Fire and Ice

I spend a lot of time thinking about my hair, taking care of my hair, styling my hair and generally doing hair-related things. I really just love my hair. It makes me seem a bit shallow. That could be a fair-enough statement - with all that is going on with the world, why spend so much time fussing about my hair? After all, it wasn't that long ago that my hair was nothing more than a source of frustration because I didn't know what to do with it. In case you don't know what I look like, I have long, thick, brown, curly hair. Well, I say curly but in reality it is wavy and it takes a bit of effort to make it curl. And that was my biggest frustration: because I have "in-between hair" I could be either straight or curly and for many years I chose straight. You can hardly blame me: it was the 90s and everyone wanted Rachel hair. I had just emerged from the 80s after numerous perms and quite frankly, I was ready to embrace my inner Rachel. So out came the strai...

I hadn’t even intended to get my hair cut that day. I did, however, have an appointment to get my hair styled for my friend’s wedding. This was back in Mexico , where one simply does not attend a wedding; much less a good friend’s wedding, without spending a couple of hours and some money getting our hair professionally done. So there I was, in the salon on a Saturday afternoon, along lots of other girls who were there doing the same thing I was. The place was buzzing and full of the smell of hairspray, the sound of happy chatter and hair dryers. I was being prepared and suddenly my stylist breezed in, took one look at my hair and said: “I can’t work with this.” She was dead serious. But instead of being offended, I actually agreed with her. I couldn’t remember the last time I had my hair cut, other than some trims here and there. I am always so disappointed with haircuts here in the UK – they are expensive and hardly ever do I feel that they helped. I feel that ...

As a scrapbooker, I am generally very restrained. I don’t shop for new stash very often, I don’t get seduced by the latest thing and I make the best of the stuff I already have. I have gone for as long as a year without buying anything new, except basics like adhesive and cardstock when they ran out. Yet my pages are, if I may say so myself, pretty acceptable and in some cases, actually very nice. Why can’t I be the same way when it comes to clothes? I am almost the complete opposite when it comes to clothes shopping: I am always buying something new, love getting the latest thing (if it suits) and sometimes do not make the most of what I already have. I have a lot of very pretty things hanging in my closet but, because there are so many things in there, I miss them and never wear them! How can I convert my scrapbooking resourcefulness into the fashion world? What strategies can I learn from one to apply into the other? First of all, I should stop the shopping. Just like my stash, my w...