Comfortable Cat Flats and the Cezanne Hair Straightening Treatment

I went with the most straight forward title I could come up with for this post – comfortable cat flats. Because frankly, they are. Strike that – they may be some of the most comfortable shoes I own. I talked about them in my recent “What I Got For My Birthday” video, and I have been wearing them non-stop since. I bought the size 7 and though they are a bit big and do stretch out slightly, they are exactly how I want a comfortable flat to fit. I was rarely a flats fan years ago, and hardly ever saw any that I deemed cute enough to warrant the loss in height. Over the years, I have embraced them much more and now am constantly on the hunt for ones that are more exciting than a simple ballet flat. I wore these this past weekend while in Maryland visiting friends, and I loved pairing them with a pair of distressed jeans and big sweater coat. It was not cold enough to warrant a jacket so I grabbed this old Zara sweater coat which also doubles as my ‘lounge around the house’ sweater in the winter. I’ve talked about these Topshop jeans before, and how they are more comfortable than my other jeans because the fabric is like a legging rather than traditional stiff denim. And double snaps for the high waist which fits me perfectly and doesn’t gape in the back!

The second part of this post is about a recent hair treatment I had done a few weeks ago. I’ve talked about this a few times here and there, but my entire hair texture changed within the past year due to a hormonal imbalance I suffered from steroid injections. My hair has always been curly and prone to frizz, but very manageable and easy to blow out daily. It was shiny, healthy and had great body to it. After the injections (and subsequent hormone imbalance), my hair began to fall out, break off and completely change in texture. It was frizzy, always knotted, dull and very unmanageable. I went from loving the process of styling my hair to hating it. I heard about the Cezanne treatment, did some research and decided to treat myself to it. It is much less harsh than a keratin treatment since it just relaxes the hair temporarily, and eventually will completely wash out within 3-5 months. So there is no issues with roots looking different from the rest of the hair and the hair still has body, can be curled and styled easily. 

The whole process took me about 2 hours, and I didn’t wash my hair for 48 hours after to allow for the treatment to set in. From a maintenance standpoint, I can’t use any shampoos with sulfates which will strip my hair but other than that, I can style and wash my hair as I normally would. It’s been a few weeks and I am shocked at the results. The frizz is virtually gone (and I tested it on a rainy day), my hair still holds a curl and it looks shinier than it has in more than a year. I still can’t completely wash and go but I can let my hair air dry now and just use a curling iron to style. That was never a possibility before as I would have to blow it out completely and then continue to style it with a curling iron as that became the only way to hide the damage and manage the frizz. I do find that on humid days, my hair will fall flat rather than frizz up but that seems like a lesser of the two evils and one I can deal with. The only negative that I have noticed is that my hair still has a strong chemical smell when wet. It dissipates when fully dry, but it is still quite strong when wet or damp. But that is a small price to pay for having my hair back and feeling like I can manage it again. Here is the link to the salon that I go to get it done, but I am sure you can just google Cezanne treatment and find a salon near your home. They advise getting it done 3 times a year, but for now I will just stick with 2 since it quite pricey. Though I am not opposed to bumping that up if I feel I need it. 

Sweater – Zara (old but similar here ) | Turtleneck – Banana Republic (old but similar here) | Jeans – Topshop | Flats – Charlotte Olympia | Bag – Loeffler Randall | Sunglasses – Stella McCartney