: Everything shown/mentioned was purchased by me, with my own money and as always, all opinions are my own :)

Goodies from the UK!

When you think of the Internet, and more specifically Facebook fan pages, what usually comes to mind is drama, hostility and holier-than-thou attitudes. You find it during contests, scattered in comments and posted on walls.  Rewind to August of 2011, the very first time I stumbled upon the Fortune Cookie Soap fan page. It started with ordering just 2 little soaps and wandering back to the page just to leave a quick note letting them know how much I had loved what I bought. What happened next was much to my surprise - I not only heard kind words back from the owners, Shannon & Justin, but also from a whole community of lovely girls from all over the world. Needless to say I stuck around, continued ordering and interacting with the same bunch of wonderful people and ended up making some absolutely amazing friends! 


This post in particular is dedicated to one of the amazing girls that I now have the pleasure to call a very good friend. Her name is Becky (if you've ever visited the FCS page, no doubt you've also had the pleasure to talk to her too!), she lives in the UK and is by far one of the sweetest, friendliest and most easy-going people I've ever talked to. Being from opposite sides of the world (I'm in Canada), we recently decided to swap some goodies and I'm here now to share them with all of you! Hope you enjoy, I know I will be! haha :)

A big box showed up at my door today!

First thing I found was a lovely handwritten card! I'm a sap and the words inside were very sweet :')

These salt 'n vinegar snacks are one of my Moms favourites, but they stopped importing them to Canada yeeeeeears ago, she was THRILLED!

Teddy Shaped Potato Snacks and Pig shaped gummies! I know a certain little boy who will fight me for these, so neat!

Jazzie Biscuits! I love cookies and these look soooo good.

Galaxy Orange & Shortcake Chocolate Bar! This chocolate bar is MASSIVE, I've read in lots of places that this chocolate is WAY better than the stuff we have here :)

Hotel Chocolat goodies! These must have cost a fortune, I've never seen such fancy chocolates! May pair these with a glass of wine for a night of pure indulgence ;)

Cadbury Wispa Gold, BlackJack chews and Sherbert fountain candy! Haven't tried any of these before, they sound tasty!

Flying saucers! I just tried these for the first time before starting this post, they're so neat! At first it's like a plain wafer and then BAM! A kick of sweet/sour powder candy inside. Love!

Pink Shrimp candy (doesn't taste like shrimp thankfully haha) and Bristol-made Toffee Crunch Candy. These are both fantastic.

Rhubarb and Custard hard candies and chewy Milk Teeth candy! So fun :)

Sweet Baccy and Lemon & Lime Bon Bons! The Sweet Baccy was the very first thing I tried from the box, it looked so strange and intriguing and I had to ask what it was. They are brown sugar and coconut! Quite addictive actually.

A lovely assortment of teas, can't wait to try them!

Sample tart melts in Rhubarb & Custard and Pink Sugar. I have an unhealthy addiction to Pink Sugar :)

A gorgeous coaster from a local artist and some adorable UK chocolate lollies! The coaster is going beside my bed with my favourite candle and my son will probably steal the lollies if they aren't hidden haha :)

Lush Snow Fairy Shower Gel and Candy Mountain Bubble Bar! Being a hoarder of bath goodies myself, I'm so thankful that she was so kind to share some of her stash with me! I've never tried their limited edition Christmas scents and I'm definitely kicking myself now!

Fortune Cookie Soap recently had a 'Create-Your-Own' Body Butter sale and Peach Bellini was one of the scents Becky chose! It smells amazing and so sweet of her to also dig into her personal supply to share this one with me :)

Gorgeous beauty goodies from brands we don't have here! Collection 2000 eyeshadow and glitter eyeliner, Barry M nail polish and I love.. Coconut & Cream lip balm! Neon and sparkly things make me happy :D

Lovely Bristol postcards! This is where all these amazing things come from.

Last but definitely not least, a cool I <3 Bristol fabric tote bag! I'll be rocking this for the summer, will hold beach goodies or for shopping runs :)

That's all of it, there is so many awesome things to try! If the pictures aren't my best, it's just because I couldn't wait to tear in haha I'm so grateful to have met such a wonderful person and thankful for all these goodies I wouldn't otherwise have had the chance to experience. Feels like Christmas today! Now comes the impatient wait for her to receive a box of stuff from Canada and I just hope it brings some of the excitement I got today. Thank you Becky for everything you did and for being so awesome, now I'm off to go overload myself with fun sweets! ;) <3

xo Sarah