Hack Job

There is no doubt that Tricky is a shaggy headed boy.

When I visited my grandmother recently the first words out of her mouth were "He needs a haircut". Closely followed by "What's his name again?" She certainly has her priorities.

But she was right. As much a fan as I am of the shag, he was in need of a trim having slipped from shaggy to scruffy in recent weeks.

Shaggy-headed, sushi-eating Tricky, 5 minutes before his hair cut

As usual, the kid sat there unmoving, shooting daggers at her through the mirror and pouting. Most hairdressers say he's well behaved and I tend to just let them think that rather than point out if looks could kill they'd be long gone by now.

Just a trim, so it's out of his eyes, I said.

She started to cut.

She noticed his scars and I said that they were one reason I liked it long. The shaggy look covers a lot of the lumps and bumps caused by his surgeries. She started chatting about the resilience of kids and all the while her scissor-happy hands flew around his poor head.

On leaving the hairdresser I couldn't see how bad it was because it was still wet. All I could tell was it that was much shorter than I'd asked... then it dried. And I cried.

Turns out, when she said "I'll put in a few layers" she meant "I'll wildly hack at your kid's head and make him look stupid".

A few people suggested that it looked like he'd got the scissors out himself. Or that I'd been embracing my frugal side and giving home haircuts. 

After I'd finished crying about it I started crying over the fact that I'd been crying over hair. Hair that grows back. Hair that doesn't matter in the big picture.

Then I looked at him, he gave me the biggest, cheesiest smile, and that gorgeous face juxtaposed with that horrid hair meant I cried some more. He didn't give a shit what his hair looked like, all he cared about was if I was going to play cars with him or not. So I played cars and tried not to cry. I'm extremely hormonal right now, can you tell? GIVE ME SOME CHOCOLATE AND I WILL STOP CRYING.

I did complain to the manager and she attempted to fix it despite me almost having convulsions when she came at his head with scissors, so it's even shorter now and a little bowl-esque. But it will grow.

And all of a sudden I have a boy and not a baby.

Have you/your kid had a bad haircut? Did you cry/complain/eat copious amounts of chocolate?

How to use chalk to colour your hair

One of the annoying things about having a dark hair colour is that colouring the tips is major pain in the arse involving bleach, strange orange colours and normally, for me, ends up looking like I've just dipped the ends in a bucket of vomit.

But there is a way! Hair chalking!

I tried it out with some subtle pink (well, it's subtle next to my purple at least) and really liked it so decided to go contrasting blue too:

Ever heard of it? It's been big in the US for a while and is gaining popularity over here rapidly. So how do you do it? It's SO easy, just grab yourself some artist's chalks and go for it:

As you can see from the pic, I have heaps of vibrant colours in my chalk box and I can't wait to try them all out. You can also use eyeshadow pigments for this - I have some loose MAC colours from my days as a makeup artist so they'll be next on my list.

As soon as you've finished, clean the massive mess of chalk that has fallen around you or it might stain. It's also best not to wear your fave clothes or sleep on your expensive white pillowcase because the fallout is pretty bad.

It is really hard to style your hair afterwards because the chalked sections feel like they have half a can of hairspray in them... plus every time you touch it your hands will come away a little tainted. I ended up looking like I'd been inappropriately dealing with a Smurf.

Yet another downside to this is that if you do it more than a few times in a row it will seriously dry your hair out. Make sure you have a good conditioner on hand to repair! But for the price of a box of chalks ($10-15 at a local art store) it's a cheap way to get quick, vibrant, one-night colour.

Will you try chalking?

This one time, I went to Sydney just to go to a party

It would appear that I'm making a little habit of whirlwind trips to other states. This weekend I threw off the confines of the SAHM title and partied like it was 1999. Well, actually, more like it was 2000 because I was 17 for all but two weeks of 1999 and sure as shit someone will send me an email saying I'm a terrible role model encouraging underage drinking if I don't spell out exactly what I mean.

My partner in crime (which is JUST A SAYING) was the inimitable Real Jive Turkey. The Jive and I had never traveled together before and I wasn't sure what to expect. It was suggested I vajazzle my vajayjay as one must be prepared for everything, including body cavity searches by airport officials, but I stopped short and just threw a handful of glitter at my crotch instead.

The red-eye flight over was uneventful, that is unless, of course, you consider inhaling other people's farts, singing along to our respective iPods and a dismal attempt to vlog at 35,000 feet to be a highlight.

We touched down in Sydney at 6am, having not slept, and decided, since we couldn't check in yet, to hit the ground running and do all the standard cliche touristy things like eat McDonalds for breakfast, take photos of a bridge and a building we'd both seen many times before and sit in Starbucks charging our phones like wankers.

Starbucks, nuts (!!!) and ironing RJT's shirt using a GHD - highlights in anyone's book

The delightful Mrs Woog offered to leave a key out at her house for us to go and crash but I became so overwhelmed with which room I would snoop through first I felt strange to visit someone's house for the first time when they weren't even home, so we declined. This was a huge mistake and the dark rings under my eyes grew two shades darker in protest. Though apparently if I say they grew fifty shades of grey darker all the mums reading this will spontaneously orgasm.

I hit the wall at about 11am, having been awake for 27 hours, and decided that a giant can of carbonated caffeine and paying someone to rub my body would be the only way forward. I sat in the massage chair at a place called Unwind in Erskine Street and had THE BEST massage of my life. I had to restrain myself from groaning in pleasure as she pummeled my muscles in to submission and when she was finished I felt like I should kneel down and worship her. I didn't because it would mean getting down and getting back up again and, really, who has time for that when free drinks are waiting for you?

We pressed on to Bungalow 8 for a fab, slightly liquid lunch with some Bloggy friends. The Jive's list of female blogger friends has just increased ten fold because despite the fact that the conversation veered towards vaginas for a while, he appreciates how dedicated we are at pretending we don't have kids and getting drunk partying.

Liz, Zoey, Kristie, Rah, Me, JJ, Fi, Salz, Alyce, Nicole, Denyse, The Jive, Lily & Cassie

We couldn't keep our eyes open any longer we headed to our "hotel" at the official check in time. I was in charge of booking the hotel and it's safe to say that that responsibility will never land in my lap again as it became glaringly obvious I had booked us in to a dingy backpackers with convent-like rooms. The shower screen was broken, the shower head was broken, the windows didn't close (and it was FREEZING) and the beds were actually lumps of concrete covered in a blanket so thin I've seen layers of dust that have been thicker. But it was clean, it was cheap and it was central.

I closed my eyes and laid there, in the cold, trying to will myself to sleep for two hours before I decided it was pointless and that Twitter would be much more interesting than the insides of my own eyelids. I was right. Y'all are very entertaining.

Fast forward through what seemed like hours of serious hair styling from The Jive and we rocked up at the party that we were in town for. StMurphy's 40th. The atmosphere was electric and it was so exciting to meet people I'd been chatting to on Twitter for ages (like McDimples!), a whole bunch of new people that I'm now actively stalking, catch up with my faves Mrs Woog and SawHole, and, of course, give the birthday boy a hug and an awesome (if I do say so myself) card.

Card created using MoonPig.com.au

Mrs Woog started introducing me as one of Australia's best mummy bloggers to all her celeb friends who were there and despite me telling her she was full of shit, she continued. So I did what any self respecting new media junkie would do and let her carry on safe in the knowledge that the darkened room would be enough to camouflage my flushed cheeks and the massive headswell that was occuring.

Celebrity whoring it up (with a super bright nose removing iPhone flash) with StMurphy, Julie Goodwin,
Mrs Woog, Saw Hole, McDimples, Charlotte Dawson, The Jive, Natarsha Belling and Jo Thornley

I managed to embarrass myself by discussing the pros and cons of female urinals with Jo Thornley, complete with actions, and reverted to very similar miming tactics when my voice, which had been failing all day, completely gave up around 1:00am (after over 40 hours awake). A development that left me with the rather unenviable moniker of *ahem* "cock throat" for the rest of the weekend shenanigans.

A sleep in a concrete bed, a walk around The Rocks and a meet up at the pub with some new friends topped off an amazing weekend in Sydney and I was home by 11:00pm on Sunday night. And much like The Jive's luggage, my voice still hasn't returned. But it was so worth it.

How to curl your hair with GHDs... after half a bottle of wine

I could blame Twitter peer pressure for this.

But really, when I filmed it, it seemed like a great idea.

Now? Not so much.

7 Inches...

When I decided to call this post "7 inches" I put it to Twitter to guess what I was talking about and the guesses, in order of popularity were heels, penises, salami, hair and a roll of cookie dough. One of those is correct.

Meet Damien. He's my beautiful BFF Bec's hunk-o'-spunk husband.

Nawww aren't they cute together?!

In true Aussie Bogan style, he gets called Damo a lot.

After a few drinks, it becomes Daayyyymoohhhhh and he looks like this:

Rockin' out, probably to Metallica

His most prominant feature, other than his baby blues, is his beard. His face fuzz. His chin warmer. Bec has been known to call it the 'Lady Garden' of his face, though it's not so much 'Map of Tazzie' as 'Map of Portugal'.

Image credit to the one and only Map Guy

I've known Damien for about eight years (I've known Bec since year one), and have never ever seen his chin. It has always been covered in beardy goodness.

It is almost 7 inches long and he has resisted Bec's nagging encouragement to shave it off... until now.

He's going to be Brave and Shave for a Cure as part of the Leukaemia foundation's World's Greatest Shave!

If you'd like to support Leukaemia research and see the naked chin of Damo, then you can sponsor him by clicking the picture below... if Damo reaches his goal of $200 by the 12th of March, then all his naked-chin-glory will be displayed here on Where's My Glow? for you to see!

Too cool for school

Click here to check out the Caroline's Angels giveaway
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Meet Glowless at the Aussie Bloggers Conference thanks to

HealthyChart and Baby Goes Retro and Simply Colors

A hairy situation

Hormones akimbo is a good way to describe pregnancy. Hormones do all sorts of cool things - like make ligaments stretchy enough to accommodate a growing baby, and quite a few not so nice things too – like turning your once quite normal face in to an acne filled grease ball and robbing you of your well deserved Glow.

I've had my fair share of hormonal dramas these past months (being teary one minute and a major cranky pants the next) but there is one effect that I have only just realised... the hair on my legs has stopped growing!

The hair on your head falls out less whilst your up the duff (which means my already thick hair is now bordering on a 'fro) so I assumed the rest of my body would follow suit and pretty soon I would look like I just walked out of the jungles of the Amazon, but apparently not.

To save money I switched from waxing to shaving when I realised there would soon be one less income and one more mouth to feed in our household. Through pure laziness though I didn't pay attention to the state of my legs – at the beginning I was feeling too nauseous to care then as time went by my tummy got in the way so 'out of sight, out of mind' came in to the equation. I probably wouldn't have noticed the lack of hair at all if it wasn't for one very strange phenomenon that Hubby pointed out to me as he sat there chatting to me while I soaked in a nice warm bath... MY KNEES WERE HAIRY!

No where else on my legs does the hair grow at the moment, so here I am with two very hairy knees in comparison to the rest of me. I have no idea how this is even possible - why my knees? They're not usually an area of the body affected by hormonal hair - it is much more likely for a preggo to develop a hairy chin or lip. It seriously looked like a pair of spiders had decided to make a home half way up my legs. With two quick flicks of a razor the spiders were sent on their merry way and a hairy knee crisis was averted. I'm just lucky that it wasn't a hairy ankle fiasco because I can barely reach those suckers now!

Interestingly when the baby is born all the accumulated hair on your head starts falling out and a lot of new mothers think they are going bald – but its just playing catch up really. I just hope my leg hair doesn't decide to go the same way and come back with a vengeance! Does anyone have a whipper snipper I can borrow just in case?