500 k and thoughts on blogging

Look what I found this morning!

Amazing!
I cant believe I've had half a million hits on my blog now.
It really amazes me how so many people can find my hair and writing interesting!

My unusual growing out-story aside, what is the appeal to you all?

My guess is it's the honesty.
My blog is the (mostly) hair related things that actually happen in my life. The updos I take pictures of are the updos I would have done anyways, the treatments I write about are treatments I would have done anyways and the knowledge I write about is knowledge I would have looked up anyways.
I don't do anything "for" my blog I wouldn't have done anyways. I don't spend time on making a fancy updo just to take pictures of it for my blog.

Maybe that's it? My methods are simple and easy, and I have my own brand of laziness when it comes to care and updos. What I do can be copied by most other people.

One way or another, it's the honesty that keeps me personally checking in on a blog.
This is why I find the western oriented beauty bloggers to be such a total reading turn off. They really go with the lie of "Oh, I just rolled out of bed this way. Te-hee." The J and K-oriented beauty bloggers openly admit how much time and effort they spend on their looks and that honesty appeals to me. It's a kind of honesty I can appreciate: I see how many hours and how much effort it takes them to look like they do and I can go "Meh, not for me". Not like the western oriented beauty bloggers that makes me think I must be doing something fundamentally wrong.

In other news, my Hubby has been talking about starting a blog too! He would like to write about free training opportunities in the Lund-Malmö area, like the outdoors gyms and good running trails. I'm pretty excited about his idea and I hope it means we can combine photo opportunities.

Hair food: Soy bean pasta

I think the nutrition facts speak for themselves!

These started popping up in my little corner of the world the last year or so. 2-3 different brands are carrying these and they have lots of interesting colours and shapes.

Pros

• Good source of protein
• Good source of fiber
• Not too high on calories either
• Super quick to boil (Most of the packs instructs you to boil it for longer than it actually needs) but doesn't fall apart if you cook it for too long

Cons

• Kind of pricey still, but the price seems to be dropping by the month
• Weird texture that reminds me more of noodles than actual pasta
• Weird (Although subtle) flavor that reminds me of seaweed
• Kind of weird to match to a meal I think. The strange texture also makes it kind of fragile, so it doesn't tolerate being tossed around too much in sauce and stuff.

So far I think the best match for it is with some fried broccoli and onion, and some tomatoes. The good thing is that it tolerates being microwaved pretty well, even with the weird, fragile texture.

Weird things done for hair

Aka “Igor’s amusing hair failures from the past”

I revisited this thread and had some good laughs. Then I thought I should write down all the weirdness I’ve done for my own blog. In no particular order, all the stuff I could think of:

Deep oiling + shampooing it out

This seemed like teh bestest idea evar! for me some 11-12 years ago when I first encountered the longhair circuit. Of course now I know that my coarse hair and oils aren’t the best mix, so the oil probably did absolutely nothing.

No wash for 9 days

Well, I suppose for some people, just going shampoo free is disgusting, vile and evil in itself. But back ages ago when I first tried to go conditioner only, I seemed to hit a plateau where I shampooed once a week and CO’ed twice. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to break it.

Someone advised me to “Find a time where you don’t have to be social and just let it grease up”. So I did. I had some project work for two weeks and just stopped shampooing to see how long I could stand it. Nine days, this was an eternity for me back then. When I finally caved in and shampooed, my hair felt like I could just chop it off and use it as candles! Gross.

Well, my disgustingness aside, this actually worked. It broke the plateau and I could transition to almost exclusively-CO.

Feet elevated when sleeping

I blame this one on my nooby-ness as well. One of those facepalm-worthy advice out there is that you should elevate your feet when you sleep, to force more nutrition to your scalp. Of course forcing blood to a certain bodypart doesn’t mean you actually force it to absorb nutrition. One of those “advice” that got me into actually research the things I do.

Tapping nails, and driving my friends crazy in the process

Okay, this was one of those “Can’t hurt, but I don’t really believe in it”-things. Your fingernails are supposed to be acupressure points for your scalp, so massaging or tapping your nails should therefore increase growth.

Ironically, it pissed my friends off so much they might as well have started pulling their own hair out. Also my hair didn’t seem to care, I still got my usual 1,5 cm for each month I did it.

Palmer’s coconut oil

I received this one in a trade (I think) and applied way too much of it. I seriously couldn’t shampoo that s*** out! I shampooed, dried my hair and found it still greasy, then repeated the process until I was out of shampoo. The greasiness spread all over my scalp, down my neck and my forehead, ick! I had to wait until the next day, then go out to hunt for a clarifying shampoo. I still had to shampoo a handful of times with the clarifying shampoo before the last greasiness disappeared. My scalp hurt and itched for days after!

Aloe vera-based hair growth gel

For some reason I decided to buy an expensive hair-growth boosting gel with a bunch of herbal stuff in it. It seemed to “activate” my scalp all nicely, but after a while I noticed I was losing hairs at my temples! I even developed a  seriously sparsely-haired spot at my left temple (I almost called it a "bald" spot, but I think that would be an exaggeration) 

Of course now I know I’m actually allergic to aloe vera, or more specifically, something in the plants skin:

• Aloe vera pressed with the skin = Red, swollen, itchy nightmare
• Aloe vera pressed without the skin = No problems

Of course, this is the kind of information they leave out on the packaging.

Nuruk powder on my scalp

Nuruk is a type of kneaded flour that releases konjic acid which is one of the new wonders of skincare. I got a bag of it in a Memebox ages ago and tried it in some conditioner for my scalp. I thought it would have a nice “scrub” effect like cassia-grains do, but no.

But I suppose it’s weird enough to use fermented flour in any part of your beauty routine?

Removing the tags in shirts and sweaters

Well, I kind of think this one is logical, but some people would disagree: I remove the neck-tags from all my shirts and sweaters. Since I pull some sort of clothing over my head at least twice in a day, and a lot of those tags are kind of sharp, it should add up to some damage over the years. So I remove them.

Hair inspiration: Bun + ponytail, take II

So the first shot at the Bun + ponytail wasn't so awesome. Hubby liked it, but I didn't.

The tail was too long for me and the bun did that "cannonball" thing where it turned into an annoying unbalanced ball. I was thinking that maybe the problem was in how flat/wide the braid was: It made it difficult to get a good knot going.

So I tried with the roundest "braid" I know: The ropebraid.

And instead of making a real knot, I would pull the ponytail out between the inner and outer coils of a Nautilus.

Much better!

But like all asymmetrical styles, it was a lot cuter from one side.

Also, the tail formed a very cute little wave!
I think mostly it was from the way it "hits" my shoulders? But maybe I have more more curl than I thought?

Would I do this style again?

Yes.

I thought the bun-part was cute and the tail-length was manageable. It was a whole lot more stable than the last attempt (Nautilus bun to the rescue!)

My only complaint is that the cute little wave seemed to provoke some sort of annoying cat-behavior in Hubby. He spent most of the day "attacking" my little tail and playing with it. Batting it around like a cat with yarn, stroking it and twirling his fingers in it. My weirdo :)

Throwback Thursday

Okay, this is technically not a "Throwback" but I wasn't sure what else to classify it as.

The lady below is my mother. If I'm seeing correctly, the picture is from 1972, which makes her *Counts on fingers and mutters to self* 19 years old.

It's funny, I really cant make up my mind if I don't look like her at all or if I look like her a lot.
What do you all think?

I have the same heavy upper eyelids as her and a good head of hair, but those two things are super dominant family traits that everyone in my family has.

Hot spot heating pads

I’ve had this little self heating heart for a while now. I think everyone knows them: You boil them, let them cool down and then re-activate them by “breaking” this little thingie inside.

I’ve been using it quite a bit, but it does annoy me that I can’t keep it ready to go in my storage. It seems to activate on its own, so I have to boil it, wait for it to get cool enough to activate and then use it. Meh.

I found these little one time use-ones. At first glance they seemed better: Lighter, bigger, flatter.

But I think they have a few problems: First of all, they took a while to activate. You just peel them out of the protective plastic cover and use the little fabric-like inner pad. Good in theory, but I’d say it took like an hour to properly heat up. That’s about when I’m done with my deep conditioning.

Second, they seemed to cool down at random intervals too! I did a really thorough deep conditioning and when I re-adjusted the cling wrap and warm hats, there were a couple of times when they were almost cold.

Huh.

Do these depend on oxygen for the reaction maybe?

If that’s the case, they’re fairly useless to me. I would want to have them inside my mess of cling wrap and warm hats when I deep condition.

Surprisingly, they seemed to stay warm a whole lot longer than they advertised. The pack said they would stay warm for 6 hours, but once I was done conditioning, I just left them in the bathroom and they were still warm the next morning.

Meh. Not really sure what to make of these.

Hair inspiration

I have done something similar before, but it didn't look so nice because I made 3 dutch braids into one. It looked nice in the front, but asymmetrical in the back.
Link

Yea, I like it. I don't think it's super amazing, but I like it.
Would wear it again.

My only complaint is that it made my hair too short to properly whack Hubby with when he annoys me.

Splurge

I've been eyeing the white stick for way, way too long now.
It's an investment and I'm a bit worried about the stick being too pointy and not Hubby-friendly. He has an ability to instantly forget he almost poked his eyes out coming in for a hug.
But, uh, you can only keep eyeing something for so long with the same interest before you eventually decide to get it.

Black White Hairstick 17.8cm

Teal Blue Wooden Hair Stick 17.8cm

Can't wait!

Hair inspiration

This was a picture I found on Dreamweaverbraiding, which now seems to not exist anymore?

The hairstyle was supposed to be a bunned up braid, where after securing it, the leftover length is left loose. This picture was the second-last with the finished style having the entire tail loose.

I started with a five-stranded braid, just for fun.

My thought was that this would help to "flatten" the bun-part but that didn't seem to help. Pout.

I love how wide the five-stranded braids are on my hair, so I had to show it off!

4 cm at below shoulders.

The finished style.
Like all asymmetrical styles, it looks better from one side than from the other.

I'm amazed at how I can both have a decently sized bun and a hipbone length ponytail going on at the same time!

Would I do this style again?

No. It felt unbalanced and loose. I also almost got my hair caught in things, like closing the fridge.

Hubby really liked it though!

Testerkorea haul II

Another testerkorea.com haul!

I really like that webshop!

Okay, no more TK hauls for a while now. Seriously. Ahem.

Innisfree: The Minimum

This line is what it the name says: A line for sensitive skin, with the minimum ingredients to create the product. Good in theory, but it was a total bust for me. It confirms how difficult it is to create good products for sensitive skin. Ecological doesn't make a product skin friendly, the minimum amount of ingredients doesn't make it skin friendly and natural ingredients doesn't make a product skin friendly. It also needs to have the right texture: Too light and your skin gets dry and cranky, too heavy and it irritates. It also needs to have the right acidic pH that works with the natural acid mantle of the skin.

• The cleansing lotion was a weird thick texture and seemed to leave a residue behind.
• The cleansing foam seemed to do nothing at all.
• The toner also seemed to do nothing. My skin usually feels dry after cleaning, until I add toner. But this toner didn't seem to do anything at all.
• The ampoule was the only thing I was remotely pleased with. I didn't hate it, but it also didn't have any real effect. Usually ampoule adds the "glow" but no moisture to my skin, but this one only sort of felt like a toner or something. It would probably be good for layering products though.
• The fresh cream was okay. 
• The moist cream was heavily moisturizing and ended up irritating me. You would have to have seriously dry skin to like this one! And even then, most people with dry skin prefer to layer products instead of putting one heavily moisturizer product one.

Yea, this line was a total bust for me.

Bentons snail bee line is awesome. I wanted to try the lotion and ended up getting a backup of the toner and essence as well. Whoops.

Assorted sheet masks and hand masks!
These really appeal to my lazy nature. Just unwrap, put on, ignore for a while, peel off. Wonderful.
And so cheap too! 
500 KRW each:

• 3,7 SEK
• 3 DKK
• 0,4 Euro
• 0,4 USD
• 0,3 GBP

Who can say no to that?

Banila Co's Claypatra has become my favourite cleanser. It's just so good!
I got the mineral salt clay pack too and that one is amazing as well. 
Highly recommended both of them! (Funny, because all other Banila Co-products have failed to impress me)

Left to right:

• Tonymoly Dust And The City Clear Shield Mist SPF8: A mister with SPF? Yes, thank you! This one went straight into my shoulder bag. I'm not so impressed with it though. It leaves a kind of funny feel/texture behind. But hey, being able to spray on a SPF just like that? With no patting or massaging required? Yea, I can live with that. The spray comes out perfectly fine and diffused too.
• Mizon Snail Repair Hydro Mist: A mister with snail slime filtrate? Yes, thank you! I'm very impressed with this one. It's light, yet moisturizing. Good stuff. The spray comes out perfectly fine and diffused too.
• Cosilon Jeju Snail Hand Cream: A hand cream with snail slime filtrate? Yes, thank you! This one went straight into my shoulder bag. I'm very impressed with this one. It's light, yet moisturizing. Good stuff.
• Innisfree The Green Tea Seed Serum: A nice and runny serum that has become my first moisturizing step after toner.

Assorted skin stuff.
Spot treatment patches, some peeling gel samples, whitening essence samples and in front: Nature Republic Hand & Nature Sanitizer Gel in lavender and green tea. These actually smell good! And are so small and convenient I have no excuse to not have them with me. And they're dirt cheap!

Hair stuff!

• WELCOS Confume Argan Treatment Hair Pack: 1 liter of conditioner. Good ingredient list. Cheap. Good!
• DAENGGIMEORI Honey Intensive Hair Mask: Another liter of conditioner. This had some sort of funny minty effect too it. Also very good! You seriously pay for the shipping, not the product with these.
• INNISFREE Green tea mint fresh scalp scaler: This one just sucked. All other scalp scalers I've tried have been awesome and left my scalp feeling "airy" and fresh without drying it out. This one left some sort of bizarre oily residue behind that I had to shampoo out. WTF and ew!
• Lador Perfect hair filler: These are awesome. You're supposed to mix them with water for a creamy, thin conditioner, but I mix them into regular conditioner. Works like a charm for thickening up cassia treatments too!

Innisfree eyeshadow pencils that had more glimmer than the webshop showed (Dislike) and also have a tendency to slide all over the place even on primer-bases (More dislike!) Two lipbalms.

O'Sulloc water + : Calorie free little packs to dissolve in water. Has antioxidants and pantothenic acid. I figured this would help me remember to drink enough water during the day!

Basically this is a bag that you insert in your bag to keep all your stuff from sliding around in one big, unorganized pile. It's quite awesome.