This Friday, I’m featuring one of my favorite skincare brands: Yes To Carrots. Only a few years old, Yes To is becoming increasingly known for its products, which are at least 95% natural and completely free of parabens, petroleum, SLS, and phthalates. Skincare is important to most women, but I’ve always wondered if it’s actually worth it, as most products are costly and their ingredients are potentially harmful. Fortunately, Yes To puts my mind at ease with its  reasonable pricing and commitment to keeping its products as natural as possible. (I understand that the small amount of unnatural ingredients are necessary for preservation and to decrease the risk of bacterial growth in the product.) These days, Yes To products can be found everywhere, including at drugstores, Sephora, and grocery stores. The company has great customer service and is constantly holding sales or giving out offers through its website, Facebook page, or newsletter emails. Yes To Carrots now carries multiple lines, with different fruits and vegetables corresponding to different types of skin. Since I have fairly normal skin, I use products from all of the various lines, assuming they’ll each have different benefits for me. Last Cyber Monday, the Yes To website held a 2-hour sale, during which everything was $2. Unsurprisingly, this caused the site to crash, but Yes To was generous enough to give customers another chance the next week. This was a great opportunity to try some new products, so I pretty much bought one of each! Here are some of my favorites:

I’ve always been reluctant about wearing moisturizer. On one hand, I want my skin to stay hydrated and to prevent wrinkles. But on the other, most moisturizers contain questionable chemicals, and what if they do worse damage to my skin? Fortunately, I’ve found both safety and effectiveness in the Yes To Cucumbers Daily Calming Moisturizer and Calming Night Cream. Yes To recommends its cucumber line for those with sensitive skin, but I mostly picked these moisturizers because I occasionally wake up with a puffy face, and cucumbers and aloe reduce swelling. The Yes To Cucumbers scent (cucumbers and some other plants) is my least favorite of the lines, but it’s not overpowering and becomes unnoticeable after a minute. Yes To Cucumbers also carries a Daily Calming Moisturizer with SPF 30.

The Yes To Carrots Super Rich Body Butter is luxuriously silky and ideal for after a shower. It’s less than half of the cost of The Body Shop’s Body Butter, yet much more natural. You know how babies always smell clean and fresh? This cream basically has the same wonderful scent.

I ordered the Yes To Blueberries Healthy Hair Repair Shampoo and Conditioner to combat the effects of the dry, winter air. It’s hard to tell if they work well because I don’t actually have damaged hair. However, it’s been a year and a half since I last got my hair trimmed (possibly the longest I’ve ever gone in my entire life without one!), and my hair is still voluminous and without split ends. So these products might have something to do with that. And more importantly, they smell like candy!

Since I’m prone to doing the bare minimum, if anything at all, when it comes to makeup, I’ve been searching for the perfect tinted moisturizer or BB cream. Most are almost entirely made up of unnatural ingredients, so I was elated when I discovered the new Yes to Grapefruit CC Cream. It simultaneously moisturizes and brightens my face, while protecting it from UV rays and making me look more “put-together.” This CC cream has the subtlest, most sheer, barely-there tint I’ve ever tried, which is ideal for my preferred “natural” look. If you have uneven skin tones, acne, or other skin conditions, you’ll want more coverage from other makeup, though this CC cream could be a safer, less expensive base layer. I tried both colors and barely noticed a difference, so I’ll probably use the Light now and the Light/Medium in the summer or mix them. The initial scent has the standard makeup smell with a hint of citrus.
I don’t usually buy facial masks because I always use them once before forgetting about them, until they grow old and I have to throw them out. But I obviously had to get some products containing my favorite fruit, and this Yes To Tomatoes Clearing Facial Mask was intriguing. So I decided to give it a try, and it turned out to be my favorite Cyber Monday purchase! It’s possible that I mostly like it because it somehow smells like cinnamon rolls… But the clay-like consistency from the Dead Sea mud makes me feel like I’m getting a spa treatment, and my face looks and feels softer and fresher afterwards. I might actually finish this jar, after which I’ll update this post with the effects of long-term usage.