Hey guys! I'm finally back with a post, after what seems like forever. I've been caught up in school, work and other real life obligations, so I haven't had any time to write posts or review things.

I am just here to let you guys know that I will be kicking off the month of November with a new series! The tentative title is "The ABCs of Popular Skincare/Makeup Ingredients". I plan to post these twice a week (Tuesday and Friday), and I will be writing them in advance so I can publish them on time.  In all, this series should take about 13 weeks to complete! I'm really excited to be starting this with you guys and hope that you can all learn something new about the ingredients that lie in your skincare and makeup!

Tentatively, the list of ingredients I will be focusing is as follow:

Aloe
Bird's Nest
Collegen
Dimethicone
Estrogen
Ferment
Green Tea
Honey
Isopropyls
Jojoba Oil
K
Lanolin
Mango Seed
N
Olive Oil
Propolis
Q
Rose
Snail
Tea Tree Oil
U
Vitamin A/B/C
W
X
Yeast
Z

As you can see, some of the letters have less ingredients (or are used less commonly in makeup/skincare, at least), so I am having difficulty coming up with ingredients. If you have a suggestion, please leave me a comment below! Additionally, some ingredients start with more common letters than other (such as R - rice and rose), so occasionally I will include a honourable mention at the bottom of some posts.

That's all for now! Watch out for the first post of the series on Nov 3rd :)

I finally had some time to go down to a salon and get rid of my black roots while getting a new colour on my hair! I'm always excited to play with my hair and regularly change my up hair colour every time I dye it. 

This was my inspiration:

Just keep in mind, even with a picture reference, it may be difficult to achieve the exact same hair colour as everyone has a different base colour for their hair. Hair dyes also don't go on the same for everyone either!

The salon I went to posted a B&A onto their instagram:

My hair colour before this was silver/granny grey, but it washed out as usual. Cool tones are really difficult to maintain and they usually fade into a sort of blonde colour. The picture reference I brought in had purple silver tones, but I walked out of the salon with blue grey tones with a hint of purple here and there, which is totally cool with me, as my main goal was to just get rid of my roots and to have a new hair colour. 

For those of y'all wanting to take the plunge into fun summer colours, just keep in mind that most of the hair colours that are popular nowadays require several rounds of bleaching (if you have dark hair colours) and I'd advise you to go early in the morning and clear out your schedule for several hours. Bleaching can take a while if you're starting with a dark or red base. To get from my previous pink hair to the granny grey, I sat in the salon chair for over 8 hours, just to get the red base out.

So this is what I look like now! Excuse the snapchat quality. Huge thanks to Axis hair salon and Elissa for doing such an amazing job. If you're in the Vancouver area and are looking to dye your hair, I highly recommend Elissa from Axis Hair Salon. She knows what she's doing. Prices are reasonable as well. 

Some general hair tips for those of you who have taken the plunge and want to make your colour last longer:

1. Don't wash your hair too often. The less you wash your hair, the longer your hair colour will stay. 
2. Wash with cold water! Warm/hot water can strip away your colours faster
3. Use a sulfate-free shampoo. Sulfate is damaging to your hair colour and will strip your colour even faster.
4. If you want to keep the cool tones, use a purple shampoo.
5. Remember to use hair masks and treatment products! Bleached hair can feel and look damaged, so you'd obviously want to keep the damage on the low. 

And that's it for now! I'm currently recovering from a wisdom teeth extraction, so there won't be any review posts for a while.

Axis hair salon did not sponsor me; I just wanted to touch upon who did my hair.

I'll be away from the Internet for a month and a half. I have two posts scheduled to go out while I'm away, but I will not be making any other blog posts until I get back to Canada.

Also, I said Part 3 of that What's in my Carry-on/Suitcase series would be up a while ago, but I just never got around to doing it, with all that packing and whatnot that I had to do. I'm really sorry! I'll write and release it when I have Internet available again.

Just a quick update on the blog :)

I had a project planned over the winter break (swatch & photograph all my lipsticks), but as I was doing part 1 of it, I realized how shitty my lighting is (terribly yellow) so I'm postponing the project until either the summer or until I move into an apartment with proper lighting.

On another note, there hasn't been anything new that I want to review right now. I'm doing some long-term tests (moisturizers, essences, masks, etc) and I probably will not get around to those until closer to the end of February.

Other than that, is there anything that I should be testing, or that you would be interested in seeing me review/give a first impression on?