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"Straight from the editor&amp;#x27;s desk, here are things I tried (and LOVED) this week: Nars&amp;#x27; new, very handsomely packaged, makeup remover; Bath &amp;amp; Body Works&amp;#x27; awesome-smelling super-inexpensive antibacterial hand gels; Kiehl&amp;#x27;s new Ultra Facial Collection kit; and Soap &amp;amp; Glory&amp;#x27;s Sexy Mother Pucker lip plumper. Plus, I let someone zap my arm with Remington&amp;#x27;s brand-new iLight at-home IPL hair removal system. Did I survive? Indeed I did! All the gory details after the jump. One thing I&amp;#x27;ve learned after years of working in beauty media is that lots of women are pretty die-hard loyal to their particular brand of makeup remover. I can&amp;#x27;t tell you how many emails I&amp;#x27;ve gotten from readers swearing how much they live and die for formulas such as Lancome&amp;#x27;s Bi-Facil, Benefit&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Remove It&amp;quot; and Sonia Kashuk&amp;#x27;s Eye Makeup Remover (a personal favorite). If you haven&amp;#x27;t already found your mascara-removing-Valhalla, or in case you just happen to be in the market for a brand-new favorite, I&amp;#x27;d like to suggest you take a look at Nars&amp;#x27; just-launched Makeup Removing Water ($28)&amp;amp;#8212;a clear, soap-free, alcohol-free and oil-free solvent that not only sweeps stubborn products (hello waterproof mascara and lip gloss) away in one quick swipe, but also tones your skin. Bonus: The bottle is very handsome and will look great on your bathroom counter. I like to keep a bottle of oil-free makeup remover on hand to touch up eye makeup and mascara application in the morning or throughout the day. Oil-free means no slick residue and no smudgy surprises later on. Things I&amp;#x27;ve pretty much been totally obsessed with for the past, oh, seven years: plumping lip glosses. Do you love them too? I think my obsession started with DuWop Lip Venom back in the day when it first came out&amp;amp;#8212;my friend Sharon told me, &amp;quot;It kind of hurts&amp;amp;#8212;in a good way!&amp;quot; and promptly tried to raid my stash of samples. I knew right then that she was onto something and I had to try it. My latest fave is Soap &amp;amp; Glory&amp;#x27;s Sexy Mother Pucker ($15)&amp;amp;#8212;which, I&amp;#x27;ll admit, I first became enthralled with because of the product&amp;#x27;s hilarious name. It comes in five shades&amp;amp;#8212;clear, pink apricot, candy gloss (a baby pink), yummy plum and half naked (a darker mauve-beige)&amp;amp;#8212;has a great medium consistency (not too thick) and smells like cocoa. I asked one of my colleagues to give it a spin&amp;amp;#8212;she tried &amp;quot;Half Naked&amp;quot;&amp;amp;#8212;check out her before (left) and after photos: P.S.: On a &amp;quot;hurts in a good way&amp;quot; scale of 1 to 10, Sexy Mother Pucker probably ranked about a 5&amp;amp;#8212;a little minty tingle, just so you know it&amp;#x27;s working. I think growing up in the 80s and being a teenager in the early 90s somehow imbued the framework within which I think about skincare with the concept of three steps. I came of age in the era of Sea Breeze and Oxy Pad commercials, was the target market for Clinique&amp;#x27;s aggressive Three-Step System campaign in the mid-90s, and spent a good ten years believing that finding the right toner would be the answer to all my skin woes. So maybe I just have a soft spot for skincare regimens that come in three parts, but even if you&amp;#x27;re not a child of the 80s and 90s, you&amp;#x27;ll love Kiehl&amp;#x27;s new Ultra Facial Collection ($26). The handy-dandy (oh-so-giftable) box set contains an Ultra Facial Cleanser, Ultra Facial Toner and Ultra Facial Cream&amp;amp;#8212;three of the company&amp;#x27;s bestselling products. It&amp;#x27;s a great trio to have on hand&amp;amp;#8212;especially in the winter when skin can get really dry. Kiehl&amp;#x27;s Ultra products are deeply hydrating&amp;amp;#8212;the cleanser is careful not to strip essential moisture from your skin&amp;amp;#8212;and great for both guys and girls. Plus, buying these three products in kit-form saves you $6 off its retail value. Win! We don&amp;#x27;t talk a lot about baths here at Glamour.com, but I would like to talk about baths more. So here we go. I think the consensus is that, by and large, Americans prefer taking showers over taking baths. Now, I like showers&amp;amp;#8212;I take a lot of them&amp;amp;#8212;but there&amp;#x27;s nothing like coming home after a long cold winter day and steeping in a warm, fragrant (oily or sudsy, decisions decisions!) bath. I believe in the purifying and detoxifying powers of Epsom salts, too&amp;amp;#8212;think of using the therapeutic salt as a way soak out all the products we put on our skin and all the pollution and free radicals we&amp;#x27;re exposed to all day long. Right now, my favorite brand of Epsom salt is Dr. Teal&amp;#x27;s aromatherapy-infused soaking solutions&amp;amp;#8212;especially the lavender (&amp;quot;Sleep&amp;quot;) and the eucalyptus-spearmint (&amp;quot;Relax&amp;quot;). When I don&amp;#x27;t use Epsom salts, I like using essential oils. Do you take baths? Some of my friends won&amp;#x27;t take them. Tell me what you think in the comments! Okay, I&amp;#x27;m crazy about these PocketBac things&amp;amp;#8212;new little bottles of antibacterial hand gel from Bath and Body Works that kill germs and smell amazing. From left: &amp;quot;I Love Sports&amp;quot; (smells boy-ish, super-clean), &amp;quot;I Love You&amp;quot; (smells cherry-ish), &amp;quot;I Love Shopping&amp;quot; (smells berry-ish), &amp;quot;I Love Cookie Dough&amp;quot; (my faaaavorite&amp;amp;#8212;smells like vanilla), and &amp;quot;I Love Cake&amp;quot; (smells like sugary frosting). Best bit? They&amp;#x27;re only $1.50 each! This week, I did something I never thought I&amp;#x27;d do&amp;amp;#8212;I tried an at-home Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) hair removal system. No, seriously, you guys, this is what I do for a living. I met up with the folks from Remington&amp;amp;#8212;you know them, they make all those great personal care products&amp;amp;#8212;earlier this week and they showed me their new iLight Pro ($249), an at-home professional-grade IPL hair remover. I was nervous at first, but I swear it didn&amp;#x27;t hurt. Here&amp;#x27;s how it works: You shave the part of your body that you want to use the device on&amp;amp;#8212;neck down only, please, don&amp;#x27;t use this on your face even though I know you want to. Then test your skin using the built-in Skin Tone Sensor to make sure that the device is safe to use&amp;amp;#8212;it won&amp;#x27;t work if you don&amp;#x27;t get approval from the sensor first. What the sensor is looking for is contrast between your hair follicles and your skin&amp;amp;#8212;so the iLight may not work on pale natural blondes or on women who have dark hair and dark skin. The wand bit is what made me the most nervous, but I can assure you that it doesn&amp;#x27;t hurt&amp;amp;#8212;not even a little bit. When you hold it up to your skin and press the button, it looks like a flashbulb goes off and the area that&amp;#x27;s been treated feels a little warm for, like, half a second&amp;amp;#8212;but that&amp;#x27;s it. Repeat this treatment every two weeks for three cycles and voila! Results that can last six months (or more!). My verdict on the iLight after using it is that it&amp;#x27;s a great at-home solution for people who don&amp;#x27;t have time to go to the dermatologist for professional hair removal treatments or who want to save that money&amp;amp;#8212;the iLight can cost less than single visits to some derms! It can also be used in conjunction with visits to the dermatologist&amp;amp;#8212;for at-home touch-ups. Have you ever used an at-home IPL treatment? Tell us in the comments if you&amp;#x27;ve ever done IPL hair removal and if you&amp;#x27;d consider doing it at home!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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