Beauty Tips From Back in My Day

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #33:

Product

I think we can all agree that I'm not a person that anyone should come to for beauty or fashion tips. I'm at peace with that. I peaked in 2006, and I'm pretty much stuck there. But there's one thing I can offer you from 2006 that I still think holds solid, and it has to do with a product... A Monistat product.

Now, I know what comes to mind when you think of Monistat. Calm down, calm down. I'm not going there, but I'm still going to ask you to be open-minded as you read this post. 

The product is Monistat Chafing Relief Powder Gel, and I use it on my face. 

True story!

Many years ago (around 2006), a blogger posted about this product and said she used it as make-up primer. I decided to give it a go, and I've used it as primer ever since! (Here's a post I wrote about it in 2011). I simply rub a light coat of the gel on my face before applying make-up, and it does everything a make-up primer should do, including helping my foundation go on more smoothly.

It turns out, the chafing gel has the same main ingredient as many quality make-up primers (dimethicone) at a fraction of the cost. At the time I started using it, several friends from my blogging circle (which is long dead) switched over from Smashbox and Bare Escentuals primers. 

So there you have my product recommendation! Rub some Monistat on your face! And heck, you can even put some on your thighs. I’m all about killing two birds with one stone.

Gaming Lately

If you're new around here, you may not know that my husband, Scotty, and I love board games (but chances are, you are NOT new around here, and you have figured this out. Well done, super sleuth!)

We have game nights with our best friends about three times a month. Between both families, we have a wide selection of games to choose from, and we go through phases of playing this or that until one of us gets mad and flips the board (then we have to put that game in time out for a while).

(Okay, no one has ever actually flipped the board, but there have been threats and name calling, mostly in jest, but with underlying tones of "all seriousness.")

Here are some of the games we have been playing lately:

Power Grid

Can I be honest? I hate this game, but I can't stop playing it.

We first played this game when I was pregnant with Zoe. Then we left it on the shelf for a couple of years (I was the reason the game got put in "time out") and brought it back out about two months ago.

This game is so complex! There are so many rules, and some of the rules aren't in the rule book, so every time we play we miss some important rule, and something doesn't work out, so we have to go back through every rules and try and figure out where we went wrong. A few weeks ago, we finally found one of the rules on the phase cards. Why it's not in the rule book - I have no idea! But our goal is to play a complete, non-botched game of Power Grid (which we finally did - as far as we know - on Saturday).

Overall, I don't like how long the game takes (the last round we played took 2.5 hours), and I'm not really a fan of the way the game is won. So why do I keep playing? Because I must master this!!!

Other games I kind of hate but will still play:
Scotland Yard
Small World

Coup

This is a really easy card/role playing game. Each player has two secret identities. You can take certain actions based on your identities, and you can LIE! So the entire game is about trying to figure out who is lying. You can challenge each other, and the last person with an identity remaining wins. Each game is about 10 minutes, so this is a nice recovery from something like Risk or Power Grid wherein you invest hours of your life.

Other "role playing" games we like:
Werewolves of Millers Hollow (with The Village expansion)
The Resistance

7 Wonders

I bought this game for Scotty for Christmas last year. This game is unique in that everybody takes their turns at the same time, so it's a nice break from traditional games.

In this game, each player has his/her own unique board, and points are acquired as those boards develop throughout the game.

The problem with this game is that I can't win it.

Yes, that is a very huge problem.

Other games we play with individual player boards:
Agricola
Alhambra

Qwirkle

This is one of our common "end of game night" games. This is the one we often play when the babies are starting to get fussy, and we're trying to squeeze in ONE LAST GAME before they completely snap.

Qwirkle is a little bit like Dominoes meets Uno (or some other color matching / tile matching love child). It's much less complex than the strategy board games we play and takes a lot less set-up.

Other "end of game night" selections we play:
Bohnanza
Skip-Bo
Golf

My Thoughts on The Giver

Last night I saw The Giver.

I first read The Giver in 8th grade. At the time, a lot of the themes of the book were beyond my understanding, but I fell in love with it. When I re-read the book as an adult, I began to comprehend just how profound the story really is. It sheds light on the purpose of opposition - we need to know pain and sickness so we can enjoy pleasure and health. We need to know sadness so we can understand happiness. We need to have agency so we can make wrong choices and learn and grow. Our world can sometimes feel disturbing and tainted, but it is also beautiful and astounding.

When I learned that this book I treasure so dearly was being made into a film, I was kind of disappointed. I worried that the movie would be catered so much to a teen audience that the depth of the story would be lost, and those teens would only care about how it compares to their popular dystopias of today. Some of my fears were put at bay when I watched an interview with Jeff Bridges, and he described his passion for the book and how long it had taken him to bring the movie to fruition. After hearing what he had to say, I decided to trust him, and I decided to focus on what the story means to me rather than what it means to the unknowing teenagers.

I won't go into a critical analysis of the movie, but if you beg the question, "Should I see it?" I will tell you, "Yes!"

The thought-provoking elements of the story are there. Go. Face them!

But with that recommendation comes the understanding that we will not all glean the same things from The Giver.

I went to see the movie with a friend who hated the book, and her presence beside me in the theater reminded me of this quote by C.S. Lewis:

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported.

My friend and I were staring at the same landscape while a gulf yawned between us. Her criticism was, "It made me cry!" and my response was, "Good!"

Cover Your A$$ets - A Review and a GIVEAWAY!

If you've been reading Fluent Brittish for a while, you might recall that I'm a board game fanatic (although it's been a while since I geeked out online over a game) (unless you count an e-mail exchange between Cyndi and me last week regarding Agricola).

A few months ago, my friend Apryl contacted me about doing a card game review. You see, Apryl is an arteest (you might recognize some of her work from the coloring pages in past issues of the Friend) (my kids have colored her rendition of Thomas S. Monson at the pulpit a gazillion times), and she did the artwork for the game Cover Your A$$ets.

So Apryl was like, "Hey! Game nerd! Wanna review this game?"

And I was like, "Heck yes, I do!"

So the game showed up in the mail, and I rounded up a trusted group of game nerds to test it out.

The object of Cover Your A$$ets is to be the first player to acquire one million dollars in assets. Things take a competitive turn when players begin "stealing" each others' assets. 

The rules are simple and easy to learn, and set-up is quick, so if you enjoy games but don't want to spend a lot of time figuring out how, this is a great option for you. It's rated for children as young as eight but is entertaining enough for adults, making it a great family game (my five-year-old can play this just fine as long as someone adds up his assets for him).  

One deck can accommodate 2-4 players, and additional decks can be added to the game for more players (one additional deck per three players). 

I think this would be a great game to follow up a Family Home Evening lesson on financial management. There are concepts in the game that can be used to illustrate financial management skills such as investing, increase (or decrease) in value over time, and taking care of the things we buy.

You can buy Cover Your A$$ets at Grandpa Beck's Games or Amazon for $11.99... if you don't win it here first. 

I have one copy of Cover Your A$$ets to give away. 

If you would like to win a copy of Cover Your A$$ets, leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite game is. Comments will be accepted through Friday, and I will announce a winner on Monday. The winner will be selected by a random number generator. 

If you do not have an Open ID to comment with, select the Name/URL option (a URL is not required). Anonymous comments will not be considered.