Some mood boards from the past six months of our life

I know Instagram was in for the past few years, but I really miss good quality big screen pictures. I really hope to get my camera soon. But so far all I have is my phone camera.

Is it safe to color my hair during pregnancy?

While it’s almost 100 degrees outside here in NYC, I’m being 28 weeks pregnant, and what’s definitely not safe is to go outside too far from the AC. That’s why I decided to write a post.  And of course I want to talk about something that’s bothering me the most  – pregnancy 🙂

It’s been years since women gained lots of the new rights in the package with lots of new responsibilities . And if 100 years ago women during pregnancy didn’t go out much, it’s totally different now. We not only allowed to go out, but also we’re functioning in the society with little or no credit for our condition.

So yeah. The question of  whether I can color my hair or not was bothering me from the day one I saw the stripy pregnancy test. I wanna give you warning – I’m not a doctor and all I’m gonna share next  is my personal opinion and experience. If you decide to color your hair during pregnancy, you should consult your caregiver. He/she will probably tell you the same thing mine told me – There’s no studies that proves absolute safety of coloring your hair during pregnancy, but there’s also no record of any harm or potential reproductive risks. So he pretty much told me the decision is up to me as well as the responsibility for the consequences.

This is my second pregnancy and I colored my hair both times. My logic was simple. If any harm was ever caused by coloring chemicals – they would put giant tag on each box “Do not use during pregnancy”. C’mon this is America and they even put “Caution might contain hot beverage” on the coffee cup. If it were even slight chance or possibility of a law suit, this would be on the box.

Second, the amount of chemicals that can penetrate to your body though scalp is so little, that if I would follow that logic of avoiding all the possible chemical harms I would have to give up my NYC fresh morning smog and move to the countryside, where I would wash my clothes in the river avoiding laundry detergent and clean house with backing soda. No make-up too, no nail polish, no computer, no cell phone and no microwave, no work stress and only fresh organic food, and rest, and fresh countryside air. No fast food ever. Yes, in a perfect world I would do that, but unfortunately I live now in the 21st century. And I can’t afford to look like shit.

Damon was doing my hair since like forever and he recommended I’d do the highlights i.e. foils. That way color (or bleach) won’t touch the scalp, so the chances of any harm are minimum. Heavy foils would also work if you need to cover grays, but too afraid to put color on your skin.
And everything in my life would be perfect if I wasn’t happen to be in the beauty school that time 🙂  I really wanted to be platinum blonde again cause I was feeling whiny and fat, and like my young life full of opportunities was slipping away from me. So i let not very conscious hairdresser_to_be to do my hair. It’s the whole different story how I ended up with a short green hair, but I figured some simple rules if I decide to answer “yes” to “Can I color my hair while pregnant?” question.

My white hair started to break after every shampoo 😦

Here they are:

1. Do it with a hairdresser you trust. It’s not a good time to check out this new guy your friend has been talking about. It’s very important to go to the person who knows you and cares about you

Damon had to cut off good 5 inches of burned hair. I fixed the color to strawberry blond – more sophisticated and easier to maintain

2. Don’t go for  drastic change. Even if you feel like giant hungry monster and you need a big change in your life, remember  -it’s just hormones, wait for a day, eat some ice cream, look in the mirror again – see, you are still pretty!

Before and after (why the hell did i do it?)

3. Do foils. It’s definitely nice not to feel guilty for doing something that bad 🙂 your grandma won’t even speak to you.

4. Simple rule not only for pregnant women. Don’t do it yourself and don’t do it at home. First of all, there’s much better ventilation in the salon and you don’t want to breath in all this fumes. Second, the color you see on the picture might not come out the way it look, because of the hormonal boom that’s happening in your body. While it’s not mandatory, it might happen. At least if it happens in the salon, hairdresser would have to fix it right away.

How about a nice green instead?

A little bit about platinum blonde

I love being platinum blonde. To me it’s the most rich and luxury hair color possible. It’s like diamonds and little black dress – never does out of style and suites everybody.

Even though It does with any skin color  – Look at Kim and Rihanna rocking it-

 Being platinum blonde is not easy. First of all it’s not cheap. If some hairdresser tells you he’s gonna make you platinum from brunette for just one session of coloring and charge you under 100$  – don’t be afraid to slap him in the face and walk away – he’s a liar and deserves it. In best case scenario you gonna get wonderful yellow and make a Big Bird really jealous. In worser case you going to end up with “Chemical haircut”  – that’s how hairdressers name it 🙂 So yes, don’t do it at home.  In the end you always get what you paid for, so if you want to pay 10$ for the box dye from the pharmacy store and do it yourself – most likely you gonna look and feel 10$.

And that’s not what you are looking for. Famous blondes are rocking it for years. Platinum blonde is universal.  Whether you are going for rich sassy spoiled Uptown Girl

like GwynethCharlize

Angie

or Candice (love that change by the way! If I’m right it’s brand new from her natural honey blonde)

or rock’n’roll stylish badass DownTown girl like

the queen of all living blondes

Taylor

Agyness

Rihanna

It works either way.  So enough about how cool is that to be blonde. Women know it without me. I just wanted to post some inspirational pics first before i get to my favorite part – advices!

1. Back in the day, when I was far from hair industry my hairdresser  (who later became my husband) used to do it for me. He did it so easily and shades were coming out so great that I convinced myself it were easy. I purchased a box dye and decided to do it myself.  A few short haircuts later, a couple of weeks of embarrassing burned yellow hairs after, I can give you one brilliant advice based on my own experience.. Don’t do it yourself!! It’s better to give a deal on Groupon or go to salonapprentice.com  and book a junior colorist in a hair salon.

2.  Maintenance is the key. I’m going to write a post about products I use myself and my opinion about them. But you always can ask you hairdresser to recommend you something.  And YES, your hair are damaged now.  No matter how good you colorist is, or if you were natural blonde  – it’s still damaged more or less. So your hair will need more nutrition now and some color shield. Make sure you always use the conditioner and a shampoo for color-treated hair. I would also recommend to trim the hair ones a month cause bleached hair tend to split more.

3. If you naturally have medium brown and darker hair, I recommend to do a few sessions. Let your hair rest for a week or two before the final shot 🙂

Anne went through drastic change from shy princess to HOT momma 🙂

4. Don’t use pharmacy dyes ever! It’s really hard to get rid of in case you decide to change the color and go lighter. Professional color lines designed in the special way and can be easily removed with bleaching without catastrophic damage.  And blonde shades of box dyes most likely won’t take you even close to desired color.

5. Now that you blonde,try to use heavy conditioner or some natural oils  if you planning to go to the pool where your hair possibly get a contact with chlorine. Chlorine makes your hair brassy, so if there’s no way to avoid it , try to protect your hair as much as possible.

6. Violet shampoo and/or conditioner is your best friend now! It will make your rich platinum shade last longer!

To be continued…..

About Make-up

I’ve been happily avoiding the thing like “being a girl” right about before 25. Then I got into Beauty School and got hooked up. Yes, I honestly think beauty industry is similar to drug abuse 🙂 and beauty itself is highly addictive thing. I think every woman can relate to me on this one. Didn’t you ever have this blank moment when you went to Sephora “for just a minute” or  “just to pick up an eye-liner” and then two hours later you found yourself totally broke, with a twinkles of madness in your eyes, holding on to a tiny bag of happiness? When your husband was looking at you like at insane asylum member: “what?! Really? This 3 tiny boxes cost you almost 200$?! What do you mean 15 min, I’ve been waiting for you for 2 hours here!”

Yeah, beauty is addictive. Nobody would argue with that.

There were times when I owed maximum two different eye-liners, mascara for everyday use and one shade of lipstick and compact powder for going out 🙂 Back in the day, when i was considered normal and not obsessed. Now  it’s really hard for me to stop.

But isn’t it just great that this little something can bring your self esteem a little bit up and take stress a little bit further away?

So I just wanted to share a little bit about things I use on daily basis. I’m not a make-up artist and I’m not a diva, so I like to keep things very simple. The quality is very important to me too. I happened to have very thin sensitive skin, that reacts to everything. It’s like the parchment with the chronicles of every junk-food and additional spoons of sugar I ate. And it also has a fire-alarm to “Bad! Bad! This Make-up is Bad Quality! and animal tested! And whatever it is, but here’s more pimples for your joy, young Lady” kind of skin. Yes, I’m very unlucky.  So I also forced to keep my make-up extra light.

Which is why instead of foundation I use BB cream with extra SPF.  It’s light and not oily and has a some (pretty ok!) coverage. Bobbi Brown does the great job for me! And I love it dearly, cause it doesn’t break me either.

If i happened to eat giant chocolate bar and/or something else my skin thinks is a hazard and other people need to know about it, I also add some concealer. It also works for eye pouches.

Since I’m extra lazy, for everyday make-up I usually draw the cat-eyes and that’s it. I got pretty good at it over time. I like liquid liner too, but for lazy or very busy girls I’d recommend the “marker” type 🙂 It gives you more control and thinner line. Kat von D tattoo liner took my heart a while ago. Simply the best so far.

This crazy shade of lipstick is not regular for me. But I just wanted to think a little outside of the box and try something totally different. So far I’m really happy with it. It keeps my mood up and it’s won’t peel my lips (sensitive skin, duh, sucks) like mac.

And of course Instagram the results!

To be continued.,