To exfoliate you can use chemicals (acids) or mechanicals (scrubs). I've used both and I think the acids are more effective and less aggravating. Use your fingers to gently massage away dead skin. Or use a large sponge for a little abrasiveness. Drug store brand liquid acne cleansers containing salicylic acids are actually pretty good. Clean And Clear, and Neutrogena have sal. acid formulas. Murad products contain glycolic acid. Estee Lauder Fruition contains a mixture of AHAs - I don't remember which, it's very expensive but lasts a long time. It's not a cleanser, it's a treatment. Avon True Pore-Fection Skin Refining Cleanser contains sal. acid, glyc. acid AND bentonite - I love it. Buy it online and buy multiples - Avon discontinues products and introduces new ones all the time. Masks containing bentonite (it's the greenish clay - make sure the ingredients call out bentonite), include Queen Helene's very cheap Mint Julep mask. It smells like toothpaste and it's almost all bentonite so it's very strong. It sucks everything out of your skin. Too strong for daily use. On the other end of the price scale is Borghese's Fango Active Mud mask. A more refined mixture of ingredients but a lot more expensive too. Good thing is you don't need much.

Carla, we are in the same boat. I'm trying to get myself (skin, hair, and figure) in better shape for my son's wedding this summer and have recently started using Olay Definity Pore Redefining Scrub and Neutrogena Pore Refining Cream (spf 15). I think cleaning your skin with something targeted for your "problems" is every bit as important as putting on a cream or lotion. And really effective cleansing should help with the breakouts you mentioned. I've only been using these products for about a week but I can already see improvement - really! My skin looks and feels smoother and looks more even in tone. Even the dreaded pores look a bit better. I expect that part to take a while but I am very pleased with the results so far. I've gotten compliments - without make up. Neither of these products is very expensive and a little goes a long way. I think they are well worth the price and the effort to use them consistently.

Week-long of humid weather, it rained today. I checked my 3 rooting-areas: In Smart-Pot with MG-potting soil, and in potting soil plus coarse sand, and in acidic pine-fines potting soil with mint-pureed (previous pic), the mint pureed have zero blackspots, but the other rootings either become yellow, or blackspotted after 8 days. Mint-pureed with salicylic acid caused wilting in the vase (no buffer, just acidic rain-water), but the mint-pureed WITH SOIL AS BUFFER is fantastic for rooting. See excerpt from below link: http://www.bluestem.ca/willow-article1.htm " Thomas Powell notes that gardeners reported all sorts of plants growing remarkably better when given regular doses of tiny amounts of aspirin (1 part to 10,000 parts water; larger doses actually proved toxic),” Plants make salicylic acid to trigger natural defenses against bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Aspirin thus is an activator of ‘Systemic Acquired Resistance’ (SAR). However, plants often don’t produce the acid quickly enough to prevent injury when attacked by a microbe. Spraying aspirin on the plants speeds up the SAR response. Tests have shown this works on many crops, producing better plants using less pesticide. They’re also testing aspirin and other SAR activators which could be effective against non-microbial pests such as aphids and root-knot nematodes,” Powell says. “This may be the most important research of the century. Stimulating SAR defenses with aspirin or other activator compounds could result in increased food production and the elimination of synthetic pesticides.” He recommends we experiment by spraying some plants with a 1:10,000 solution (3 aspirins dissolved in 4 gallons of water), leaving other plants unsprayed. Tests have shown that the SAR activation lasts for weeks to months." *** From Straw: Let's see how long my rootings in mint pureed stay clean. Mint has salicylic like aspirin and willow-rooting-hormone. Another German reserach showed that Salicylic acid also help plants to tolerate salt-injury better: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21143731 " Salicylic acid treatment via the rooting medium interferes with stomatal response, CO2 fixation rate and carbohydrate metabolism in tomato, and decreases harmful effects of subsequent salt stress."

Tina, it can be used as a primer but most don't. Here's a good description from Sephora where I buy mine. I never wear a primer unless I'm going somewhere nice, and my primer is cream. "This silky, translucent finishing veil adjusts to any skin tone while minimizing the appearance of pores and fine lines. The weightless formulation can be worn alone or under and over foundation to prep skin, lock down makeup, and control shine for a complexion smoothing, flawless finish. High-resolution, reflective powder technology transforms skin by visually minimizing pores, fine lines, and imperfections for an airbrushed-looking finish. " ETA, when I'm wearing foundation I put the powder over it, then use blush.