American Blend & The 37:

Today's shave was pretty good but not great and no it wasn't the soap. Today I went with Fine Accoutrements and their American Blend soap which is their take on YSL's Rive Gauche Pour Homme (2003) and to finish off today's shave, I went with the matching aftershave:

I should have switched out the blade before my shave even though I only had 1 shave on it. My shave was very uncomfortable. I ended up getting where I wanted to be in just 2 passes but the razor tugged and pulled a lot. So I am tossing out the blade and putting in a Gillette Nacet blade. I'm a little disappointed that the Wilkinson Sword blade was only good for one shave in my slant.

C.a.D. & The Slim:

Today's shave was great. Today I decided to go with Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements and their modern day classic "C.a.D." which is a much stronger version of a certain 1970's & 1980's "canned shave foam" scent. I can't mention the name because I don't want to get any "cease and desist" letters for mentioning their name which is what the company that makes the canned foam scent does. And to finish off today's shave, I went with the matching aftershave:

The Gillette Slim was perfect this morning. I started off with a setting of 7 for my 1st pass then I dialed down to 3 for my second pass and then down to 1 for my last pass. I ended up turning it back up to 3 and hitting my moustache area again because it wasn't close enough and 1 wasn't getting it done in that area. I believe that I'll be doing what I did the other day from now on when it comes to shaving. I also tossed the Wilkinson Sword blade out as well. 3 shaves is my limit with those blades. Others who don't have a tough beard like I do will more than likely get 5 to 6 shaves out of a blade give or take a little. They're extremely good blades but so far I'm loving the Gillette Nacet blades more.

C.O. Bigelow & The 42C:

Today's shave was great. Sorry for the delay ladies & gentlemen. I pretty much had to shower & shave and go out the door today. In fact I posted it on my Instagram page before shutting off my phone before leaving. Today I went with C.O. Bigelow and their Menthol & Eucalyptus scented cream. The matching cologne doesn't quite match the cream but it's pretty close:

And to finish off today's shave, I went with a nice healthy dose of Osage Rub:

The 42C was excellent. I ended up getting a really close shave in just 3 passes. I also did something a little different today in terms of my passes. I only went against the grain on my moustache area, my chin and the bottom of my chin. The rest was either with the grain or across the grain which made for an extremely comfortable shave today as well.

New Camera in The House!

This Christmas gift is awesome and was needed very badly. After 6+ years of abuse and an untold number photos taken, my old camera has seen its better days. My mom has surprised me this Christmas with a brand new Nikon B500 digital camera with built in wifi and I downloaded an app that syncs the camera with my smartphone which is pretty simple and easy to operate:

Since it is Christmas and me being a Christian, I thought it was best to take the 1st picture of the Nativity Scene which is the true meaning behind Christmas:

The Wifi & the app are awesome and make transferring pictures very easy. I now only have to take 1 photo or series of photos and can upload them to all forms of social media apart from this blog. I also just turned on the date stamp so that people can tell when the photo was taken. I also don't have to set the date & time because my smartphone does it automatically which is awesome:

Here's how I transferred my pictures directly from the camera to this blog. I have really missed doing this. My old camera use to be able to do this but for some reason, it no longer is able to do that and has been that way for nearly 3 years. Now I can simply turn on the camera and transfer my pictures to this blog. Before I was having to remove the memory card to upload them before:

This is my old digital camera which has seen 6+ years of abuse:

^ As you can the bottom plate is broken and I was having to hold it closed for the camera to even work. Transferring photos became a hassle. I had to remove the memory card for any and all uploads. The transfer cable quit working. And since the bottom plate no longer stays shut, I've been having to reset the date & time in the camera before each use. Plus this old camera didn't have wifi built in either which does make a huge difference. I've got my new one set to the VGA setting which allows the camera to take 9999 pictures on this specific setting with my 16 gig memory card. This goes down to 1604 photos on the 16 mm setting. Another feature that I really love is the fact that I can now turn the flash on full time instead of just off or on auto which made for interesting situations when photos didn't turn out good at all. I was having to take at least 4 if not more photos just to get one decent photo for mail calls & shave of the day photos. Getting some photos of a honing session was extremely difficult to the point where I had to stop taking photos of my progression and eventually I got to where I decided not to do honing posts as a result. So being able to leave the flash on full time instead of just having an auto setting is a huge help. Another thing I've noticed about new camera is the fact that it's 5 times faster than my old one shown above. Boom and it's done while my old one would take about a minute or longer to take a photo.

Resolution & The Doc:

Merry Christmas ladies & gentlemen. Today I got up and looked in the mirror and I needed a shave. So I grabbed Soap Commander and their fabulous "Resolution" scented soap which is the only Christmas like scent that I have in my shave cave. The scent is a fresh cut Frasier fir tree, some bitter but fresh mistletoe along with some really sweet Cranberries. And to finish off my Christmas Eve shave, I paired it with Aqua Velva ice blue aftershave splash:

The doc was fantastic. I was pretty much squeaky clean after performing 3 passes. I could have stopped after 2 but there was a few too many spots with stubble left behind so I went ahead and done my usual 3 passes with this razor. The Wilkinson Sword blade in the razor is on its last shave which is about normal because the doc razor is a bit of a blade eater. I had to stop before my last pass & strop the blade to finish the shave. So I'm going to go ahead and put a fresh Gillette Nacet blade in there to try. I'm really loving the Gillette Nacet blades.

Proraso Green & The 42C:

Man oh man what a great shave I had this morning, wow. Today I needed something that was refreshing & invigorating so I went with Proraso Green which has an incredible Menthol & Eucalyptus scent to it along with an epic post shave feel. And to add even more menthol to the post shave feel, I finished the shave off with Pinaud's Osage Rub which is like tripling the menthol effect:

The Merkur 42C (Classic Closed Comb) was perfect. I was squeaky clean after just 2.5 passes which is a sweet spot for me and these Gillette Nacet blades might just be my top choice of razor blades before long. They're even more comfortable & efficient than my Perma-Sharp blades are and that says a lot. I may have to change my top 5 blades after this, wow.

Confidence & The Fusion:

This morning's shave was great and since I have to be some where, it had to be fast as well. Today I went with Soap Commander their classic "confidence" scent which is fabulous. The scent is an overly sweet honey with musk & patchouli. The patchouli & musk still allow the honey to come through but calms the sweetness down to where the scents work well together. And to finish off the shave, I went with the matching aftershave balm which adds a touch of menthol to the already incredible post shave feel:

The Gillette Fusion was perfect. I was squeaky clean in just 2 passes. I really don't have a lot of time today so I grabbed my Fusion and I did make sure that it had a fresh blade.