Pizza cupcakes

I usually post about beauty-related things, but this is a tryout as well. I think it's really awesome and I want to write about it!

A while ago I saw a post on 9GAG about pizzacupcakes, I loved it, and really wanted to make some of those one day. And now I did. I googled around and found this blog and used it as my recipe. http://reallyfrompinterest.blogspot.nl/2012/04/cupcake-mold-pizzas.html

This is what I have used for 5 cupcakes. (Well, 5 and a half..)
- Half a jar croissant dough
- Half an onion
- Half a tomato
- Shredded cheese
- Some mozarella
- Garlic
- Butter
Note: I havn't used the butter in the end, and it turned out fine, they got out of the griddle very easily without the extra grease.


I will tell you step by step how I did this :)
As you will see, I did not use any herbs, of course you may add whatever you want, like tiny pepperonis the original recipe had.
Let me know if you tried it, would be nice to know!

Off we go!

My ingredients. The big thing is my shredded cheese, I always
have it in the freezer just in case I'd need some! 

This is what the croissant-dough looks like.
I picked this one because of the crispyness, of course,
if you like normal pizza dough better, it will work out just fine!

I tried getting it into the griddle as good as possible.
Got everything covered.

Put it in the oven to pre-bake for 10minutes on 200 degrees.

When they came out I got a little bit worried, haha!
But if they get out like this, they can still be saved!

See! I pushed everything to the sides a bit. The bottoms where
slightly thinner but it turned out fine.

Put the shredded cheese in.

Followed by onions, garlic and tomatoes.
I also tried stirring in a bit :)

And lastly, some mozzarella on top!

Put it in the oven for another 10 minutes on 200 degrees,
et voila!

Smakelijk!

Coloring eyebrows.

Since I have red hair I've hated my black eyebrows. Some people like darker eyebrows, but I REALLY don't. Especially on me. With red hair it seems incredibly unnatural. I have tried bleaching them before, but I didn't get an even color with it, and basically I had blonde/yellow eyebrows. Not the best solution either.

So after a looooot of doubting, I bought a package of normal hairdye. It is recommended to use eyebrow-dye but since it was't for sale in stores and shipping costs where higher than the actual dye, I went for normal hair-dye. Well, it wasn't the best thing I did.

Not all hairs got covered, so some of them are black now, and some of them are red. But the worst part is that it stained my skin. I have red eyebrows, with an even redder glow. I was so ashamed when I had to go out with my dog, cause I couldn't get it off in ANY way! I tried soap, shampoo, conditioner, peelinggel, nailpolishremover & even terpentine. Neither of those worked :( I read online that the ashes of a cigarette would help, fortunately (yes even when I need ashes so much I still think this is a good cause!) no one around me is a smoker.  If I would try this way of dying again, I will make sure to have some ashes near me, cause overal.. I do like the color, and how easy it was to apply!

If I ever get better results, I will update this post :-)

Before

Applying. I am laying down to avoid stuff getting into my eyes.
Should've been more precise....

The glow. Hope you can see it.

Sorry for the weird face xD
But here's the end result!

The smell of henna.

This doesn't count as a real tryout-post since I've used henna several times before. But I still would like to mention it.

I just LOVE the smell of henna in my hair. It smells so natural and healthy. Love it.

And to make this post slightly relevant, let's make a list of the things I like to do while using henna!

- I use 200g of henna, and 650ml of water (35 degrees) and wait 2 hrs before applying. Make sure to use enough water, I've tried 500ml once and it simply was too dry and didn't cover all of my hair.

- I never use gloves and apply it naked in my bathroom (remove rugs, towels, clothes.. it flies everywhere.) The orange dots on my body and face wash of immediately, so no worries there! My hands, however, remain orange for a day or two, maybe three. I don't care, working with gloves is annoying. 

- I used to just.. *plop* a whole bunch of henna on my head and just rub it around. Worked fine if it's liquid enough, but now I like to divide my hair into parts, and *plop and rub* it into those parts. But I really want to make sure to get all my hair covered! Good moisturized henna is easier to work with. I also put my lengths in henna, just cause it's easier, it doesn't affect the color all that much. When I'm finished I put everything on top of my head and feel like a Royal Queen for some reason :') After wrapping plastic on it, putting a hat on and hop into the shower to get all of that flying henna of my body, the waiting begins.

- After 5 hrs of hanging on the couch, the best moment has come! I love rinsing henna! It's great to see my feet disappear in this orange shower-sea! :D I might take a photo of it someday. It's so pretty, I also love how the orange water is everywhere on me, and it smells pretty great :) 

- Don't try to get it all out!!  Really, there's no need to spend 2 bottles of conditioner and a whole week of watersupply to get all those tiiiiiny hennapieces out. I just rinse until my hair doesn't feel that thick anymore, use conditioner/shampoo/shampoo/conditioner. And that's it. I leave the shower with a lot of thingies left in my hair. I use my blowdryer, and just let it aaaall fall out, and get the vaccuum-cleaner et voila. Then I tend to go for a walk with my dog to get all last bits out outside, and not in every corner of my house.. 

- Next step: Enjooooy the smell ^.^

Jojoba oil and keratine.

Months have passed, and I have tested a few things. I've been testing two things at the same time, which is rather stupid but the second one wasn't planned, it just happend because I am way too clumsy.

First, my plan was to replace the coconut-oil I'd been using for quite a while (and was still in love with!) for Jojoba oil. Just to see how it would be. I have to say it made my hair even softer than the coconut-oil, hard to imagine that was even possible. I am thinking my hair could've gotten used to the coconut-oil, therefore after a few months of Jojoba I will go back to coconut, before trying the very very populair Argan-oil :D *Cant wait to try that one* But for now, I am pretty fond of my Jojoba-oil, and loving the softness.

By the way, I also tried to use Jojoba oil as a facial moisturizer, but that didn't end very well. I ended up having a few pimples and quit out of fear of looking like a 14year old again, haha! I read it works very well for other people, but I'm afraid my skin needs a less greasy moisturizer, the search continues!

And second! Sometimes when using leave-in conditioner I would use some of my small bottle of keratine. Keratine is one of the things that hair is made of, can also be found in nails, so it's a very natural thing. But do NOT confuse this with the "Brazilian Keratine Treatment", I am very much against that, I don't see how heating the hair (even with good and nurturing keratine in between!) can be good. So I will never do this, however my treatment looks a very small bit like it, except for you know.. the BOILING of all hair cuticles.

Anyway, as I said, I've been clumsy. The keratine comes in a very small bottle, and pouring just a little bit is a very hard thing to do. So now I had WAY too much, which seemed just about right :D After putting it in together with my leave-in conditioner (Yes to Cucumbers) I blow-dried my hair. So yes, some heat, but not 230 degrees like the real Keratine Treatment. It also looks good without blowdrying, but I noticed the incredible shininess after I blow-dried it, so I guess it had something to do with it, but I am not sure yet, will continue to test on that.

That's all for now. Gonna continue to use Jojoba and Keratine for while! And desperately search for a good facial cleanser, and moisturizer. Maybe I should visit the Lush store again.

Coconut oil treatment.

It has been quite a while since my last post, but I just havn't tested anything since. And suddenly last week I felt like testing something again! I've heard some VERY good thinks about coconut-oil treatments for the hair. I've tried it before, and I put WAY WAY WAY too much oil in my hair, I've had greasy hair for daaays :') So if you'd want to try this, please god, don't use too much :P

But now I know how much to use, I am very excited. I wasn't expecting much since all these natural-wonder-kindof-things never work for me. But this time; WOOOOOW! My hair felt SO incredibly soft! So I want to share this with you guys, while having coconut in my hair as I type!

So, this is what I use. I bought it in one of those very small foreign shops in Holland, they usually have strange vegetables outside their shop :P And as you can see, it's not expensive at all! You do need 100% pure coconut oil. So a shampoo/serum/whatever with just some coconut in it, won't give these awesome results. Don't use coconut-milk either; just 100% PURE COCONUT OIL!


It is not liquid so to use it, it needs to liquify. Some people just take a small piece out (they would have a jar, not a bottle) and just rub it in their hands until it liquifies. I just put the bottle onder some hot water for a minute and there you go :) Next step is just to pour a little bit into your palm and get your hands all greasy. And just.. rub it into your dry hair, I usually start with gently touching parts of my hair just to make sure the oil's not only on one spot.

And I've read it doesn't really matter how long you leave it in there, the longer the better of course but my first time I left it for half an hour, and the results already were amazing! Now I'll leave it for a few hours.

The coconut oil I use. There also are
some versions out there in a jar :)

Hope you can see it, it's still solid!

Just like that. Some hot water running over it.

Tadaah, Liquid! It's ok if there still are some solid
pieces in there, you don't need all of it
anyway.

This is much I use. My hair is quite long,
so with shorter hair, start using a bit less!

My greasy hand. Lousy photo though, didn't
wanted my camera to become greasy :P

Conditioner Only

So. I have been trying out some conditioner only washing. I am still not fully happy with it, actually.

This is what I have tried with 3 different conditioners:
I put it on my hair when it was still dry and left in in there for about half an hour up to an hour. When in the shower, I put my hair under the water for just a second, and then massaged really well, just like I would with a normal shampoo-wash. Rinsed it out and did a normal conditioner treat with another conditioner, I will get back to that! Then let it air-dry, didn't use any leave-ins or oils, really wanted to see the effect of this wash!

My results:
Pantene conditioner (Got it as a gift, don't know the price xD)
My hair stayed clean just as it does when using normal shampoo. BUT, this conditioner has cones in it, which I don't want to use anymore. I was happy it worked, but still wanted to get this working without cones, I only used this one first because it was the only one I had, figured that if it would work, I'd go out to get a new, conefree conditioner. The second conditioner used, was in this case also the Pantene cause as I said, only one I had!

Europrofit (Kruidvat & Trekpleister, 0.79 cents)
Tried washing with thise one 2 times. First time I left it in for half an hour, bad good results, my hair didn't get very clean and was greasy a LOT faster. Second time I left it in my hair for 3 hrs, rinsed it out, and somehow I still had some very greasy parts, the ones that were clean, were ok. But then again, after 2 days, it was totally GROSS.

Wonderwel (Bas, Dirk, 0.50 cents)
I heard good things about this one, so I had hope! But again a little part of my hair was still greasy, not as much as with the second Europrofit try, but still enough for me to feel "eww". I tried this today so I don't know how this will turn out in a few days, so I will update this in a few days!


So obviously putting conditioner on dry hair is a no-go for me, I'd need way too much conditioner to get it all covered, cause now I already used a handfull of it! It's not that it's expensive or anything, but I just think there has to be a way to use less. So my next (& last!) CO-try will be to put it on wet hair, leave it in for an hour and then rinse out. We will see..

2) Europrofit

1) Pantene

3) Wonderwel

SMT for my hair!

I had heard a lot about this so called "SMT" on various webpages and forums. SMT stands for "Snowymoon Moisturizing Treatment", Snowy is one of the users on LHC* and made a great moisturizing recipe! A lot of people on LHC are enthusiastic about this, so I just HAD to try it.

* http://www.longhaircommunity.com/forums/index.php

My hair BEFORE smt :)

I am not sure if I used the right ingredients. (see pictures below) The recipe says you should use a moisturizing conditioner without cones, not sure if I did that but if it this turns out awesome (it's on my head right now!) I will retry with a better conditioner!


So, I found a very good post about SMT here, you should go read it there, there's no need for me to re-explain the whole thing xD Here it is: http://www.longhaircommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128


So I started by getting into the shower and just wash my hair like I normally would, without using conditioner. After that I kept my hair in a towel so it would dry just a little bit and I used that time to make my SMT-potion :D  I mixed 4 tbls of Pantene conditioner, with 1 tbls of honey and 1 tbls of Aloe Vera Gel. You can also put some oils in it if you like, I didn't because I want to see what this basic-recipe will do. I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds, but 10 seconds would've been enough, just making it a bit warm is ok.

The *potion*

Applying it was very easy, it looked just like a normal conditioner, it was a lot more slippery tho, the spoon I used for mixing was SO slippery I dropped it several times! :P After applying I put my hair up in a knot, put on a showercap, and a normal bonnet (hope that's the good world, Googletranslate!) over it to keep it warm.

Applying.

With the shower cap.

I'm so AWESOME! :')

I put this in my hair at 2PM, and I'll take it back out around 1!PM, so it has time to absorb it all! *anxiiiooouuuus*


Alright, I rinsed it out after 9 hours! It felt really soft in the shower, but that doesn't really mean anything, it tends to be soft with certain shampoos as well. I was quite amazed when I got out of the shower and I was able to comb my WET hair, that is NEVER EVER possible, since it tangles so so so much when wet. And now, no struggle at all, W.O.W. ! !


Now, 2 hrs later it's starting to dry just a little bit and I can feel that it IS softer! Especially on top of my head, the only place it's dry now xD Can't wait to post about it when it's dry in the morning!

Right before rinsing it out.

My WET hair, combed !!!

3PM the next day.
Ok, I can't say I am VERY happy with the result. My hair does feel different and healthier, but it's quite poofy. Some people would totally LOVE this extra volume but I don't, haha! So next time I will just use my hairdryer again, yes I know it's bad... I might also leave the honey out next time, and add some cocunut oil. Once I have done that, I will come back with an update!

In the morning, after combing.

In the morning, before combing.

THE PRODUCTS

Aloe Vera Gel.

The Pantene Conditioner

Honey. It expired last year, yes!
But I figured it wouldn't do any harm.
Got it in Aldi.