Philosophy Vanilla Birthday Cake Shower Gel 3 in 1

I should probably be more organised and take photos of products before I've used up 3/4 of them. In my defence though, I only thought about reviewing this the other day when I was having a shower and thinking about how smooth my elbows where feeling. Look, I'm an adult. It's not weird, okay?

I've never had a lot of interest in bath products - as far as body washes go I don't get much further than the supermarket for either Dove or Palmolive, whichever is on special. I have no use for bubble bath, bath salts, bath bombs and so on, because a) I don't have a bath, and b) like Kramer, I find the idea of floating around in your own filth vaguely disgusting. As for showers, well they're not very interesting when you're in there on your own. And because I wear perfumes all the time I don't like highly scented bathing products that can clash with them.

However, Philosophy is one of those brands you hear about all the time, so one day when I was lurking around on Strawberrynet buying pointless pretties, I decided to throw in a bottle of the Vanilla Birthday Cake Shower Gel. It was $24AUD, which is a bit ridiculous for body wash, but I got the 10% off for being a Strawberrynet Uber Shopper, so that was something. And it's a pretty big bottle, a shade under 500ml.

The scent is nice enough, but just your average synthetic vanilla scent found in any number of bath and body products. I'm told that the scents are hit and miss, but that some of them are spectacularly good. Once I'd rinsed it off the scent was pretty much completely gone, and that's actually a selling point for me. I enjoy it while I'm using it, but I don't want it messing with my perfume once I'm out of the shower.

What I really like about it is how smooth it makes my skin feel. I own about 596 body moisturisers, but I've yet to find that one that will magically apply itself while I lie on the couch eating cheezels and watching my stories, so they don't really get any use. Having a shower product that does all that hard work for me is fantastic. And when I mentioned to Noodle Arms that my elbows were really smooth (don't you wish you lived in my house and was privy to such scintillating conversation), she said hers were too - and her elbows are usually as rough as a cat's tongue.

I don't know if Philosophy is available in Australia, and if it were it would be prohibitively expensive anyway. The shower gels crop up on Strawberrynet regularly, but the scents available there are limited. The website ships internationally but charges a flat $40USD shipping rate. This is great if a bunch of people go in together and buy a lot of stuff, but not so great when you just want four or five bottles. I really want to get my hands on some more, though, so I'll have to give it some thought.

In short. Philosophy makes me feel soft in a good way. Two thumbs up.