The festive season may be over, but I’m still bathing in Christmas magic every night with The Body Shop Vanilla Chai Exfoliating Sugar Body Scrub and the Vanilla Chai Shower Gel. I treated myself to these during the Black Friday sales and completely forgot about it until I got back home from visiting my family for the holidays. It was a lovely surprise to come home to, and it helps make that warm and cozy holiday feeling last a little longer.
I know I say this every time I try a new limited edition range by The Body Shop, but this is by far my favourite Body Shop scent so far. The notes of vanilla and brown sugar are just right, not sickly sweet at all, and there’s a definite spiciness to the fragrance that makes it the shower equivalent of a lazy Christmas afternoon by the fire with a pile of Christmas cookies.
The Body Shop Vanilla Chai Exfoliating Sugar Body Scrub smells heavenly, of course, but it also has a great texture. The last couple of scrubs I got from The Body Shop had a gel texture with gel-like beads and I was disappointed by their performance as it wasn’t scrubby enough for me. The Vanilla Chai is a sugar scrub and I can feel it working and lifting dead skin cells to leave the skin super smooth. It’s not exactly gentle, but it’s definitely not harsh on my sensitive skin either. The scrub is thick and creamy and the sugar doesn’t dissolve immediately when it comes in contact with water, which makes for a very satisfying and even scrubbing experience.
The Body Shop Vanilla Chai Shower Gel has the same great scent as the sugar scrub. It lathers well, but I found it quite stripping, so body lotion (the Vanilla Chai gel-lotion, perhaps?) is definitely a must with this one. It’s a great way to layer up the scent, but even using both products together didn’t make the Vanilla Chai fragrance linger for very long. It does, however, fill the shower with the scent of Christmas.
The best part is that the Vanilla Chai range is now on sale, so I can also pick up the hand cream. And the body butter. And the lip balm…
