valentine’s day – okay andie

Happy Valentine’s Day dear friends! Valentine’s Day is not one of my favourite holidays, but I am a blogger, and bloggers (for the most part) love to do holiday-inspired posts, however they choose to interpret them. So I felt I may as well pay homage to the holiday in my own way – no real fuss, just one of my favourite dresses that feels very appropriate for this love-filled day, what with it’s romantic length, red and frillyness.

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Love, in all it’s forms, is incredibly important to me. Love is what drives me, always. In the past, present and future I have always imagined my life full of intense love, something I now realize is one of my greatest weaknesses and strengths. This desire for love, in all aspects of my life, in it’s purest of purest form, is unattainable. When something is that important to you, it will undoubtedly let you down – the expectations are just too high. That kind of love, the one I am talking about, is fleeting. It exists momentarily in our lives, magnificent and bright, but it fades to dull, eventually. All this may sound sad, depressing even, but I don’t mean for it to be. Quite the opposite. To allow love, of any kind, to come to you is to be brave and open. To acknowledge the extent to which it can carry you, but also drop you, and to just say, “I don’t give a fuck. I’m giving it my all”, is one of my favourite qualities in a person. It means fear does not limit you. My expectations may be too high, it may be the reason for much sadness, but I’m glad that love is what drives me…good things have always come from love, not love masked as fear, but real, pure love.

All I’m really trying to say on this Hallmark holiday is to let love into your lives everyday…whether that be love for yourself (super important), your family, friends, partner, art, animals, objects, religion…whatever it may be, be in love with it every single day. You’ll quickly see how beautiful this complex world is in all it’s simplicity.Dress: vintage via Public Butter

*want to try this hairstyle?! you can find a tutorial here.

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Since Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, I thought I’d share a fast and easy (I think this is a theme with my hair) Valentine’s-inspired hair tutorial. To be honest, this hair style could be worn on any occasion, but I think the sweet little red bow adds a nice Valentine’s Day touch. I’d first like to mention I used this technique to get my waves, and I do think it adds to this hairstyle quite nicely, so keep that in mind. And here we go!

❤ FIRST STEP: Backcomb around the crown of your head so we can create the illusion of voluminous hair. I have no real technique to this – I just backcomb until it starts to look puffy and extremely tangled, which makes me feel incredibly anxious…but the more insane it looks, the better, in my opinion. See. Insane.❤ SECOND STEP: To prevent our hairs from looking like we stuck our finger in an electrical socket, start brushing down the top layer of your hair, starting at the crown so it forms a sort-of sheet that blankets the backcombed hair – now no one can tell what nightmare you have created underneath. Next, just hairspray. Always an optional step, but it helps to hold things in place…as it should, because that’s it’s only job.❤ THIRD STEP: We are going to create a half up-half down look (sort-of). Take your desired amount of hair on each side and starting from the front, pull it to the back of your head and secure it with bobby pins, (I have quite thick hair so I needed about 4 bobby pins in total, however, you can add as many or as little as you would like, my sweets) we are doing this to add a messy, voluminous effect, so try not to pull your hair back too tightly, we don’t want it to look like it’s glued to your head. ❤ FOURTH STEP: Take your hair and pull it to your preferred side and tie your hair elastic around 1/4 – 1/2 way down your hair, so we have a nice loose side ponytail thing happening. Hair elastics aren’t always the most aesthetically pleasing, so we are going finish it off by tying a bow around the elastic. Like I had mentioned before, this hairstyle could be worn at any time and doesn’t necessarily need a bow, but since this is Valentine’s Day I think a red or pink bow would add the perfect lovely touch to our do.And we are done! Super simple and yet, adorable. Now whether you are going out with your partner, hanging with your friends, or being your own valentine, you will be the belle of the ball