“What is this?? Fresh mozarella in a jar?”

That’s what popped into my head the first time I laid eyes on the 50/50 Body Balm by Soaptopia. Because isn’t that what it looks like — little balls of fresh mozarella? And while I do love fresh mozarella, what’s inside those jars is even better.

The 50/50 Body Balm is an ingenious mixture of 50% body cream and 50% body oil (grapeseed, olive, hempseed, avocado and jojoba oils) — hence the name. The cream is piped directly into the jars, with the oil poured in afterwards. The result is a moisturizer that is 100% rich and indulgent.

This was definitely my favorite product from the Soaptopia store that I visited last week during my trip to LA. I especially loved the Rose and the Vanilla scents. In fact, the 50/50 Body Balm is so excellent that I must declare it among the “Products That Make Life Worth Living.” It is not easy to win entry into this category, folks, so I definitely recommend you go out and try this balm!!

Hated the traffic, weather was a little frosty, but I absolutely loved loved loved Soaptopia in Los Angeles! I happened to see a little ad for it in the city guide that I found at our hotel, so with the help of the GPS, made my way over to the store.

All of the soaps sold at the store are made in the back kitchen area. They even give tours/demonstrations so that customers can see first hand the magic.

The end products are absolutely beautiful, are they not? I am totally enamoured. Soaptopia uses all natural ingredients in their products, including essential oils for fragrance. They offer an amazing variety of soaps, salt scrubs, bath oils, bath soaks and more. Keep your eyes peeled for a Soaptopia review soon!

LaLicious is having a big Spring blowout sale — 45% off their travel sets, and body wash and mitt gift set.

I’m a big fan of the LaLicious sugar scrubs. The packaging is cute, the product is fantastic and every single ingredient is all natural and recognizable. The latter is a really nice bonus considering the all natural angle isn’t really their schtick.

The travel set seems like a great way to introduce yourself to the line — it contains mini versions of their body scrub, body butter, body wash and body oil. Now it retails for $20 instead of the regular $36.

Their sale is to help clear out inventory in time for the debut of their new packaging in April. I’m curious to see what this will look like. I already like their current packaging, so they have big shoes to fill.

I originally bought this product because it was the one hand wash that actually fit on the tiny ledge of our tiny pedestal sink. And it matched the decor of our bathroom. (Ok, shallow, I know, but what do you want me to say?)

I found it at TJ Maxx where I find many of my beauty gems. You want to know how much I paid? $3.99. You want to know how much it retails for on the website? $14.50! What a steal, huh?

I see Perlier products at TJ Maxx all the time, but never in actual stores. From what I can suss out from the website, it sort of seems like a L’Occitane. Anyone have the dish on this brand?

As a hobbyist soap maker, I have a gajillion bars of soap in my house. So of course I do the natural thing and go out and buy another bar.

Well, in my defense, I wanted to try a goats milk soap to see what the difference is between that and water based soap.

This was a very wonderful, emollient bar of soap. Tons of creamy lather, brilliant on the skin. I’m sure some of it had to do with the goats milk, and some of it with the castor oil (a number of soapers swear by castor oil).

I love how Zum bars are scented with essential oils. I typically use fragrance oils in my soap, but lately I’ve been convinced of the integrity of essential oils — I love the natural earthiness. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but slowly becoming mine.

I have an unhealthy obsession with body scrubs and baby beauty lines. So when I came across Noodle & Boo’s body scrub, it was a match made in heaven.

The sugar grains are superfine so that they don’t scratch the skin. The scent is a milky-honey-sweet-baby scent. Absolutely lovely. And it left a bit of a buttery sheen on my skin afterwards.

Please note: this product is meant for mommies. At least I hope so. Eight months is too young to get them started on an exfoliation regimen, right?

As a teenager, I was a huge music buff. You ever see the movie, High Fidelity, and you know how all they ever do is make All Time Top 5 lists? I can relate because that is the total music geek thing to do. Sit around and make lists for everything.

So in honor of the former music geek in me, here is my All Time Top 5 Desert Island Beauty List (in no particular order):

1. Bobbi Brown Blemish Cover Stick

2. Lancome Definicils Mascara

3. Vaseline Petroleum Jelly

4. Cake Beauty Milk Made Hand Buffer

5. Manor Hall Soap Company Butter Me Better Soap

Wow, that was a hard list to make. I’m sure next week, this list will change, but for now that is my list.

I want to know what is on your All Time Top 5 Desert Island Beauty List. Share your list in the comments!

For those of you who don’t know, I’m an avid hobby soap maker. I’ve been making soap for the past year and a half. It’s a continual learning process, but I absolutely love it.

I’ve learned to make soap the good old fashioned way, combining nourishing oils and butters with lye. Unlike commercially made bar soap, cold process soap retains its natural byproduct of glycerin, which actually locks moisture into the skin.

If you haven’t tried soap made via the cold process method, I strongly urge you to. I’ve heard many stories of people suffering from skin issues like eczema, who said that using c.p. soap healed their skin. I have no personal testimonies of that sort, but I will say that you are seriously missing out if you haven’t tried it yet!

Here are some companies to check out:

The Soap Kitchen - they make soap in the back kitchen of their store, which is located in California.

The Bubble Roome - a guy from Brooklyn who makes his own soap and designs the Neo-Victorian packaging that it goes into.

Century Farmhouse - founder, Ann Marie Craig, was chosen by Country Living Magazine as a 2008 Women Entrepreneur. She makes soap from her Wisconsin farmhouse, using the rainwater, snow, sap and herbs that she gets from the land.

Saipua - another Brooklyn based company, with beautiful packaging that is almost too pretty to unwrap.

Biggs & Featherbelle - two sisters from Maryland with whimsical, fun packaging and products.

Pangea Organics - organic soap wrapped in 100% post-consumer packaging. The paper actually contains seeds like amaranth and sweet basil, which can be planted into the ground.

If you’re interested in learning how to make soap yourself, check out the free tutorial on About.com. It’s the best online source I’ve found so far. And if you want to read up on the different products out there, then check out The Soap Bar blog, which I frequent daily.

Without fail, every winter, I end up with a weird bout of eczema on the backs of my hands. This time, the bout hit in December, and seeing as I have a father-in-law who is a physician, I thought I’d ask him for a prescription over the phone. I wanted to get me some of the good stuff!

Being the responsible physician that he is, he wouldn’t write me the prescription since he couldn’t diagnose it in person. Instead, he told me to try some Lubriderm hand cream.

“Yeah, ok…Lubriderm,” I thought, shaking my head at his total cluelessness.

Nevermind that he has a medical degree from Johns Hopkins. I write a beauty blog.

But I was desperate, so I bought a tube of Lubriderm Advanced Therapy Hand Cream. And wouldn’t you know it, it actually worked. No joke. I was really quite astounded, to be honest.

I’ve been enjoying this in my shower lately. It has a nice bubbly lather, adequately softens and contains a fine sprinkling of sea salt for a bit of exfoliation. And it has a pretty gingery citrus type fragrance to it.

This came with a bunch of other Sanctuary Spa products, from the PR folks at Boots (Sanctuary Spa is a UK based line distributed by Boots in the U.S.). I thought the Foaming Cream Scrub was the stand-out of all of the products that I sampled.

One that did disappoint, unfortunately, was the Mande Lular Body Souffle. It looked great and smelled great in the jar, but left a weird, sticky residue on my skin.