3 Year Blogiversary!

Hello my lovelies! I hope you’re having a great bank holiday weekend so far and are enjoying the sunshine. As you can tell from today’s post title, about a month and a bit ago was my 3 year blogiversary! So I’ve been reflecting on all of my different blog posts over the past year and what I’m looking forward to in this next year!

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I can’t believe how much I’ve changed and grown over the last three years, and I can see a massive difference between the person in the first photo compared to now; I’m so much more confident and comfortable with who I am and I think you can see that in these photos. That being said, I still love that shy and insecure girl and if I could tell her anything it would be to believe and love herself even more because it will only lead to great things.

So, what’s been happening over the past year?

I’ve written 32 blog posts last year, left a long-term relationship, I came out, spent a lot of time working on myself and just had a lot of fun (even though I couldn’t really go anywhere during it!). So, let’s go through my top 5 favourite posts from the last year!

Number Five: ‘Art Journaling.‘

I loved writing and filming this post, it’s the first time I’ve filmed my journaling process and I’m proud of how well it came out. I still journal pretty much every day and I can’t wait to show you some of my newest journal spreads!

Number Four: ‘What Pansexual People Want You To Know.‘

This post just like the next post on this list meant a lot to me, and still does. This was a blog post I had wanted to write for a really long time, and I think it covers a lot of questions and misconceptions people have about people who are pansexual. It also helped a lot in the early days when I came out as some of my family and friends had no idea what pansexuality is.

Number Three: ‘It’s Time For An LGBTQIA+ History Lesson.‘

This is such a important post to me as it covers the beginning of pride from the Stonewall Riots, important people in queer history that you should know about and how love will always win. If you’ve never heard or read the story behind the first pride, you should check out this post or go to the Stonewall website!

Number Two: ‘I Moved Into A Tiny Room.‘

This post had to be included in my top five because it was like a reset and refresh that I felt was needed, especially when the first lockdown kicked off and I knew I would be spending a lot of time in my room over the next few months! I also love this post because I haven’t done any posts on my bedroom before, so this was a nice change and was fun trying something new. Maybe I’ll do an update post soon because the room has changed a bit since then!

Number One: ‘I Shaved My Head.‘

Of course this post had to be my favourite post for the past year, because it started a huge shift in how I feel about my own beauty and appearance. Shaving my head was something I’ve always wanted to do, and last year I finally did it. It was such a liberating experience and I’d 100% do it again in the future and recommend it to anyone who’s been wanting to do it!

I’m going to continue to grow and evolve over the next year and I can’t wait to write all about it! What was your favourite post from the last year? Let me know in the comments below! It’s always fun reflecting on the past year and seeing how much I’ve changed in a few months, and for me last year was a huge year of self-growth and self-love.

And with that, I’ll leave you with a poem that has stuck with me:

Maybe,

true happiness

is when we are

happy with

ourselves.

– faraway

Have an amazing weekend my lovelies!

Love,

I Moved Into A Tiny Room.

Hello my lovelies! I hope you’re having a good Saturday and weekend so far and are staying safe if you’re venturing outside social distancing. It seems weird that everything is very slowly feeling a bit like we’re getting back to what normal used to be, but it’s refreshing being able to have a bit more freedom. (That being said, I’ve still not left my house even with the lockdown restrictions being loosened a bit!). Speaking of refreshing, over the last two weeks I’ve had a big change of scenery; and all of this happened because of a conversation with my younger brother.

You see, I still live at home because I’m saving to buy my own place in a few years (thanks UK house prices..) and because I’m the oldest of the three of us that are still living at home, I have the biggest room out of the three of us, with my youngest sister (13) having the next biggest and the my younger brother (17) having the smallest because he’s never had a lot of stuff or need for a bigger room. Well, my brother asks me quite a lot about when I will be moving out because he is desperate to have my bedroom and long story short, I was feeling generous and decided to just left him have it since he’s never had a big room before and he is going on 6ft+ so he needs the leg room at the end of his bed at the very least haha.

The look of shock on his face when I said to him lets just switch rooms was absolutely priceless.

Then the next day came along and it was decided that we desperately needed to paint my brothers room in prep for me moving in. So, we spent the entire day taking everything off of the walls and filling in all of the holes ready for painting the room white to give it a new lease of life and brighten it up. That evening I had to start going through everything in my room and have a big clear out, because even though I’ve paired my belongings down dramatically over the last few years to combat my hoarding tendencies (thanks ocd! Haha) I still had a lot I needed to go through in order to fit everything into a tiny room.

I’ll be honest, I completely forgot to take really any photos of the process which was my bad, but the day after filling all of the holes my brother and I moved everything out of his room except his bed (incase we didn’t get everything done that day) and then I painted the entire room white which really brightened it up and gave it a nice refreshing look. Then that evening once the paint was dry we managed to move all of the furniture out of each others rooms and into our new spaces.

So, although I completely forgot to take before pictures of my brothers room, and during the painting process, and my room beforehand, I have dug out some old photos where you can see small parts of what my room was like before and during!

Here’s what we were dealing with before:

So those are before my I moved rooms, now here’s for the small number of photos I took during(thanks to my brother Joe for the shaky camera shot – at least it’s something from during the process!). And for reference, my old room is probably three times the size of this one with slanted walls on one side:

And finally, here’s what my room looks like now that I’m all moved in! It’s super small, but I love it and it is so refreshing to be in a new space and it’s super cosy and light!

As you can see from the photo I took from above, the room really is pretty small! And as you can see there isn’t a huge amount of storage in my room, close to none really, except a short gap under my bed; so by changing rooms I’ve had to go pretty minimalist compared to what I used to be like. I’ve decluttered and tried to go minimalist a couple of times in the past, but somehow the clutter always begins to build up again after a few months. So this is a great opportunity for me to really commit to the minimalist lifestyle.

Now I’m two weeks into living in this new room and I can safely say that I absolutely love being in this smaller room, it feels exactly like the kind of reset I needed. And it’s so nice to have a simply shaped room! My old room was a disjointed ‘L’ shape with parts taken in and out of it with slanted walls across the longest side so low you couldn’t use it! But my brother loves his room and loves the weird walls too! And lucky for me, I now don’t get asked ‘When are you moving out?!’ 5 times a week.

My family have no idea how I’ve managed to make my teeny tiny room cute, cosy and appear weirdly bigger than how my brother had it, but they think it’s a great fit for me too and love how I’ve decorated it.

I have to favourite parts of my room, number one – my windowsill. Weird I know, but in my last room I didn’t actually have a windowsill, not sure why, but I didn’t. Plus, I’ve made myself a little succulent and cacti garden with my incense burner, buddha and crystals, which I find so calming and relaxing to look at. These succulents and cacti were less that £10 in total from B&Q for anyone who’s wondering – bargain!

My second favourite part of my room, is my wall art. My walls are completely covered in art and it just brings a smile to my face. I love art, and I love being creative and it’s such a great way to express yourself. I’m currently working out what other images and artwork I want to add onto my picture wall so if you have any ideas or recommendations let me know in the comments or tag me on insta @theweightofmyworlds!

So, what do you think of my new room? How do you like to decorate your space? Let me know or show me your spaces on insta or twitter, I love interacting with you on there! Now that you’ve seen my new space in my tiny room, I’ll leave you with these photos of me and my brother Joe! Can you guess how tall I am?! Hahaha!

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Have a great weekend my lovelies! Stay safe and look after yourselves!

Lots of love,

Into

I Went From Hennaed Hair To Blonde.

Hello my lovelies! As you might have noticed, I didn’t put a post up last weekend, and that’s because it was my birthday! But I’ve also been working on this post for you, so here we are today!

So, as you can probably guess from the title of this post, I’ve gone blonde! It took a lot of thought before I actually decided to do it because of having henna in my hair (disclaimer: henna is permanent and if the henna you’ve used on your hair contains metallic salts then you risk your hair literally burning off your head if you bleach it). Lucky for me, the henna I used is Lush Caca Rouge and hasn’t got any metallic salts in it!

Hairdressers won’t touch hair that has has had henna on it due to never being able to fully know what henna you have in your hair and it’s very hard to get out. Something I only learnt AFTER I had hennaed my hair. Whoops!

Being someone who likes to switch up their look a lot, and someone who isn’t afraid to just go for something, I decided I was going to go blonde myself. Yep, you heard me right. I decided that I was going to take my brown/auburn hennaed hair and go an ash blonde. Crazy idea right?

So what did I do? I made a list of everything I was going to need and sent my sister off to salon services for me, because if I was going to bleach my hair to death, I should at least do it with the proper products.

What did I get for this hair challenge?

I bought a bucket of bleach, a big bottle of 20 volume developer, a lightner that I thought was a toner when I bought it to find out it was not, a hair colour, olaplex and then my sister and I picked up some more stuff that was bound to ruin my hair from the supermarket.

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This all happened the day after my birthday, when my sister, her husband and I were babysitting my younger brother and sister (they’re teens but we just had to make sure they didn’t burn the house down when my parents were away) and we had my niece and nephew round. My sister and I are pretty close and have a great laugh whenever one of us are doing our hair so we knew it was going to be one hilarious ride from bleaching my hair to finally getting it presentable. With me doing my sister’s hair in between mine.

To start my hair process, I actually used two lots of colour b4 on the henna on my hair about a week before deciding to go fully blonde because I had heard that it strips henna from your hair. It took a very small amount out which you can see below, and then I slapped on a semi-permanent ash medium blonde which went pretty dark on my hair. It was then that I thought, lets just go fully blonde!

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Side note: Please don’t fry your hair off at home, my hair is very resilient and can withstand a lot of bleaching and processing! But like I always say, you do you!

So onto my first process! For bleach one, we put the bleach over the mids, then the ends and then finally the roots of my hair (as the roots are virgin hair and the heat from your scalp makes the bleach process faster) which resulted it white roots and carrot orange lengths which we had to laugh at! The henna turned out to be extra stubbon than we expected but we went with it.

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Then we went on to bleach number two which helped a bit and we went to a pale orangey yellow!

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Next up we decided to try the lightener which I don’t really think did anything for my hair but I’ll let you be the judge of it.

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It was at this point that we decided to try a box blonde dye, which meant taking a trip to tesco with my Griffindor hat on at 8pm at night… and my sister persuaded me to get a platinum blonde kit which is essentially more bleach and an ash box dye. After the platinum bleach kit we ended up with a pale yellow look with platinum roots, making a good amount of progress!

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Then we put on the ash blonde box dye applying to the roots first and viola! Blonde hair at last! It still needed a bit more toning for my liking at this point so a few days later I put another ash blonde over the top of everything and got to a colour I like.

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Since my hair had been through hell and back, and was essentially just a straw birds nest on my head at this point, I made sure I got myself some good protein, repair and moisture treatments to give my hair a bit of love.

I used the olaplex treatment and then paired that with a heavy layer of love in conditioner on one night which I found helped a little, and then two days later I used the Aphogee two-step protein treatment paired with a shea moisture repair and strengthen mask which was like a miracle treatment for my hair, the protein treatment is something I would recommend to anyone using bleach on their hair because it transformed it from straw to soft and bouncy once again.

The Aphogee treatment is bizarre experience because the protein step is a very liquidy orange product which you saturate your hair with, then use a hair dryer to warm it up to make your hair go rock solid, which you then rinse out and leave on a moisturising conditioner on for a few minutes. After rinsing that out your hair feels so much better!

Here’s before the Aphogee treatment and after:

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I’m currently using protein and moisture masks every time I wash my hair which is around 2-3 times a week which is definitely helping my hair. I’m also washing my hair alternating between a gentle purple shampoo and a co-wash from Noughty haircare which is a brand I love so much (not sponsored, I just love their products!) along with some of their treatment and styling products.

So, here’s my hair now!

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And that is how I went from auburn brown/ginger hair to blonde in two days! I definitely wouldn’t recommend you do this yourself at home if you don’t want to damage your hair; but if you are going to do it like I have, then I would 100% recommend the Aphogee protein treatment, a good moisture restorative hair mask and a leave in conditioner. I would also not dry your hair with a hair dryer or use heat on your hair for as long as you can. I personally only ever use heat to diffuse my hair but now that it’s shorter I let it air dry with my natural curls.

My plan for my hair now is to gradually go a little more of an ashy tone, more so on the ends of my hair as that’s where I’ve got slightly more golden tones from the henna. And I will also keep on using protein and moisture treatments regularly to help my hair bounce back more.

So, that’s my hair! Have you ever changed your hair colour drastically in one/two days at home? How did it turn out? Let me know in the comments!

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I love my new hair colour, it brings out my blue eyes and I think it’ll bring out my freckles when the weather gets a bit warmer. If you want to change your hair colour, go for it! And if you’re unsure what colour to go, you can always try semi-permanent colour without the risks!

And with that, have a nice weekend lovelies!

Love,

Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid To Change Up Your Hair.

Happy Saturday my lovelies! How’s 2020 treating you so far? With us now in the new year, it can feel like the perfect time of the year to experiment with our appearance, whether that be by playing with makeup more (or less, you do you!), wearing new clothes that are out of your comfort zones or, you could switch up your hair.

Just before Christmas I did just that, I decided to get a big hair cut. Here’s how it happened, like how all of these sorts of decisions start for me, it began on Pinterest. I fell head first into the gorgeous hair pins rabbit hole and couldn’t stop pinning these incredible hair inspo photos for hours on end. It was a few hours before I noticed a pattern with the pins I kept adding to my boards; for one everyone had amazing natural waves and curls, and number two, they were all a lot shorter than my hair was at the time.

Lucky for me, I am all for changing up my hair, they only hair length I haven’t gone is the buzz cut, and for the longest time I’ve wanted to shave my head. Who knows, maybe 2020 will be the year for the buzz cut! Like many of you I imagine that like me you probably get the urge to chop all of your hair off when it’s long and vice versa.

Well my hair was below my collar bone, and had been for quite a while as I’ve been undergoing a hair health transformation which has led to me finding new ways to care for my hair and my natural waves and curls. If you want to see what my hair journey has been like then please check out my previous post on it here!

I debated getting my hair cut for a few weeks, and then I figured I would just go for it. I had decided I was going to go a little shorter and get a curly wavy fringe to go with the look. Because you know, what’s something all girls debate for weeks when it comes to hair… to fringe or not to fringe?

Knowing that my hair will grow back, I decided to book in for a hair appointment that same day and off I went to my local salon to get the big chop.

So, what did my hair look like before? Well here’s how long it was before the cut:

You can’t always tell the length of hair when it’s curly, and here it may not look that long to you, but when it was straight it was below my collar bone near my bust. Also, something you can’t see here is that the ends of my hair are still slightly damaged from how much I used to straighten it, so I was happy to get the last of my damaged hair chopped off.

So, what’s my hair looking like now you ask? Well… take a look!

My hair is certainly a lot shorter here that it was! But it as a whole lot healthier and it takes me half of the time it did before to do my hair which is great. I did have a curly wavy fringe for a little while which was super cute, but I am trying to keep my hair off my face as much as I can at the minute so my acne doesn’t flair up too bad on my forehead, so I’ll show you that another day.

My plan now is to grow my hair again, because it’s finally in a healthy place and I don’t plan on burning it to death again, so it’ll grow faster now that I actually know how to look after my curls. And if I decided to do another big chop in the future, so be it!

I’ve always been of the mindset that hair is hair and that it will grow back, so why not experiment and get it cut or coloured and try something new. I love all hair types, textures and lengths, they’re all beautiful in their own ways, and changing things up every now and again is so much fun for me!

Plus, I find sitting in the salon chair super relaxing and I could easily let a stylist cut all my hair off or dye it any colour if they wanted! Lots of people told me not to cut my hair because it was finally getting long, but here’s the thing.. it’s MY HAIR. ON MY HEAD. So.. thanks for the input but I’mma do me thanks.

Moral of the story:

Experiment with your hair! Have fun with it and don’t be afraid to try something new on a whim, because who knows, it might become your favourite look yet, and when it comes to trying something new, it’s your opinion that matters most, no one elses!

And with all of that said, what’s your hair like? Do you like to experiment with different styles and cuts? Let me know in the comments!

Have a great rest of the weekend my lovelies!

Love,

I Embraced My Natural Curls.

This week I’m telling you about a change I decided to start about 4 1/2 weeks ago. And it’s to do with my hair. Now, I’ve done a post about my hair journey before, and you can read that here! But recently I found something called ‘The Curly Girl Method’, and it’s said to be the best way to embrace your natural kinks, curls and waves, and apparently makes your hair healthy and teaches you how to properly manage your hair.

Before I get into what the curly girl method is and what’s involved, I’ll tell you a little about my relationship with my hair. For years and years and years I knew I had curly hair, and I know now that my natural hair is beautiful, but for the longest time I felt like having slightly messy curly hair with a bit of frizz wasn’t very attractive (except when someone else had it… typical!) and that straight and sleek is the only way my hair should be.

I guess it was something that I unfortunately learnt from lack of representation of people with natural hair! I mean, it wasn’t until Disney’s Brave that there was a princess with natural curly (and a bit unruly.. but fab) hair! And how long did that take? YEARS.

So what did I do for years? Well, yes you guessed it! I straightened the living daylights out of it. EVERY SINGLE DAY. And when I say every day, I mean for at least an hour, every day; whether I was going out or not! And then I realised my hair looked nice when I straightened and then curled it.. so that’s what I did. Sounds silly straightening your naturally curly hair to then curl it again doesn’t it?

Yeah, I thought it was ridiculous too. And then I luckily came across the Curly Girl method and I’m so so glad I did!

So.. What is the Curly Girl method exactly?

Well the basis of it is as follows:

• Products are free from sulfates
• Products are free from silicones
• Products are free from damaging alcohols
• No heat to be used on your hair
• Use a micro-fibre towel or t-shirt to dry your hair
• Dry hair on the lowest settings with a diffuser if not airdrying hair

That’s the general jist of it I think! I’m sure I do some things that aren’t entirely Curly Girl friendly but I’m still working on my routine with this new hair care adjustment.

My hair care routine used to be:

Washing my hair every other day with whatever shampoo and conditioner was on offer – and they always had sulfates, silicones and bad alcohols in (partly because I didn’t realise how bad they were!) and then dry it on the hottest heat on my hair dryer, then brush and straighten the hell out of it. To be honest it’s a miracle I still have hair on my head!!

My routine now goes like this: (And I now only wash my hair 1-2 times per week!)

1 . Wash with Curly Girl approved products – I’m currently washing once a week with a clarifying shampoo (to get rid of any build up from styling products) and then with the Noughty Wave Hello Curl Defining Shampoo on my second wash day.

2 . I then do what they call co-washing, which is basically washing your hair with conditioner, the one I’m currently using is the As I Am Coconut Co-Wash Cleansing Conditioner and I use this in the same way I use shampoo, and then after rinsing it out with cool water I apply more to the ends and lengths of my hair.

3 . I then scrunch out excess water.

4 . And then after all of that, I then apply my Cantu Shea Butter Curl Activator Cream to my hair and scrunch it in.

5 . Then wrap my hair in a ‘plop’ with a simple t shirt and leave my hair in that for about 5-10 minutes before I take my hair down.

6 . I then sort of organise my hair I guess? Haha my hair doesn’t necessarily part the same way everyday so I create my parting and then scrunch my curls with my t-shirt to remove more water.

7 . Then comes the mousse! I squirt a dollop of mousse into my hands, rub them together a little and scrunch that into my hair and curls.

8 . If my hair needs more volume at the roots (which it normally does since I have thin hair anyway..) I’ll add in some root clips around my hair part and hairline for about 30 minutes to an hour.

9 . When time’s short, I’ll then diffuse my hair upside down on the lowest settings; and if I’ve got time, I let my hair air dry!

10 . Once my hair’s dry, it then has what the curly haired community call a crunch or cast, which I then crunch out. If I want more volume at my roots I’ll fluff my hair out a bit and use my hair pick to lift my hair up and shake out, and voila! My hair is good to go!

And I know it sounds like way too much work, but in all honesty, applying all of these things actually takes less time than it did when I was straightening my hair! It’s only the air drying that takes a little longer.

And with my results I’m getting, that’s all the motivation I need to keep going! Oh, and the fact that when I’ve done all of this, my curls usually last about 3-4 days, which means waking up, shaking my hair out from my ‘pineapple’ (that’s how I sleep with my curls – scrunchie, silk or satin pillow case and pineapple hair) and about 5 minutes later, I’m usually good to go!

And if my curls are having a bad hair day, I just refresh them using a spray bottle with water and a small amount of conditioner in it and scrunch in some mousse! Simple as that!

I am still going through what they call the transition phase with my hair, in the sense that it’s going to be a while until my hair is really healthy again along with my curls remembering what to do after being washed!

Here’s before I started the curly girl method, when I straightened and then curled the life out of my hair:

Here’s my hair on my first wash day doing the curly girl method:

I know this just looks like a big mess, but I knew that going in to this, I would have to be prepared for my hair looking pretty bad for the first few washes, especially because I am still working out the best methods for washing, styling and drying my hair! Before it’d be a blitz with anything and then a load of heat damage.

Here’s my what my hair looked like for next few weeks:

And here’s my hair as of last week (fluffed out, day 3 hair and trying out new products):

There’s loads of different products out there for curly hair, and it just takes some time working out which ones work for you and your curl type, hair thickness and porosity! If you’re wondering about any of the more complicated stuff like hair porosity, hair protein etc, I highly suggest checking out Jannelle O’Shaughnessy Engels, Curly Susie and Alissa Evelyn‘s YouTubes! They are all curly girls themselves and have great channels devoted to curly hair!

So, what have I learn’t from going completely curly girl friendly?

For a start, I only wish I’d embraced my curls sooner! And I never would’ve thought it’d be this easy to completely stop using straighteners on my hair! I don’t miss them at all! Part of me still can’t quite believe I’ve managed to go all natural, and my hair has never felt so good!

If you’re wondering whether or not to try out the curly girl method of hair-care, I would totally recommend it! I will say, it will take a few months/years to get your hair to a good place where your curls don’t need as much help with products etc, depending on the current condition of your hair, but my hair has only just begun it’s curly journey and I can’t wait to continue my curly journey!

I heard a quote (can’t remember where from) which sums it up pretty perfectly:

“Frizz is just a curl waiting to happen.”

I’ll do a follow up post in a few months so you can see how much my hair has changed! Oh and if you’re wanting to start this hair transformation and aren’t sure what products are curly girl friendly, here’s an article I found helpful!

How do you like to have your hair? Have you gone natural before? Did you like it?

I know I do! haha. I might do a styling post in a few weeks, because I know that on day 3 and 4 hair (before it’s being washed) it can look a little crazy, and sometimes I just want my hair up and out of my face! Is that something you’d like? Let me know in the comments!!

Have a great week lovelies!

Love,