A month or so ago I chopped off my hair. The reason I had grown it so long was because I had heard about Pantene Beautiful Lengths last year and was really excited to participate. After all, my hair just grows and grows like a darn Chia Pet.

Here is what Beautiful Lengths is about:

Pantene is on a mission to support women with cancer by providing free real-hair wigs to women who have lost their locks through treatment. Together with Look Good…Feel Better, we’re asking women to skip their next salon trim, grow their hair a little longer and stronger and pledge their ponytails to the Beautiful Lengths programme.

The whole process was so easy. I went to my hair dresser armed with a ruler, hair tie and a bag to store my ponytail. He was a bit confused but dutifully chopped a 23cm ponytail off and some stranger in the room getting her nails done yelled out “THAT’S IT! THAT’S A GREAT LENGTH.” So it all fell into place, quite literally.

Anyway, you’re looking at your watch wondering what this has to do with anything. I just wanted to bring to your attention Pantene Beautiful Lengths. It was a pleasure to be able to do this, after all hair grows back! So if you have long hair and are considering a change this might be for you. It makes a normal haircut a bit more fun.

Oh geeeez…

I was pleased to hear that Jurlique had brought out some new facial oils, so pleased in fact that I bought the original one! Whoops! This is the Skin Balancing Face Oil!

Well, the heart wants what it wants. I couldn’t go past the scent, yummy yummy.

A few drops after cleansing and it’s like a day at the spa. I’ve been following this up with Herbal Recovery Gel at night, which has never steered me wrong. I’ve been waking up with baby smooth skin. This is perfect for the colder months when my skin starts to rebel and go dry.

Are you changing your skincare now it’s getting colder?

So a while back I bought this snazzy hair donut from Petra for like, eight or nine bucks. Hair donuts come in many sizes, which you can choose depending on your length of hair. My hair is quite long, so I was told I could get any size and it would work quite well. I bought a medium to large-sized donut, as you can see from the photo.

Often people try to replicate the same look from a hair donut with a sock by snipping off the bottom. For me, the eight bucks was cheap enough just to try this rather than ruin a precious sock! They are like gold in my house, seriously. I also think that with my long, heavy hair that the sock bun might be a bit difficult for me. I’d love to try it some day!

Everyone has a different technique when creating a bun with a hair donut or sock bun. The base is always the same: put your ponytail through the hole of the bun and wrap your hair over it. Now you can do two things from here: wrap the excess hair AROUND the bun and pin with bobby pins.  Or you can TUCK it under into the hole in the bun.

I went with the tucking option. I positioned my hair over the donut the way I wanted and then slowly tucked sections under. This is where a larger donut would’ve helped me, due to my long hair I was stuffing a LOT of hair into that hole.

Freshly tucked bun

I think this method takes a fair bit of patience. As i mentioned, having such long hair made it really difficult. It was a time-consuming method of very gently tucking the hair into place.

The benefit? NO bobby pins. A very neat looking bun. And a bun that stays put all day long. I seriously went to the beach and paddled in the water. At the end of the day it was looking a bit worse for wear, but I was still very impressed. I’ve found since then that when the bun starts to get messy, it’s very easy to escape to the bathroom and re-tuck any loose strands until it looks like new.

After a day of abuse, not looking awful!

So my verdict? Give the tuck method a try! I really love using it, I think it’s a perfect way to keep my hair up in this heat.

Anyone have a hair donut? How does it compare to the sock bun? Interested in hearing your technique!

By the way, I saw Paul Kelly and Neil Finn last night. So in awe of both of them. I find it so crazy that we pay so much to go see musicians who dance around and lip sync for an hour when these two amazing men sung for 2.5 hours straight as the entire crowd swooned. Every time they started a song you’d hear happy sighs from somewhere in the audience, happy to hear one of their favourites.

I cried during Deeper Water. I’m a baby. Also, Neil Finn is FUNNY. Wow.

Anyway this is what I’ll leave you with tonight:

Do I even have big pores?

That was what was going through my head when I received this primer on Christmas day. My aunt had asked the sales lady at Benefit what the most popular products were, and  she came away with this and They’re Real mascara. (Yay!) I was really confused as to the point of this product at first, I’ve never been overly concerned about my pores before.

However I think I made some happy little squeals when I first applied this product : It’s love. (Ugh, the things that make me happy!)

What does it do to make me squeal, exactly? Well it smooths out my complexion, it reduces redness, it takes away shine and of course… it minimises the appearance of pores. It’s a silicon primer, so if you’ve tried one before you’ll know that they glide on smoothly and do a great job keeping foundation put all day. (Note: not everyone likes silicon primers as they can clog the skin, so if you’re one of those unfortunately this product is not for you.)

This is a NICE PRODUCT, people. It’s a nice product in a sea of broken promises and shonky cover ups. I’m as happy as a lizard in the sun with this product. Thank you, lovely Auntie for buying this for me! I might have to stock up when I’m at Benefit for my next brow wax.

Click here for more information.

PS. Experimenting with different actions and filters lately, these photos are not my favourite but meh! I just like photos and I like playing with them.