Midweek Musings: You're So Vain
I bet you think this blog post is about you. Or, er, me. Which it is. What I mean to say is, I'm so vain. I don't know whether it's the warmer weather or the fact that Daph is sleeping better so I can no longer blame her for my daily Stig of the Dump impression, but anyway, I've decided it's time to get myself together. Appearance wise.
I mentioned teeth whitening in my last blog post - and a few of my friends IRL told me that they'd had the Zoom treatment and it was beyond painful, so that's kind of put me off that a bit. BUT. Today I had my hair done and - drum roll please - CUT for the first time in... well, so long I'm ashamed. Anyway I wanted to go back to the ombre thing I blogged about last year but get it done properly this time. And get my lob cut back in. I asked the hairdresser to match the ombre to my roots. Which were coming through looking properly BROWN. But she insisted I was still a 'dark blonde' and so we went with that colour. And voila...
Hilariously, my roots are now the exact same colour as Daphne's hair, which is quite nice really. We match! I can't believe how much lighter it looks than I imagined it would and although it's very 'ashy' (and obviously a lot darker!) I actually quite like it. Oli nodded his head in approval too, which is a bonus.
Best of all, there's no sign of any YELLOW hair - my absolute pet hate about blonde hair is when it goes yellow or gingery. Yuck.
I've also treated myself to some new skincare - the Alpha H Liquid Gold serum that everyone talks about. I've used glycolic acid masks before and really liked them - I hate any mechanical exfoliates as my skin is so sensitive. I've only used the Liquid Gold once so far and I definitely noticed a difference the next day - my skin was tauter and smoother, but not massively so. I'm going to use it two or three times a week as suggested to see how it works long term.
I also went to M&S earlier this week to get the baby something and ended up spending shedloads on Stila make up. There's a massive M&S right by my flat and I often go there when I'm bored and want to take the baby for a walk. Anyway I'd never really looked at the M&S make up section but had noticed recently they now sell Ren, which is really good as I use their clarifying toner every day. But then I spotted Stila, and I dunno - perhaps it's the brown packaging but everything suddenly looked REALLY enticing and promised amazing things. So I bought a lipstick, some BB cream (why Charlotte? You HATE BB cream) and a eyebrow kit thingy which is sadly quite crap - back to drawing mine on with pencil I think.
I don't know why but just BUYING make up always really cheers me up. Now what I really need to do is shift this extra 10 pounds I'm carrying around from being a pregnant pig. Then my transformation will be complete. Ha ha! I suspect the only way to do this is cardio - namely, running, SOB - so have resolved to get back into it after Easter and all the eggs. Ahem.
On that note, hope you all have a fab Easter. We're off to Bristol to visit my uni friend Sophy who's just had her first baby, and I'm quite excited as we're staying in the Hotel du Vin so it's almost a little mini break. Will let you know how we get on sharing a hotel room with a seven-month-old... bedtime at 7pm, that should be fun!
DIY Blonde Ombre
Don't worry, this is definitely not going to turn into a beauty blog! But just to have a break from the endless baby baby baby posts, I thought I'd write about my new hair.
I've had my hair lightened for about 300 years now - when I was a child it was very bright blonde, but as I got older, it inevitably darkened and I think my natural hair colour is kind of filthy blonde/mousey brown. The least coveted hair colour on the planet basically. Anyway for years now I've had an all-over high lift tint done, which lifted my hair to a really light blonde - I swapped over to this from highlights because it was so much cheaper and I never much liked the stripey effect you seem to get with highlights. But as I mentioned in one of my pregnancy update posts, when I got pregnant I noticed that my roots were coming through really dark. Like, almost black.
Then my hairdresser told me that she was going to have to change my dye formulation as my roots were so much darker than before, so the levels (not sure what the technical term is?!) she was using wouldn't be strong enough to get the same result. And despite her doing this I started noticing that my once-bright hair was looking a little... yellow. Like properly yellow. Eeeuww.
I decided that change was in order, spent hours googling ombre and balayage (I figured if I've got dark roots now then I might as well go with it right?! even if it is very 2013) and then I booked an appointment at Trevor Sorbie to have a complete hair makeover.
This was the kind of look I was after... But with straight hair. And a fringe.
Unfortunately, that didn't really work out. The colour technician (lovely though he was) seemed convinced that I would regret dyeing my hair darker, and so he only put in one or two shades below my existing colour and the result was (as you can see from below)... exactly the same.
Five hours, £200+ and a glass of complimentary Prosecco down and feeling deflated and a bit pissed off (yes I know I should have complained but I'm far too British for that) I decided it was time for that old mantra 'if you want something doing, do it yourself'.
I should add here: I have never dyed my hair myself. Unless you count copious Sun-In
And that's what I did. I did spend about five hours first saying to Oli 'Should I do it? Maybe I shouldn't? I suppose I've already cried once today (the baby is being 'challenging' this week) so it won't matter if I hate it. Will it?', but anyway. I watched a few Youtube videos of terrifyingly young girls doing it far more professionally than I ever could, especially not at THEIR AGE, then very unscientifically plonked L'Oreal Preference in Florida Honey Blonde all over the top of my head, combed it through the lengths a bit and voila.
It's not too bad is it? A bit more subtle than I wanted and it hasn't totally covered my roots as I got terrified of how dark it looked when the dye was on so I washed it off a bit early (it says to leave it to develop for half an hour but given it took nearly half an hour to actually get the dye on my hair in the first place, I'm not sure when you count the half an hour from?). So I may redo it in a week or so. But anyway, it cost £6.99 and I don't hate it. Result.
Sidenote: Just noticed there are loads of brackets in this blog. Kind of like I'm continually justifying things to myself. Weird.