A Little Dash of Color

(Photo courtesy of Soapnet.)

This week I visited the hairstylist to freshen up my hairdo before the new semester with a cut and color. This time I decided to go dark. Really dark. Like, on a scale that starts with 1 being the darkest, we combined a 2 and 3. I can pull off the dark look, but it’s obviously not a natural color for me. It’s just a fun color and it’s one of the few fun colors I can do.

I’ve often thought it would be cool to throw a funky color into my hair. That’s not to say that I would completely color my hair blue, even for a short period of time, because that’s not something I’d do. Can you imagine trying to coordinate outfits, make-up and jewelry to a specific color every day? But I have thought that it would be fun to throw in streaks of color like a dark blue or green. (Although, now that I think about it a little more, there could still be coordination issues with streaks of color.) The only problem is that my workplace won’t allow it.

So, I’ve thought about the day when I can do something fun with my hair. You know, the day when all my dreams come true and I’m a bestselling author and no one cares what color my hair is. Yeah, when that day comes, what would I do with my hair? Of course, me being me, I convinced myself that if that day comes, it will probably be years from now and I’ll be too old to pull off streaks of funky colors.

Which brings me to the woman pictured above. Lauren Koslow, who plays Kate Dimera on Days of our Lives is (according to Wikipedia) in her 50’s and look at her hair! Do you see that beautiful blue streak? So, maybe there isn’t a too old. Maybe there’s a time when you start to do it differently than you would have done it before; instead of streaks of color you add a streak of color. And, to be perfectly honest, I like the one streak better; it’s a little dash of color!

So what about you? If you were to do something different with your hair, what woudl you do?

Oat and Yogurt Facial Mask

It's September and I am now counting down the days until the start of the semester--six days (including today) to be exact. It's a strange time of year, this last week before a semester starts. Throughout this week I try to soak up as much free time as possible while making last minute preparations for the semester.

Part of soaking up free time includes the last few days of spending time with friends without the thought of homework I'm not doing hanging over my head. My friend Sarah came over again to watch the second season of Sanctuary (which is breaking my heart!) and to continue making our way through the only season of Moonlight.

Lately we've been doing "girly" things while watching our shows. We started with painting our finger and toenails and did our make-up during the next get-together. When we talked about not being completely happy with our pores I came up with a new idea: a pore reducing homemade facial mask.

So I searched this lovely thing called an internet and found a recipe for a homemade oat and yogurt facial mask.

Oat and Yogurt Facial Mask

You will need:
2 tablespoons oats or oatmeal (not the quick-cook kind)
2 tablespoons yogurt

This mask is so easy to make that I don't even need to write this out into steps. All you have to do is grind the oats and mix them with yogurt. Refrigerate the mask for a few hours before applying.

I don't think I ground the oats enough and if I had it might not have been quite so messy but let me tell you, it was an experience to apply this mask! We removed our make-up and applied the mask. It was falling over the place but eventually we were able to pack it onto our faces. Since we were watching TV I lost track of time, but we probably had the mask on for about twenty minutes before we took it off. And that was another experience!

Sarah noticed that overtime the yogurt hardens into it's own mask beneath the layer of oats. It was pretty cool. We could feel the effects of the mask immediately upon removing it. While we didn't notice a huge change in our pores, but the mask softens the skin. Like Sarah said, it makes your skin baby soft!

Here are some making-of photos and Sarah with the mask.