What I’ve Learnt From Having A Shaved Head So Far.

Happy Saturday my lovelies! This week has flown by for me, I think I’ve lost track of what day it is at least 3 times everyday, and haven’t actually been outside other than twice this week. Today was the first day I’ve actually allowed myself some time to actually have my daily walk, because all throughout the week I’ve just been way too busy to do so!

It feels weird being so busy now, especially because I know a lot of people aren’t working right now. I’m one of the very lucky people who can work from home, so I am working monday – thursday with my full time job and then I’m also running my own business in the evenings and on fridays, as well as writing this blog, trying to stay fit and doing some hobbies.

One thing that hasn’t been taking up my time, is doing my hair. Because as you may know from my post a few weeks ago and my insta, about a month ago, I shaved my head for the first time.

And since then, I’ve learnt quite a few things.

1 . I love not having to wake up and think about styling my hair. In fact, I have hardly thought about it at all since chopping it all off, and I’m a lot less stressed when it comes to getting dressed and ready for the day because I’ve saved about 40 minutes from my morning.

2 . My skin is thanking me. I don’t know if it’s related, but before I used to have my hair on my face all of the time, and due to having naturally curly hair, I always used products to tame it, and since having no hair to go on my face my skin appears to have cleared up a bit (I’m also trying out some new skincare products, so that might be helping too).

3 . I love a beanie hat. Or any hat to be honest. When I was younger I loved wearing hats in all forms, but as I’ve gotten older I always struggled to feel comfortable and stylish whilst wearing them. And I realise now that I think it was partly down to hat hair and not finding a way to wear a hat without feeling drowned; but now I don’t have to worry about hat hair, so I bought myself some beanie hats because I was getting a little chilly, and I now wear them nearly every day! They are just so cosy and I have a few colours which go with any of my looks for the day.

4 . Showers are so much quicker, and cheaper! We all knew that showers would become quicker, but I didn’t realise how little shampoo and conditioner I’d actually need. I haven’t had to spend any money keeping up with all of my hair products which is great!

5 . I didn’t realise how much of a comfort blanket my hair was. It’s one of those cases where you can’t see how something has affected you until it’s gone. For me, that was definitely my hair, it’s one of the things everyone recognised me by and knew me for. I think that’s why it took me so long to actually shave it off, I’d always wanted to do it of course, but it was the fear of hating how it looked and being judged and seen differently that stopped me. Now that it’s gone, in fact the second it was gone, I felt so incredibly free that I’m not sure why I hadn’t done it sooner!

6 . Hair doesn’t make you any more or less feminine. I was very paranoid that people would think I was a man or misidentify me. But I don’t know why I thought this, I think this is something that’s unconsciously ingrained in us since we’re young, that girls are supposed to have flowing hair and boys are supposed to have short hair. What I’ve come to see as I’ve gotten older is that I frickin love women with short hair and men with longer hair, and every other form of hair style on all kinds of people. When I had long hair I had days where I felt more masculine and then days where I felt more feminine and then days where I felt neither, and having my hair this short just reinforced that gender stereotypes are a load of bollocks and you should do what makes you happy.

7 . Your hair will grow back, and your hair grows faster than you think it does! I’ve trimmed my hair every weekend since I’ve shaved it, and I’ve had just over half a cm come off each week. It doesn’t sound like a lot I know, but when you think about it, it’s not bad!

8 . I’m not sure I want to grow my hair out again. I don’t know if it’s because it’s so comfy and freeing and easy or if it’s purely for the fact that I love it. Oh and the fact that head massages are even better with no hair.

9 . I’ve never been happier with my appearance. If you would’ve asked me 5 years or even 10 years ago if I would be my most confident self with a shaved head I would have laughed in your face. But who would’ve known! I love it!

10. I know myself better now. In shaving my head, I’ve finally began spending time actually looking at what makes me feel good and feel like myself. And over the last month and a half I have had days here and there where I’ve not felt my best self, but I think that’s pretty normal given the state of things, and then I’ve had days where I absolutely love how I look, but I can honestly say I have 90% more days where I live how I look. I’ve had time to actually look at my face, and I mean really look at my face; it’s not something we usually do, not when you really think about it, we get distracted by our hair and how that changes our face, so I’ve taken time to actually get to know myself better.

And that’s what I’ve learnt so far. I never would’ve thought simply having little to no hair would change me so much, and when I say change me, I don’t mean change who I am, I mean that I’ve changed in the sense that I’ve so much more confident, more accepting and less judgemental of myself and I couldn’t care less about what traditionally makes us attractive in society.

So, after all of that I’ll leave you with this:

One day I woke up and realised I was not made for anyone, I was made for me. I am my own.

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Powerful stuff eh? Anyway, look after yourselves my lovely! Have a great weekend and stay safe!

Lots of love,

I Shaved My Head.

Hello my lovelies!! I hope your week hasn’t been too bad with everything going on outside our homes. To fight the boredom of staying home non-stop for a few days a lot of us are coming up with creative ways to spend the time, creating games, making art, and video chatting more people than ever before. And some people are wanting to get their hair cut so bad that they are cutting it themselves!

I am one of those people.

And as you can tell from the title of today’s post, I shaved my head! It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but have been way too scared to actually do it.

But since we’re in quarantine until further notice.. I figured that if I hated it, I’ve got a few weeks to figure something out at least.

So, how did this all go down?

Well, on Monday I had decided that I wanted to get a pixie cut. And that afternoon the lockdown in the UK started.. so going to the hairdressers was no longer an option.

( I should note now that none of my family or myself are hairdressers in any form.. I just have experience with doing my own hair at home so I do the odd trim and colour here and there)

So, me being the careless person when it comes to hair in the family, figured I’d get my mum to give cutting my hair a go. We decided to begin with cutting a reasonable amount off with scissors, and then we decided to do an undercut, so we could get closer to a pixie bob to begin with.

Then, about a day later I decided that we should increase the undercut and have it go from my temples, which essentially made it just shaved everywhere apart from the top layer of my hair.

Now, I will say now, that I was debating shaving my hair off whilst we kept cutting shorter and shorter, but the fear kept getting to me.

So, by this point I had what looked like a blunt bob because you couldn’t see my undercut/shaved head. I will say here that my hair was extremely damaged from going blonde (I don’t regret it, but I do wish my hair wasn’t damaged) so cutting off more and more made my hair feel a whole let better immediately!

Two days the went by, and I had then cut even more length off my hair, to the point where I now did have the pixie bob I was after, and I managed to style it and it did look kinda cute.

That night I was watching YouTube and a video popped up by the amazing Rifenstine!! And you can check out her video about her shaving her head below:

And I loved her hair so much and the fact that it was so healthy now!

Even after watching the video (and several others by this point) I was still super unsure and nervous about shaving my head. Then when I woke up the next day, something still niggled at me so around lunchtime I finally plucked up the courage and put the clippers to the rest of my hair.

And I am extremely happy to say that I love it so so much!!

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It’s the most freeing experience when it comes to beauty that I have never experienced before, and I feel like I am truly myself! Which is weird and saying a lot coming from someone who has always made a big effort with my hair! And now I finally get it when people who have shaved their hair say that everyone should shave their head at some-point in their lives.

I can’t wait to discover what my fully healthy hair will be like (if I grow it out, but right now I’m loving it like this so we’ll see) and how I express myself probably even more through my clothes and makeup!

I’m also getting some hair paint delivered soon, because even though I want my hair to be the healthiest it’s ever been, I still want to be able to play with hair colours; and hair paint is the perfect way to play with colour without any damage or commitment!

Another thing that I love is that it takes me about 2 minutes to wash and dry my hair (without having to touch a hairdryer) and my hair is ready to go!

So, would I recommend shaving your hair off? Absolutely. Just be prepared for a big change, and don’t worry about how short it will actually be. Your hair will grow back, and you never know, your confidence might grow even more too.

Have a great weekend and stay safe everyone!

Lots of 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,

My Hair & Skin routine

We all love having silky hair and smooth skin. And for me that’s been a bit of a journey; over there last year I’ve managed to put together my own extremely simple routine that does everything I want it to whilst still being pretty cheap.

I’d definitely recommend trying these quick and simple routines out for yourself as all of the products I use are less than the price of a fancy coffee.

I can’t guarantee everything will work for you, but it’s always nice to try something out!

So, my skin care routine. Well as some of you know, I have suffered with adult acne for a long time and also suffer with psoriasis, so finding skin products that work for me is sometimes a challenge. (Check out my Acne Journey here!)

I use acne medication prescribed to me along with a few other things to keep my skin in tip top form. (If you think you’re suffering with any form of acne then I highly suggest going to your GP where you can find something that works for you.)

My skin routine goes as follows:

1. First thing in the morning I take my first lot of acne medication, ‘Doxycycline’ with breakfast.
2. Then after breakfast I wash my face with just cold water and put some ‘Simple Kind to Skin Protecting Light Moisturiser SPF 15‘. That’s it for the morning, nice and quick!
3. Lunchtime is when I take my next acne medication, ‘Co-Cyprindiol’ (you have to have frequent check ups when you’re on this one as it doubles up as contraception.
4. At the end of the day (this bit is typically once a week) I use a microdermabrasion skin care machine to exfoliate, promote blood flow and just generally get any nasty stuff out of my pores.
5. Before I go to bed I then apply my ‘Adapalene’ topical acne cream medication.

Some things I also do to help my skin stay clear and healthy are:

• Drinking mostly water. I know I know, we hear this one all of the time, but water helps keep us hydrated and out skin looking moisturised.

 

• I try to not touch my face as much as possible, (don’t want to spread any oils or any traces of stuff that could be transferred onto my face!).

• Wash/Change my pillow case often. (dead skin cells, sweat and all sorts get on these and can cause breakouts after build up!)

 

• I ALWAYS take my makeup off before bed. – I cannot stress this one enough!!

• A balanced diet; this doesn’t mean eating super healthy all of the time, it’s about not eating mountains of sugary, oily, fatty food all of the time, you can still have your favourite guilty pleasures, but just in moderation.

 

• Speaking of food: I always wash my face after eating any form of takeaway; I always feel super greasy after eating foods like Chinese or Fish & Chips, so washing my face after stops me from developing mountains of spots around my chin.

 

• Sun cream. Wear sun cream no matter what weather it is, you skin is always vulnerable to the sun even when it’s cold outside. And if you’re not great at remembering to put it on, get a moisturiser with SPF already in it!

 

Now, onto hair care!

A bit of background on my hair journey:

My hair has been through it. Like really through the ringer. It’s been blonde, brown, auburn (so jealous of all you natural red heads out there!), orange, red, pink, green, strawberry blonde and several other colours. There was once a week where I decided I wanted to go from bright red to blonde.. my mum and I decided to do it in the space of two days; it involved 4 lots of bleaching and a lot of laughing. I’m incredibly lucky to still have hair on my head to be honest.

I have cut my hair off numerous amounts of times in order to salvage what was left of it after copious amounts of bleach and box dyes. One time I decided to go red again after bleaching my hair and putting blonde box dye on it and my hair was so damaged that after one wash my hair had millions of blonde and pink patches where the dye could no longer stick to my hair.

That leads me to now, I cut nearly all of my hair off in September last year in order to finally give up what had become a hair dye addiction (fellow hair enthusiasts know the struggle haha). And from January this year I have been growing out my natural hair in order to get it as healthy as possible again and not felling like straw. I am also slowly getting my naturally wavy and curly hair back!

Here’s just a few images of my hair journey over the years:

Here I am as a baby next to my older sister, that’s me on the right, and as you can see my hair is pretty curly and mad naturally.

As you’ll see in these photos, my hair goes from nice and healthy to getting more like straw and shorter as it kept snapping off!

Here’s me at 12 years old, my hair was still completely natural here!

Here I am at 14 years old, I think my hair might have been bleached slightly at this point?

Here is where my hair escapade starts to go downhill.. I had dyed it a few times by here so it’s big, frizzy and very straw like hair!

I dyed my hair red when I was starting sixth form and you can see how damaged my hair had become by the ends of my hair!

About 2 months into sixth form I decided to bleach all of the life out of my hair and fry it constantly by making it wavy every damn day.

After sixth form I decided to cut my hair into a pixie to try and salvage it, I then dyed it brown and then as it was getting healthier and growing out I decided I wanted blonde hair again.

A year later came around and I couldn’t stop myself from going auburn again, and here you can really see the damage!

My hair survived for a little while longer by going brown for a few months and it grew to a good length, then I wanted to go blonde so bleached it to bits, then I decided I wanted red hair again..

As you can see here, when my 21st birthday came around I decided to try and get my hair healthier again by cutting it into a pixie, and it was bleached blonde during the summer.

I actually have healthy hair in this photo! Here is my hair a few months after I turned 22, I’m starting to grow out my pixie here!

So that is what my hair went through, I’m sure there are more photos all over the place of even more hair colours but that’s something for another day, you’d be here for hours!

Here’s my hair now! It’s finally healthy and all my natural colour; I’m working on styling my natural air dried hair as it’s a big crazy at the moment!

So now you know a bit about my hair past, on to my routine!

1. I brush my hair to get rid of any knots or tangles before I wash it in the evening.
2. I then wash my hair with warm water, using ‘Tesco’s Pro-Vitamin B5 shampoo damaged hair’; I stumbled across this when looking for a new shampoo to try, and for 90p it’s a bargain! This shampoo is absolutely amazing on my hair and I definitely recommend it; it lathers nicely and is super cheap!
3. I then use ‘Tesco’s Pro-Vitamin B5 conditioner for damaged hair'(it is nowhere on the website at the moment but you can find it in store!) on the ends of my hair and work my way up avoiding my roots, like the shampoo, the conditioner is also 90p and makes my hair feel so silky and less frizzy.
4. I then rinse the conditioner out with cold water (it takes a bit of strength to not jump out of the shower at this point haha!).
5. When I get out of the shower I wrap my hair in a micro-fibre hair turban (you can get them from wilko for £1.15!).
6. Then, if my hair is feeling a bit dry I put some spray in conditioner onto the ends of my hair. I use one I picked up by chance at Aldi (it was on their special buys) which is a dupe of the ‘Aussie Miracle Hair Detangler Conditioner Spray’!
7. If I have time I’ll let my hair dry naturally and if I’ve got to be somewhere then I’ll dry my hair on the cool setting with my hair dryer.
8. I usually leave my hair overnight and style my hair with my straighteners in the morning, this is usually straight, but if I do style my hair in the evening it will be curly ready to be clipped half up the next day.

And that’s my hair routine!

Some things I do to help with my hair growth and health:

• Brush my hair before washing it so it isn’t too knotting when I wash it and there’s less damage when I wash it as your hair is a lot weaker when it’s wet.

 

• Rinsing my hair with cold water is something I found makes my hair less frizzy, shinier and it helps promote blood circulation to your scalp, which helps with hair growth!

• Use heat protection sprays even when just using the hair dryer. I recommend putting heat protection spray on your hair when it’s wet, as you avoid potentially making your hair feel greasy when applying it to dry hair.

• I avoid washing my hair everyday as this can strip my hair of it’s natural oils and prevents any oils from penetrating into the hair.

So that’s my skin and hair routines! What’s your hair journey? And what is your skincare routine? Let me know in the comments, I love reading and responding to them all! I hope you all have a great weekend my lovelies!

Oh, and don’t forget, there’s still time to enter my giveaway! Check out how to enter here!

Love,

 

 

Life Lessons To Remember

So this week I’ve realised that 1.) I’ve come a long way with my eating disorder treatment, and 2.) I’ve learnt a load of lessons not only about myself but about how I should see the world; and this is why I’m writing this today. What made me come to this realisation is the fact that I got my haircut, well, I got bangs.

Why would getting bangs make me have this big realisation you ask? Well because I had been thinking about getting bangs FOR AGES (I was totally inspired by Devin Lytle’s hair – fellow thin hair gal who is amazing, who works for Buzzfeed and is in Buzzfeed’s Ladylike which I LOVE along with all the ladies there so you should defo check them out!) but every time I went to get booked in at the hair dressers I chickened out because I thought it might look bad and that people would think I looked stupid. That’s when it hit me, why am I worried about what other people think?! All that matters is what I think and if I want bangs then I should just get some damn bangs cut!

Once this realisation hit me, I decided to book in a haircut to get bangs, and because I’m ridiculously indecisive I actually ordered some clip in bangs to check if I definitely wanted them. Here’s the bangs I ordered:

Once these arrived I did ask people what they thought, and they weren’t sure that it would suit me and then I realised that if I liked them, and I wanted them, I should get them cut no matter what anyone else thinks.

Something I was scared about was that my boyfriend wouldn’t like how I look with them, especially since he wasn’t sure that they’d suit me; but guess what, he told me to get them cut anyway because he knows that my opinion is what matters most and that he’ll love how I look no matter what (and to be honest, he’s seen me at my worst so I couldn’t get much worse than that haha). And with that sense of ‘it’s my hair so I’ll do what I want with it and I’ll rock it no matter what’ in my head, I went and got it cut.

And guess what?! I think I look pretty with them.. (that feels weird to say but I’m trying to be nicer to myself).

Ok, now that I’ve rambled on about my hair for long enough, let’s actually get back to why I’m writing this post.. here’s some life lessons I’ve finally learnt:

1. If you want to try something new with your appearance (or really anything in life – providing it isn’t harming anyone duh) and are unsure, just give it a go; you’ll often find that you’ll rock it and look great!

2. Confidence is key. (I’m still working on this one but I’ve realised that if you act like you’re confident even when you’re not, everyone around you will think you’re a boss ass b*tch. And you’ll look good because quite frankly, confidence is sexy and looks good).

3. When it comes to your body and appearance, your opinion is the only one that matters, and anyone that tells you how or what you should look like can go f*ck themselves because you’re perfect as you are.

4. Self care is not being selfish. You gotta take care of yourself! After all, you’ll be living with yourself for the rest of your life.

5. Learn to accept compliments without putting yourself down after hearing them. If someone is complimenting you, (unless it’s unsolicited catcalling from a stranger, in which case.. they can eff off) it’s because they want to, no one is forcing them; and why wouldn’t they want to compliment you?! You’re great!

6. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength and you’ll find you feel so much better after asking for help. Plus you’ll find that you’re probably going to make some really great, reliable friends along the way.

7. No number defines your worth, whether it’s on the scales, on your clothing labels, social followers/likes or your bank account. You are worth so much more than any stupid numbers!!

8. And finally, sugar and chocolate WILL NOT KILL YOU. Eat what you want, when you want it. Nothing is unhealthy in moderation so try to stop labelling food, because that’s all it is. Food. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just food that tastes good and nourishes your body.

So that’s what I’ve learnt recently, and if you’ve ever had some realisations of life lessons yourself, definitely let me know what they are! Also, to finish, to the right is a selfie of me and my new hair in case you haven’t seen my insta, because why shouldn’t I show this off?!

Oh and buy the way, I totally recommend trying out clip in hair pieces (when it’s cheap) if you’re thinking of changing up your look but aren’t sure yet, here’s the clip in bangs I bought (I did trim mine but do what you want with them!).

Hope this helps any of you out there who tend to worry about what other people think about your appearance (aka people like me.. I’m working on that haha) and remember, your opinion of yourself is the most important!

A little life quote to end: “A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms”.

Have a great weekend everyone!! Love,