Friday, April 4, 2008

Summer Wedding Colors

One has to be careful when dressing up for the somber dark winters. But summer dressing, that too for a wedding, can be fun! The monotony of the landscape during winters is broken with the onset of summertime. You can see the sun shining in varied shades of orange at different points of the day and vibrant flowers in full bloom. Everything looks just so fresh and inviting. So let your summer wedding colors be a representation of all the season has to offer. In other words, the choice of colors for summer wedding is endless.

Ideas for Summer Wedding Colors
When you think of summer wedding colors, think of bright hues. Since everything is a riot of colors during summertime, you can feel free to choose any hue. Yellows, purples, bright pinks and bright blues are some popular summer wedding colors. They work fine for everything right from the décor to flowers to trousseau.

Though more suitable for springtime, you can consider using pastel hues for delicate touches in a wedding. Pastel colors may not be quite appropriate for the dresses of bridesmaid during summer wedding, but these can definitely be used in invitations and other such subtle accents.

The brightly shining sun is the first thing most people will associate with summer. As such, yellow can be used in combination with gold or orange with white to get a lovely, fresh feel.

A combination of gold with lavender is apt for creating a bright, merry atmosphere in summer weddings. You can add magenta in economical amounts to this particular color scheme to pep things up further. A good idea will be to make the bridesmaid wear dresses in different colors of this summer wedding color scheme.

Teal is one hue which can bring out the best in a summer wedding. Flux this hue with silver and white for a cool, stimulating color scheme. Tulips and other flowers can be died teal to match dresses and other decorations.
Red and pink blend with one another quite well. Employ different shades of both colors to create a really romantic atmosphere during a summer wedding. Use reds and pinks in lights, candles, etc.

Shag Hairstyles

All the fashionistas, who dare to experiment and believe in keeping in sync with the pulsating upbeat fashion fundas, should opt for the inimitable shag hairstyle. The latest and trendiest hairstyle in the market, shag haircut is suitable for all hair types, except for very thin or thick hair. The ‘out of the bed’ look given by the haircut is highly manageable and intriguing, giving a boost to your carefree attitude. For inspiration and example, consider the hot and fiery look donned by Meg Ryan, owing to her shag hairstyle. So, to flaunt that style icon look, go for the short and medium shag hairstyle and get ready to rock!

Short Shag Hairstyle
A short hairstyle is the wackiest, yet trendy look to be donned. While applying shag hairstyle to short hair, there are more layers cut at the crown of the head rather at the bottom. Keeping the length intact, the shag hairstyle gives a lot of volume to the overall hair. As the hair near the ear are not trimmed, one can easily tuck them behind. However, to make the look more manageable and humane, it is ensured that the farthest layer from the crown is the longest. This provides sleekness and free flow to the hairstyle.

Moreover, to tame this wild look, it can be customized as per your own distinct personality and persona. This includes the amount of layers to be given in your hair, which is quite dependent on the type of hair you have and the shape of your face. To enhance the look, you can get the hair strands on different levels rolled out. This will give you an untamed and jazzy appearance. For adding zing to the overall arrangement, one can even use hair color to highlight the hairstyle.

Medium Shag Hairstyle
Those with medium length hair can opt for this sassy haircut. Though this does not work very well for too curly or frizzy hair, it can be still applied to suit your requirements. For medium hair, there are levels both in the front as well as the back. The ends can be both uneven and tapered or uniformly covering the face, depending upon the look you want to wear. For a messy yet sexy look, those with straight hair can get their hair slightly waved and leave people entangled in charisma. The greatest advantage of this haircut is that it even looks good if the hair length is overgrown.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

'I kissed lots of toads before I found my prince': Trisha Goddard's final memoir reveals how she FINALLY found her Mr Right


When I look back over my love life, one thing I know for sure - you have to kiss an awful lot of toads before you find Prince Charming!
It seems incredible to me now that, for so long, I had such desperately unhappy relationships with men. My first husband was a control freak from whom I was lucky not to have caught Aids; the second cheated on me with one of my staff and I ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Even before them, the first man I lived with and thought I loved had a dark side. He was good-looking and funny. When we first met his chat-up line was: "I'm not gay, me. I can **** all night." I almost passed out with shock. It was direct, and he wasn't lying.
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New start: Trisha and Peter on their wedding day with her daughters Madi and BillieRead more...
Man escapes jail in domestic abuse case after using video of ex-partner on Trisha chat show to prove she was violent 'My husband cheated on me as our daughter fought for her life' - Trisha Goddard on the marriage crisis that very nearly destroyed her
But he was so jealous he beat up any other man who dared look at me, even a friend of mine who just put his hand on my shoulder at a party.
He squared up, screaming like a madman. Then he turned his fists on me. He hit me in public, he hit me at home, and then would blub and say he was sorry and beg me to forgive him. And I did.
I kept on putting up with his violence, believing his promises, hoping he would change, and stayed with him when I should have left.
Finally I did. He had some friends round one night while I was in bed trying to sleep and I went down in my nightie and asked them to keep the noise down. He came at me, fists flying and literally frothing at the mouth.
His mates intervened and managed to pull him off me. As they held him down, one of them said: "Get out, Trisha, get out!" I took his advice, slid the window open and jumped.
The video player followed as my "boyfriend" pushed off his mates and hurled it after me. Luckily, it smashed into the ground and not into me. Still wearing my nightie, I ran to my car, drove away and never went back.
I'm still amazed I stayed so long. I went home to a violent man every night for several years, and in the long run I'm wiser for it. But I wish I'd been wiser at the time.
Now, when I think of all I went through in my life, I feel like I'm talking about another person. Don't get me wrong, though. I don't sit around thinking, poor little me who suffered at the hands of all those bastard men! Rather I think I got the relationships I deserved at the time.
I might not have beaten anyone, I might not have tried to change and control others and I was always faithful, but - as I said right at the very beginning of this series - I was damaged goods as a result of my childhood. And people who are damaged tend to attract partners who are damaged, too.
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Trisha says Peter is the only person she's every really married and that she took her vows 'in spirit, soul and mind'
From a young age, I'd shut myself off from people, afraid to let anyone in. If they couldn't get to me, I couldn't be hurt. I learned to be fiercely self-dependent. I never leaned on anyone, financially or emotionally, and I didn't expect any of the men in my life to lean on me.
What I missed out on as a result was what I needed most - love.
All this became clear to me in the therapy I received after my nervous breakdown, following the break-up of my second marriage. I realised I had to change. It was time for a new me.
When I left hospital, closed down my television production company and told my unfaithful husband to leave, for the first time in my life I had the chance to take stock and focus on myself.
But this new life was scary. I was living in Australia, thousands of miles from my family, a single mother with two small daughters and no job, and I was slowly on the mend from a lot of pain. Money was a real worry, too, especially after the highly-paid work I'd been used to.
My girls were my salvation. I'd put Billie in my giant running stroller and Madi in a baby back-pack and I'd power-walk the three of us round the neighbourhood for miles and miles.
We'd sing "We are the Goddard Girls" at the tops of our voices. The walking also lifted my mood in a way that no medication ever could.
But I had a social life, too, when Billie and Madi were with their father (my ex). In my late 30s, I did what I had been too busy with my career to do in my teens and 20s - I partied!
I met some great men, and what was special about them was that none of them wanted anything from me. They weren't needy or possessive. They were fun.
First was James, one of a set of wealthy, bad boys I went clubbing with.
They were heavily into Ecstasy, and eventually I tried some. I have to admit it made me feel "loved up" in a way I'd never been before.
I felt great. And I kept on with it, until I realised the low that inevitably followed the high of the night out on pills just wasn't doing me any good.
James was a gorgeous, kind but messed-up man, and we were in love in the way that great friends can be. He never judged me, and he never tried to change me, and he wasn't a pain in the butt. Both of us knew we weren't going to last for ever - and that's what made things work between us.
At the same time I became mates with a guy called Andrew, an amazingly perceptive man who had been through very similar mental-health experiences to me.
He was a posh boy, too, but, unlike James, he was confused about his sexuality. He was gay but not entirely comfortable with it.
But through him I met types of people who were worlds apart from anything I was familiar with. He took me to gay clubs where we hung out with a "non-specific-gender" crowd - strange-looking people with no hair, no eyebrows, dressed in gothic rags and big clumpy shoes.
I couldn't tell the girls from the boys. They weren't gay or straight.
I got to know many of them and our nights often ended with us all sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking about their lives and their problems.
Some were rent boys, others drag queens. Yet all were fascinating, decent people who had adopted a certain way of life in order to survive.
It got to the point where I would turn up and they would all say, "Oh, it's Trisha, I wonder what we'll end up debating tonight."
In some strange way, I must have been preparing myself for the work I would do years later on the Trisha show.
I loved my new-found freedom. I wasn't "black", I wasn't a "single mum", wasn't "her off the telly" and pestered for autographs, I wasn't a "nutter" who'd had a breakdown. I was just me, and it felt wonderful.
The next guy was Steve, British with a cut-glass accent. We met through a mental health awareness project I was involved in. He was going through a divorce, too, and we had a fine old time bitching about our exes.
Emotionally we just clicked, and we had a fling. He was great for me. He was a gentleman. But I wasn't ready to commit to anyone.
Then my daughter Billie set me up with John, the father of a friend of hers. The friend told Billie she didn't have a mummy, and Billie said she didn't have a daddy, so they thought it was the perfect solution.
John was an airline pilot, attractive, kind, charismatic and clever, and we ended up pretty serious about each other. He was a proper grown-up, and a complete contrast to the men I'd spent most of my life with.
At this point I was seeing James, Steve, and John all at the same time (plus another guy called Chris, who was really just there for decoration).
They knew about each other, and didn't seem to mind.
Each was passionate about life in his own way. All of them opened my eyes to the fact that there are men in the world who care whether a woman enjoys herself or not.
John ended up taking priority, and we were together for about a year. But eventually it went wrong. Though I loved him, he wanted more commitment than I still felt able to give to anyone.
I wasn't distraught after it finished. I realised just what a positive period I'd had with all those guys. I'd done what I should have done in my teens. I'd learned a ton of things about men, and discovered they can be wonderful creatures after all.
And, do you know, at that point I remember thinking that I didn't care if I never had another relationship. I'd got my girls, I'd got my health (just about!), and that was all that mattered.
The usual angst that bedevilled my thinking - that I was a single mother, that I'd never make it on my own, that I would go bankrupt, that I was a bad person - all that had disappeared. I was at peace.
Naturally enough, a couple of months later, I found myself dating the man who would become the love of my life.
The first time I met Peter Gianfrancesco was when he was applying for a senior government job in mental health. Because of my long involvement as a governmental mental health adviser, I was on the interview board.
The plans he put forward to help sufferers were new and exciting. So was he! He was dark, brooding and intelligent, and, as I told the board when they asked my opinion, I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating biscuits!
It was me who asked him out, the first time I'd ever done such a thing. I was asked to bring someone along to a do to promote mental-health issues in the media, and he sprang to mind.
I asked six mates if I should ask Peter. Three said yes, three said no, so eventually I just went for it.
The evening went amazingly. Peter was incredible with the celebs invited along, and afterwards he drove me to a cafe where we drank all night - coffee for him and peppermint tea for me. We talked and talked until it got light. Then he drove me home. The girls were away, so I asked him in.
He was nervous, sweet and natural and I adored him from the word go. I was comfortable with him. He was very moral, very male, but not frightened of his feminine side. And I realised all this on the first night! I wanted to see more of this man.
About six weeks later, I introduced him to the girls as a friend of mine, and they all got on famously. He didn't talk down to them, but treated them as equals.
I watched how he was with them very carefully but he was all the things I could wish a man to be for my daughters. He was tender with them but also solid, a brilliant father-figure.
The night he told me he loved me was the most romantic of my life. I arrived at his house for dinner and the front door was slightly open. Inside it was dark. On the floor there was a candle burning beside a red rose and a piece of parchment, charred around the edges.
On it was written "When I look at you ...". I walked along the corridor to find another candle, another red rose, another piece of parchment, "... my heart stops".
I moved to the next candle. "In your eyes I can see the future..." Eventually I arrived at the last candle, on a table set for two. I sat down and read: "I love you", just as Peter stepped out from the darkness.
I was overwhelmed. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me in my 39 years on this planet. But I didn't tell him I loved him because the old impetuous Trisha was gone. This was serious. I needed time to think.
Yes, I was in love with him and I knew it was a love that could only grow over time. But because of all I'd been through with men, it was not easy to throw my caution aside and accept how much I felt for him.
He asked me to marry him but I told him I needed the girls to agree first, and Billie wasn't keen. She liked Peter but wanted it to be "just us" - her, her sister and her mother.
I could understand that, so I told Peter he'd have to wait.
A few months later, he asked again, on bended knee at twilight in the Sydney botanical gardens. I knew Peter was right for me, and in the months since he had first proposed, Billie had come round to the idea. This time I said yes.
I took him to England to meet Mum and Dad. They liked him, but, more to the point, they respected him. Peter is the only man I've ever been with who my father hasn't referred to as a "boy".
He witnessed my family at their worst as a spectacular screaming match broke out between Mum, Dad and one of my sisters. A chair was wielded in the air. But the amazing thing was that Peter did something about it.
He took Mum aside and told her in no uncertain terms that he didn't want to be around arguments, and he didn't want Billie and Madi to be subjected to them either. He wasn't nasty. He was firm and polite. I'd never heard Mum apologise to me in my life, but she did that day.
We chose to get married in Italy. My two previous weddings were such dismal events I can hardly think of them as weddings at all.
To my mind, Peter is the only person I've ever really married. He's the only man I've ever stood at the altar with for the right reason - love.
I was married in spirit, soul and mind, and I thought my life couldn't get any better. And then it did.
Anglia Television had seen tapes of my work in Australia and invited me to England to host a new show.
But the "new me" was cautious. I wasn't going to let work come between me and my man, as it had done so often in the past. I was ready to turn down the chance.
"But, Trisha," Peter said when I told him, "what an opportunity! Go for it and I will be right there behind you. This is your time."
And that is precisely what it has been. Since I married Peter and started the Trisha show in 1998, it's as if my life has been blessed. My career has blossomed, yes, but the happiness I have experienced and the love I have been surrounded by are a million miles away from anything that came before.
I have watched my girls grow into strong, confident young ladies. As for Peter - who came to England with us and works for a mental health charity - well, he is the absolute icing on the cake.
People expect a lot of happiness from life, but if you think everything is going to be great all the time, then you're setting yourself up for a fall. As the saying goes, s**t happens, and I've been through a fair amount.
Some people have been through more than me, some less. But in the end it's the way you deal with it that counts. I believe that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and, when I look back on my life, I wouldn't change a thing.
If I hadn't gone through all those awful relationships, if I hadn't hit rock bottom and bounced back, I wouldn't be the person I am today. As it is, I've arrived at a point in my journey where I'm finally happy as I am.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

How To Cut Bangs

Don’t you just love to see those gorgeous bangs forming that perfect frame for your face? But it is about time you got those trimmed and leveled since they have been growing haphazardly. At the same time, you feel too lazy to go to the salon and also want to know how creative can you be with your hair. Experimenting with your hair can be fun, provided you are cautious and careful about it. If you want to try it out yourself, check out this information on how to cut your own bangs. How to Cut Hair Bangs Yourself You must have the perfect tools for cutting or trimming your hair. This means a sharp pair of professional scissors and a styling comb is a must. Don’t try to cut your hair with craft scissors or paper scissors since they don’t snip off hair properly. Shampoo your hair and let it dry naturally. Don’t snip off wet bangs as they may turn out to be shorter when they dry up. Comb your hair as you would normally. Don’t change the direction of the bangs and better to keep them straight on your forehead. Gather the front bangs and make sure you have separated them from the rest of the hair. You may tie up rest of your hair in a pony to make sure they stay out of way. Take a small section and press it between your index finger and middle finger, shaped like scissors. Pull the hair straight and keep it away from your face so that you can see them. Take the scissors and start to trim in upward snips. Keep doing it till all the bangs are neatly trimmed. Make sure you start by cutting a small amount of hair so that even if something goes wrong, it can be blended by cutting off a slightly more amount. Be careful with your hands as sharp scissors may hurt badly if it accidentally snips the skin.

Natural Make Up For Your Wedding

Would you not want to look like a princess on your wedding day? After all, it is your wedding and it comes once in a lifetime! Among all the people, the entire attention will be on you and you will be stealing all the limelight. It therefore indicates that no matter what, you cannot afford to look like a Plain Jane on your wedding. At the same time, too much make-up can make you look garish and the hot topic being discussed in your marriage could be your over-the-top look. However, there is a way to strike a balance between the two by choosing for natural make-up for your wedding. Read on useful information regarding the know-how of natural make-up for a marriage. EyesAvoid any harsh lines or too much eye liner and Kajal. Your eyes can be lined according to the color of dress you will be wearing. Opt for black, grey or even brown and make sure to smoothen it out. The eye shadow is best used according to your dress and your skin tone. Warm tones like copper, chestnut brown, peaches, pink browns, etc. work the best. Avoid greens, blues or garish pinks and violets. Use generous doses of mascara to add volume to your eyes. LipsExfoliate with a soft toothbrush and Vaseline. Avoid applying foundation on the lips as they get damaged. Use some moisturizer on and around the lips and then apply a warm tone of lipstick, mostly in browns, red browns or light pinks. For the pout, dab a hint of lip gloss on the center of your lips and press them together so that it spreads. Never apply the lip gloss all over the lips and don’t line your lips with a harsh lip pencil. It will look as though someone drew it on your face. CheeksMore than your cheeks, it is the cheek bone that needs to be accentuated. Instead of shimmery blush, go for a matt look. These days, you even get liquid blush that can be applied in an upward motion starting from the apple of the cheeks to the high end of the cheek bone. It is then blended softly with finger tips. Avoid bright pinks or dark browns and stick with pale bronze or copper for a dusky complexion and pale pinks for fairer complexions. Tips:Wash your face thoroughly using a mild soap or a face-wash. If your skin is flaky or threatens to break-out, use a good scrub like apricot scrub to remove any blackheads or whiteheads. Apply water based moisturizer and let it set in for 15-20 minutes before you start applying make-up. Apply little foundation, enough to even out the skin tone or hide blemishes and if you have dark circles, use a hint of concealer to blend it with the skin tone. Have a trial make-up session done two weeks before your wedding. Take a digital camera and shoot pictures of yourself to get a fair idea as to how you would look on that day. Get a good night’s sleep before your wedding, even though you may be under a lot of stress. You cannot afford to look dull or washed out on your wedding. Get your eye-brows plucked and hair waxed at least 4-5 days prior to the wedding. If you have an allergic reaction, you would have the time to cool it down.