Review | AVON- Argan Hair Products

Salaam,

I did a mini haul/review in February for some Moroccan Argan oil products I bought from AVON (which you can read about here http://www.ihijabi.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/haulreview-feb-2013.html)

So I've been using it for about a month and thought I'd do a follow up on those products.

When I first used it, I could see and feel the difference in my hair. It was really soft to touch and wasn't as frizzy as it used to be when I had washed it before with other products. I really like the products and would recommend them for people who don't like using heat on their hair to tame slight frizzyness, these products really make your hair feel healthy.

After using it for a while, I felt that sometimes the shampoo/conditioner didn't clean my scalp properly but did clean my hair quite sufficiently, my scalp became greasy after a day of washing my hair but the mid/ends of my hair were fine (I don't wash my hair everyday).

I realised that the actual leave in treatment is what was making my hair feel so soft and healthy rather than the shampoo/conditioner, so I think if you didn't want to buy all the products, you could just go for the leave in treatment and see how that works for you.

I don't think the products make your hair grow more or any thicker but the do make your hair look and feel healthy which is really important to me.

My cousins bought some authentic Argan oil from Morocco when they went on holiday and she said the oil is too thick and smells really strong so she doesn't use it much, the leave in treatment is like an oil when you put it on your hand and it looks a bit thick, but actually when you use it, it's light non-greasy and smells amazing.

I'm still using the products and I would get them again after they're finished. So if you're thinking of getting I'd say go for it, the products are not expensive and are really worth it.

You can buy the products and read the (glowing) reviews from other customers here: http://avonshop.co.uk/shop/search.asp?find_spec=argan

Let me know what you thought of it if you do use it (=

Book Review | Aalia's Hijab Styling Guide

For those of you who are familiar with hijabi youtubers/youtube guru's you might know Aalia also known as Alz786UK founder of princess rockz. She is a sister on youtube who shares her hijab styles as well as vlogs, hauls, cooking and OOTD video's. Recently Aalia published a book called 'Aalia's Hijab Styling Guide' it's a book that she's been working on for over a year and finally I got my hands on a copy to review for all you lovely people (=

The book costs £14.99 (p&p depends on your location so find out before you order), it's a 115 page paper back book in full colour. My first impressions of the book were very good, it's glossy, high quality and well worth it.

It has a vintage look and feel running through it. She signed the first 50 books (I think) and I got a signed copy too =D

So this is her contents page, as you can see she has more than just hijab tutorials in the book  as she's included storage ideas and helpful tips throughout as well as outfit ideas at the end.

In the first section she has pictures and descriptions for things you will need in order to wrap your hijab, when I saw this I thought it would be a great gift for a new Muslimah or someone new to wearing hijab because it really does explain everything clearly and simply.

Each hijab style has Polaroid pictures of Aalia herself (looking lovely as always mashaAllah) showing you how to do the steps, under each picture is a description to explain how its done. What I really liked about this was the bit at the top telling you the level of difficulty, how long it should take and what things you'll need for the style, like a proper recipe you can't really go wrong.

So the book starts off with beginner styles at the beginning of each section, goes on to intermediate and then to advanced which makes it a book for everyone and gives beginners a chance to progress and develop their skills as they go through the book.

My favourite styles were the ones towards the end (party & bridal styles) because the ones at the beginning seemed too easy for me, but as I said they'd be perfect for those who are new to wearing hijab.

Half way through the book you come across some storage ideas where Aalia tells you about different ways you can store your hijab essentials as well as shoes/ jewellery and other girly things. I liked this part of the book, I felt like a kid again going through a picture book lifting the flaps and browsing the pictures.

The book comes with a pull out face shapes guide which has 6 common face shapes with pictures and a description to explain how you can find out if that is your face shape.

The most read post on my blog is the one titled 'hijab styles to suite your face shape' I have had the most comments on that post and even though I wrote it a while ago now I still get inundated with emails from sisters asking me to help them find out which face shape they are and which styles suite them, so this pull out guide is very much in demand. I think it would have been nice if Aalia linked the guide to the styles in the actual book, giving examples as to which styles in the book would suit the face shape in the guide, but I suppose you could try them all out for yourself and then add the styles you think would go with your face shape in the notes section at the end of the guide.

The whole book has a very personal touch to it so it feels like Aalia really is guiding you through the process of wearing hijab, which I think was very sweet and thoughtful, you can really tell how much effort has gone into this book.

Overall I really liked the book and would like to congratulate Aalia for coming up with a much needed book to encourage and inspire sisters to wear hijab. I thought some of the styles were very similar and would have liked to see more of a variety so perhaps in another edition of the styling book Aalia could add different styles as well as styles with different types of hijab like jersey and silk scarves.

I'd recommend this book to younger sisters who are thinking about starting to wear hijab as well as new Muslimah's and those just looking for some inspiration.

Although these types of books might be popular and common in places like Indonesia and Malaysia it's the first of it's kind in the UK and I would love to see more of these types of books pop up in bookstores libraries across the Western world.

For more information about which stores in the UK are stocking these books as well as information about getting your hands on a copy contact Aalia via her facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/aaliahijabstyles?fref=ts

Also check out her Youtube channel for her videos and hijab tutorials:

http://www.youtube.com/alz786uk

If you already have a copy of Aalia's book leave a comment to say what you think...

iHijabi x

Recipe | Chocolate Ganache Cake

I made a chocolate cake a couple of weeks ago, after uploading a picture of it on facebook there were a lot of requests for the recipe so here it is me lovelies....

You will need:

• 250g Stork Butter 
• 250g Caster Sugar
• 230g Self Raising Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 4 Medium Sized Eggs
• Cocoa Powder

For the icing/topping:

• 200ml Double Cream 
• 200g Cooking Chocolate

Unfortunately when I cook I don't always take exact measurements or time it so some of these steps you will have to estimate...

Recipe

1- In a clean bowl put in the 250g of butter (softened) and 250g of sugar, mix it together until it's smooth

2- Add the eggs and mix

3- Slowly add the flour and fold in, add the baking powder and mix so it's completely mixed.

4- Add the cocoa powder (I estimated this one and it does depend on how rich you want it to be) I added roughly 4 or 5 table spoons.

5- Pre-heat your oven & grease your cake tin

6- Pour the mixture into the cake tin and put the tin into the oven

7- I think I turned my oven to about 170 degrees/ gas mark 4 and left it for an hour and 20 minutes roughly. It's quite a big cake so did take longer than I thought.

(to check if the cake is cooked, take a toothpick and pierce it into the cake, if the cake is cooked the toothpick should come out clear, if it's not properly cooked it will come out with mixture on it)

8- You can do this step before starting the cake or while the cake is cooking. In a saucepan add the double cream and cooking chocolate.

9- Heat while stirring continuously so the chocolate doesn't stick to the saucepan.

10- Once the chocolate has melted and has been mixed with the cream take it off the cooker and put in a bowl to cool.

11- Ideally the ganache should be left for a couple of hours in order to thicken up (like in the video in the link below; scroll to 'Technique: Icing a cake with chocolate ganache'), but I was impatient and it was still fairly runny when I used it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/easy_chocolate_cake_31070

12- Once the cake is baked, take it out and leave it to completely cool

13- If your 'ganache' is still quite runny you can pour it on top, however if it has thickened up, use a bread knife or spatula to spread over the cake

14- This cake tastes much better when it's been left overnight. The next day this cake tasted better than it did on the day I made it.

When I first poured the chocolate cream

How it looked the next day

Try it out inshaAllah, hope it's not too hard to follow and apologies for taking so long to post (=

OOTD & Review | Post Graduation Party at Chaudhry's Buffet

I had a graduation party with my family (6 months after I actually finished uni and 2 months after I had my graduation ceremony but hey ho). We all went to chaudhrys buffet restaurant in Edmonton (London) for lunch. It was a big deal for my family (paternal side) because I was the first to graduate out of all my cousins, my parents, uncles and aunts never went to uni so everyone was really excited for me when I graduated.

Restaurant review

Before I show you what I wore I just wanted to do a quick review for the restaurant (which I will e-mail to them). I booked the restaurant beforehand (1 week before) and paid a £50 deposit, I had been there before with a few friends so knew that it wasn't too bad and looked really nice. It's actually a good restaurant, the food is nice (not amazing quality but nice none the less), it's reasonably priced (although it keeps going up) and the decor is really nice, however I wasn't happy with everything.

They charge a lot for drinks (£5 for a jug of cola, which would be less than £2 at the shops), we asked for tap water and by law they were supposed to provide tap water but they told us 'it wasn't their policy', I'd like to see how they can explain how this law doesn't apply to them.

Their waiters were really pervy and this is very shocking for a halal HMC approved restaurant, we were sat with our large family away from the main buffet and when my cousin went to get food one of the waiters made a comment in his strong Asian accent, when she replied 'excuse me?!' he repeated what he said, she walked away in shock and didn't feel comfortable walking back to the buffet to get more food, when my uncle saw the men staring at another one of my cousins as she got her food, he hurried her along. For the professional look of the restaurant we did not expect to receive this kind of behaviour from the staff, which made my female guests feel very uncomfortable.

On their website they have written 'We have provided for an on site car park for our guests to use in order to provide extra convenience. This is also a bonus if you wish to hold your event or private function with us; as then you would have sole use of this facility.' however when I called up they said that they don't have a private car park and there is a council car park that we can use. The council car park is always very busy as it's right outside a private tutoring school and mosque. When we got to the venue and my mum wanted to park the car she did see a private car park and the man at the gate said 'there were no spaces available'. So do they have a car park or not? Again, for a place that prides itself on providing for Muslims (i.e. being halal, on Islam channel etc) I found their dishonesty to be completely unislamic.

Maybe I'm nit picking now but we were told the reason why their prices had gone up was because they had introduced dishes such as steak....was there any steak on the day? No.

I had paid for all of my guests at the beginning but as we were leaving the man at the front desk said that apparently we had 2 extra guests (children) that we did not pay for....I found this highly insulting as he was accusing me of lying, we counted the number of guests again in front of him trying to see if we had made a mistake (if we had, I would have been more than happy to pay), but the fact was we didn't make any mistakes, but again he insisted that he and his staff had counted 2 more children in our party, in the end he said it was ok and let us go but the point is all of this put a downer on the entire day. I hope the restaurant take these points into account in order to improve their service because I would hate to see such a nice restaurant lose business due to things that can be easily changed.

If you would like to check out the restaurant follow this link http://www.chaudhrysrestaurant.com/buffet.htm

OOTD

I got lots of really nice gifts thanks to all my aunts, uncles and cousins. At the end my uncles gave a really nice 'speech' about the importance of education and how proud they are of me, so I'm really glad I stuck through the course and made it through uni, my little cousins made poems and cards and also gave mini speeches to say congratulations and how seeing me get through uni has motivated and inspired them. I was really touched by all the efforts everyone went to (=

So yeah 3 years of 'torture' was well worth it to see the happiness on my family's faces alhamdulillah.