Long Healthy Hair

I have been growing my hair forever, I only cut it every few years to donate it. I love having long hair and I love everything you can do with long hair. If you plan on growing your hair out, there are a few things you should know. 

• Don't wash your hair everyday
• Don't use heat on your hair everyday
• Let your hair air dry
• Don't brush your hair when it is wet
• Don't pull your hair into super tight updos
• Treat your hair with the right products
• Use hair masks every other week
• Trim your ends every month to keep split ends from forming
• Don't over brush your hair
• Use leave in conditioner
• Instead of putting your hair up, put it in a loose braid
• Use fabric hair ties
• Don't over process or over dye your hair

My Biggest Regret

I have always been a blonde and I have always loved being a blonde. This year, in the middle of summer, when my blonde hair was at its peak of sun kissed highlights and salty waves from the lifeguarding every day, I had the bright idea to dye it a chocolatey brunette color. The day I dyed it, I was excited for a change, my long blonde healthy hair was soon going to be brunette and I couldn't wait. 

Until I looked in the mirror after, and my hair was black. The darkest black I had ever seen, I looked like Wednesday Addams. My perfectly toned bleach blonde hair absorbed the color too quickly and too well and my hair was black. I was mortified. I didn't look like myself and I couldn't even look in the mirror without crying. 

No one recognized me and no one liked the color. The bubbly blonde I had been my whole life had been transformed into someone I didn't even know. I went to work the next day with a hat and everyone was shocked. People truly did not know who I was or what I had done to my perfect hair. I couldn't take it I had gone into a depression for 2 weeks all because of my hair. I needed to go to a good salon that could fix my hair. 

Fixing a bad color is not easy and it is not cheap either. I walked out the salon minus $300 dollars but I looked just liked I had stepped off the cast of Baywatch with my long blonde hair. It wasn't the same exact blonde I had before, but a couple days of lifeguarding and sitting in the sun, my hair went back to being a perfectly bleach blonde toned color, the color I had been my entire life. 

My promise to myself after this was to NEVER dye my hair any other color than blonde because from that experience I knew I would never be happy if I wasn't a blonde. Since then I haven't dyed my hair and I do not plan on it either. Being a blonde truly is my calling in life. 

Stickers

I love advertising my favorite brands. Everyone knows the little pink whale is Vineyard Vines and when they see that cute little smiling whale sticker on my water bottle they acknowledge it and know exactly where its from. Or when people see the mountains they know its Patagonia, and the little blue fish is Southern Tide. People recognize these brands because they are iconic, and when people see them and recognize them, they want to go home and buy things from them. The best thing a brand can do is sell stickers to gain followers and to gain popularity with their brands. My laptop is completely covered with stickers like these, and I love the way it looks and the questions I get from people about where I got all my adorable stickers. 

Target

Oh Target. I can walk in there with absolutely no intention to buy anything and leave the store with a cart and a half full of things I "just had to buy" because it was "soooooo cute" or it would "go perfectly on my desk!" This Saturday after the mall I decided to stop into Target really quickly. That quick little trip turned into an hour of getting last minute finishing touches for my Halloween costume, candles, crafting supplies, makeup, and a fur headband for skiing along with gum and a binder that I was supposed to buy in August. 

My friend and I walked out of Target and I was confused, looking down at my bill I didn't know how I spent more money in Target than at the mall. 

Then I realized that Target truly does have everything you could need and more, and honestly if I was only allowed to shop at one store for the rest of my life it would be Target!

DIY Halloween Costumes: Serena and Blair from Gossip Girl

With Halloween 5 days away and some of us still scrambling to get our costumes together, I'm going to make it easy for you. Everyones favorite TV show, Gossip Girl has easy characters to recreate because of their strong personalities and iconic looks. 

It girl, Serena Van Der Woodsen can be done with a plaid skirt, white knee socks, a button up, a loose and messy tie, and a casual boho jacket thrown over the outfit completed with booties or heels. Serena's hair is often tousled and messy and her makeup is simple and fresh faced. 

Blair Waldorf is a bit more put together than Serena is. Her hair is usually pulled away from her face with a preppy headband and is done up in clean curls. Her lips and cheeks are blushed and her eyes are soft. Her uniform is always pressed and clean, her Tory Burch ballet flats match her knee socks perfectly. Instead of a messy tie, Blair usually finishes off her uniform with a neat tie or scarf. Blair's favorite way to top off the outfit is with a peacoat, a classic and preppy look. 

So grab your best friend and your old plaid uniform skirt from middle school and you can easily throw together this cute costume. 

Social Media

Everything we do needs to be documented on social media, we Instagram what were eating for brunch followed by an OOTD. That night, we snap a picture and #latergram it before we go out for the night. Through out that night we tweet about the dirty look the tall brunette girl gave you and add snaps to your snapchat story of you and your friends singing in the car. The next day its all uploaded on Facebook into some cleverly named album for 2000 of your closet friends and family to see. 

Maybe we don't realize it while its all happening but all this time spent on social media is honestly a waste. We spend hours trying to figure out the perfect theme and we make sure not to repeat outfits on Instagram. If you don't get more than a certain number of likes you delete the picture. We are getting so caught up in scrolling through our Instagram feeds and snapping pictures of whats happening to our friends we are actually missing out on those moments because we are so caught up in trying to show everyone else how much your having fun instead of just enjoying the moment. 

I will admit that I have been a culprit of all of this until I decided to delete my Instagram and Twitter and settle for just having Snapchat and Facebook. When I first told my friends about this they got genuinely upset that they could no longer tag me in Instagram posts or mention me on Twitter. It was as if I was no longer a part of the social media world. 

But to be completely honest, deleting these apps and deleting my accounts is a great opportunity for me to focus on college applications and it also gives me a chance to create an entire new social media base in college with new and different followers. Even though I'm no longer a part of my friends social media world, I have now become a part of the real world and I think thats better than any amount of Instagram likes. 

Planning with Lilly

I have been planning with Lilly since my freshman year. I need everything in my life to be super organized, or at least I need to have it look that way.

Lilly planners come in 4 different sizes for 2 very different people. You have the smallest planner, for people who basically just want to carry around something with Lilly's name on it. You have the medium agenda for people who want to look like they have it together. You have the large agenda for overachievers, and you have to jumbo agenda for people who want to seem really really important and want to make their social calendars look better than yours. 

There really is a Lilly Pulitzer agenda out there for everyone!