Princess life ♡: January 2013

Sunday 27 January 2013

Tips on How to Get Dry/Damaged Hair Healthier Again

About two years ago, after only dying it black a couple months before, i decided i wanted platinum blonde hair and made almost all the rookie mistakes. I was lucky enough that my hair was so healthy to start with that the damage wasn't completely unforgiving but even though i am brunette again now i've learned some awesome ways to get damaged hair feeling/looking healthy again.

Tips/tricks

Don't brush your hair when it's wet: I cannot stress this enough, our hair is very weak when wet as it stretches. I personally don't brush my hair at all but if you do, DO NOT BRUSH WHEN HAIR IS WET. Just don't do it!

Not so hot: It's time to start avoiding the hottest setting on your dryer and cut back on those straighteners and hair curlers. I know this is the most obvious advice but you really will notice a huge difference once you turn the heat down

Give it a rest: Don't wash your hair everyday, try every other day. The acids in shampoos strip our hair of it's natural oils, so the best way to avoid this is to simply not wash it so much.

Better products: From heat protection milks to moisturising shampoos, our hair needs extra TLC and it's worth investing in some good products. Obviously a lot of these are crazy pricey so the ones i would recommend are

Kerastase Ciment Thermique
Aussie three minute Miracle Reconstructor
Aussie Miracle Moist Shampoo

Happy hair days: Every month or fortnight or so, give your hair a special lovey dovey day, use a deep conditioning treatment, or use a home made recipe (i've left my favourites at the bottom for you to try)

Things to avoid

Elastic hair bands: The metal band can catch on your hair and cause breakage and the tight fibres can further damage your hair

Clarifying Shampoos/Acidic Shampoos: Clarifying shampoos are designed to give your hair 'a fresh start' by removing any leftover product or dirt, for people with damaged hair though these are important to avoid as they are powerful and remove all the natural oils. Even if your hair is healthy, long term use of clarifying shampoos can cause great damage to your hair.

Over Nourishment: It is in fact possible to go overboard with treatments. Whatever method you choose to give your hair some nourishment, try to only do it every fortnight.

Rough fabrics: If your pillow is made of a rough or 'drying out fabric' (cotton included) this could be causing damage to your hair whilst you sleep. Try silkier fabrics such as satin or try wrapping your hair up in a softer fabric whilst you sleep. Same goes for if you wear a lot of hats.

Favourite home made treatments

Hot oil treatment: These are very easy, simply

Warm up some of your fav oils (i would recommend any nut oil and/or argan oil) in a microwave until nice and warm, NOT BOILING, just pleasantly warm.
Cover your hair in it, paying special attention to the tips.
Wrap it up in a towel and leave for approx 45 minutes.
Wash as usual.

Honey Treatment: Honey is great because it locks in moisture, it's also great for your skin

Mix 1/2 cup of honey (organic, runny) with an egg yolk and mix together
Shampoo/condition hair as usual
Whilst damp, massage the mixture into your hair working upward from the tips
Leave for 20 mins then rinse with warm water

*if you are worried it won't come out esily you can add a spoonfull of olive oil to loosen it, though i've never had any trouble with it coming out very easily

Happy hair Days Everyone, I'd love to hear some of your tips too

Ly ～❤

Wednesday 9 January 2013

✰ My favourite healthy ✰ snacking alternatives✰

It's the New Year and lots of us have probably got the 'eat more healthy' line on our list of resolution and

like everyone i often get peckish in between meals, although weight is not a concern for me i still care about what i'm putting into my body and want to make sure i'm taking care of myself. So i wanted to share with you some of my favourite foods/snacks which happen to be very healthy and nutritious.

Yoghurt and honey

Yum! Yum! YUM! This is my go to snack food at home,

if i'm hungry my first instinct is to grab some nice organic yogurt and either drizzle it with honey or chop up some banana into it! Or maybe even both.

Of course you can put other things in your yoghurt, sometimes i like to put a spoonful of jam in with it instead

but i must stress, i have seen a lot of people think that they can just completely cover their yoghurt in jam or honey of sugar and it's 'still healthy because it's yoghurt

..........it doesn't work like that!

try to stick to just one tea spoon of honey/jam or sugar, that's all it needs.

Fruit/veg smoothies

Okay so i know these aren't necessarily quick, but if you have some spare time you can make a batch and it'll last a few days. My favourite smoothie recipe is

1 Mango
2 chopped carrots
1 or 2 peeled oranges
1/2 cup water or orange juice

Some people like to add a quarter tea spoon of ginger and you can also skip the mango!!

Smoothies are so fun to experiment with but they're always brilliant at filling you up and you know it's always going to be healthy as you know it's only fruit/veg going into your body.

If you can't be asked to make your own, you can always get an innocent smoothie or a variation as they're just as delicious and healthy but it's obviously more fun to make your own.

Rice cakes with almost anything

Oooo! My mouth is watering just thinking about them!!!

I really love rice cakes and i could happily eat them on their own but i know most people find that bland.

A few good things to put on your rice cakes are:

Peanut butter (make sure you get a brand that doesn't use palm oil, or that gets it from a sustainable source)
Cream Cheese
Cream cheese/cucumber
Cream cheese/ smoked salmon
Smoked salmon and lemon
Houmous
Tahini
Honey

You could put ANYTHING ON THEM!! They're just so delicious. My favourite is smoked salmon and cream cheese with a squeeze of lemon. Rice cakes are the perfect alternative to bread/toast and they are so much better for you. My mum is even fond of making rice cake sandwiches which are unsurprisingly delicious.

FRUIT AND VEG

Honestly nothing baffles me more than when people say they're trying to get healthy but 'it's just so hard to find nice foods to eat'

What about simply some fruit and veg? It's cheap, you usually don't need to prepare it and it's really tasty.

You could just grab a banana or an apple or my favourite, some blueberries.

Or if you have a little time, chop up some carrots and dunk them in some houmous!

Cut a grapefruit in half and sprinkle some sugar on top!

Hell, make a fruit salad if you feel like it.

It's very common now days for people's taste buds to be 'warn out' and for your body to crave snack foods and junk but i promise just a couple days of eating fruit and veg in place of the usual unhealthy stuff and it'll start being the healthy stuff you crave instead, it's amazing how quickly your body gets back to wanting the healthy stuff.

I'd love to hear some of your favourite healthy foods so comment below and enjoy all the yummy food

～❤

Tuesday 8 January 2013

My Top 5 ❥ favourite anime of 2011 - 2012 ❥

I struggled to order these so much so please don't in any way view this as my be all and end all favourite animes of 2011-2012
2011 and 2012 were abundantly good years for anime and i've barely scratched the surface with the series i've watched so again, this is not a be all and end all!!

Number 5

Guilty Crown

Guilty Crown kind of became the Marmite anime of 2012! People either really liked it or thought it so awful it should be erased from their memories. I was one of the people who really liked it ^-^

I went in expecting to absolutely despise it because of all the terrible things i'd heard about it and after the first episode i was ready to drop it. I was pleasantly surprised though how quickly it developed its own vibe and i ended up watching the whole thing in a couple of days.

The story follows Shu, a young boy who accidently finds himself with 'the kings mark' which allows him to extract peoples souls/hearts and manifest them as weapons or items reflective of said person's personality.

The soundtrack is easily the best thing about this anime, it may even be considered it's redeeming feature!

I must stress that this anime is greatly flawed, the female lead is one of the most dull characters to exist in anime and although i like a little bit of a chaotic break down toward the end of my anime i know others prefer to keep it a bit more structured. The action is awesome, in particular the 'anti-gravity' scene in one of the earlier episodes! I know A LOT of people really hated this anime and i feel a little like Joey in that episode of friends where Rachael tried to make a trifle. The giant robots: good. The music: Good. The action: Gooood!!

The only thing i really hated about it was the lack of character development for some of the side characters and how mind numbingly boring Inori was but that's about it, everything else was great.

Number 4

Mirai Nikki

Can i just have the first 20 or so episodes on here please?? seriously the ending was so stupid i nearly ripped my hair out but up until then A+

Where Guilty Crown lacks in the female lead area, Mirai Nikki excels. Although she's some what unorthodox she's definitely interesting. Yuno Gasai is so desperately in love that she's willing to go on as many murderous rampages as necessary and she'll be laughing all the way!

I feel like everyone has seen this anime so there's not much point in me explaining it but i will! We follow Yuki, a painfully average high school boy, as he is thrust into a game of 'last one standing gets to be God' There's a lot of stupid crap in this anime but all the gratuitous violence and 'yandereness' really do make up for it. I feel like thanks to this anime we finally have a 'yandere' queen.

The twists are actually pretty great in this one too and i definitely felt satisfied with the 'big reveal' which is becoming rare in most anime.

Side not: My favourite bit has got to be the Ninth 'dart scene' in fact that whole episode was great!

Number 3

Yuru Yuri

Recently i've gotten really into comedy anime and Yuru Yuri had me in stitches!! It was so surreal but also really, painfully cute. I've never watched something before where i've shipped every character with every character and other than Strawberry panic i've never watched an anime with an entirely female cast!

I'm not even sure what Yuru Yuri is meant to be a parody of, i want to say Yuri, but it's kind of a parody of the entire cute sub genre.

At first you assume Akari is going to be our protagonist but her position is quickly usurped by all the other female characters who have a much stronger presence than her! Eventually it's proclaimed that her only outstanding trait is her hair! I couldn't help feeling this was a subtle dig at the magical girl genre and how dull the leading lady often is in comparison to the supporting cast. This anime is really, really funny and i found that i not only loved all the characters but that it was very easy to get through and i can't wait to watch the next series!

Number 2

Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

Literally who came up with this? And i seriously hope they will be making a series 2

Tonari is the story of apathetic, book-worm Shizuku Mizutani's romantic journey with a borderline sociopath with 0 self-preservation skills. I feel like Haru is one of the most unique characters i've ever come accross in anything ever!He's completely blunt and actually a little bit scary but he's kept in check by the girl he's decided he's in love with.

I loved, LOVED how he was continuously, accidently punching Shizu in the face while usually trying to defend her honour in some way. and all the side characters were so well mapped out, and quite amazingly, i was interested in ALL of their stories.

The only thing i would fault this series with is that it must have a second, it was left in such a way that we have to assume that's the plan andi'm sure we're all dying to find out a little more about Haru's past and what's to become of the romantic endeavours of (our blogging soul mate ) Asako!!

Number 1

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Urgh! How much more obvious could i be!! Madoka exceeded my expectations in a big way, i knew the gist of it but i was so sure that all the hype would mean it was bitterly disappointing, i was wrong.

Madoka is to the magical girl genre what Neon Genesis Evangelion is to the mecha genre! and it managed to achieve that in just twelve twenty five minute episodes. If you have managed to go this long without seeing it and are lucky enough not to have been exposed to any spoilers then quickly, GO AND WATCH IT!! I am amazed i was fortunate enough to watch it without too many spoilers, all i knew was that people were saying it 'ruined there life' and that 'it was not a happy show'

I also want to point out how freakin' amazing the sound track is, they have all this fake angsty celtic music which doesn't actually mean anything (something i think was intended to be a clever little reflection of the music often used in mahou shoujo) but it sounds fantastic, you'll be listening to it for days after!

Madoka really got me thinking, a lot, about the magical girl concept, and how it's kind of fucked up! You could literally discuss this show and all the sneaky little tid bits for hours! There's just so much crammed in to those 12 episodes and it definitely deserves it's seat in the anime hall of legends.

Now who's excited about the up coming movies and the second series??

or are you as apprehensive about them as i am?

Honorable mention

Mawaru Penguindrum

This would most definitely have been on my list if not for my strong aversion to over the top symbolism, metaphors and allegory and every other bit of pretence this show had!! It was a wonderful show and i'm sure many people were not bothered by all the symbols but for me, plot should always come first and i felt the story was completely over powered by the writer's desperation to present a deeper meaning.

This being said! I would still recommend it!

Please feel free to leave your favourite anime of 2011/2012 below or any recommendations

Ly ～❤

Sunday 6 January 2013