Starting the new year off beautifully...

...now as you've already been informed, I am not what you would call a particularly girly girl. I have my hair up in a bun more often than not, and if I could get away with not wearing makeup all the time, I would. However, I do prefer to be a well groomed individual when it comes to general appearance and cleanliness, and that makes certain things a necessity. If I'm not going to wear makeup or do my hair, I better at least be presentable to go outside without it. It also means that despite being pretty lowkey on the beauty front, I still have certain pet peeves about my looks and a desire to fix them. Some, like the baby hairs around my hairline that refuse to be straight for longer than a day, are really just something I have to live with. Others, like my yellowed adult teeth, I can absolutely change.

See, I had braces for two years, and I ended up with not only yellow teeth, but de-calcified spots on my front teeth too (which for those playing at home are the little white marks on teeth that often appear after wearing braces because you can't actually brush behind the brackets. As a result, I've had yellow teeth with little white marks on them for years, and as far as insecurities go, that's pretty much my one.

I had an appointment today at Adore Salon in Folsom, aka my regular salon and the only ladies I now trust my hair with, to get my teeth whitened. I decided that since I also decided that 2014 is going to be a banner year for me, I need to start it off right. So, after doing some other girly things today, I headed to Folsom to get my teeth fixed once and for all.

First of all, did you know you can't brush your teeth before you get them whitened? You can brush your tongue, but not your teeth. Yuck! To the poor people who had to deal with me prior to my whitening appointment, I'm sorry.

The company who does the teeth whitening is essentially a woman named Karen who used to be an independent contractor with dental offices where she would come in and whiten teeth for their patients. Now, she is working independently. You can check out her website for more information.

The procedure is fairly straight forward. You come in, she checks what level your teeth are at before she whitens them. I was a 20 or 25? Something like that. Anyway, the matching little teeth that she measures your teeth against were the 6th and 7th ones down on the strip when she showed me. You use one of those Crest portable toothbrushes (remember Rip, Slip, Brush, Ahhhh? Same thing) to dry off your teeth, then put vitamin E around your gumline to protect your gums from the peroxide. She gives you a prefilled tray, you place it in your mouth (luckily, her trays have a barrier for your lips so she doesn't have to use cheek separators) and sit for 25 minutes with the tray in your mouth under an LED light.

It's boring, I'm not going to lie to you. But for $49 when dentists charge significantly more, I'm gonna say it's worth it.

Once you're finished, you rinse your mouth out with warm water and put more vitamin E on your gums. Karen checks how white your teeth are after your session to see what kind of progress you made. I went from the 20 or 25 to 10 or 15 so the 4th and 5th little teeth. I'd say that for my first time ever whitening my teeth in 21 years of having teeth, that much progress is pretty solid.

Here's a before and after picture. The before is definitely a little dark. I took it this morning and there wasn't such good lighting.

What do you think? I definitely see an improvement! And not just in the photos. I mean in real life, too. 

Stay tuned for my upcoming posts about my beauty favorites that I want to share with you guys. We'll be talking hair and bodycare favorites. Get excited!!