Friday Five – Hair in a hurry

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I can’t count the number of times I have needed to wash my hair but opted for an extra 15 minutes in bed. A girl always needs a back up plan for those occasions when she just can’t be bothered.

Cousin It from the Aadams Family never had a bad hair day

Cousin It from the Aadams Family never had a bad hair day

Here are five quick fixes for a bad hair day:

1. The messy ponytail - Distinguishable from a  regular ponytail as it is supposed to look unbrushed. Instead of brushing, use your fingers to comb the hair back into place, fasten with a band and back comb the tail slightly to ruffle it up.

2. Plaits - Most grown women can’t get away with two bunches without looking a bit desperate but two plaits is a different matter. They can be worn loose or wrapped around the head and pinned into place for a simple Heidi-style up do.

3. Donuts - Not the ones you eat but a hair donut. Pull hair up into a ponytail, through the donut hole, let it flop over and secure with an elastic band before spreading the hair out to cover it. Voila, you have a bun which you can freeze immobile with vast amounts of hairspray.

4. Water - Do you suffer from rogue hair? Do you think it is mental to carry hairspray around with you at all times? Me too and you don’t need to if you can brave a bit of water. I’m not talking about hair washing but slap a healthy splash on the offending hair strands and clamp firmly with fingers to force it back into place.

5. Dry shampoo - I am in love with dry shampoo. It has changed my life by banishing sweaty heads and enabling me to wash my hair less frequently. If you are blonde then talcum powder will also work but remember to brush it off your scalp and be careful when wearing black clothes.

Five ways to feel less fat

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I write this with my laptop balanced on the swollen protrusion that was once a toasted bagel and is now a ‘food baby.’

Like the Bermuda Triangle, the Mary Celeste and the existence of UFOs, bloating is a mysterious phenomena. Some days my stomach expands and contracts by several inches. I recently believed that all my pairs of jeans had shrunk in the wash because they were suddenly so tight around the middle. It turns out that they are only comfortable depending on what time of day I am wearing them (and I need to eat a smidgen less cake.)mid section view of a man sitting on a bench in a park --- Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

Bloating is annoying; it looks bad and it makes me uncomfortable. Some days I look down and wonder if there’s an alien inside that’s going to pop out and eat me. It’s like the stage of pregnancy when you can’t feel the baby, none of your clothes fit and instead of a bump you just look like you’ve been hammering the pies.

Bloating can be caused by any number of things but here are the most obvious:

Wind/Constipation - This is the main cause of swollen pot belly and, unless you are a ladette, farting all day is not ladylike or sociable. It can be eased by cutting down on windy foods such as beans, cabbage and cauliflower, drinking plenty of water and gentle exercise.

Food intolerance - Wheat and dairy are the worst offenders. Having eaten a gluten-free diet on occasions I can confirm that not eating wheat or drinking beer or wine (it’s also wheaty) does flatten the stomach but it is also sad and boring so unless you actually have to, don’t do it.

Swallowing air – Do you talk a lot? Then that’s why you are bloated. Try not to swallow too much air when you are eating, drinking, talking or breathing (I kid you not).

Hormones - Hormones make us hold onto more water which must like to slosh around in the mid section and make us feel fat at exactly the time when we want to eat chocolate and are irrationally angry about things – way to go evolution.

Five things you can do to beat bloating

  1. Drink more water – Water flushes out the digestive system and keeps everything moving and working properly in there. Fizzy drinks can make bloating worse.
  2. Exercise – Walk around for ten minutes after eating rather than just flopping on the sofa like a beached whale and you should shift the food baby.
  3. Eat Boring foods – Opt for rabbit food, grains and pulses rather than alcohol, crisps and sandwiches.
  4. Ditch chewing gum - You are sucking in evil, bloaty air while you chew so do it with your mouth closed or don’t bother
  5. Comfy clothes - Don’t squeeze yourself into skinny jeans or a bodycon dress when you know it will upset you. Accept that it’s not the right time to flaunt your figure, get out a tunic and a pair of leggings and cover up the offending inflation.

Bloating is a fact of like and much less noticeable if you have a concave stomach but, as that isn’t the case for most people, don’t torture yourself and make the most of being covered and comfy. Everyone knows that being piously healthy is the best way to look great but why be too vain to have fun? It’s more important to feel happy and confident than to obsess about your weight and, if all else fails, you can stop talking for a few days to avoid swallowing too much air.

Friday Five – Foods that hate fashion

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I can’t wear white clothes; every time I put something white on there is a countdown to when I will splat something down myself. Whether it’s missing my mouth, flicking noodle sauce or covering myself in chocolate dust, my messy eating has left a trail of stained clothes, some of which have never recovered from their injuries.MH900262270

Dribbling on yourself is not a helpful habit so here are my top five foods and drinks to avoid if you want to be stain free:

1. Red wine – It gets harder to get into your mouth the more you drink. On my wedding day I only drank clear beverages and had a bib made in the same material as my dress to try to stay untarnished.

2. Chocolate – We all love it but, in our haste to get it into our mouths, it’s easy to forget the unsavoury dark smears it can leave behind. I write as somebody who has unsuspectingly gone out in public with a chocolate Hitler moustache.

3. Fruit – It might be good for you but it is a pain to remove from your clothes. All those juicy drops that squirt and spray everywhere staining in all the colours of the rainbow – red and blue berries, purple plums and orange and yellow citrus – there is no such thing as dribble-free fruit.

4. Spaghetti – There is no delicate way to eat long slippery food that is covered in slick sauce. The trick is to do it without flicking the sauce (usually made of dangerous tomato) in a million different directions, but frequently ends in a spatter of stickiness.

5. Toothpaste – Okay so it’s not a food but we’ve all been there right? You leave the house and notice a white crust around your mouth, or an unsightly white blob on your top where you have drooled a bit while cleaning your teeth, that won’t rub off as toothpaste seems to absorb into your clothes.

Fair skinned fake tan test

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There is much to fear about spring and summer and I don’t just mean the constant paranoia about encountering a spider, I mean it’s tanning time.

For the fair-skinned among us and those too lazy to entertain any form of fake tanning from September to May, this means streaks, baked bean toes (if you’ve had them you know what I mean), orange knees and ankles and white patches that look like a skin condition.

So with the first promise of sun and some time on my hands I decided it was time to brave a new tan product that I impulse bought several weeks ago when it was too cold to bother. Here’s my results:

The product

Boots Soltan Beautiful Bronze self-tan mousse Light/Medium. It cost around £6.IMG_3045

On the can it promises:

  • Natural even colour
  • Tinted colour mousse so you can see where it is applied
  • Even fade
  • Streak free
  • Develops in 2-3 hours

It suggested buying self tan mitt and for once I took the advice to avoid stained fingers.

Preparation

A vigorous exfoliation in the shower using a pair of abrasive washing gloves, followed by a blob of moisturiser on the feet, toes, ankles, knees and elbows and also around the neck, though I had no plans to put any of it on my face.

Application

This was so easy that I became suspicious. The glove worked great and the tint meant it was easy to see where it had gone on and where there was too much of it. I still overestimated how much I would need, particularly for my legs and, next time, will go for a small squirt and add-on as needed rather than pumping out a big globule straight away. My back was a little tricky but the mitt helped reach some of the harder bits and any glaring errors would be out of sight to me so whatever.

The product is supposed to be water and sweat proof in two hours which meant I had to stay indoors but it dried on the skin very quickly and it smelled okay too.

After two hours I could see the difference and gave my legs only a second coat as suggested. With reflection I would remoisturise the rough bits again at this point which I didn’t do.

The results

I was really pleased with the colour. There were no streaks and it has faded evenly which I never expected in a million years. The only problem is I ended up with orange feet and ankles because I put too much on (which it told me not to) due to an over eager squirt and it would not shift, even with scrubbing. My husband laughed at my orange ankles (thanks for that) and there was no chance of sandals as – you guessed it – serious baked bean toes.

I tan in peculiar patterns and shapes when I lie in the sun so I am fine with a bit of uneven colour here and there provided it is not too orange or looks like dirt. Fake tanning for me is 60% results but 40% ease of use because, if I have to stand drying for half and hour or reapply every ten minutes, I’m just not going to bother. For a first go this products gets the thumbs up from me on both counts as the failings were all mine.

I won’t be using it every few days – it is unlikely that we will get the weather for it for more than a few days of the summer – but regular intervals with a top up from a gradual tanner such as Johnson’s Holiday skin or Dove summer glow and the world could even see my legs this summer, even if it is from the slightly orange knee to slightly orange ankle.

Some big fat beauty lies

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The beauty industry is always trying to help us cut corners with new ‘miracle’ products but some of these are more of a hindrance than a help.

For every wonderful invention like a BB Cream or a dry shampoo, there are double the amount of products with fancy names and big promises that don’t live up to the hype.MH900414035

Even most beauty advertising is fake if you look at the small print on the bottom of the page or screen. When it says ’98% of women agree’ they could have only asked five people  and mascara and hair ads are frequently styled with fake lashes and extensions.

I recently bought a can of Nivea deodorant which promises to protect against sweating caused by stress (I have a wild toddler). However, it leaves terrible white marks that stain your clothing and look awful and I never seem to notice them until I have left the house. White deodorant marks are stressful so this is both a lie and an epic fail from Nivea.

Here are a few other untruths that get on my nerves:

Chip resistant nail varnish – This is the unicorn of beauty products, a beautiful idea but purely fictional. It is impossible to avoid chipping with standard nail varnish and I have usually had to touch a nail up within 24 hours. I would feel less annoyed buying it if it was branded as ‘chip reducing’ or ‘super hard’

Whitening toothpaste – I buy this but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work. I have never noticed any difference in the shade of my teeth from a toothpaste, even concentrated ones. If there is a difference, it must be hard to see with the naked eye.

Glide on eyeliner – I have no eyeliner that ‘glides on’. Some of them are easy to apply but none solve the age-old problem of how to get both eyes the same. By this I mean that, as I am right-handed, it applies smoothly on my right eye but it is never as easy or as neat on the left

Hair tools – I am wary of anything that claims it can transform my hair into a bun, chignon or tumbling curls in an instant. I have a few of these items, such as a hair donut, that work perfectly well but still require effort and concentration to avoid looking ridiculous.

Streak free fake tan – For the fair-skinned this is a fallacy. You need to have a dark complexion or a build-up of several tan layers before the contrast between light and dark is invisible. Every year I try a different product and every year there will be a pale patch or a dark smear somewhere that lets it down.

Mascara - There are so many types of mascara – do I want volume or length or lash separation or to magnify my lashes by 5, 10 or 15 times? Unfortunately none of them are called longer, darker and fatter which is generally what I am after. I steer clear of ‘clump free’, which means too watery, and ‘water proof’, which means impossible to remove.

The language of beauty is designed to sell products rather than mislead us but it means nothing if you don’t get results. Companies don’t need to lie to get our attention but they do need to deliver a product that does what it says it will. If you don’t raise expectations so high then they don’t drop so low. It’s time the cosmetic companies had a reality check and realise that promising something better that works well is a greater selling point than something that promises it all and doesn’t deliver.