4 Things I Was Influenced to Buy…& If They’re Worth The Hype (& Money)

While I may be considered an “influencer” on Instagram, I am just as likely to be influenced to buy something! We see ads from influencers all the time promoting certain products and it seems like a lot of them will talk about the same product around the same time.  Generally, this is not an accident and it is designed that way by the company or marketing team that rolled out these campaigns to the influencers.  Some catch my eye, some don’t, like anything.  But when something *does* catch my eye, sometimes I buy immediately and sometimes I wait it out and see who else might talk about it or what other opinions I can find.  Recently I’ve pulled the trigger on a few purchases (recently being within the window of the last 3-8 months) and so now that I’ve had sufficient time to try these all out, I’m going to share 4 things I was influenced to buy…& if they’re worth the hype (& money).

The 4 Things

1. Bondi Boost Shampoo & Conditioner:  I went back and forth trying to decide between 2 brands I saw a ton on Instagram: Prose and Bondi Boost.  I am trying to both get my hair as healthy as possible and to grow it out longer, so I wanted to find shampoo & conditioner to facilitate that.  After hearing from some friends anecdotally that they weren’t impressed with Prose, I decided to try the Bondi Boost HG Shampoo & Conditioner.  HG = hair growth 🙂  They have a 30-day money back guarantee if you buy from their website, but Ulta also carries their products (shampoo here & conditioner here) and has bigger bottles too. No idea why the Bondi Boost site doesn’t!  Anyways – I love this stuff.  Super clean ingredients, smells so clean and refreshing, and my hair felt noticeably stronger and smoother after just the first use.  It even felt thicker!  And now having used it for over 2 months, I can say I do think it’s making my hair grow faster.  I got my hair colored right around the time I started using it, and so I can easily see how much growth I’ve had and it’s at least a couple inches.  So for this, I say: WORTH THE HYPE!
2. Dime Beauty Lash Serum & Perfume:  Okay so I’ll go ahead and say it: WORTH THE HYPE. Technically these are 2 separate products but from the same brand.
   1. Lash Serum: I’ve always been kinda weirded out by lash serum products on the market because a lot of them have really icky ingredients and I did not want to be putting that stuff so close to my eye, lol. But every ingredient in Dime’s serum has an EWG rating of 1, which is the safest rating any ingredient can get.  So I got it sometime last fall and despite the fact I have been terrible about using it consistently, I can say that I undoubtedly have noticed a difference in the length of my lashes.  It will take several weeks from when you first start to see the difference, but you will!  I recommitted myself to using it every single day (they say to use it even morning & night if you really want to ramp up lash development) because y’all know I don’t like wearing face makeup…and I think if your lashes are on point then they can do the work for the rest of your face!!
   2. Perfume:  Only recently have I become aware of all the toxic ingredients found in many of the perfumes on the market.  So when I saw that Dime had their own perfume, I was intrigued and decided to start by getting the 3-perfume sample set. It’s only $15 and an easy way to try out the scents before committing to the large bottle.  While I thought all 3 smelled great…I *loved* the Lovely Dreams scent and went back for the full size bottle.  It’s now my daily scent!
3. Magic Spoon Cereal: Fun fact, I am a little bit of a cereal monster.  I can rarely keep it in the house because I love it so much, haha.  So when I saw people talking about Magic Spoon on IG it definitely caught my attention…but ultimately I did keep holding out because I was like wellllll it seems a *little* expensive for cereal.  One day I must have been having some serious cereal cravings because I finally did order some.  I got the variety pack with the cocoa flavor, cinnamon, & blueberry to try.  I have to say, it does taste a lot better than I thought it was going to for being a “healthy cereal”.  The cinnamon & blueberry were tied for my favorites.  Cinnamon might get the slight edge because it reminds me of my all time favorite Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.  The nutrition stats are pretty good: around 150 calories and 14g of protein per serving.  Also, I found that I really only needed to eat one bowl because it was really filling…and kept me full for hours.  You can check out the comparison to other cereals on the market here.  My verdict: WORTH THE HYPE but with a disclaimer to where I think it’s worth it *to at least try once!*  Yes it’s pricier than most cereals, but I think food budgets are easily enough manipulated where I could save the $ elsewhere in my grocery list if I wanted the cereal.  I do like having the option of a quick, yummy, and high protein snack….and Emma really likes it too!  If you don’t like cereal then no it’s not worth it lol. PS – Amazon carries it here but I think you can get a better deal/pick your exact flavors on their website.

So there ya have it!  I definitely don’t always like everything I always get…but in this case, I did!  In fact, it was what gave me the idea to write this post…to validate that yes I had seen people talking about these products and I decided to give them a try (for several months in some cases) & I really liked them!

I have since been influenced again and have a couple other items I’m trying out including the Billie razor (I know, I’m like 2 years behind on this one but I finally decided I’m going to put it to the test against my old Venus razor! lol) so stay tuned for another post like this one soon!  Feel free to let me know if you have any questions in the comments!

xo,

Bess