Don't be Tardy to the Party!

As always, I'm later than the White Rabbit when it comes to news (I genuinely need to check my -mails more regularly). Everybody left, right and centre seems to have been attending hair events.

Maybe next time.

I'll be lucky.

Maybe next time....I'll gooooo.
(Glee reference, not Cabaret).

Moping will do me no good.

It's far too late to attend the Manestream Beauty Accessory event, but I'm putting the poster up because I simply adore the picture.

Yes, I will wear massive hair, a headscarf and 1000 rings.
Because I'm worth it.

However, it's not too late to attend the Manestream Beauty's Mixtress Summer Event later this month! In addition, it's only a tenner if you get an early bird ticket ^_^

I will not be able to go, because I'll be in Edinburgh at that time, but if you do manage to go, let's see some awesome pictures!

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Castor-Way Dryness

The shower cap method thingy just wasn't working.

My problem wasn't so much what was happening at night, but what was happening during the day - it was deliciously hot last week. I delighted in it. My skin delighted in it.
But my hair wept. It was. Not good.

The shower cap situation wasn't doing much except to make me feel quite hot during the night (and nobody really needs that, eesssh!).

So I rummaged in my cardboard box of stuff, digging for the treasure that is my bottle of castor oil.

I poured some into some molten coconut oil (and then recoiled sharply at the smell, because phew-ee, 3 months of distance did not make the nasal glands get any fonder of castor oil's whiff).

Slicked it on my head, sprayed on some water, and then let it be.

That was Tuesday.

It's Monday today and I did it again after my Saturday wash and my hair is still singing.

No, wait. It's dancing.

Not just normal two-stepping though. Full on happy booty dancing.

Basically, castor oil mixed with something else = liquid gold on my hair when it's dry, thirsty and needs some TLC.
And it's cheap. So cheap!  And it works so well! I can't imagine slathering it on by itself - images of slicking smelly treacle onto my head come to mind - but diluting it with coconut oil seems to work so well.

The next day, my hair still felt good, despite facing off the heat in a room where the temperature seemed ever increasing and focused directly on my neck.

I decided to be a little exciting when I got back and attempt to unravel the twists to give me some sort of jazzy hairstyle, because I was getting fed up of the frizz/twists/etc. I spritzed it with water to dampen it and then haphazardly pinned the twists in random directions all over my head so that they were stretched.

You know what? It bleeding hurt. After about an hour, I got a headache and had to take the blasted bobby pins out.

All sixty billion of them.

And the stretching worked! 

Then I put my shower cap on for the night and they'd shrunk. Again.

Totally great excuse for a great twistout...

With sucky ends...

And a dodgy side of fluff!

Ah well. I ended up putting it into a ponytail anyway.

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Sweet Delayed Gratification

Let's go back in time a little. The year is nineteen ninety something.

The Rebel Sis and I are in the car most probably, on our way home from a birthday party. In our hot little hands, we both clutch our own respective party bags; carefully surveying the booty within the flimsy plastic sacks. The Rebel Sis reaches in and pulls out one of the sweets in it's brightly coloured wrapping.

"Wicked!"* she says and rips the wrapper off, before shoving the sugary treat in her mouth. This pattern continues for a while - she chews, gulps and slurps her way through the entirety of her party bag in less than half an hour, including the delightfully squished cake in the bottom.

She turns to me, still licking the icing off her fingers. "Aren't you going to eat yours now?"

I clutch my bag closer to me with all the anxiety suitable to the elderly young pensioner I was always meant to be.

"No."

She looks at me, perplexed. "Why not?"

"I don't want to!"

"If you're not going to eat it, you may as well give it to me." She stretches out her hand. Since this proposal makes less sense to me than most things, I respond only by cutting my eyes at her and kissing my teeth in irritation.

My dad turns around: "Whose hissing?!" I shrink into the chair, while the Rebel Sis gleefully takes the opportunity to dob me in.

That one party bag could last me up to a month. The cake would have to be eaten pretty soon, to avoid it going stale. On days when I felt like it, I would take one of the sweets to school, as a status booster in the lunch hall. On down days, I'd escape and either run my fingers over the wrapping paper, break one open and savour every. single. bite. I prolonged the heck out of the satisfaction most kid's normally get from party bags (though I had to hide mine, since the Rebel Sis would literally just take it if she found it).
I genuinely didn't understand why the Rebel Sis would want to have it all at once - how could she possibly enjoy it?

Today, the picture hasn't changed much. I'm an obsessive saver still. The way I see it, the dreams I can achieve by putting towards the future are far bigger that what I can do with what I have right now.

Why have something puny today when tomorrow I can get something magnificent?

The Rebel Sis does not agree with this sentiment. Her first Christmas back home after uni, she returned with the announcement that she had bought an Xbox360, as well as a plethora of games to play on it (between 12-20 games in total). My eyes boggled. "Where'd you get the money for that?"
She shrugged. "My overdraft."
"How are you going to pay it back!?"
She gave me a bemused look. "I'll just sell it when I don't need it any more."
But she bought it new. So the price she'll be able to sell it for will be depreciated from the price she bought it for. Which means she won't cover her costs.
Which means that....that...

*sigh*
That I should keep my nose well out of my sister's financial business.

* Look, I've already mentioned it was the nineties, all right?

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Nigerian Bento

Hello happiness! ^_^

Spicy Peanut Chicken on a bed of spinach...fried plantain...and jollof rice.

Oh, yum.

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Oops, I did it again...

Remember this?

You know, doing half of my twists, and then leaving it for two days, and then pretending it was a hairstyle and that I totally meant for it to look that way?

Yeah, it happened again.

'Cept this time, I left it 5 days before I finished it. So half of my twists are 1 week older than the others.

You can't tell - they're all fuzzy as anything ^_^

I did them with a tisane of lavender and catnip before using coconut oil as a styler. Squidgy, soft hair. My hair took it all up incredibly fast.

Later on, I somehow found myself left alone with my hair shears....

Despite the fact I think I semi-promised I would give up my random, intermittent snipping.

Some would say that I'm regressing, but you know what?

I regret nothing!

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Super(market) Adventures

"What?" I asked, since my house sister had suddenly burst out laughing.

She spun her laptop around for me to take a look. "Conveyor Belt Tetris!" she exclaimed.

I raised an eyebrow. She went on to explain, "It's when you try and arrange all your shopping in neat blocks, like in Tetris!"

So of course, I had to give it a try.

I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky apples! 

Though this means that buying rolls of biscuits now becomes a necessity...

(If you've ever played Tetris and waited agonisingly long for the long straight piece, you know what I'm talking about).

So if you were that person in the supermarket...

That looked at my artistic Tetris based efforts...

And gave me a funny look...

I just want to say....

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May Non-haul

I don't really tend to do 'hauls' of stuff. Even if there's a sale, I tend to stick to stocking up on the necessities and pondering too deeply about everything else [because me + panic buying = not pretty].

I picked up some Goody hair bands of 17 from Bodycare because they were £1 a packet (as opposed to the usual £1.50). Just over 5p per band.

And then I strode into Boots and grabbed three shower caps for £1.07.

Their purposes will soon be revealed....

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Pretty that can't be pictured

My passport expired last year and I've been delaying it for 6 months because....

Well, because of the picture. I wanted to take the picture when I had time to do something vaguely interesting and quirky. I was thinking two puff buns, a la Pucca.

But last week, after delaying it for nearly 5 months, I just decided to do it after my swimming lesson.

I gently brushed my soggy hair back into a slightly shrunken and full ponytail, banded it to stretch it out, and then delicately pinned my fringe to the side to allow my face to quietly shine through. Pleased with my work, I slipped into a photo booth at my local supermarket and tried to look as human like as possible.

So of course, the resulting picture showed all I had was a misshapen, none-existent ponytail, since my hair hadn't dried when I released it from the bands, a sloppy fringe and a facial expression reminiscent of one plagued with constipation.

Obviously, it didn't end there. The photo booth did me the ultimate injustice by flipping the picture around, so now I look all wrong on the wrong side of my face.

I'd just paid £5 for the privilege of looking like one of the undead's newest recruits, so I sent the photo off with my form and resolved to spent the next ten years grinning manically whenever I enter an airport,so that the people who

But this picture-fail thing kept happening. There was a quite complex [read: took me longer than 2 minutes] hairstyle I attempted. I tried to take a picture and...

Yeah. You can't tell anything is going on there

Can you see what I did? No? Me neither, and I can't remember what I did either.

My theory is that sometimes, some things are soooooooo pretty that cameras cannot do it justice and the effect is ruined.

Or. Maybe my camera and the photo booth camera are equally rubbish.


[Sidenote: My first five attempts to upload that photo collage resulted in this:

See? I'm not crazy! This is definitely some sort of conspiracy...]

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Not so yummy

The following is in stark contrast to my latest experiences in primary school, where the kids I know have meals that have me looking at my own lunch box efforts in disappointment. On many an occasion, I have been found hounding the dinner ladies people for a piece of dessert.

Notorious as I may be becoming, it works.

Anyway! Apparently, there is a kid who has decided to start taking pictures of their school lunches every day. It's gotten a lot of attention but I'm going to put my hand up right now and say I am not yet convinced that this is not a hoax.
Because I believe in people.
I believe in food.
And I believe in Jamie Oliver (though I'm aware his campaign was mainly aimed at primary schools, not secondary schools...).

If you've got two seconds, check it out! There are only 3 posts (and over 40,000 hits already apparently).

Never Seconds

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Aloe Vera Juice or No?

So Hollands and Barretts are having their Penny Sale once again - which basically means, you buy one of certain things, then you get another one for 1p.

I know, I know, it's basically buy one get one free, but they're charging you a penny for the free bit.

As usual, I picked up the necessities.

Two for £15

Whilst there I  noticed that the large aloe vera juice was also on offer.

At first, I was going to buy two of them (for a total of £10) but then I realised, I've never used aloe vera juice before. So I had a massive internal debate between just going for it and buying the two massive bottles, or going for the smaller £6 bottle. Not as great value, unless I hate it, in which case I would've saved money.
In the end, I left without buying anything, because I can always go back if I change my mind.

But should I change my mind?

Has anybody used aloe vera juice before?
Does anybody know the difference between aloe vera juice and aloe vera gel?
Does anyone have any details - the good, the bad and especially the ugly?

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Half Baked Hairstyle

When one is tired of sock buns, one is tired of sock buns.

And will probably revert to their most dependable mainstay.

Which in my case, is twists. Unfortunately, I was catching up on some work, so I didn't quite finish the twists that day.

Or the day after.

Or even the day after that. 

I just threw it up in a bun and pretended it was supposed to be like that.

This picture reminds me of this moment from Mean Girls

One lonely twist in a sea of...untwisted

Because, you know, obviously that is the look I was going for.

I finally finished it on the third day of this half baked effort. And then did little else to make it look reasonably attractive.

But whatever. It still looked mildly decenty I don't know if the same can be said now that it's been conditioned twice and moisturised all in the same hour, but even if everybody disagrees with my prognosis, I still declare it a fit and healthy hair style.

Should last me till the end of this week...or next week if I'm pushing it.

Yay for pushing boundaries!

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Folly I Do

Hey. Remember this?

So, it didn't work out. I kinda love the minty smell, the suds may make some happy but I wasn't too pleased with it's extreme stripping power on my hair and general lack of itch prevention on my scalp.[/End review]


But I still have over half a litre of it left.


Fortunately, I've also run out of toilet cleaner! Instead of chucking it and because I'm too lazy to put into sample size bottles and give it away, I decided to use it to keep my loo smelling invigoratingly fresh.

Then I poured some into the cistern for good, minty measure and flushed.

Er....maybe I used too much...?

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Term 2: A Time of Cuts

Since I thought I had about a £500 deficit from last term, I did as the government tends to do and made cuts - which in my case did not consist of closing down libraries and doing strange things to the NHS but meant not spending in some areas where I had over spent last term.

My budget isn't what I would like to keep my spending level at - it's literally all the money I have for that period, so if I go over, it comes out of my overdraft and will need to be paid back eventually. I think it's much better to do that now than at some later, non interest free date >.<

This term was hectic crazy money wise. Firstly, the biggest expenditure in my Miscellanous/Household category was due to the fact that my house mates moved out and took their stuff, which meant I had to buy furniture (since I've never lived in an unfurnished house before).

I hate buying furniture.

It is now on my list of things I am not fond of doing. Maybe I will be a minimalist when I grow up. Having this unexpected expense means I thought I had to do that annoying thing of borrowing from myself in the future and take it from my savings from next term. I sulked.
And then I had to get over it and just took it from my savings for this term.

My last pair of cheap shoes that I'd bought just after the beginning of the new year were actually getting really embarrassing to me, my family and everyone associated with me, so I tried to invest in a pair that would hopefully last me.

Timberland Women's 96358 boots from Amazon.

But they were too small (boo to deceptive American sizing on British sites!), so they got returned and I still have shoe money (yay!)

(They were beautiful though - I have great taste).

I've been slacking massively on the saving up for my driving lessons. My agreement to myself was any money not spend on using the bus to get home would go to driving lessons...but it was so cold at the beginning of the year I couldn't take it and sprung for the bus on several occasions, especially after I lost my gloves *sad face*. You can call me wimpy, but when you're literally incapable of speech because you're so cold, then £1.20 is a small price to pay.

I overspent on train travel because I haven't claimed my transport costs yet (I know, I know) and I had an impromptu trip to London. If I had known for definite that I was going at an earlier date, I could have gotten an advance ticket but it was all very last second/night before, so full whack I did pay.

Because it's been a bit like Musical housemates these past few months, I've been too lazy/fed up trying to work out who owes me what.
Frankly my dears, I couldn't give a dog's ear at the moment and have resigned myself to the fact I'll just absorb the costs.
I also paid for tickets for an event in a couple of months, hence why my Days Out category looks a little bit whacked.

Aaand, I overspent on food. But what else is new?

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