Research is Key!: Length Check Number 2

Would you believe me if I told you I've been trying to post this since Monday? My laptop has had soo many tabs open and so many e-books due to all the dissertation research that it just refused to upload any pictures on to blogger but I couldn't shut it down and have to open all those tabs again and I couldn't do any blog posts without pictures either... *sigh* I was between a rock and a hard place until now, finally I closed everything and gave the lappie a much needed reboot and it's working perfectly again, well nearly. Lol. So I was going through my blog the other day and realised it has been a while since I did a hair related post and I've been harping on about how I will write my regimen down as well, which to be fair is probably more for my benefit than yours (I can be so forgetful!) But I did a length check the other day, the second one of the year and thought this would be a perfect time to share with you again.

I think my current regimen would be a good place to start otherwise I might forget to write it down all over again! Haha. So here goes... Actually I'm realising that this is kind of a boring post to write! Especially considering the fact that I have three yummy food posts in the works! Haha. I love blogging about food, there's just something so satisfying about reliving those moments where I bit into an amazing burger! Okay, back to hair.

I think the reason I don't really feel like writing this post is because I'm disappointed with the menial length of hair I retained this quarter of the year. I know I should be more focused on health and not length but sometimes it's so hard not to grow impatient, just the other day I was thinking of chopping it all off again and going natural, but I'm trying to be patient and give it till the end of the year at least! I've only been on this journey for 7 months you see, but hair envy is real! Lol. I just want my locks to flow already, or at least look thicker! Here's what I've been doing to my hair:

Monday's are wash days and I:
Shampoo with Elasta QP Creme Conditioning Shampoo. (I clarify once a month with ORS Creamy Aloe Shampoo).
Do a green tea rinse to combat shedding.
Apply ORS Hair Mayonnaise for 20 minutes because my hair loves the stuff!
Condition with ORS Replenishing Conditioner for 45mins to an hour.
Air dry my hair in a cotton t-shirt for 60 minutes
Apply my leave-in; I recently switched from Motions Nourish Leave in Conditioner to Dr Miracles Leave in Conditioner, I've been searching everywhere for Cantu Shea Butter leave-in but all the stores near me are permanently put of stock! I'm in need of a really awesome leave in.
Allow my hair to finish drying without the t-shirt.
And then depending on what time it is as I usually wash in the evenings, I either moisturise with ORS Carrot Oil and seal with Sweet Almond oil or I just tie my hair up and moisturise and seal the next morning.

This has been my regimen from the beginning of the year, the only addition being green tea rinses and also switching from ORS Carrot Oil to Kids Organics Shea Butter Detangling Moisturising Hair Lotion (goodness that name is such a mouth full!) at about 12 weeks post when my new growth needs some TLC to stop it from drying out so easily! So on to some pictures:

I'm definitely claiming proper shoulder length now! Next stop is collar bone length which looks about an inch or two away, sadly! OMG can I just stress the importance of reading up on stuff before you try it right now? So I was looking at my regimen as I wrote it down and trying to see what differences I've made between January and March where my hair grew quite a bit and March and now where it hasn't really grown at all and the only major difference was doing tea rinses. So I went to my best friend, google, for help to see the negative impacts of tea rinses and the very first thing that came up was an article from curlynikki.com, here saying that tea rinses can STUNT growth! Now I was like hold up, say what?! But as I read more I realised I had been doing some fundamental things wrong, for instance I never took the tea bags out of the bowl until I was ready to use it, which was hours sometimes, when really you're only meant to leave in the tea bag for a minute or two to get a weak brew! Lack of knowledge is no excuse as my hair showed me these last three months, but now that I've identified the problem (I think) at least I can try and correct it and see how I do in the third quarter of the year.

Hmmm, hair posts aren't that bad! I'm washing my hair right now and going to try a roller set tonight, I'd do a post on the outcome later on if it turns out nice, or even fairly acceptable. :)

Ciao ladies!
Reni x

P.S. I really need to do something about the middle of my hair, the breakage is disastrous! Look how much shorter it is! Any tips? Also I made a length check post so you can see all of my progress pictures from the beginning of the year here: Length Check Progress Pictures

Length Check, Progress Pictures

Decided to d a little post which I will update whenever I do a length check to track the growth of my hair.

December 2012, before my cut/trim:

January 2013, the start of the journey!

March 2013, length check numero uno

July 2013: Length check 2

 

Exploring Manchester: Media City, Salford Quays.

'Ello 'ello 'ello everybody :)

How you doing? I can't believe it's almost the end of the week again, where does time fly to? But I'm not complaining, everyday would be a Friday if it was left to me. So my friend Tomi and I are always going on about how we need to explore more of Manchester and really step outside the confines of just the city centre and last week Sunday, we decided to do just that. After a little bit of brainstorming on how exactly to conduct our exploration we decided on a bike ride to Media City, Salford! We were both quite excited because Media City and infact Salford because it's somewhere that we've never really been to, Salford is always in the news for bad things and so I always thought of it as the 'dodgy' end of Manchester. Lol.

So we went online and searched for a bike rental company and came across Brompton Docks; this company rents out Brompton Bikes (the cool foldable ones) for a fee of £5 for 24 hours and a leisure membership annual fee of £1. Before I forget to say this, Brompton has quite a few docks across the UK so if you're interested in renting a bike for the day or maybe longer, head to their website and check if they have any near you.

Considering the price and the fact that we had our hearts set on the bike ride already we quickly signed up and went to pick up our bikes at the closest dock. I must say that following the instructions to unfold the bikes was the most hilarious part of the journey, I stood there staring at the contraption in front of me for a good few minutes before attempting to assemble it but once the hard bit was done it was all smiles as we followed our hastily written down directions to Media City!

Cycling on the main road is actually a very intimidating experience, especially when you haven't been on an actual bicycle in years, those ones in the gym don't count! We felt so unprepared with no helmets or knee pads like all the professionals alongside us but we weren't too bothered. Much to the annoyance of many people on the streets of Manchester, whenever there wasn't a clearly marked cycle lane, we just hopped on to the pavement and cycled there instead. Safety first guys! Lol. Let me just stop this tale at this point and say that Google Maps is a liar. After googling the cycle route from Piccadilly train station to Media City we were told to expect a journey time of 20 minutes. That's reasonable right? Just that in actual fact our journey ended up taking over an hour! Yup, we cycled for over an hour. It didn't help that one of the major roads we were meant use was closed off and that we got lost and kept taking the wrong exit at a massive roundabout but still, I blame it on Google Maps. We stayed in surprisingly good spirits through the whole debacle and just kept discovering new areas of Manchester that we wanted to explore, but by the time we arrived at Media City, our bums were sore and our legs were exhausted which only meant one thing. Food time!

Sadly as it was a Sunday evening a lot of the local stand alone restaurants were closed/closing but my super sharp food detecting device, which some may simply refer to as 'my nose', led us on a short trail straight to the open doors of Prezzo. Technically, it's July and we were meant to be doing a 30 day eat clean, train dirty challenge (more on how badly I failed on that later) so I felt a little bad pigging out and opted for one of their "lighter choices" which was surprisingly yummy and very very filling! Since there wasn't a single pigeon in sight, my fear of them is close to crippling, and we had no bike chains; we ate outside and enjoyed watching young families on the lawn opposite us playing tennis and having picnics. I thought it'd be a bit weird if I took a photo of them so I didn't but there was an adorable little Nadal in the making, left handed and all.

After refuelling ourselves and realising that it was getting quite late, we decided to cycle around a bit more and enjoy some of the scenery that we definitely don't get in our parts of Manchester. I think it's the river that really makes Media City what is is, there's just something so calming to me about water. When I get rich I'm going to live in a swanky apartment with a balcony overlooking a lovely river or better yet I'm going to move to Bora Bora and live my life there surrounded by the gorgeous blue sea.

Photo Credit: awesomeplacestovsit.com

We could see the Imperial War Museum in all its glory, so wonderfully designed:

These three lovely buildings I'm not quite sure what they are called but I love that they are triplets. Actually maybe in one of these buildings lies my swanky future apartment! I'm getting some good vibes from this!

We also found the Lowry Hotel and the Lowry Outlet Mall which sadly was also closed! I really didn't think it through when I suggested going in the evening on that Sunday but the thought of cycling in the boiling hot sun at 2pm was hugely unappealing to me! It sucked that everywhere was closed but it was such a dreamy evening with a lovely cool breeze that really nothing could get us in a bad mood.

We met a lovely couple taking an evening couple at the bridge, the man was quite excited by our Brompton bikes and when we told him we rented them was even more excited, going on about how he had one of those years ago and he recognised them from miles away. We politely asked him for directions back home because it was starting to get dark and no one wants to be cycling about lost in the dark right? And he pointed straight at the Hilton in Deansgate, I love that you can see it from almost any part of Manchester that your in and told us to follow the signs home.

See the three red dots in the sky on the right hand side of the picture? That's the Hilton!

I took one last picture of the scenic view and jumped back on the bike and cycled all the way home. The journey home took us only about 20 minutes compared to the 70 or so minutes it took us before and we felt so silly for it, who knew all you had to do was follow the road signs eh?

It was such a lovely day with Tomi and we vowed to have more perfect relaxing evenings like this one. I can't wait to tell you all about our next expedition! Haha.

Reni x

Antalya 2013. 4 Days of Pure Bliss (PART II)

Hey guys,

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends, back to boring Monday's again for those of you that are still working on in school. If you're on faux holiday like myself then Monday's are a lot more bearable aren't they? (I say faux because technically I don't finish school till I hand in my dissertation in September, booo). Anyways, as I promised I'm back to fill you in on how the other 2 days of my 4 days of bliss in Antalya went, let's resume on Friday morning shall we? :)

Woke up nice and early again but this time it wasn't to make the massive breakfast; Friday was the day of my mum's actual birthday and to kick off the day of celebrations we had a Service of Praise. There was singing and dancing to the Most High as well as a short sermon by one of her best friends before a select few people got to give speeches/tributes. (Obviously mine was the best, it made people teary-eyed! Ha!) After all of that we were treated to a lovely brunch and some cake.

Mummy looking gorgeous in pink & silver! Check out that gele!

                                    

Apologies for the blurry pictures above, they were taken by my iPhone which I will never compare to my camera again! Especially on zoomed in pictures. Once again after brunch and gathering everyone together to slap on some of Ibi's sun screen (yes, black people do need sun screen!) we headed back down to the beach for our waterfall tour and some ringo. The waterfall tour was supposed to take place on Thursday with the rest of our beach day activities but the guy kept telling us that his boat was due to arrive any moment and it never did arrive on Thursday before we had to leave! Because of this we were pretty skeptical about his antics and I wouldn't have been surprised if he just didn't turn up the next day as well, especially since we had already paid him! Lol. But I guess the Turkish don't have too much 419 blood in them because he turned up on time and with refreshments for us during our trip!

There was a little bit of a wait before we could actually get on the boat and I really wanted to try wake-boarding; I know fellow blogger Afam of The Ramblings of a Mad Man, does it quite often and the pictures looks like such fun! I hear it's quite difficult though? After hearing how difficult it was and not particularly wanting to belly flop in the water, my cousins and I opted for the Great Mable which is pretty much a massive float with handles attached for gripping on tight for dear life!

After getting a suitable adrenaline rush and a little wet, the boat was loaded and ready to take us on our waterfall tour. There were four in total and each one was bigger than the next but the pictures all kind of looked the same so I only put up two of them.

This one was the smallest of them and was also the first one we saw, I was a bit disappointed with it because I didn't know what was yet to come! Also can I just say, how awesome is the colour of that water?? Mediterranean Sea at it's finest!

Excuse my cousins head in this shot, lol. There were some pretty deep crevices in the nearby cliffs. I guess this is where all the pebbles on the beach are formed or something by some erosion process.

We finally got to the big one and it was pretty exciting to see! You could feel the mist that was being created from quite a distance away. I know it's no Niagra Falls but I've never been this close to a waterfall before so I'd say it was quite cool!

So cool we even took a group picture! Haha.

Weirdly enough we didn't see any marine life at all throughout the tour which was a bit disappointing but at the same time a great relief! I don't know how I'd have reacted if I noticed anything bigger than a goldfish casually swimming around our little boat! After the tour I went back to the hotel because I really just needed to rest before the activities of the birthday party!

Instead of just lazing about in my room though I decided that a spa moment would be in order, especially as I couldn't see any other time to enjoy the facilities. When in Turkey, do as the Turkish do and so I opted for a Turkish bath (hamam) followed by a full body massage. I don't have any pictures of the spa time because 1. I was too relaxed to be bothered about my camera and 2. It would have been very explicit photos because in the hamam you lie on a slab like the one in the picture below and a masseuse comes to scrub you and bath you, haha. Oh and there are other people being bathed at the same time as you, lol. Luckily for me I had my cousins so no strangers odd bits to stare at. It was extremely cringe-worthy at first but the girls were very professional and I fell into a trance afterwards. Oh plus you get to wear a paper thong. **giggles**

After the exfoliating bath and the amazing oil massage it was already time to head upstairs to get ready for the Dinner & Dance. Lord knows I would have lived in that spa if I had the chance! Lol. So I got dressed, did my make-up and tried to do something cute with my unruly 15 weeks post relaxer hair! The end result was something like this:

And I felt pretty fly until I saw my mother looking like this! She literally looked flawless and not at all of age, I better be looking like this when I'm at that age; the genes are somewhere inside me. Can I get an amen?!?!

There was a delicious 6 course meal and some other entertainment including this belly dancer who was trying to seduce my brother with her fingers. Lol.

I realised that I have absolutely no pictures of any of the food we had all through the time there which is really quite poor but I guess there was always something more interesting going on around me. After a night filled with drinking and dancing the crowd eventually thinned out and we all went to bed looking forward to our last full day in the dreamy city of Antalya.

My goodness can I just stop here and say this post feels really really long?! I feel like I've been typing away for absolute ages! Thank you for making it this far... It's the final day now, Saturday! I'm sure you're used to us waking up bright and early and heading for the massive breakfast by now, but on this day we found out breakfast ended at 10.30 and not 10. Can I get a whoop whoop for an extra 30 minutes in bed?? Especially after that Friday night we just had!

Saturday was a really simple day, we went on a boat cruise which featured the waterfall tour! (Had I known I would have saved my money!) and got to go swimming in the sea. Sadly when the yatch stopped moving about half of the party started feeling extremely sea sick from all the bobbing about so we couldn't really swim for that long before we had to head back to shore.

Pirates watching over us to keep us safe from the other pirate ships!

Ibi & Iretidee. Sunglasses and Cheeses Crew!

The mummies wouldn't let us swim without life jackets. They still don't trust our swimming skills even after all that money on lessons from when we were kids! Lol.

Sadly, Saturday was our very last day as the flight on Sunday was at 8 a.m. or some equally ridiculous time! The only thing I regret was not having more time to explore the actual city (I went to the beach instead, typical huh?) so it's definitely on my list of places to go back to! Here's saying bye to Antalya; my four days of pure utter bliss!

See my brother Modee the professional photo bomber! <3

Hope this has provided some sort of escapism for an otherwise boring Monday lunchtime. Enjoy the rest of your day, I'm off to continue with school work too :(.

Ciao!

Reni x

Antalya 2013. 4 Days of Pure Bliss

Hey guys!

So when I first thought of writing this post I thought I'd do a little outfit of the days, lookbook type thing but I decided against it because honestly, I'm just not that fashionable. I wear what I can to get by looking nice enough that I'm not called a tramp but I'm rarely ever the most fashionably dressed person in the room! I like comfort way too much. Nonetheless, I feel I must warn you, this post and the next one is FILLED with selfies and other random pictures of my different outfits, this was the first time in a long time that I was using my 'proper' camera so I got a bit snap happy. Some of the pictures are still taken with my iPhone though, I wonder if you'd be able to tell which ones. Anyways, let's get down to business.

At the end of June my beautiful mama had a big birthday to celebrate and she decided to do so by taking a well deserved holiday with her favourite people to the beautiful city of Antalya, Turkey. Antalya is one of those places that I had literally never heard of before my mum mentioned it in passing and although I was sad that Istanbul was out of the question, I trusted her choice completely. Also not going to Istanbul meant that all the jokes about being "taken" a la "Taken 2" finally had to stop! Haha. We arrived on a gorgeous Wednesday afternoon even though I'm quite sure the weather there is always gorgeous, having just been in rainy Manchester, I was a very happy bunny for the change. The whole of the first day was spent exploring the hotel, Rixos Downtown, and taking pictures of any and everything that looked interesting!

The view from the elevator; I thought the interior of the hotel was fantastic! I felt like I was in some exotic paradise land!

The poolside was definitely my favourite area of the hotel even though I didn't get to spend too much time there, the days that followed were too action packed to have any real lazing about by the pool but I did manage it once!

I feel like my black hat is slightly reminiscent of Boj! Lol. Maybe it's just the picture.

This view of the hotel from the poolside is one of my favourite shots from the whole trip. Don't you just love how it looks like a massive ship! All the trees in the surrounding area make it look so gorgeous.

After wondering about the hotel and lounging by the poolside it was time to get ready for thew welcome dinner and drinks fiesta. Unfortunately by this time I was too tired to take any more blog-worthy pictures so we're going to have to skip on by to day 2, the Thursday. We woke up bright and early to make the massive breakfast buffet, quite unfortunately I found I don't really like turkish breakfast. There's just something about not having any sausages with a big breakfast that doesn't sit right with me, but fortunately they had some of the best American style pancakes I've ever tasted with a huge variety of toppings! Being well fed and well rested my cousins and I decided it was beach time!

Can I just say that the novelty of a pebble beach wears of very very quickly! Stepping in boiling sand is one thing but stepping on hot pebbles reminds me of that challenge that those crazy people do when they run across hot coal! We hopped, skipped and jumped until we reached the sanctity of deck chairs and umbrellas to protect us from the sun. Turkish people are extremely friendly, even when they are trying to rob you of all your money for extortionately priced umbrella's! The lovely man ended up giving us two for 'free'.

At the beach we got to go jet skiing and parasailing. Two things I've never done before; parasailing was a lot more calming than it looked and I was so sad I didn't have my camera up there with me to take pictures of the view from such a high vantage point, but truth be told I was so concerned with holding on to the harness that I doubt I could have taken any photos!

This jet-skiing picture was taken before the funniest part of the whole day at the beach. You see me over there, rocking my shades feeling like a real cool cat before Iya and I take off to the deep end of the water...

What you don't see is what happened a few minutes later when Iya was feeling like a formula one driver and I was egging her on to go faster and faster until she made a very swift left turn which saw me flying off the jet-ski and straight into the deep blue sea! It would have looked perfect on camera or slow motion tape; me flying off and thinking to myself that I needed to grab my sunglasses before they became property of the ocean floor and then water treading while I waited for Iya to realise I had fallen off and turn around to come and get me! In the 15 seconds it took her to realise I was gone I got terrified by the thoughts of any form of sea life, be it fish, whale or mermaid coming to say hello. Luckily there were none but I noticed how startlingly blue and clear the water was. Beautiful I tell ya.

We eventually made it back to shore and then back to the hotel where we had an hour or less to get ready for the pre-birthday party which was an all white affair at this lovely restaurant called Aura. While white is not my favourite colour in the world (read I'm far too clumsy/messy to wear white) and it took me forever to find an outfit, I was happy I finally found something that worked from Topshop!

Lil cuz Iretidee!

Just to clarify, I don't have a sister. But if you think that we look like twins you wouldn't be too far off the mark. We even had identical hairstyles until mine got soaking wet from the earlier dive!

Shortly after this picture was taken, several groups of locals ran up to my cousins and I begging if they could take pictures with us, I kid you not. I guess they don't see that many black people down in Antalya because one of the girls kept blowing us kisses from her passing car! It was very exhausting and strange indeed, I think that now if a celebrity ever said no to a picture with me I would just nod my head understandingly. And then day 2 was over.

I feel like this is one of the longest posts I've ever written and I may be wrong but it's pretty long! Thanks for making it to the end. Haha.

Enjoy your Friday night guys! I'd tell you about my Friday in Antalya in due time :)

Reni J x

DWT Manchester: Rihanna Stan

I'm so irritated right now! Completely besides myself, want to know why? It's simple really. Because I feel like blogging!! You're probably thinking "So do it then, what's the big deal?" but the big deal is this. I have a specific set of pictures that I am very keen on sharing with you which I took with my proper camera after a couple of photo walks with friends, but then I got home and got ready to transfer the pictures to my laptop, it was then I realised I had two major setbacks. One, my camera USB cable seems to have disappeared on me, I've never transferred pictures off it before so I'm not even sure there was a USB in the box but that seems like a ridiculous notion! So I switched to plan B; get the memory card and just put it straight into my computer, thwarted again! There is NO memory card reader slot on my laptop!

Can you see how this would be very frustrating? Now until I either buy a USB cable or find a way to connect a memory card reader to my laptop then I'm stuck with no pictures! :(

Do not despair though for I have a back up plan! Today we can broach one of my favourite topics... Rihanna!! :)

For those of you who don't know, I am a proud Stan! There is nothing else to say about it other than it is true and I will admit it again unashamedly any day, anytime. I don't really understand what there is to hate about her, I can understand feeling indifferent though. I'm indifferent about a lot of things, but Rihanna is not one of them! She's young, she's beautiful and she's rich! Haha. She also lives her life the way she wants too and though she's a bit extra sometimes, like the stan I am, I forgive her for her muchness and blame it on the fact that she was a star from such a young age! Almost 10 years now to be precise.

So as I have now confessed where I stand maybe you will understand this post a bit more! You see, last month I went to the Diamonds World Tour in the MEN Arena! Whoop whoop! It was my second time in the arena, but my first time in the standing area. The decision to go to the show was extremely whimsical, I think I got my tickets the night before or something because I decided I couldn't let her pass right through my city and not see her! So at about 4pm, Tomz and I got ready to start the entire process that will eventually see us to the front and centre of the stage!

We got dressed and ready to hit the road.

I have no idea what she's wearing and I didn't think to ask as this was never meant to be an outfit post! But I'm wearing TopShop from head to toe, lol, except my shoes which are Nike Blazers and my belt by Ferragamo.

As we got closer to the arena you could really start to feel the buzz, there were people giving out some pretty awesome stick on tattoos which were actually infused with the scent of her new fragrance Nude. I loved the concept! Rih and all her tatts, I was completely unadventurous though and simply stuck it on my hand! Lol.

After a lot of standing around and waiting patiently with palpable excitement (approximately 4 hours worth!) the show finally started! Whooooop! She was opened for by 2 DJ's who together make up a group called GTA (i forget what it stands for) and they were awesome! For the first twenty minutes anyways.

You see I'm pretty sure that whenever you are waiting for your favourite artist to come and rock the stage, nothing is more annoying than some DJ's playing the same type of music over and over again! I don't even know what the genre would be called but I guess their tagline is in fact 'death to genres' sadly it was still all one genre all house/dubstep/electro/drum and bass like. I was quite disappointed and very very tired from standing for hours now but I still managed to keep my smile, somewhat.

And then fiiiiiinally! At about 9.30, the queen Rih finally comes unto stage and it was pretty crazy from there! Most of the night from this point is a bit of a blur, I was so high off her energy and loving every single song she performed singing and dancing around like crazy! Unfortunately (or fortunately) the arena was packed! Stadium Status baby! So there was no room to take some action shots of Tomz and I dancing, there was plenty of room to take pictures of Rih though and she looked amazing! Here are shots of her outfits from the night, she changed so many times!

This is by far my favourite outfit of her! She looks like Iron Man's long lost girlfriend, I loved it!

Literally flawless is she not? And I was so up close to the stage as well! It was amazing, what would have made it even more Rihdiculous would have been if I got to touch her when she came down to the crowd! Unfortunately I was about 1 person too far away from her! Boohoo :( All in all even though her vocals could do with some work she's a pretty amazing performer! "Where have you been" "Cockiness" "Diamonds" and "Rockstar 101" were amongst my favourite performances! She's coming back to Manchester again on Tuesday and I'm trying to decide if I want to see her again, I so would if I can convince just one person of her awesomeness and get them to shell out the cash. But for now it's peace out b*tches! (It wouldn't be a complete Rihanna post if I wasn't profane at least once! lol)

Reni x