Freebies and fun from the LUSH pinata event!

My friend and I were at the mall this past weekend and stopped in at LUSH on a whim. Although I love the idea of any fresh, handmade skincare product, I've always been oddly afraid to go into the LUSH store because it felt like some secret society I didn't know the rules to. Of course I was totally wrong and the ladies who worked there were super nice! They were having an event to celebrate the release of a limited edition bath bomb called "Donkey Oaty", with a giveaway of said product. They also informed us that they were going to be opening a pinata filled with freebies at 4:00 on the dot, so we said we'd return again at 4.

One thing leads to another and it's 3:58 and we're sprinting down the halls of the mall to get to the store in time. I guess their clocks were fast because we skidded into the store with seconds to spare before 4:00 and we see them picking up the carcass of the pinata off the floor and a handful of people were excitedly looking at all the stuff they got. You can imagine our collective "Nooooooooooooooooo!" when we realized we missed our chance at freebies.

Amazingly though, there was a kind soul who had collected a basketful of free stuff, and offered us both a bunch of things she collected. Thank you, super nice LUSH shopper!! I ended up with (shown in the above photo) 2 bars of soap and a "Party On" temple balm - a kind of relaxing aromatherapy balm. The LUSH employee I asked said the soap is ginger soap available only in the UK right now!

My friend had heard a lot about the Aqua Marina cleanser and asked for a sample, so I got one too. It has calamine and aloe vera to calm irritated skin and kaolin for deep cleansing. I've never used their products before so I'm excited to try all this new stuff!

The two little white containers in the photo were from Origins recycling program. I always bring an empty cosmetics product (and I have tons!) with me when I go to Origins, and they usually have a sample-size of something available. This time they were out of prepackaged samples, so they made me up ones of my choice. I picked some "A Perfect World" moisturizer with SPF and "Clean Energy" makeup removing oil.

Gotta love free stuff! :)