53 years young comfortable with how I look.

This post was written in September 2024 and scheduled to go out on 21st October. Our daughter died on 7th October. It seems trivial to let this post go without with sharing this information with you. It's important to me that you know life isn't just carrying on as normal. It's also quite poignant if you reach the end of the post.

For the first time in my life (aged 53) I'm comfortable with how I look. My size, my style and my hair.

I'm at my most comfortable with clothing in the autumn and winter when I can stick jeans, a jumper and boots on and not have to think about layering. I hate feeling bulky. I hate feeling cold. Mind you I don't like being hot either. I do love a good summers day, the ones where you don't have to think about something warm for the evening, or a rain coat for later, or what type of shoes go with a dress because sandals won't cut it due to the rain forecast later.

I've always had reasonably good skin, although as I've got older I've developed liver spots, darkening patches of skin on my face. I've never tried to cover them although I do wear makeup, it's not heavy and I wear it for me. I''ve also always been happy to go out without make up on, but I always wear factor 50 sunscreen, since the age of 30 and I moisturise every day. I've never learnt to do my make up. All I've done over the years is change my colour of eye liner and mascara, these days it's black (it used to be blue in the 80's) and I've added in an eyebrow pencil in brown. Lipstick alters depending on my mood, but red is.a no go these days. 

I had a mall make over experience. I wiped it all off as soon as I left the store. It was so heavy and greasy. I've had two newspaper make overs and one by a professional make up artist, the latter was my favourite. She'd seen an article in the newspaper where it had aged me and offered to do a natural make over to make me look more my age. 

Before, during, the Teresa May Power Bob and after.

Mail Online 24th August 2016

Professional make up artist and photo shoot in UAE.

22nd May 2017

Sandwich Generation Mail Online 28th June 2018

Me and Mum

My nails are something I like to have done. Just a gel polish, once every 3-4 weeks, bright colours. I usually do my own soak off and spend around £30 on a new polish. I find if my nails are done, I can put my hair in a pony tail, not worry about make up and I'm good to go out.

I've lost weight recently. Only a stone. I'm now a size 10 trouser. I've fluctuated between a size 10-12 for the past 20 years. My top half is a 14. But with medication for migraines and no, the medication does not make me put on weight, it does increase my appetite and with up to 15 migraines a month I've always craved sugary foods. Just over a year ago. I realised the weight was no longer fluctuating, it was staying on and I was uncomfortable with how I looked and how I felt. My clothes still fitted me but were tight. My dresses that once fell from my bust, were now filling in and I was getting more aches and pains around my neck, shoulders and lower back. I started to watch what I was eating and slowly I managed to stabilise the weight gain and eventually started to lose some weight. A medication change earlier this year for the migraines helped me lose more weight and I'm now where I feel my most comfortable. I have more energy and in less pain.

My hair has always been the biggest thing I've had an issue with. I've NEVER been able to style it. I've NEVER had the right cut. I've grown it long, I've got fed up with it and had it cut short. I've had the worse hair cut EVER.

I asked for this in April 2022.

With an undercut.

I left like this:

I cried.

I washed and dried it, it looked like this:

I paid £48 to get it rectified. I was happy with the end result. I've only had it trimmed three times since.

I've had hair extensions, I've had it dyed almost every colour going, in fact right now, it's faded from a bright blue, underneath at the back to a pale green. Colours I've always been happy with. I've always alternated between short and long hair every couple of years. My hair grows quickly. It's only taken 2 years to grow from short to this below and you'll notice it's also gone from grey to blond and no it's not died. It was dark when I was younger, I went grey around my early 30's started to dye it blonde, let it grow out grey, then discovered it was blonde after all, could've saved a fortune.

But styling I've never got the hang of, until I bought one of these new fan dangled devices online, my hair has spent years being straightened or scrapped up in a pony tail, or just chopped short again. 

Are you happy with being you? The way you look? Your hair? Your fashion sense?

I'm not always happy with the inside, but on the outside I feel good and sometimes that's all that matters and it's what keeps me going some days, but please don't judge me by that. I might look like I've got it all together, but looks can be very deceiving. 

Boho Chic in Dubai with Top Tier Style

For the purpose of this post I was given the following items for review. I like to be honest with my readers and make the disclaimer at the beginning.

I don't do many review posts and it's not something I search for, so I was very surprised to be contacted directly to ask if I'd review a pair of sunglasses, an item from the Boho fashion range and a cat t-shirt.

I have quite a few cat t-shirts that often feature in my blog, usually worn when I attend events with my dog Bob and I'm always happy to add another to my collection.

I've also been meaning to get a spare pair of sunglasses for a while as the ones I wear on a daily basis are by Tiffany and rather expensive to spend so much time falling off my head on the floor as Bob pulls me in all directions when I take him out for a walk. When the weather isn't so hot I like to cycle, even more so since we've relocated to the other side of Dubai and the roads are less busy. As you can imagine, there's a lot of choice for sunglasses in Dubai and the sales staff are quite pushy over here. I'm fortunate that most shapes and styles suit my face so it was nice and easy to choose a pair from the comfort of my own home. I now have a spare pair for when I walk Bob or go for a ride. They are polarised and I could choose the colour of the lens to suit the frame.

I wear a lot of dresses in Dubai all year round, regardless of where I'm going and what I'm doing, other than cycling. I prefer the longer style, but find most maxi dresses have spaghetti style straps, whilst I'm not breaking any cultural rules in Dubai by wearing these dresses out, I find in the summer my shoulders burn quite badly and in the winter it gets chilly in the day and wearing a pashmina to keep my shoulders warm and protect them from the sun is a flaff and I spend most of the day picking it up off the floor along with my sunglasses.

Delivery time was fast for all the items and they were packaged well. The t-shirt and dress came in a really small bag and I was concerned the items would be badly creased, but they weren't which would make them excellent items for packing into hand luggage and be able to wear without ironing at your holiday destination. The quality of the materials and the manufacture is excellent.

The dress was slightly see through, which could be a problem in Dubai, but I wore it with a slip underneath. Ordering was easy but I did find the size chart difficult to find on the website, however it was very accurate, the t-shirt fitted perfectly and I opted to get the dress in a larger size as it had adjustable ties round the waist.

The vintage steampunk sunglasses, boho fashion and cat t-shirt in this review were provided by Top Tier Style. If you would like to purchase your own use the coupon code BLOG15 for 15% OFF everything on their store!

Growing old gracefully.

Back in the summer, 2016, I took up an offer with The Daily Mail to have my hair dyed grey, cut and styled like Theresa May. 

Why? Because I've been grey since the age of 28 and I spend a fortune dying it blonde to hide the grey from the outside world. But who was I kidding? There aren't many 45 year olds that don't have grey hair these days. so rather than deny the fact I was getting older, I decided to embrace it.

When I looked into having my hair dyed grey, professionally it was around £200 +, so when I saw the request from Jill Foster for the Daily Mail, I decided to go for it.

Before:

During:

After:

I will admit, I hated the finished style, when a gust of wind caught me, it was my feet that moved and not my hair where I had so many products in it, but I loved the colour and the cut when it wasn't so heavily styled. I've been able to maintain it with ash blonde toner as the blonde continues to grow out.

Edward James Aveda in London, did a fantastic job with the cut and blending in the grey, it was a great experience and a once in a lifetime visit to a BAFTA hairdresser, not somewhere I could justify a monthly visit to.

The only trouble is I no longer like being grey, I feel washed out, my hair is dull and lifeless and there's no style to it anymore.

Now:

I failed to recognise myself in the picture above and my 21 year old son says I need to sort my hair out, most days I'm walking around like this.

I've not had much luck with cuts and colours in Dubai and it's bloody expensive and I certainly can't afford to travel to the UK just to get my hair done, regardless of the stylist and Salon I choose, so I guess I'll keep wearing my hair up, I don't need to use the toner anymore, but I'm not happy with it.

My son suggested dying it purple, pink or blue. In his words 'why not grow old disgracefully?'

Any suggestions or recommendations greatly received.