Revolution Rainbow Drops Review.

Hello my lovelies! I hope you’ve had a good week so far and have been enjoying the slightly warmer weather (if we can even call it warmer haha we’re still under 10 degrees celsius)! So, this week I’ve been taking some time for selfcare, and one of the things I decided to do was to look after and tone my hair. You may have noticed from my other posts over the last few weeks that my hair is now pink!

I had pink hair once for about a week, and that was when I first shaved my head. I loved the colour, but at the time it was too big of a change for me and I only kept it for a week, but then about a month or two ago I took the plunge and went pink again, and I absolutely love it!

This weekend I spent some time bleaching and toning my roots. Since bright hair colours fade fairly fast I’ve taken to toning my hair every 5-7 weeks to keep my hair vibrant. And to do that I’ve picked up some Revolution rainbow hair drops in ‘pink rays’ and ‘peach rays’ to try out, and I figured why not review them for you as I think they’re fairly new!

The hair drops have around 300 drops in a post, and are used with conditioner and is applied like a hair mask. To get the colour you want you just add the number of drops into the conditioner until you get the colour you want. You can also check the colour with the number of drops you need with the colour chart on the box.

First impressions of the drops are that they’re quite gloopy and are very pigmented. I used about 25 of pink and 10 of peach to make my colour the first time I toned my hair and then I just winged it the second time until it was a colour I wanted. The conditioner I decided to use was a from superdrugs own ‘fruity’ range of hair products, I picked it up at the same time I picked up the drops.

I’ll admit, when I looked online at reviews I saw that these drops worked for some people and did nothing for others so I was a bit skeptical, but figured that for the price it was worth a try and if they worked for me then I’d definitely get more than my money’s worth.

Here’s what my hair looked like before, during and after the toning:

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And here’s what my hair looks like now that it’s dry:

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I have to say, when I washed out the toner (the time I didn’t count how many drops I used – probably around 25/30 pink and 20 peach) my hair was looking like it was going to be neon, and to be honest I absolutely love it! My hair has never been so vibrant and pink is definitely a colour that I’ll have for quite some time.

My overall review on the Rainbow Hair Drops by Revolution is that they worked amazingly on my bleached hair, and I was able to get a completely unique colour for my hair which I love. Plus, I love that it’s a pigment dropper that will last a long time and all you need is a colourless conditioner; so not only was the colour payoff great for me, but my hair was also left feeling super nourished and shiny.

I’d one hundred percent recommend these to anyone who has pink hair, and if I decide to go another colour I’ll definitely look into using their colour drops to tone my hair; at the moment they’ve got pink, peach, lilac, silver and blue available at superdrug. I believe they’re priced at £9.99 per bottle which if you think about it is very cheap for a toner that has 300 drops in it and all you have to do is decide how much you want to use for the shade you want. I’d be very interested to see how their other colour drops look on others hair, especially the lilac and blue droppers (blue hair unfortunately isn’t my colour, but I may try lilac in the future if I fancy switching up colours!).

I think the results you’ll get with these will depend on your hair and it’s current condition,; for me, my hair had been bleached twice once with 30 volume developer and another with 20 volume and then I had a previous pastel pink demi permanent colour which had faded out. With most bright and pastel tones they’ll show up better on light natural blonde or bleached hair, and my hair sucks up pigment pretty quickly and easily which is likely why I am able to get such a bold shade.

What hair colours have you been? What was your favourite? Let me know in the comments!

And with that, I’m going to go and have a pyjama day! Have a great rest of your week my lovelies!!

Love,

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I Found Out My Ancestry With 23 and Me.

It’s Mother’s Day this weekend! So a lot of us will be showering our mums with love and tending to their every need. When deciding what I wanted to write for today’s post, I stumbled between the idea of a mushy post about why I would be lucky if I turned out remotely like my mum or if I wrote about my ancestry that I found out recently with 23 and Me.

So, I’ve decided on a bit of both. My mum and I aren’t what you’d call super cuddly or expressive with our feelings when it comes to reminding each other what we like about one another, which is why I know my mum is cringing reading this right now just like me! Haha sorry mum, but I love ya.

It’s not that we don’t like expressing our feelings, we’ve just never been that way when it comes to talking about each other. And she’s more like a best friend than a mum, and we can tell each other anything (yes that does mean we can talk about emotional stuff, but that’s not us and that’s ok), honestly I don’t really know where I’d be without her. Also, can we just appreciate the fact that my mum, Lindsay, is incredible at encouraging me to wear whatever I want, and she could pull off wearing a bin bag and look great if she wanted too. Although here she’s rocking a neon green crop top (she hate’s this photo, and I can’t understand why, because she looks great! So make sure you show her some love in the comments!).

Right, that’s enough mushy stuff, onto why I wanted to find out my ancestry. Well, for years I have wondered what my heritage actually is, because I’d heard several stories from different family members and where I come from.

So naturally over the years I’ve become more and more curious about what’s true and what’s just a rumour! Which led me to buying a 23 and Me pack.

The entire process took about 3-4ish weeks, and that’s from receiving my box, sending it off and being sent my results. One thing I love about 23 and Me is that they update you and keep you informed about what is happening at every step towards getting your results.

So, what did I think my heritage was?

I was told by family members that they thought I could be:

• British
• French
• Something else I can’t remember..

What were my results?

Well, I found out a few things I wasn’t expecting! Here we go:

• 100% European, Northwestern European

Broken down into:

• 65.8% British and Irish – UK & Ireland
• 10.9% French and German – Germany & Netherlands
• 9.4% Scandinavian – Norway
• 13.9% Broadly Northwestern European

I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect from my results! I was just excited to see where I’m from, and finding out I’m more than British was a big shock to me; I have no idea where the Irish, Scandinavian, German or Netherlander (I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it) in me came from.

So once I found this out, I was able to see where/who in my ancestry timeline this DNA has come from.

This was so interesting to find out, and it also got me thinking, who in my family do I think could be part of a certain population. And I’ve since asked my family members that I’m close too, about what they know about their own ancestry and it’s sparked some really cool conversations!

I also paid to do the health reports from 23 and Me; so I got to find out about what my genetics say about my personality, appearance, carrier status, health risks, hobbies etc. To give you an idea of what a few things I found out (there’s about 5-7 reports when it comes to the health part so I’ll stick to a few very brief things):

• Likely to have blue or green eyes – That’s true, I have bright blue eyes.
• Likely to have lots of freckles – Also true, more so in summer!
• Likely to have lighter skin – True, and it’s no surprise now considering my heritage.
• I don’t have an athletes genetic makeup – so guess who’s not going to feel guilty about not enjoying exercise anymore….hahaha.

Here’s a few generations of the women in my family, featuring my incredible dad and nephew (we’re all a little nuts, but I love that about us!). So left to right we have my nephew and niece – such cheeky monkeys, my little sister, my parents, then below left is my granny and my great granny:

Now that I know more about my heritage, I am going to look further into my ancestry, and where I’m from. I also now feel like I know more about myself and why I am the way I am, because of my genetics. And it makes me want to go visit all of these amazing places I’m from even more now, because I have only been to Germany and I live in the UK!

To anyone wondering whether they should do something like this and find out about their genetic makeup, I’d highly recommend it,  especially if you’re unsure what your heritage is. I mean, I found out I’ve got 1,126 third, fourth and fifth cousins probably from a line in my 3rd set of great great grandparents!! And those are just the people who have already done a kit with 23 and Me, and they are from all over the globe! Maybe I’ll connect with them one day, who knows!

Family means the world to me, and I feel like I know mine a little better now. And I just want to thank all of the amazing women (and men, but you know.. it’s mother’s day) in my family for everything they have done and I want to wish them a very happy mothers day. You deserve everything!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you incredible mums, dads and other family members who are doing both roles out there. You’re so important and loved and I just want to remind you of that! Have a great weekend.

Love,

Finding A Lump.

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time. And what better time than than a few weeks before ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’ begins. Just warning you now, this might be a bit of a long one, but I think talking about these things more does a lot of good, and if this helps anyone out there then I’ll be happy.

Only a small number of people know this about me, but about 1 1/2 years ago I was doing a quick breast check after reading about boobs in an article (I think it was from somewhere like cosmo?) and I found a lump.

Lucky for me, it ended up being labelled benign which means it’s cancer free and shouldn’t impact me. I recognise that I am incredibly lucky that my lump ended up being benign as not everyone is so lucky.

Let me take you back to when I found this lump, I think I was reading an article about why all boob shapes are beautiful (being a girl just wanting to like her body for what it is and all that.. still working on that now haha) when it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked my breasts recently.

So that was when I decided to give my boobs a once over. And that was when I found a pea sized lump towards the bottom left of my left breast. It was like the entire world had stopped when I felt it, then the panic set in. That was when I got my mum to see if they could feel it and that I wasn’t going mad for nothing.

Unfortunately they could feel it too, which meant the next day ringing up the doctors to get an appointment. Sadly my doctors are a bit short staffed without as much people as they probably need for the area I live in, so I had to wait a little while before I could get booked in, but I know that they’re doing everything they can in the current funding situation.

The day of my appointment came and off I went to the doctors absolutely terrified because in the time waiting for my appointment my anxious had wreaked havoc with my head and I had basically come to the conclusion that I was going to have to have surgery or it meant death. Some people may think it’s silly that this is what I was thinking, but that’s the reality of anxiety for you, it’s not rational and you can’t control it.

Once I went in for my appointment the doctor was so lovely and she calmed me right down; she asked me about what I’d felt, where and if I was in any pain. For the record, I’ve suffered with chronic chest pains for about 6 years in the left side of my chest reaching round my entire back and through my shoulder blades (I’ve been back and forth to the doctors for years about it with no avail), so I mentioned this in my appointment to see if this lump could be the cause of the pain if it had trapped a nerve or something, I didn’t know what it could be because I’m not a doctor and no amount of googling was helping me out.

I’ve recently found out the pain is actually coming from a few other conditions which I’ll talk about in another post, but I am okay and getting treatment so it’s now being managed. Right, back to talking about boobs!

After talking about what was going on, then came the examination. It was pretty nerve wracking getting my boobs out for a complete stranger, but it had to be done. She got me to show here where the lump was and then she felt my breasts for lumps. That was when she confirmed to me that I was right and that there is something there.

The doctor did then confirm to me that yes there is a lump, but the good news was that it was very small, around 8mm-1cm big, which meant it was probably benign which is great news. In order to just double check everything from my appointment, I was then given an appointment for an ultrasound so we could actually see what was going on.

The hospital appointment came round about two weeks after my doctors appointment which was pretty fast in my eyes. And I was glad because I just wanted to know what was happening and if I needed to start thinking about how I was going to potentially tackle the big C.

I brought my mum along with me to this appointment because 1.) We love doctor/hospital shows like 24hours in A&E and stuff like that, and 2.) She’s always there to support me in whatever way I need it. Going in for my ultrasound was pretty surreal, I walked into this dark room with 3 medical professionals in it, a load of equipment, a medical bed, 2 chairs and a curtain. My mum stayed with me for the entire thing, which helped a lot with the nerves.

So, I said hello to all of these very welcoming women in this dark room, took my top and bra off and laid down on the medical bed. It’s pretty weird having 3 women that you met 5 seconds ago staring at your boobs I’m not going to lie. The main doctor there did another examination on my breasts and then she put the coldest gel in my boobs I’ve ever felt haha. Then came the ultrasound machine, the doctor pushed it all over my boob until we came across a dark blob on the screen. My lump.

Here came the good bit for me. After a bit of moving around the blob the doctor came to the conclusion that my lump is definitely benign, and that I actually have something called a fibroadenoma. Fibroadenoma’s are a range of solid breast lesions that can feel hard, soft, smooth and rubbery, a bit like a pea, but they can be larger. Fibroadenoma’s are usually painless, but if they are causing significant pain they can sometimes be removed; you should also keep an eye on the lumps and go back to your GP if anything changes.

It’s pretty strange looking at an image of your boob on an ultrasound screen, especially because you only ever see ultrasounds happening to check on pregnancies.

So, once my ultrasound was done, I headed out with a leaflet about fibroadenomas and a huge sense of relief. I was and am incredibly lucky that my lump isn’t anything that serious.

At the beginning of this year, I thought my lump might had gotten bigger; but this was also around the time that I had lost a lot of weight, so I wasn’t sure if maybe I could just feel the lump more. So along came a second round of appointments to the doctors and hospital and lucky for me, nothing had changed other than myself losing weight.

This was great news for me as you can imagine. Some people aren’t as lucky as I am and I will be forever grateful that my lump is nothing serious. I’m still living with my lump at the moment, and it does cause some achiness now and again, but I know things could be so much worse.

What I want everyone to take away from this is to make sure you’re checking your breasts on a regular basis. You never realise how lucky you are until you have a scare like this. Even if you’re a man reading this, check your chest too, because men too can breast cancer. If you’re looking for some more information about what signs to look out for when checking your breasts, you can find that here! You can download a leaflet on what to look out for here!

I hope you’ve all enjoyed finding out a bit more about me and have found this useful; I know it’s been a bit long winded, but it’s an important issue that needs to be spoken about.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! And I also want to say a big thank you to all of my lovely readers for all of your support, and to celebrate my first 100 subscribers and say thank you to you all, stay tuned for a giveaway at the end of the month!!

So that’s it from me for today! Have a great week everyone! Love,

I Took An Intolerance Test!

Hey everyone!! So this week I’m going to be talking to you about intolerance tests. Why you’re asking? Well because my mum and I have suffered with annoying coughs for months on end for no apparent reason (the doctors said it’s nothing) and we both suffer with psoriasis which can be triggered from certain foods, stresses and other things! And to be honest, we both love sending stuff off to get health results!

So, the labs we used are called ‘Test Your Intolerance Labs’ or ‘TYI Labs’ (very creative name I know..). Also, just for the record, this isn’t sponsored, but if any labs wanna send us away for health tests feel free!!

We bought the ‘essentials’ test, partly because they were on offer for £29 instead of £39 at the time. Also, if you recommend the test to a friend you get £5 off so that’s what my mum did for me so it was even cheaper which is also a bonus.

So how did the test work, well, it was super easy and wasn’t painful at all; all they needed from us was around 5 strands of hair, ideally from the root (so we gave a few more just in case). Then we had to send off the hairs to the lab’s address ourselves; we’d recommend putting your hairs in a small clear bag and writing your order number on it just to ensure it doesn’t get lost (we wanted to make sure we got our results as quick as possible so took all precautions to make sure it didn’t get lost!), and then we put it in an envelope with our order sheets and send them off!

After a few days we got emails to letting us know that the lab had received our samples and then after that it took about 10 working days for the results to come through, online it said between 7-10 working days for your results to come through so we were prepared for having to wait a bit. The good thing is that they email you your results so you get them as soon as they are ready in a pdf; and it helps the environment by not sending out paper!

I will admit that I was a bit impatient waiting for my results but that’s because I sent them off just before a bank holiday, so I had to wait a little longer for my results because we had a 4 day bank holiday which is obviously non-working days!

Once I got my results it was pretty surprising what I am intolerant to, and it was the same for my mum! We found out that foods and ingredients in foods we were eating everyday we are intolerant to and that may actually be causing our psoriasis to flare up and these annoying coughs!

Here’s my results:

My Intolerance Test Results

Here’s my mum’s results:

My Mum’s Intolerance Test Results

So, this is what we found out! Turns out my mum is intolerant to basically all plants near us which definitely explains why she has all year round hay fever. Also, turns out she’s intolerant to buttermilk and mustard which she eats ALL THE TIME. So that has been a fun thing to try and cut out for her..(I’m joking, it’s been a struggle but she’s finally used to it!). And we did find it funny how my mum is apparently intolerant to gin, just because she loves a G&T every now and again!

For me, we found out that I’m intolerant to pears, which I absolutely love! That was disappointing but I figured I could manage a few weeks without them to see what difference it would make to my health. I’m also intolerant to butter lettuce which was something I was eating nearly everyday as well as pears; so it’s no wonder why I was feeling bloated and coughing all the time alongside my skin flaring up. One thing I couldn’t believe was that I’m intolerant to cat hair; especially because I’d never even considered being intolerant to certain pets and I love cats and my boyfriends cat seems to love me!

After getting the info back, we decided that it’d be a good idea if together we gave up all of our food intolerances (well at least for a while as an experiment). For my mum it meant changing a huge amount of her diet, you’d be surprised at how many things mustard is in!! It’s in everything!! And it’s the same with buttermilk, also in everything! Gin and everything else was easy for my mum to cut out just because she wouldn’t have that everyday anyway, so that was no big deal. My mum began taking antihistamines in the morning to help with her other intolerances and that has definitely helped her a lot.

For myself, I cut out butter lettuce, which was pretty easy because there’s so many other salad leaves you can have instead! Pears were also pretty easy to cut out, but I definitely miss eating them because they’re so good when in season. Everything else on my food intolerances list didn’t really make any difference to me luckily just because I don’t like those foods in general (I’m a fussy eater, and for once it’s a good thing!). Obviously I’ve not cut out my boyfriend or his cat haha.. I love them both way too much to do that!

So… how has cutting these things out helped us? And how long did it take for us to feel a difference?

Well, for one, it took about 4 weeks for us both to feel a difference in ourselves. Cutting out these foods made a big difference for us both! For me, it actually stopped my annoying cough altogether! For my mum and my own skin, it definitely helped with our psoriasis flare ups, obviously it isn’t a cure for it (partly because there is no cure unfortunately) but it was something we found that helped a little. And now that I think about it, my mum hasn’t been coughing as much anymore either to be honest!!

So what should you take away from this weeks blog post? I would definitely recommend taking one of these tests if you’re suffering with a health issue that doesn’t appear to be caused from anything; and then trying out something like this to see if it makes a difference! And if it doesn’t, keep going to you GP until its resolved.

I think I’ve babbled on for long enough now so I’ll let you get back to your day; but I’ll ask you this, have you tried any health tests? If you have, which ones? And finally, do you want my mum and I to try some more to see what we find? Have a great weekend everyone!!

Love,