2014 in hindsight: Everything else

Best reads

Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033 and Metro 2034. Sure, they have their problems at times, but overall, it’s the most fascinating world in any book I have encountered for a very long time.
The pacing is pretty uneven and the author could really use being introduced of the principle of Chekhov's gun, but still: This is one of he best reads ever for me.

Worst reads

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain trilogy. I like Guillermo del Toro’s movies. Especially Pan’s Labyrinth was awesome. You would think this sort of pedigree in a book would produce something awesome too, but no. This was just plain bad.

First of all, it stinks of American author with boring, lengthy and completely pointless descriptions of the characters actions and pasts. [Bleep] that. I don’t need to have my characters motivation served on a silver platter like that: I want to be able to decipher them through their current thoughts and actions. This is such an American author thing and I think it should be banned. Ugh.

Second of all, it tries to bring a legitimate medical and scientific approach to explain the supernatural vampire-thing. And it fails so hard that it hurts.

Yea, this was so bad I only got through the first half of the first book. Unfortunately we bought the trilogy. Total waste of money.

Best TV

Metalocalypse. I randomly watched an episode and was instantly hooked just a minute in. It pretty much managed to become my favourite show ever after just a few episodes. This show is absolutely hilarious, weird, entertaining and the music is so awesome.

This show deserves more love!

Worst TV

The Lone Gunmen. Hubby got me the series on DVD for last Christmas and I’ve been slowly chewing my way through them. I was so excited when I first got it, especially when Hubby told me how difficult it had been to get a copy. He couldn’t even get a version with European-friendly subtitles!

You have to admit it smells a bit funny how they “predicted” 9/11 and then the show was cancelled, right?

Yea. No. The show is just plain bad. Bad writing, uninteresting stories, the most irritating and stereotypical bad girl/Mary Sue in TV history, the most irritating and stereotypical stupid blonde guy sidekick in TV history… Bleh.

Best music

Dethklok! The fictional band from Metalocalypse. Bought all the albums and love them.

Worst music

Ugh, so much bad music clogging up the airwaves this year. Luckily I haven’t bought any albums I’ve ended up disliking. I think the point has to go to Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda for slaughtering a fun classic.

Best purchase

My new Sony MP3 player. I love this thing and it was so awesome to replace that irritating ipod!
It makes me smile every time I turn it off and it goes "See you later!". 
Damn straight. I will see you later.
*Puts on Sennheiser headphones again*

Worst purchase

My camera. When I used my phone, I would usually just take 3 pictures and use the best one when I transferred them to a computer. Taking 3 pictures with my camera will usually leave me with 3 useless pictures. When it works, it works a lot better than my phone, that's true. But the camera is incredibly temperamental and I now take 7 pictures of everything, just to make sure one is good.
I know I went for something simple, a point-and-click camera, but damn. It really gets on my nerves some times. The consistent "good enough" of my phone seems more attractive some times when I'm going through my pictures!

2014 in hindsight: Beauty

In 2014 I learned about the Asian skincare routine and made friends with Memebox. The multistep Asian skincare routine makes so much more sense to me! It’s not reinventing the deep dish, but taking your “normal” skincare steps and putting a lot more effort and thought into it.

I thought the extra products and stimulation would piss off my sensitive skin, but it seems alright with it. To be honest, my skin hasn’t improved a lot. I still get redness and irritation, but I think I see more of a “glow” going.

However, even if you compare the “lack” of results, I still prefer knowing my skin has been properly cleansed, toned, moisturized and protected against the sun.

I also invested in a Clarisonic for my skin and absolutely love it.

Memebox was a real obsession for me for a few months, but now I have reached a real point of saturation on the boxes. No matter how awesome a product, I still have backups of it or something similar already. Most of the products have been really awesome for me and the majority of my skincare products are now from Memebox.

I have also taken a real interest in Asian beauty bloggers (Not necessarily bloggers who are Asian, but bloggers who like the Korean skincare methods and the Asian skincare products). 
What I like the most about these girls, is that they freely admit how much effort it takes for them to look as perfect as they do. They openly talk about products, routines, getting regular professional facials, plastic surgery, the amount of makeup, the circle lenses and false eyelashes and so on and so on. 
Not like the western beauty bloggers: "Oh no, I just rolled out of bed like this!" 
Bah. Lies.
I find it a lot more empowering to know how much money and time these bloggers actually, honestly put into looking as perfect as they do. And then having the option of deciding if you actually, honestly want to invest as much effort to get to look like them.

2014 in hindsight: Hair

The great big news of 2014 was me joining the henna-squad.

It’s something I have considered for many years.

I had three reasons to do it:

• Add strength to my hair (And since my ends are some 10+ years old, this was a good idea)
• Push my natural titian colour a little more towards the red
• Henna would provide a base for indigo to attach to, so I could correct the faded ends

What kept me from it for years was:

• Henna is irreversible (Or at least very troublesome and damaging to do so)
• It seems like so many of the very longhaired longhairs go henna and it makes me go stubborn and silly teenager-ish

But after a lengthy and thorough testing on some shed hair, I went through with it. And I haven’t regretted it at all.

I had a pretty big cut in September where my mother took off a good 10 cm. I’ve been seriously happy with it: It took away a lot of fragile ends. Usually when I do my not-so-thorough S&D in front of my monitor where I snip away all ends that looks “off” from my braid, I cut off at least 20. After the trim, I often don’t find any actual splits.
Maybe I got rid of the last bit of hair that was put through styling products because it was too short for a ponytail? Maybe I got rid of the hair from before I transitioned to full CO wash? After all, there's a big difference between 2 CO washed a week and 2 shampooings a week.
I wish I could figure out what part of my old ends I cut out. Unfortunately the CO transition and stopping with the styling products was something that happened before I started blogging about my hair care routine. Booh. 

Unfortunately it means I am still stuck in the “knee-ish” length territory. I’ve been around “knee-ish” length since 2012 and I’m sick of it.

I don’t regret the cut, but I’m leaning towards “no trim 2015” and make a serious push towards longer length. Maybe I won’t be unhappy with the thickness and state of my ends after the cut?
Well, at least I should give longer length a shot and see what happens. If my ends insist on being too thin and fragile for my liking past knee, maybe it's time to settle for a length I like more: Mid thigh. Mid thigh is still long-long, but it's a lot more convenient for me to maintain than knee.

I’ve been searching for a set of fake bangs that will match my hair colour and texture, but the search will continue in 2015.

Today’s hair: Suebian knot

Suebian knot on Wiki

I followed these instructions, but placed this at the back of my head instead of to the side. Compared to how much hair the bog bodies have, my knot would look ridiculously big and silly placed over the ear.

I had some trouble with the loop: Couldn’t entirely figure out how much length I should leave for it or how much tension I should maintain in the twists for it.

Like with all asymmetrical updos,  it has some seriously cute angles and some seriously bad angles.

To my surprise, I actually liked the end result. Usually I prefer my updos to be way more “packed” and restrained, but this actually worked for me.

Especially surprising is the fact that everything is held up with just three hairscroos, and I could probably have held it just fine with two! 

It holds up to my criteria for good hairstyles that I want to do again: It's fairly quick and simple, and easily distinguishable from any other hairstyles.

The loop made me want to try pinning it up.

With the loop pinned up, it looks a bit like the Celtic knot. But the Celtic knot is one of those styles that doesn't really work for me because my thick hair turns it into a massive lump that's barely distinguishable from a slightly lumpy cinnamon bun.

This however, has more character and looks more interesting than a Celtic knot.

I quite like this, both with the loop up and down!

Renaissance Henna’s Henna Hair Oil

This is a sponsored post.
In fact, this is my first sponsored post ever, and it makes me feel quite giddy inside!
How cool: Brands wants to send me stuff to review? Wowsa.

  

No, seriously. This is definitely one of the coolest experiences since I started blogging!

Renaissance Henna sent me a bottle of their Organic Henna Hair Oil Blend to try.

Direct link

Renaissance Henna store front page

Previous price: £12.99 (GBP)
Price: £10.99 (GBP)
The bottle contains 100ml.

Product description:

Renaissance Henna India Desert Earth Organic Blend Henna Hair Oil
A little goes a long way - just a few drops of this exquisite India hair oil will beautify, nourish, repair and condition the most lifeless hair. Perfect after and in between henna / indigo to help maintain henna hair colour and keep it glossy and strong. This is food for hair. May help to encourage hair growth.

It's manufactured and packed in India. How cool. 

First thought: Great bottle. Plastic, so no risk of shattering. Good grip on it too. The little grooves in the bottom should help maintain a grip on the bottle even with wet and slippery fingers.

Ingredients : Organic Sesame Seed Oil, Lawsonia Inermis Extract, Acacia Concinna, Eclipta Alba,
Aloe Barbadensis, Emblica Officinalis.

Ingredient list deciphered

Sesame seed oil.

Lawsonia Inermis is the Latin name for the henna bush.

Acacia concinna is used to make the herbal powder Shikakai.

Eclipta Alba known as false daisy or bhringraj.

Aloe vera.

Emblica Officinalis also known as amla.

I'm far from an expert on Indian herbs, but I recognize all of these. I've never actually gotten experimental with anything other than cassia and henna, but these herbs I've seen in so many hair recipes before. 

What do the herb-experts say?

The bottle opening

The oil
The oil itself is light and thin in consistency. It's easy to distribute in my hair and doesn't leave a greasy residue. It absorbs nicely and leaves a pretty shine behind.

Scent
It has a sort of lightly wooden scent with overtones of fruitiness. Once applied to hair, it seems to disappear.

Glossy!!

13 years

Huh. Ticker is off a bit. Because of leap years?

Unfortunately I didn't have time to let my hair properly air dry, so it's slightly damp in the pictures.

And my camera was being a pain, so all the pictures came out fuzzy.

This one was particularly blurry, but none the less I really liked it. Wish it had been clearer. Sigh.

Really not happy with the camera... 

The Jolly Blogger Award!

I was nominated for the Jolly Blogger Award, so here goes:

1. Do you open your gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?

Christmas Eve like most Danes.

2. Favourite Christmas song?

Shu-bi-dua: Den himmelblå

Or maybe

Mariah Carey: All I want for Christmas is you

Or 

Drengene fra Angora - Jul i Angora

(Feel free to be confused)

3. Favourite Christmas/holiday movie?

I’m going to have to go with ELF.

But if I can pick TV Christmas calendars too, I still love The Julekalender. It’s one of those bizarre Danish things that won’t make any sense to the rest of the world, but damn. Still cracks me up 23 years after it showed on TV for the first time (Holy crap I’m old!)

Here, have a full episode:

(And feel free to be thoroughly confused again)

4. Favourite Christmas decoration?

Nisser everywhere!

Any kind is good.

5. Favourite Christmas food?

Risalamande

Or

Traditional Danish Christmas duck

Or 

Æbleskiver

All things I miss quite a lot since Sweden has different Christmas traditions when it comes to food.

6. Favourite holiday/winter drink?

Christmas beers!

As much as I want to, I cannot stomach gløgg. It looks so cozy and nice, but bleargh.

7. Snow or no snow?

Hmm. Tricky question. Snow looks so awesome and feels so right for Christmas. But it also comes with nasty wet puddles everywhere, frozen sidewalks to slip on and generally messes up your home with all the mud and water you end up dragging in.

So… I don’t know.

8. Do you send out cards or no cards?

I do send cards, but I’m not very thorough with them. It feels a little silly. Like, once a year you “have to” send cards out to people for no other reason than that you should.

9. Do you still secretly believe in Santa Claus?

No.Does anyone?

10. Your favourite winter clothing item?

Big warm, heavy snowboots.

11. One beauty product you cannot be without this winter?

Lip balm. So much lip balm.

12. Best Christmas memory?

Hmmm. I don’t think I have any that sticks out as the best Christmas memory ever, but every year when we play Pakkespil, it seems to be the best moment ever!

It’s absolutely hilarious when people get all worked up about it. 

Action shot

...Of my newest hair stick from Morrigan. I thought it might be a bit too blunt, but it goes through my bun just fine.

Memebox special #68 Hair salon

When this box first came out, I ordered two of them. But then I spent some time worrying that it might have been a bad move.

Luckily, it turned out it wasn’t!

Left to right

• Na. 8 Outbath treatment

“A yuzu citron-scented leave-on hair treatment”. How cool! A really big leave in-conditioner. And I have two of them! The back of the tube is in English (Awesome!) and it contains cones, keratin, arginine and camellia seed oil. Nice!

• La’dor Perfect Hair filler

Each box had two of these little ampoules. You’re supposed to mix them 1:1 with water to a creamy mix before applying it to your hair. Sounds cool!

Maybe I can also just mix them in some regular, cheap conditioner to give it an extra boost? Or mix it in my henna treatments?

Hubby has been eyeing them in the bathroom and commenting on how cool and science-y they look.

• The Shampoo Natural Waterless Shampoo Outdoor

It’s a dry shampoo. I hate dry shampoos. Sell/trade/gift-pile.

Left to right

• Haken Natural Baobab oil

Another baobab product. Huh? I haven’t even used the first one yet.  

I tried some of this and it’s a clear, slightly sticky leave in conditioner. It creates an amazing shine and leaves a slightly wooden scent behind.

I wonder if baobab is the next big thing in haircare. When I first “started”, it was sheabutter, recently argan oil has been the great big “It” thing and now, maybe, it’s going to be babobab oil?

You heard it here first, folks!

• Solucion 9 Aztect Therapy Shampoo Natural Herb 50%

I almost gave these two Hubby, but I might keep them. They’re supposed to contain herbs and medical plants to lessen hair loss and since I always shed 1½ dead cat whenever I use shampoo (Like once a year on average), maybe I should keep them?

• Ryo Anti-Hair loss Treatment

This contains some weird stuff: Biota seed, coix seed, green tea and gold extract. How do you make gold extract?

Anyways. I might use this to target my scalp when I deep condition.

This was an amazing box! Even better than the Superbox # 16 with the hair stuff.

Winter swap on UTT

As I already blogged about, there is a winter swap going on UTT.

Yesterday I received the package from my gifter. It turned out to be Morrigan, and funnily enough, just the reveal of who was gifting me was almost as surprising and amusing as the gift itself. 

 I had to include a shot of the outside of the box: All prettily wrapped up and with some pretty cool stamps on it.

 She wrapped everything up individually! It felt like Christmas unwrapping it all.

(And then I felt a bit bad not having put more of an effort into my own gift)

A cool calorimetry that she knitted herself. I don’t own one of these, so this will be really cool to try!

(Major envy of her skill here. I tried to learn to knit once and ended up ragequitting)

Different cool masks! Facial, hand and eye treatments.

Two very unique hairsticks. She wrote that the seller screwed up the length of the first one so I ended up getting two. Action shots will be made!

A conditioner I’m looking forward to try! Good size, good ingredient list for me.

Some very cool elastics. I’ve never seen any like these before.

And awww, stupid, rough mail service. The claw clip broke. Pout.

And a very sweet letter in the bottom of the box.

Thank you, Morrigan!

Mini-meet

Last Thursday I met up with Frigga from UTT. It was a spur of the moment thing, where it crossed my mind in the middle of the seminar “Hey, doesn’t Frigga live in this city?”

So I contacted her on UTT and luckily she saw my message and we met up for dinner at Joci sushi. I had never been there before, but they have running sushi and it was very good. I think some times they get a bit lazy with running sushi, but this had a good variation on dishes. I will definitely go there again!

I found it quite funny how Frigga and I have almost exactly opposite hairtype when it comes to the thickness of individual hairs. Hers is almost ghostly fine and mine is coarse.

We had a good talk about hair products and methods and such… It’s funny to talk hair in real life though. I always find myself fumbling for the terms and names of stuff in Danish because I’m so used to only talking about hair in English!

Frigga didn’t want any pictures, so I have none.

Throwback Thursday

I think I have said it before, but I quite liked this length. Well, that and a bit longer… Up until eyebrow length where it got near my eyes and needed a ton of product to be tolerable (And daily shampoo to get the gross product out again to keep the product-related breakouts down)

The length was pretty flattering on me, but so very boring in the long run.

Looking at pictures like this and having my heavy snake of a braid resting in my lap, I can barely understand my hair was once so short.

New Girl Fast Scalp Hair Root Up Ampoule

Scalp scaling gels.

These makes me very, very happy.

Seriously.

What are in these?

I’ve tried two (2) and I have loved them so, so much.

They don’t make my scalp all dry, tight and unhappy like shampoo, but just cleans my scalp perfectly.

Second question: Where can I find more?

So far I have only received them more or less randomly from my Memeboxes.

I seriously feel a little sad knowing I don’t have a backup in my hair stuff-pile. 

Today’s hair: Knotted braids

Continuing my experiments with knotted updos.

Dual French braids knotted together and tied off. I once tried this without braiding it first and it turned into a slippery mess. With the braids knotted, it had some staying power.

Funny how short it ended up being though: Not even BSL.  

I like it! My hair isn't "up", but it's still very much out of the way for me.

Q&A answers

For some reason Blogger decided to eat up my answers. Huh. How odd.

So, here goes… Again.

What made you want to grow your hair? 

Helene Sørensen

Short answer: Because I like it.

Long answer: It just sort of happened.

After I shaved my head, I found short hair got boring really, really fast. So originally I just wanted to regrow it long enough to whip it up in an emergency ponytail (Like, a bit past shoulder length/flip length).

When it was finally long enough to do that, I wanted it long enough to properly braid (Like, BSL ish).

When it was finally long enough to do that, I wanted it long enough to bun (Like, waist ish).

When it was finally long enough to do that, I wanted it long enough to do a figure 8 bun (Like, classic ish).

When it was finally long enough to do that, I wanted it long enough to make a cool crown braid (Like, mid thigh ish)

So it sort of became a “More wants more” kind of thing…

If you would encounter a wizard, who could magically transform your hair to any length, what would that length be? 

indi500fan

Hah. Could be fun to have below floor length or something really long. But only if I could get the damn taper down. No fun having only 14 hairs reaching floor length.

What would you change about the following: 1. your hair 2. body (height/figure, ect) 

Buchfreundin

1: I’d like my hair to be a natural copper blonde/ strawberry blond.

Thicker and less taper. Yea, more wants more.

Also, some sort of natural parting/cowlick, thank you very much. My hair falls flat down in front of my face, so I always need to restrain it in some way or another if I want to see.

2: Ooooh boy… This will be a long list and probably makes me seem really insecure.

• Better skin. I have super sensitive skin and it seems it’s always mad at me no matter what I do.
• I have hooded eyelids and I’d like them not to be. It runs in my family and yes, I considered surgery.
• Larger eyes.
• Better eyesight. Minus 4,25 and minus 5. It’s a lot.
• Straighter nose. Broke it twice, so now it has a slight bump. Yes, I considered corrective surgery.
• My jawline is slightly asymmetrical. Yes, I considered the Korean jaw shaving surgery.
• Smaller boobies.
• I could stand to lose a few kgs.
• Change where my fat deposits go to: It pretty much only goes between my navel and top thighs. A little more distribution would be nice!

If you could live anywhere, where would you pick? 

Buchfreundin

Hmmmm. How about Réunion?

If you could become you favourite character from a book, whom would you be? 

Buchfreundin

Okay, this is a difficult question. I mean, favourite books and favourite characters and all don’t equal a universe I would want to live in, you know?

If we took some of my recent favourites like the Game of Thrones series, the Metro 2033 series and the World War Z book… Yea, I would not want to live in those universes. I don’t have a death wish.

But to pick a character I both like and would want to be: Asimov’s Dr. Susan Calvin.

Have you ever considered going from being a serious amateur hair and beauty blogger to being a professional one? What would influence your decison one way or another? 

Andi

No, never. I like blogging as a hobby, but I simply have no interest in going pro even if I could.

Do you like turtles? or any other animals for that matter? I'm a big fan of friendly affectionate ones. Best pets I ever had were Rats. Any pets? 

Nightgerbil

I haven’t had pets since I moved out of my parent’s house, but when I lived at home, I always had animals around me. We will get animals again once we move to a larger place.
Never thought of getting a turtle as a pet though!

My best pet was my peach faced lovebird Bølle. The most affectionate, intelligent and cranky little old fluffball in the world. He’s been dead for 14 years now, but I still miss him every day.

I would have had a pet mallard too that we found motherless where my parents have their boat, but Bølle refused to accept him in my room, so he had to be more of an outdoors-duck than a pet. Bølle flew into a screaming fit and would probably have murdered the little babyduck, so…

We had a budgie before I got Bølle and my parents have a dog.

I had a bunch of animals, not pets:

Chickens

Horses

Pigeons

And oh, so many injured rescues of tits, sparrows, pigeons and swallows though the years.

And since the duck had to be an outdoors duck, we got him a lady friend and they had a bunch of duckbabies themselves.  

Q&A answer session

Q&A

Anyone up for a Q&A session?

I'll post the answers in two days.

Just remember this: 

Double standards, maybe?

I know that to the vast majority of people out there, the thought of not washing your hair with shampoo is really disgusting. Strangely though, using dry shampoo seems almost normal. You shake a powder in, massage it around and brush it out.

I honestly find that a bit disgusting, no matter how much they claim it really, truly, honestly absorbs the grease. Ick.

I guess I’m in the school of “Do wash your hair, but find the least damaging method that works for you”, when it comes to hair. Dry shampoo (Or talcum or baby powder or cocoa powder or whatever people substitute it with) just doesn’t feel “washing” for me.

It’s like I feel with hand disinfectants, no matter how cute or clever or portable they are, I will still prefer at least wiping my hands in a moist towelette or something. No matter how much I’m told that hand disinfectants are really, really effective, I still prefer wiping or rinsing off my hands.

Anyways. I’m getting out on a tangent here.

My point is; dry shampoo is something that I should like because it’s hair friendlier than regular shampoo. But I don’t.

Which is partly why an amusing (I hope?) print like this is pretty disturbing to me.

It’s a flowchart to decide on whether or not you should wash your hair and it features options like:

Well how bad is it? => On a scale from carrots to pepperoni pizza, its melted cheese. This option still doesn’t lead to “Wash your f**king hair!”

It also features options such as “Can you wear a hoodie?” and “Will it be dark where you are going?”

Still. People pay for this?

I really hope this is a joke so clever it went over my head... 

Indigo revisited

First thought of the day: Crap, I overslept!

I had slept for 11 hours with the indigo in my ends. Crap.

Literally blue?

But once I had rinsed it clean, I’m not sure I can actually tell I did anything to the colour. How odd.

The henna did the perfect “barely there” effect, but the indigo seems to escape me and be so barely there I myself isn’t even sure I have done anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I would rather have that than it becoming too dark.

But it also irritates me: I wouldn’t have added indigo if I hadn’t wanted an affect.

It worries me a bit because now I’m tempted to add more indigo and maybe then it will turn out too dark.

Seems like an appropriate reaction :)

Is the problem maybe my henna-dose being so low that the indigo can’t even bind to my hair?