To have your best hair ever...!

Hello ladies! 

I've always been asked what do I do to have my extra-long hair (more than halfway down my back) in such a good shape and no split ends whatsoever. I have wavy, dark brown hair, and it is very thick. 

(This was the only picture in which I thought you could 

really see how my hair is naturally)

The latest hair tip I've heard around is that washing your hair with horse shampoo will make it longer and beautiful.

I mean. For real? IT'S HORSE SHAMPOO, GUYS. I'm quite an skeptic when it comes to these miraculous things, unless I have tried them, but... for real??? Shampoo doesn't make your scalp skin make you produce more protein, and hair grows from the skin (some people tend to forget), so whatever you put on your hair, it will not make it grow FASTER. (Unless you take pills I guess, but I don't know absolutely anything about these other methods.)

Well I HAVE been asked if I washed my hair with horse shampoo, and I don't. I have also been asked if I have any sort of pill to make it shiny and long, and I don't do that either. 

I feel like people always want a miraculous method to repair the damage they have put their hair through for many years. My only useful tip is, and you might've heard this so many times: 

"LESS IS MORE"

And I imagine you were expecting some big awesome tip that would save your life, and that would be your greatest secret? I guess, it might be, although not in the way you were hoping for it to be. 

I used to be a girl who didn't accept her really wavy and frizzy hair, and I used to wear it shoulder-length and ALWAYS ALWAYS ironed it flat. Which didn't work, because... I was not meant to have that kind of hair. And I had the most frizzy, burnt and damaged hair, believe me. 

So, after reading some article some years ago, I decided to EMBRACE my curls, and I decided to chop my hair ends, and let my hair grow, WITHOUT using a flat iron, or any damaging heat on it. And it did take a lot of self-control, but in the end, my hair grew so long and beautiful, I decided cutting my hair and washing it with normal shampoo would do the trick. 

I cut my hair (over the) boob-length every four or five months, and it just... grows. I eat a lot of healthy foods, drink a lot of water, never miss my meat and fish, etc. I believe having a good diet is also the biggest secret to naturally beautiful hair. I wash my hair with shampoo and conditioner (only, yes!) every three days or so? 

My only issue is that I have to wash my hair THE DAY BEFORE any big event, because my hair is very frizzy. It usually needs a couple of hours to completely dry and I put it in a twisted bun after it isn't too damp anymore, so that it dries the way I like it to!  

The twisted bun is a nice way of creating big waves in your hair without using ANY heat whatsoever! All you have to do is, once your hair isn't too damp (like I said) you divide your hair in half, and twist both pieces (direction: away from your face, so that the waves FRAME it), until you have two big twisty strands. You then put them together into a bun, and tie that with a hair band.  

(My twisted bun looks a lot like this one! Cute, right?) 

It's really simple, but I can do a tutorial of it if you request it! :) 

You can do this before a party (if you've got plenty of time), or maybe even after flat ironing your hair (I flat iron my hair two or three times a year, when I'm up for it, so I do admit I flat iron my hair SOMETIMES.) 

Anyway,

I hope my hair ramblings helped you a little bit!   

Love, 

Maria

My skincare routine

Hello everyone :) !

I've been wanting to do a post about my skincare routine for some time now, because I think many people want to know how you achieve a nice skin glow and minimal blemishes. I haven't got the most perfect skin in the world, believe me! But I think my minimal take on a skincare routine is the responsible for bettering my skin quite a lot these past months.

I have always used a lot of creams on my face, thinking these would help all of my problems: acne, dark circles, blackheads, etc. Now, on dark circles I have still no solution except for concealer, and YSL Touche Éclat has been my go-to for some years now, since I don't have MASSIVE dark circles, they're just a purplish tinge that doesn't look nice at all. As I already said in a previous post, I never had huge acne problems, but some years ago I did have a lot of breakouts. But I thought, if my skin problems were due to my pores clogging, shouldn't I use LESS products?

Right now, I'm a firm believer that less is more, and I just use three products in total, and just two of them I use on a daily basis. My skin routine goes like this:

At night, after a day in which my skin suffers multiple aggressions, I wash my face with Clinique's 7 day scrub cream (rinse off formula), which not also cleans and hydrates my skin, but it also leaves it glowing and BEAUTIFUL. I swear by this cream, if I had to only use ONE product for my skincare, it would be this one! 

After rinsing off my face, I use my Interapothek Aloe Vera Gel, but there are many different brands of aloe vera gel and they all do almost the same job! This gel hydrates my skin (it doesn't make it greasy or anything), and it also makes any redness go away, including acne swelling and redness, and feels so refreshing and nice on the skin! I also swear by this product, because it has many benefits and is quite cheap and available ANYWHERE.

In the morning, I normally just use my Aloe Vera Gel alone, but if I feel my skin has some more issues than other days (like a couple of blemishes here and there) I will also scrub my face with my Clinique cream. 

The third product I use, although not EVERYDAY is a cream for my really dry skin patches, whenever I have them, which would be normally in the winter because of the cold. This cream is Babor Cream. I really like it because it makes dry patches go away almost instantly, but I do not use it normally because it does leave an oily residue and my skin doesn't always need that extra oil. 

So here you have it, and I hope it was useful to you guys, although cream-lovers will be disappointed by the limited amount of products I use on my skin!

Love, 

Maria.