Eating healthy, staying active, and sleeping well are all things that we can do to keep the effects of aging from creeping up on us too fast. We should embrace our aging bodies, of course, but there are a few extra things that we can do to help us feel beautiful.

Our skin is often one of the first telltale signs of aging. Over time, it thins, wrinkles, and dries, and it may even spot. There’s no escaping that, but there are anti-aging creams that can make our skin feel and look better by erasing fine lines, wrinkles, and dark spots.

By the way, I don’t really like that widely used term in the beauty industry. “Anti-aging” makes it sound like there’s something wrong with aging. I prefer pro-aging!

You may already be applying moisturizers, creams, or serums on your face every day. Did you know that your skin repairs itself while you sleep? By choosing the right night cream for your skin type and condition, you can give your body the extra boost it needs to keep your skin as healthy as possible.

Board Certified Dermatologist Dr. Longwill in Florida says:

Your nighttime regimen should be about cleansing, repairing, and soothing. While we sleep, our skin is regenerating which is why it is beneficial to apply products that are focused on hydrating and recovering. It is also important to make sure that the products you are applying are formulated to penetrate deep into the skin.

Dermatologist Recommendations

Dr. Shainhouse, a board-certified dermatologist at SkinSafe Dermatology and Skin Care in Beverly Hills, California, recommends the following four anti-aging night creams for women over 50.

Olay Regenerist: Microsculping Fragrance-Free Cream

This thicker, non-greasy offering by Olay moisturizes the skin without causing irritation or breakouts. It contains moisture-attracting hyaluronic acid, collagen-building peptides, and skin-calming niacinamide and green tea.

The dimethicone helps create an intact skin barrier to trap moisture and hydration in the skin so that you wake up to skin with a smoother, plumper, dewier appearance.

Neutrogena Rapid Wrinkle Repair Regenerating Cream with Accelerated Retinol SA (Fragrance-Free)

Neutrogena’s rapid wrinkle repair cream contains retinol, the only scientifically-proven molecule to help promote new collagen growth and improve the appearance of wrinkles. Retinoids also facilitate cell turnover, bringing fresh new cells to the skin surface, so that your skin appears brighter and younger.

The classic night serum version is very lightweight and layers nicely under a thicker moisturizer. This newer moisturizer version has a smooth texture and application and still feels light on the skin, while providing moisturizing and skin barrier repairing ingredients like hyaluronic acid, glycerin, and dimethicone.

Avène Eau Thermal – Tolérance Extrême Creme

If you have hypersensitive or allergic skin, Avène’s tolérance extreme is a great option. It contains no fragrance, emulsifiers, or preservatives, so this thick white cream absorbs and doesn’t cause skin irritation.

SkinFix Barrier⁺ Lipid Peptide Cream

This thicker moisturizer by SkinFix helps to replace the lipids and fatty acids that naturally occur in healthy skin. It strengthens the skin barrier and helps to soothe dry, tight, irritated skin.

It also contains moisturizing ingredients like glycerin and squalene that are locked in by the barrier-protective lipids (Shea, sunflower, vegetable, jojoba). It is non-comedogenic, doesn’t feel thick or sticky on the skin, and absorbs well.

Dr. Rina Allawh is a board-certified dermatologist in the Philadelphia area with a special interest in the unique challenges of pigmented skin in regards to anti-aging, skincare, sun care, and skin cancer. She mentions that a night cream containing retinol should be part of every anti-aging regimen.

“Retinol creams can provide non-invasive wrinkle prevention, evening out the complexion, promoting increased cell turnover, and reducing pore size.”

She also specifies that retinol use can sometimes cause some dryness, peeling, and skin irritation. Her go-to topical retinol cream is the La Roche-Posay Redermic R with Retinol Cream.

La Roche-Posay Redermic R with Retinol Cream

According to Dr. Allawh, this product provides optimum hydration (via the “Retinol Booster Complex”) with minimal skin irritation. If you are searching for a mild alternative to retinoids, you can look ingredients called retin-alts. These are natural alternatives to retinol which treat acne and improve skin texture, and also have anti-aging properties.

Under the “retin-alt” fall:

• Bakuchiol, named after the Bakuchi plant.
• Resveratrol, sourced from grapes and olives, which contains powerful antioxidants.
• Carrot oil, potent on carotenoids, such as Astaxanthin. Beta-carotene is thought to convert to vitamin A in the body, providing a natural “retinoid-like” benefit. Carrot oil has been used as an ingredient in various hair serums.
• Cacay oil, a plant-based derivative of vitamin A.

Highly Rated Night Creams for Older Women

Here are several other highly-rated creams available for nightly use.

RoC Retinol Correxion Deep Wrinkle Night Cream

This RoC night cream contains powerful retinol and an exclusive mineral complex. The non-greasy and non-comedogenic formula helps reduce the appearance of deep wrinkles while lifting and firming the skin. It’s gentle enough for nightly use. This cream is tried and tested with over 3000 positive reviews on Amazon.

Collagen Face Moisturizer by L’Oreal Paris Skin Care Day/Night Cream

If retinol irritates your skin, you can try this day/night combo moisturizer from L’Oréal Paris. It gently nourishes and replenishes your skin while you sleep as collagen fills in the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Clinique Turnaround Overnight Revitalizing Moisturizer

A revitalizing night cream from Clinique leaves your skin plump and silky. If you care for youthful looks, this is a great option for you. Wake up with glowing skin!

Have you tried any of these night creams? What was your experience like? Do you have any other recommendations? Tell us about your nighttime skincare regimen. Let’s chat night creams.

We love our friends. We really do. But even as I practice channeling acceptance, meditating, Zen breathing, and openness to the universe, I get irritated. It’s not about accepting them. I do. It’s not about judgement. I don’t judge. I think it’s about their crazy banging into mine.

A meme swirling around social media says it well: “When your friend’s mental illness matches your own, priceless.” So true. Yet, living through it can be much more challenging. How can we honor ourselves, our friends, and our intentions when a moment of irritation sets in?

It Is Just a Moment

“It is just a moment” can also be aptly named “this too shall pass.” To get past the moments, the trick is to string together more times that you like who you are with them. Pay close attention to the choices you make in the moment. And then rewrite the history of how you see yourself.

One reaction is just that. Just one time. It is the pattern that emerges over time, and time, and more time that we need to notice and keep on course. Small detours and course corrections to our own choices are the tending to keeping that train on its tracks.

Do Not Take It Personally

Everyone advises to not take things personally, but it is hard to do sometimes. But do it you must.

Start by reminding yourself it may not be you, even if it sure does feel that way. It is your friend’s stuff (behaviors, actions, choices), and you just have to breathe through it. Repeat to yourself, “I am just here, and it would happen to whoever was in this spot at this time. It’s not about me.”

Own Your Own Quirks

Why is it always more obvious when someone else displays the behavior? It’s so easy to point at them and carry on. The adage wisely says, “When you point a finger at someone, there are three pointing back at you.”

Seeing your crazy in someone else is hard to take. You must be brave to see yourself in their actions. You have to get past the annoyance, irritation, and anger. And then you start the hard work of choosing to let go or change.

Now let me illustrate with an example from some time ago.

I was picking up a friend at the airport. I was five minutes away from the rendezvous point when she called and said, “We just landed, it will be another half-hour until I get off and pick up my luggage. And, by the way, my phone is at 1% so you can’t reach me.”

I was about to explode. I could have run another errand instead of waiting. I could have slept late if she’d only considered that there is free texting on most flights these days and jacks to charge your phone.

Why was she devaluing my time? There are so many other things I could have done other than wait for her at the airport for 30 minutes.

I took my own advice and considered what might be the reason she did not text earlier or have her phone charged.

Was she afraid I’d leave her waiting at the airport? Or that I’d be late, despite my track record, so she told me an earlier time? Might I have done the same thing in her situation? This took me back to years past when we had to meet people without cell phones to communicate.

And I remembered it was just a moment and let it go. I just waited in the cell lot, made a few calls, because I was not at 1% on my phone, and when I saw her – gave a huge hello, held no grudge, no resentment, and no hostility.

I knew it was about her and not me. I accepted our friendship and quirks for what they are. Her need to be waited on and my need to squeeze activity into every second of the day. However, although it was just a moment, I have since declined to pick her up from anywhere.

Know When It Crosses the Line

Sometimes it may not be your crazy. Friends you love and respect can become aggressive. It is hardest when they do not recognize it. In these situations, it is best to detach. Remember, you can disengage and still love the other.

In most conversations, adding personal experience deepens the understanding. Not with my friend… she sees it as competition. I can see that about her now. What I cannot see is why I continue to accept my friend’s continuous hostility toward me.

Over several conversations she has said, “end of topic,” and then turned around and walked away from the sandbox. Is this what being kind embodies in a 60-year-old? She digs her heels in, says I am not listening, and believes she has the higher-level bit. I wish I could have videotaped that.

I try to relate with my experience, but she discounts my efforts and says, “I’m competitive.” She is the competitive one – thinking the situation is so different or special. She digs in – and that is her crazy. I take the bait and dig back – my crazy.

Either way, telling me how competitive she is and then not allowing for discussion is her controlling and uncomfortableness, not mine. And repeatedly doing it crosses a line.

This is a 42-year friendship I had to think long and hard about staying involved with. I have come to decide that the way she speaks to me and deals with conflict is unacceptable in my life today.

Meditating Vs. Medicating

Do you find yourself mentally preparing to spend time with this friend? If you feel that you are the one who is always compromising, taking the blame, and accepting her shortcomings while she continues to refuse yours, it’s time for real honesty.

Do not confuse meditation with medication. Finding your Zen and being present in each relationship through meditation is a healthy approach. If you find yourself medicating to be with your friends, this is a good sign it’s time to let go of whatever you are holding onto for your own sanity.

What’s Next

Look at the relationship as an observer. Look in and see if you are being the type of friend you want to be and expect from others. Decide if you are being treated with the kindness and respect you want from others.

Be gentle with yourself and your friend. We all want to be happy and loved. Cultivate relationships where the feeling is mutual and comes naturally.

Do you keep one or more friendships from decades ago? What are these friendships like today? Do you have friends who have come to act more like enemies as the years went by? Have you let friends go? Why? Please share your thoughts with the community!

Kelly Dodd’s White Puff Sleeve Crop Top on Instagram

Real Housewives of Orange County 2020 Instagram Fashion

On Insta Kelly Dodd was trying to sell us on her adorable workout clothes she was gifted. Little did she know she was also selling us on her adorable white puff sleeve crop top. I love her top because you can dress it up or dress it down depending on your mood. The puff sleeve gives any outfit such sophistication which is def something I need in my life. I’m turning another year older next week and I think I need to slip out of my usual baggy work out clothes and slip into a nice puff sleeve top for my outings (when those happen again). And then once I’m done for the day I’ll slip back into  some of Kelly’s cute Bare Athletics pieces.

Sincerely Stylish,

Jess

Click Here To Shop Her A.L.C. Mandy Crop Top

Click Here to Shop Additional Stock

Photo: @kellyddodd

Originally posted at: Kelly Dodd’s White Puff Sleeve Crop Top

Dorit Kemsley’s Black Cat Eye Sunglasses

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills 2020 Instagram Fashion

We all know that seeing a black cat means bad luck if you’re superstitious. But did you happen to know that here at BBH we think seeing black cat eye sunglasses means good luck? And it’s your lucky day because Dorit Kemsley’s sunglasses from her Instastories are fully stocked. They may look familiar from our Real Housewives Zodiac Sign Fashion roundup because they were included in the “Cancer” section of the post based on our girl Dorit Kemsley—further proof Faryn’s picks are right on! But obviously you don’t have to be a moody Cancer to wear them (I can say that as a Cancer, btw). You just have to be in the mood for a great stylish pair of sunglasses.

Sincerely Stylish,

Jess

Click Here To Shop Her Celine Cat Eye Sunglasses

Photo Credit: @doritkemsley

Originally posted at: Dorit Kemsley’s Black Cat Eye Sunglasses

We all use the cloud almost every day in one form or another. However, many of us have no idea what it actually means.

When we talk about “the cloud,” what this means is that the things you create (a.k.a. data), such as photos, videos, documents and email, are not physically stored on a computer, phone or tablet.

Instead, a network of computers – owned by the large companies which provide various services – holds your information. You can access it, use it, and change it via the Internet.

Here is an easy example: When you take a picture on your smartphone, it is stored on the phone’s internal hard drive. But when you upload the photo to Google Photos or iCloud Photo Library, you move it to “the cloud.”

You can still see it, share it, and edit it. It looks like it’s on your phone, but it is physically stored on Apple’s or Google’s computers somewhere.

Cloud services have exploded over the past few years. There are many services that you are using that you might not even realize are cloud based. These include:

• Email – Gmail, Apple mail, Yahoo, etc. Unless you are using an Exchange Mail Server, your email lives in the cloud, not on your machine. You can sign in from any device, anywhere in the world, and check your mail.
• Photo Storage – Google Photos, Amazon Prime Photos, and Flickr
• Streaming Media – Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix and Hulu
• File Management – OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox

Why Should You Care About the Cloud?

As technology continues to get more integrated into everyday life, cloud storage, backup and software services become more essential. For the average user, the cloud has made technology more accessible, affordable and ultimately safer. There are multiple benefits for you to use these services.

You are not using space on your device

How annoying is it when you try to take a picture with your phone and you get that dreaded “Cannot Take Photo” pop-up, that tells you there is not enough available storage to even take a photo?

If you aren’t using a cloud photo storage, you must go through your phone and figure out what you can delete to free up space. The effect is !?@#. By automatically having your photos upload with a cloud service, that becomes much less of an issue.

When you sign up for iCloud, for instance, you automatically get 5GB of storage. If you want to upgrade it to 50GB it is a mere $0.99/month. That is a lot of storage for the average user for not a lot a money.

If you have a Gmail account and use Google Photos & Google Drive for storage, you get 15GB for free and 100 GB for $1.99 month.

Last but not least, if you are an Amazon Prime member, you have FREE unlimited storage for photos.

Software and hardware is expensive and gets outdated fast!

With the cloud, you don’t have to worry about constantly buying new software every year. Yes, you pay an annual fee but the newest version of the software is automatically “pushed” out via updates for you to use.

As for the machines that keep your data, it is up to the cloud service provider to keep things up-to-date, so you have access to the latest and greatest technology.

If one of their servers fails, the data moves to another machine so there is little to no downtime. It’s their business lifeline to keep things reliably accessible and with no lag time in accessing the data.

Replacing Lost or Stolen devices

We’ve all know someone that has dropped their phone in a lake or had it stolen out of their car. While the process of getting a replacement is a pain, if your data is backed up by a cloud service provider, setting up the new one doesn’t result in a complete loss of both device and everything on it. You can purchase a new phone and have everything restored as it was on the lost device.

Security and Privacy with Cloud Services

Because of all the confusion surrounding the cloud, there are a lot of concerns about security and privacy. There is never going to be a 100% guarantee that a cloud service can’t be breached—but the same goes for your own machines and accounts.

Weak passwords, outdated software and old machines that fail are the greatest threat to consumers staying secure. When you stick with tried and true service providers, you greatly decrease security risks.

Reputable providers have highly trained IT people managing machines, software and the data they protect. They are on top of the latest threats. Strict security protocols and constant updates and upgrades keep your data safe, secure and private.

Keep Yourself Safe

How does this apply to you?
Do your due diligence and ask questions when it comes to choosing any cloud service.

Are they a new company? Longevity holds ground in technology. Make sure you are using reputable organizations, such as Google, Apple, Dropbox or Amazon, that have been around for a while.

What are their privacy policies? What are their terms of service? Do you own your data or do they get access to it?

Do they have good reviews? Consumer opinions may vary, but on the average, good services get good reviews.

Have they had any security issues in the past? If so, how did they handle the situation? You are trusting them with your valuable data, so make sure you do your homework. A breach in security is not a killer – it’s how the company responds to it that is critical.

What else can you do to keep yourself secure on the cloud? The basics are key to protecting sensitive and precious information.

• Be smart about your passwords! That means Fido123 isn’t good enough. Make sure you are using complex passwords, and consider using a password manager.
• Avoid storing sensitive information in the cloud. Enough said.
  
• Always, always, always have at least two methods of backup and cloud storage. I use Google Photos, iCloud Photo Library and Dropbox for my document and photo storage. I have an external hard drive and online backup service. Redundancy is a good thing.

The cloud can be a scary concept for those who don’t take the time to understand it. But with a little education, it is easy to see that the cloud can make your digital life much easier to manage.

Having access to your data from anywhere is the key to using mobile computing with less frustration if you are careful.

What are your favorite gadgets or devices? Do you use any “cloud services?” Are you concerned about the safety of your data with these services, or are you confident in them? Have you had any of your accounts breached because of malware or a service provider being hacked? I would love to hear your take on this subject.