KEY POINTS:
Tempting though it is to spend these long winter nights in front of the telly until you can decently take yourself off to bed (I live an exciting life), resist. Spend some of the time doing overdue beauty maintenance. Well, it beats doing macrame.
1. L'Oreal Excellence Crème Triple Protection Crème Colourant Dark Praline Brown - $23.99
About now, most brunettes get a hankering for hair that's as rich and velvety as it gets. On cue, L'Oreal has come out with three lovely new brown shades of its permanent colour that covers greys evenly and does velvet to perfection. Okay, so home hair colour involves a degree of guesswork when it comes to the back half of your head, unless you enlist a friend's help, but the front will look great.
* From selected department stores, pharmacies, supermarket and variety stores.
2. Origins Precipitation Extra - $45 for 200ml
Artificial heating and extreme weather conditions can suck a lot of moisture out of skin. Give back. This is an intensely moisturising cream that has sunflower seed and soybean oil, murumuru butter, brazil nut oil, shea butter, coffee oil and clary sage oil in it to give "very dry skin" the biggest dose of moisture it's seen in a while. Origins compares it to a summer rain shower. There's no greasy residue but it's one of those creams you can spend a bit of time massaging into your skin leaving it all the softer for your efforts.
* From selected Smith & Caughey's and selected department stores.
3. Mario Badescu Rolling Cream Peel - $46 for 2.5oz
This is a labour intensive peel with AHAs in it. Apply a thin layer and then massage until small rolls appear. It's gentler than some forms of exfoliation and really does get rid of ugly old skin cells.
* From Glamorpuss.
4. Tom Ford Estee Lauder Collection Azuree Soleil Eau Fraiche - $108 for 100ml
Uber-designer Tom Ford's collaboration with Lauder is like bringing summer forward a few months - well the spirit of anyway. The limited edition fragrance recalls Palm Beach, St Tropez and Azuree. It's the smell of the beach in a bottle - Tahitian gardenia, coconut oil, jasmine, myrrh, sandalwood, amber and caramel. Impossible not to be transported to a warmer place.
* From selected department stores and pharmacies.
5. Chanel Rouge Noir Le Vernis - $44 for 13ml
A set of black painted talons is one of the easiest ways to update your look for the season. This is the famous Rouge Noir colour, a garnet-tinged black introduced by Chanel in 1995, which became an instant legend. Its time has come again. Suddenly, "I've got to paint my nails" is a great excuse for a night in.
* From Smith & Caughey's and selected pharmacies.
