The Ordinary

I bought a couple of products from The Ordinary: I bought hyaluronic acid from Sephora, and then, because Sephora apparently doesn't carry it, I bought squalane directly from Deciem (which I guess is The Ordinary's parent company).

If you don't know about The Ordinary already, the idea is that they sell the things that are ingredients in all the expensive beauty products, and they sell them quite cheaply. The 100% Plant-Derived Squalane was $7.90 (US) from Deciem, and the one from Sephora was less than $7.

As far as I can tell, both products work well, but I stumbled on a Canadian website that has reservations about the Hyaluronic Acid - something about the size of the molecules that I don't entirely understand, but it sounds rather ominous. I decided because of that I am sort of going to hedge my bets - I'm not going to throw it away or anything but I'm going to maybe use it less often than I would have otherwise. Once a week, say, unless I see any issues.

I bought this from Sephora after I decided I wanted to use some of my Sephora points on some cologne for Rob's birthday, back in January. He liked this D&G stuff that I got but boy, it's a really tiny bottle for 250 points - or to think of it another way, it's a freebie for having spent $250. It's considerably bigger than one of those little spray vials, but still awfully small - 4.5ml. (Here's the smallest retail bottle, 50ml for $68.)