Everything Cherrychan108: Cherry's Morning Simple Skincare Routine Winter '09

For me, skincare is tenfolds more important than make-up. The fact is that make up does not look good on bad skin and it can make your skin even worse. Loving what nature gave you is important and that includes your body's largest organ - your skin.

Today I'm going to quickly go through what I use in the morning. Looking at it, I have significantly decreased the amount of products I've been using and I think it's been doing my skin some good. Besides what you're about to see I've also been doing well on my Weightwatchers journey and been eating healthily. I've tried to sleep as much as I can but I think the key to good skin is being happy and relaxing as well as religiously cleaning day and night.

Step 1: Cleanse

Why is it important to cleanse in the morning, especially if you cleansed before you slept? This is because you can produce oil on your skin during the night as well as picking up dust and any unwanted bacteria during the sleep. So a good clean in the morning will prepare you for the day and your skin will thank you for it. I tend to use scrubs in the morning because it not only wakes me up but gives my skin a good flush and healthy glow.

Right now I've reverted back to an old favourite, Neutrogena's Deep Clean Invigorating Scrub.

This scrub is particularly good for the morning as it has a great menthol feel to the skin. It's exfoliating particles are part grainy and part beads and therefore gives a good balanced scrub. I've recently been using this and letting my face soak in the product for a couple of minutes before I sleep. The reason for this was because it would increase the menthol feeling so it would wake me up properly in the morning but I've foud since I've been doing this my skin has become softer; don't quote me on this but it might be the scrub - but probably not.

Step 2: Tone

Toning sweeps away any remaining cleanser from your face, balances your skin, calms it down and prepares it for moisturising. I don't think I've used a product as continuously as I have with this one; the Botanics Rose Water Toner.

I adore this toner in every single way. If you don't like the smell of roses, I would recommend two other toners I've listed below. But definitely try this out if you can, it's absolutely fantastic and addictive. I can't live without it and honestly calms my skin right down which has a tendency to flare up from many cleansers.

Other recommendations:

Simple's Soothing Facial Toner

Body Shop's Seaweed Clarifying Toner

Step 3: Moisturise

The key to any skincare regime is to moisturise. The benefits of supple skin is monumental - and I'm not exaggerating. When there is an inbalance within your skin you will get dry skin or break outs or redness - any imperfections is due to some sort of imbalance and that's moisture included. You can even break out because of oily so don't be fooled into thinking you're safe if you have oily skin. The fact is is that no matter WHAT skin type you are, you need to moisturise and feed what your skin needs. I'm so in love with moisturising; my mother is in her 50's and she honestly has the most gorgeous skin in the world and when I say it's soft, it's an understatement. It's better than a baby's bottom, it's taut, glowing, soft, smooth and most of all - amazing for her age. She is the type of woman who will never really need to wear foundation. How has she achieved that? She tells me its through religious moisturising and using as little products as possible.

Here are the three moisturisers I'm using at the moment. All of them are amazing and totally recommended for dry/combination skin. I'm currently using the latter A LOT and it's my current favourite.