New Hair Alert!

I am one of those people who doesn’t make much effort with their hair. I wake up, brush it (sometimes), and either leave it down or tie it up – that’s it. What I do like to do with my hair is experiment. I have quite a round face which means I can’t experiment with the actual cut because it makes me look like a munchkin, but I can dye it and I have done quite a few times. I have been black, brunette, ginger and every shade in between. The newest colour I decided to head towards was – drum roll please……. BLONDE!! Yes you heard me right. Blonde. Considering I have always been a dark haired girl I wasn’t too sure what this was going to look like.

I would like to introduce you all to the new me:

 This was straight after I hade dyed it, it was still very white.

So, what do you think? It's very blonde, right? What I thought I would do is give all you dark haired girls out there a ‘how to’ on becoming blonde. I had lovely help from my very beautiful pink haired friend Aimee. She has her own colourful blog here. Take a look, I am 100% sure she will teach a new baking tip. I definitely learned a thing or two.

So what you will need is:

This is how you become a blonde bombshell:

1.       You first have to bleach the hair or the blonde hair dye will not take. This is a tricky process as you don’t want it touching anything but your hair. Make sure you have an old top on just in case. This took quite a long time, but you don’t want to miss a section otherwise it will really stand out.

It was already turning blonde.

2.       After leaving it in for 20 minutes - once your whole head is covered - wash all the bleach out. Again be careful not to get it everywhere. Once you have washed it out you will be able to see how white it has made your hair. My roots were WHITE - so white that you could see my scalp.

What a strange colour.

Look how white my roots are!

3.       The next step is to put the blonde colour on. I bought L'Oreal hair dye. This is just a preference as I have used them a lot over the years and I feel they give a good overall tonal colour. Follow the instructions that come with the dye as they are all different.

4.       After leaving the dye in for as long as the instructions state, wash all the dye out. At this point we conditioned my hair to make it a little softer after all the bleaching. Once washed, blow dry your hair. Then look in the mirror and see the new you smiling back (hopefully smiling, if you like it).

At the very beginning it was still very white blonde but after a couple of days this calmed down and now I love it!! Here is a before and after photo:

The one downfall of becoming blonde is the roots. Who knew hair grew so fast?! It has only been a couple of weeks and my roots are already showing quite visibly. I think that I will let them grow to about 2cm before bleaching the roots again, so I will let you know how that goes.
Currently I love being blonde and it has taken a while to get used to it. I still look at photos and in the mirror and shock myself, but in time I will start to remember.

I would love to know if any of you dark haired girls have gone blonde recently and how you did it, or how you already blonde girls keep it blonde and stop it from going dark.

Abbi's Top Tips - Nail Art

The trend for this summer was nail art and I am glad that it is carrying on for the autumn season. I thought that this month’s top tip could be how to do an easy nail art, for those who are desperate to try it for themselves.

The first thing we did was search the World Wide Web for inspiration. There are so many different designs out there that it is hard to pick a favourite, so we decided to incorporate a few ideas that we saw and make up our own design.
So lets get artistic….

Equipment needed:
 

We chose the white as it will be a nice base for the nail art. You can choose which ever colours you feel suit you best. Don’t feel limited, let your imagination run wild.

Instructions:

1. Paint 3 finger nails with your first chosen colour. You can choose which fingers you wish to paint. We chose not to paint the thumb and ring finger as they were far enough apart for it not to look silly.

2. Repeat step 1 until you feel the coat is the right colour. We did 2 covers.
 

3. Once those nails have dried completely, paint the remaining nails (in this case our thumb and ring fingers) with the other colour. Again paint those until you feel the coat is the right colour. The white we used took 3 coats.

4. You have to let these nails dry completely because we will draw the nail art on top and if you do not let it dry it will not work.
 

5 We decided to go with an Aztec design for our nail art as it is simple straight lines and you can be as creative as you want with the design. Being very soft with the pen draw your first line to see how much comes out. Doing this will stop you from making a massive dollop on your nail, which means you would have to start again.

6. Being soft and careful, slowly draw your pattern on the nail.

7. Once you have finished let the nails dry completely. Once they have dried, put a clear top coat on every nail. This will protect the nails for that little bit longer.

8. Once your first hand has completely dried it is time to tackle the other hand. For most people this is more difficult as you have to use the "wrong" hand to paint your nails - the only tip I can give you is take it slowly.
 

Then TA-DA it is done and you have attempted your first nail art paint job. Once you have done it once then go crazy with it, try news designs. We would love to see how your imagination works.

Throwback Thursday

Last month was my parents 20th wedding anniversary, so I thought I would dedicate todays Throwback Thursday to them. This is a photo from their wedding day and it is by far my favourite. My mum hates getting her photo taken so all posed photos of the two of them my mum hates and there are quite a few when either one of them or both have their eyes shut. 

I was 2 years old when they got married, I dont really remember the day very much except I had to have special shoes....? 

I am who I am today because of these two special people in my life. I look just like mum and share her over emotive emotions and everything else is my dad (and I mean everything, sometimes its a little scary how alike we are). 

Me and Simon have been together for quarter of the time my parents have been married and I hope that when we hit our 20th anniversary that we are half as happy as they are.

Happy Anniversary Mum & Dad and Thank you.

  

Clio Update

We have had Clio now for 3 months and that time has gone really quickly. Thankfully she has not got any bigger otherwise she would be a small horse.

I am still not too sure how I feel about her. At the beginning I loved her because she was quiet, she didn't jump and she did what we said. Now it's a different story. She's found her voice, or shall I say her bark. As she grew more comfortable around us she seemed to turn into what I can only describe as a toddler - she gets told off, has to have timeout and has the biggest sad face.

Along with the barking she has started to jump up. I know that she only wants to play and it is not vicious, but I dont think she realises how big she is. I have got numerous scrathes on my arms, legs and stomach from where she jumps up at me – which I am not impressed about. When she jumps up I can honestly say it scares me. She is so big I have nearly fallen over quite a few times.

Clio has also taken a fancy to shoes (hear the girls scream)! We have a shoe rack by the front door that she takes shoes from and runs into the garden to chew them to pieces. What Clio does, which she thinks is clever, is that she chews nothing indoors - she takes them into the garden to chew. What Clio doesn't understand is that we can see her run from inside the house with the shoe into the garden. I have already lost 2 pairs of shoes; 1 beautiful pair of gold havaianas and a pair of sandals. Thankfully summer shoes which are no longer needed.

What I have managed to do is teach her 3 tricks, which I am so proud of. The first one was sit, which was quite easy as she did that when ever she thought we were giving her food, so all she had to learn was doing it on command. The next one was paw, or as I prefer high 5. This was a little trickier but we got there and now she doesn't stop doing it. The last trick was lay/down. I am so impressed with myself for stepping out of my comfort zone and teaching her these tricks. Now I just need to teach her to roll over and to leave my shoes alone!