My Moom, La Reine des Freebies

Last September my Moom came to visit while Copain was away in the states.  We had my little shoebox apartment to ourselves, just us girls, and we had a totally girly three weeks together: Sex and the City extravaganzas, cheese and wine, Paris adventures, drinks on the beach in Corsica and Sephora shopping sprees.

Oh, and we re-caulked my tub.

But back to the fun stuff. To know my Moom is to love her. The woman has an entire drawer dedicated to the various shades of taupe eyeshadow that exist in the world.  She has a basket full of lipsticks and more freebie travel pouches from Lancôme than you can count on two hands. Full confession: My Moom is a product junkie. So when she had a day to herself in Paris, it's no surprise that she came back with all of this:

Three products purchased, all the others: freebies!

Note: I didn't even know that France had the capability to to give away something - anything- for free. I was very impressed with my Moom and her ability to turn three products into 20.

Included in one of the three products she bought was a jar of Clarins night cream for me - Multi-Active Nuit, Crème confort vitalité jeunesse (Multi-Active Night, youth recovery cream). The conseillère at Sephora told her that I was at the age where I should start thinking about les premières rides - early wrinkles. genial.

It was the most luxurious cream I've ever had and it was a treat to put it on each night. I was sad that three months later I was all out and promptly made my way to Sephora to buy some more.  I was even sadder when I saw the price tag on the little jar of cream at the Clarins counter - 63 Euros!!! Needless to say, I left the little jar right where it was, went straight to Monoprix and purchased a 10 Euro bottle of Mixa organic anti-wrinkle cream. Nowhere near as amazing but at least it was in my price range.

For my birthday this year, my Moom told me to treat myself to a new jar of Clarins - on her. As I stood in BHV looking at the different lotions and tonics I couldn't help myself, I got completely sucked into the Moom mentality!  I initially went in for just the night cream, but then I remembered that my friend Sunny had told me about Clarins having a great mineral sunscreen and I needed that too.  Plus it was thirty percent off because it was made with the old packaging! Then the conseillère told me that the sunscreen wasn't really a day cream - it should go on top of my day cream...so I guess I needed some day cream too. I left BHV with not one, not two, but three purchases AND (much to my content) a whole load of freebies:

Day cream, Night cream, Mineral Sunscreen and my amazing freebies (including a fun new raspberry-colored lipstick and a great little pouch!)

Oh, and I now I have a Clarins carte de fidelité - loyal customer card! Buy 8 products, get the 9th one free!

Like mother like daughter I guess...ooh la.