Quantcast
KimmiKillZombie - Beauty, Hair and Style. Vegan and Vegetarian Interest. The Strange And Unusual. More. - Part 2

INSPIRATION: Coachella’s Hippie, Summer Style!

May 2, 2012 Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Inspiration, Style

I’m going to be totally transparent here, the Coachella festival is relatively new to me. Being a Northerner, we have quite a few of our own annual festivals to distract – plus, we don’t get the joy of celebrating the summer sun until a little later in the season.

Last week I kept happening on pictures of trendy youth in barely dressed in their best hippie attire; tassels, ponchos and tambourines. I immediately grew envious of that festival atmosphere; live music, dehydration, flip flops.

Are you feeling inspired by Coachella’s Hippie/Neon/Boho summer fashion? Try to recreate the looks below!

[Read more...]

ASK KKZ… About Anything!

May 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Advice, News, Site Updates

It’s about time I did this post! Since I started regularly publishing posts here, I’ve had a regular post theme called ‘ASK KKZ‘ where I’ve featured beauty, hair, and style questions submitted, emailed, and posted by readers.

After adopting a Vegan diet a year or so ago, I also decided to begin answering questions from readers looking for resources, advice, and tips.

Now, I will be expanding my Advice posts again! For some time, a few off-topic questions have appeared in my inbox. Until now, I’ve avoided publicly responding on the blog because I wanted to keep my hub-of-the-internet sort-a cohesive, and stick to only a few topics. But all of that kind of went out of the window when I started blogging for fun, and not to promote my indie business of the week.

So, though I’m horribly under-qualified – expect to see everything from the typical beauty, hair, and style advice – to vegetarianism/veganism  queries – to relationship advice – to career help – …to whatever else shows up in my inbox!

[Read more...]

Why I Dye My Hair.

April 23, 2012 6 Comments

Filed Under: Hair, Meh, My Offline Life, The Wonderful World of Hair Dye

I get a lot of reactions to my hair. Children point and whisper to their mothers, husbands usually stare too long, 12 year old girls excitedly ask questions about how they can get hair like mine, and women typically scoff and belittle me. Either with rude sounds, questions, or odd glares.

I usually get a lot of snide questions/remarks. I try my best to weasel around them without really delving too much in the real catalysts. “What made you dye your hair like that?” , “You’d be such a beautiful girl..”, “What’s so wrong with your natural color?”

I usually just respond with, ‘I like blue.”, or “The same reason you dyed your hair only two shades darker, or lighter, or added highlights..”

When I was a teenager in high school, I used to dye my hair a lot. But in common teenager fashion, my weird side didn’t stop there. I dressed in black, baggy clothes. Rimmed my eyes in dark make-up, and caked on foundation. Ripped and cut holes so my thumbs could poke through my sleeves. I listened to burned CDs of the angriest, melodramatic singles. Reactions from people then were much simpler than now. People would look at me and then immediately look away, unphased. I was a teenager. Everything done during that four year period (other than your grades), is an excusable fad.

And it was. Most of it.

After high school, I shed the black layers, I learned how to apply make-up to accentuate my features, and my music tastes grew to many more genres. But I continue to dye my hair.

So why do I dye my hair? The real, truthful answer is I really don’t know. But there are some things that factor into my hued hair..

[Read more...]

The Sun Is Out, The Snow Has Melted…

April 19, 2012 1 Comment

Filed Under: Life, MUST DO!

Spring has Sprung! Okay, that was corny and lame. But if you are anything like me, you are more than ready to shed the layers and bask in the first real sunshine of the new year. Winter is long and dreary. And though spring can be wet, rainy and muddy – it’s a time to celebrate! Plus, it also means Summer is around the corner, and summer is totally awesome.

Here’s a list of some of the things you MUST DO THIS SPRING to get you started!

[Read more...]

ASK KKZ: Vegan Eating and Sources/Supplements of B12, Iron, Calcium and more!

April 13, 2012 Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Advice, Veg and Food Q's

Hi. I’ve been vegan for a fair bit.. like 1 year. I never really did a lot of research and sort of just jumped into it. I’m a pretty good cook but I work a lot.. sometimes that means meals are cans of soup or bread and jam or worse, like crisps. I thought it would be a good idea to start taking a supplements or vitamins or something but I’ve no idea where to start. I thought maybe you could give me some advice on what to take and how much.. or what you do to get all the nutrients with little spare time.

- Submitted by Embrose

Hey Embrose! It can be tough eating vegan on a limited time budget. Here this past week, we’ve been on the post-vacay lag and eating practically nothing but grilled ‘cheeses’ (cheddar Daiya, yum!). Thankfully we mustered up the energy the other night to make a jumbo chickpea ‘tuna’ salad with tons of celery and onions to throw into tortilla wraps for quick snacks and lunches. We’ve practically been surviving off it for the past few days!

If you plan ahead when grocery shopping, there are tons of vegan friendly pre-make meals like this that can help you eat healthy while still fitting within your busy schedule. If you allot some of your time one evening off in the kitchen, you’ll have delicious munchies for the next few days and won’t have to go through the stress of feeding a tired, hungry body.

Some great pre-make meals for the week and some of the essential nutrients they’re high in;

  • A big healthy salad with kale and/or spinach sprinkled with sunflower seeds (Calcium, Iron, Protein, Folic Acid..)
  • A vegan chili loaded with veggies and beans (Protein, Iron, Calcium, Fibre..)
  • A hearty stew with root vegetables like carrots, parsnips, and yams (Fibre, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Potassium, Magnesium…)
  • Eggplant lasagna with cauliflower, broccoli, and a tomato based sauce (Fibre, Magnesium, Potassium, Folate, Vitamin C, Vitamin K..)
  • Cold pasta salad loaded with cherry tomatoes, garlic, bell peppers, onion (Vitamin E, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, Vitamin A..)
  • A build-your-own pita station with sprouts or spinach, tomatoes, onion, bell peppers, carrots, and whatever other veggies you enjoy (Vitamin E, Fibre, Vitamin C, Vitamin A…)

As you can see, simply by eating meals loaded with fresh ingredients you’re providing your body with a cocktail of nutrients vital to healthy function. Simply eat well consistently and you’ll have to worry less about which vegetable is high in what, and which vegetable you need to eat 4 and a half cups of to meet the day’s goal.

That being said – there are a few key nutrients that vegans do need to keep a watchful eye on. Calcium, Iron, Folic Acid, and B12. A great way, like above – is to add foods rich in these minerals to your diet. By eliminating animal products from our diets we’ve removed a large ‘source’ of these vitamins, and we must be sure to provide adequate alternatives.

[Read more...]

(Part 3) TRIP REPORT: A Blue-Haired, Vegan in Vegas!

April 12, 2012 Leave a Comment

Filed Under: My Offline Life, On The Town

Firstly, if you haven’t already read Part 1 and Part 2, you should head over and catch up. I hate to say it, but the last two days of our Vegas Vacation paled in comparison to our first few, at least in eventful worthy happenings that need narrating. I’m going to start this post a little differently than the other two, with a LIST OF THINGS I LEARNED IN VEGAS.

LIST OF THINGS I LEARNED IN VEGAS:

  • Despite being the city that never sleeps, most places do in fact close. Of course, our dimension’s rules of space time do not apply to casinos, but cocktail lounges do have last calls, and stores do have anti-theft gates.
  • Las Vegas is very much a family destination, despite the public drunkenness and escort ‘promoters’ literally littering the streets. Expect to be tip-toeing around minors until the sun goes down.
  • Always carry 1s and 5s. This city runs on tips (whether hard earned or not).
  • Don’t make eye contact with ANYONE in the hallways of the Fashion Show Mall. Don’t stop, linger, or act confused/lost. Do any of these and prepare to be whisked away to a land of free trials, samples, and subscription purchases.
  • Befriend other tourists and every cab driver you ride with. They will teach you steals, deals, and secret spots in the city.
  • Prepare for the lucidity of how much alcohol you actually drank, and where all of your money went.
  • Take care of yourself in the mornings; bathe, hydrate, eat, relax.. and you may just survive a whole week in Vegas.
  • You will see strange things and people. Don’t think too much about the absurdity, have a laugh and carry on your way.
  • Make a list of 10 things you must do on your vacation and then cross out five of them.
  • The slot machines don’t owe you anything. But-perhaps another visit from the cocktail waitress.
  • You will not need sleep in Vegas. You will, however, pay for it when you return.
  • Prepare for at least 30 minutes of unaccounted time if anyone in your group needs to use the washroom when touring the strip.
  • All those pajamas you packed? Yeah, you’ll be lucky if you use them.

[Read more...]

(Part 2) TRIP REPORT: A Blue-Haired, Vegan in Vegas!

April 11, 2012 2 Comments

Filed Under: My Offline Life, On The Town

(Read Part 1 first, silly!) Typically, I get pretty bad hangovers. I’m not talking headache and endless-quest-for-greasy-food hangovers;  I’m talking barf-factory, day-of-silence hangovers. But, I did good in Vegas. I think I did so well for several reasons. Firstly, at home we typically get drunk at night – so the goal is get drunk super-hard and super-fast, and then find your bed. But in Vegas, we just drank continually all day. Combine that with all of the walking and eating, and your left with a nice, mellow drunk. Vegas would also be the first time I regularly wore my new contact lenses. I think knowing I had to be coherent enough to pop them out every night also gave me the presence of mind to chug half of a litre of water before going to bed.

It is also the right time in this tale to tell you of Jon’s (the boyfriend’s), Great Keepsake he had been planning. I call it a scrapbook, but he doesn’t like my girly annotations on his manly project. He even brought white glue and a paintbrush along with us (which clearly never saw outside of the suitcase). His plan was to collect as many of those iconic escort cards on the strip as we could along our trip, and then turn them into a huge ‘scrapbook’ of Vegas. So- everywhere we walked, Jon happily snatched snatches out of the palms of those offering. I would get a few surprised looks from passers by- She’s letting him whaa-? Whenever there would be a large group of cardguys, they would swarm around him, trying to hand him piles of the same card. By the end of the trip, we had a overloaded a whole mansatchel. It dawned on me the embarrassment should airport security unzip his carry-on to a waterfall of slightly starred out nipples, and 89 dollara-night specials. By the end of the vacation, we found ourselves waving ‘no thanks’ to the excited card carriers, seemingly already aware of Jon, The Card Collector.

[Read more...]

(Part 1) TRIP REPORT: A Blue-Haired, Vegan in Vegas!

April 10, 2012 2 Comments

Filed Under: My Offline Life, On The Town

To start – this was my first time in Vegas. This would also be my boyfriend’s and my first real vacation together. We’ve been dating for five years, so it came largely overdue. This vacation also would be the first time I would be legally able to drink in the US, as the last time I visited was Florida, and I was only 19. And, as young starving artists, this trip came as a large gift from my parents – to help me out of a hurdle in my life and to celebrate a large anniversary or momentous occasion, what have you. (Without their gift this splurge-worthy vacation would have been a Motel 6 walking tour of where to get mugged.) This year marks my 5 year remission date of a very rare and difficult cancer battle that I was lucky to survive. And to celebrate this ‘anniversary’ and my continued good health, I thought what better a place to celebrate then the city of luck!

[Read more...]

VEGAS BOUND!

April 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

Filed Under: My Offline Life, On The Town

I’m off to Las Vegas tonight! I’ll be gone for one whole week, but you can still keep yourself busy by following me on Twitter and Instagram for pictures and updates! I’m paying some crazy resort fee which includes internet access, so you better believe there will be drunk pictures alll over the internet by the time I’m done.

I’ll post a trip report here with all the good details when I get back!

Smell ya later!

- Kimmi

[ASK KKZ] I VANT.. Blood Red Hair

March 30, 2012 Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Advice, Hair, Hair Q's, The Wonderful World of Hair Dye

My question is, I dyed my hair black about 4 months ago, and it has faded to a dark brown. I am wanting to use the Loreal Hi Color Highlights in RED over my whole head. But the reviews I have been reading say it really doesn’t go over dyed dark hair. So I am wanting to lighten the dark parts a few shades lighter so the red dye will show. My natural color is like between a dark blonde and really really really light brown, so I don’t need to bleach my roots at all. But will this work if I use just the bleach-shampoo mixture, because I don’t need to go blonde, I just need to get to a dark blonde, light brown kinda shade. I’m hoping that your still replying to this post because I am getting ready to purchase everything tomorrow, and I need to know If I should do this before I put the dye in my hair. I ‘m wanting a really bright red color, not like crayola red but a bright blood red kinda. more of an orange based red, not pink based red is what i’m trying to say. Thanks a lot.

- Submitted by Amanda.

Great question Amanda! I get a lot of faux red-head queries, so I always love answering these questions, as I can usually cover several different q’s in my inbox at once.

On to your question!

I don’t have any experience with that particular hilighting kit, so I’m not sure what results it will have for you. I do know that red is a finicky color, and if you are looking to achieve a bright, true hue- you’ll definitely need to bleach first. The lighter the better. Think of colored dyes as colored cellophane or cling wrap. They go on as a wash. The tone of the color underneath WILL show through.  So if you try to put red over brown.. you’re going to get auburn. If you put red over white-blonde, you’ll get red. You’ll want to remove as much of the pigment of your natural hair as possible, as the more color present underneath the dye, the more muddy the result.

I would recommend a full strength bleaching and picking up a semi-permanent dye like Manic Panic’s Vampire Red instead, because then you’ll get your true red color. Vampire Red is a nice deep red, so even with white-blonde hair you’ll get that deep, rich, ‘bloody’ effect. I think the hi-lighting kit IS meant for natural hair, but I don’t expect the results to have all that ‘pop’ of a semi-permanent dye.

P.S- I know vampire red doesn’t particularly conjure up images of The Little Mermaid, but it’s my blog and I happen to think Ariel is the bomb. THE BOMB.

Good luck!

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »