Garnier Ultimate Blends : The Sleek Restorer with Coconut Oil and Cocoa Butter. Its Gorgeous!

June's blog swap is with the lovely Cindy from Girl With The Skew Earring.  I love Cindy's blog and have been a long-term reader (you'll find her here!).  Looking at her blog archives it seems that she started out just a few months before me, August 2011 to my November 2011, but Cindy's blog, and writing, to me, always had such poise and maturity, along with a good dollop of fun and realism, and I always thought she was an veteran blogger.  You'll also spot that the swap is somewhat late - I've had a full-on 'flu and I've been trying to take things easy, so I managed to persuade the lovely Cindy to have this swap first week in July instead.

Read on for Cindy's post - it's about how she got on with the Garnier Ultimate Blends haircare range (I want to buy them now!), and please go and take a look at my post on her site when you're finished...

Even though Hair Care is one of the last things you would associate the Garnier brand with, they have really hit the nail on the head with their Ultimate Blends ranges.  Shampoos, conditioners, dry shampoos, quick fix masks and hair oils in a range of blends to suit every hair type and so far all the reviews that I have managed to read are all really complimentary.

I am not new to the Garnier Ultimate Blends range, having previously tried The Silky Smoother (with Madagscan Vanilla Milk & Papaya) shampoo and conditioner.  While the results were good with this super yummy smelling range, something was lacking, it just didn’t grab me.  So when it ran, out I reached for the next one down the line: Garnier Ultimate Blends The Sleek Restorer with Coconut Oil and Cocoa Butter.  When I found out that this 250ml bottle was on offer at just €2.50 in my local pharmacy, I didn’t hesitate putting the conditioner into the basket too.

I like that you can get a small size of the bottle.  It’s the perfect size to try out to see if you like it without having to feel guilty about wasting money if you don’t.  Another bonus: it fits in my gym bag quite handily.  Which I like even more because that is where I find I am doing my hair washing these days.  And it doesn’t hurt that it smells exactly like The Body Shop’s Chocomania range: positively edible.

The golden shampoo isn’t too runny, or too thick... It’s just right.  It doesn’t lather as much as you’d expect, and this means that it takes some work to get worked though all of my hair right down into my roots.  But it does rinse out easily without feeling stripped or straw-like and my hair feels properly clean without having to shampoo a second time.  And the shower is filled with the yummy sweet smell of chocolate.  Awesome.

You’d expect this conditioner to be on the thicker side of things, especially as coconut oil and cocoa butter feature high up on the ingredient list.  But it is not.  I actually found  that I did need more than I initially thought I would, my hair is rather long though (past my shoulder blades).  It spreads through the hair really nicely though even if I do need to get an additional splodge out of the tube to ensure the full length of my hair is properly coated in product.  The results are totally worth it though.

With my hair being quite long and very thick (I have a lot of bloody hair too), it takes a flipping age to dry naturally, so I generally just blast most of the water out of it with my hair dryer (or the one at the gym) for a few minutes and twist it up into a bun for the rest of the day.  This usually leaves me with a good bit of frizz and fly-aways galore.  But not anymore, now that I’m using The Sleek Restorer.  I still have a few rouge fly-aways, but nothing like the frizz halo I used to have.  And even those few stubborn hairs are easily tamed with my favourite dry oil from The Body Shop.  By the time evening rolls around and I take my hair out of the bun, it is soft and smooth and shiny and it still smells amazing.  My brush goes through the lengths easily and my hair doesn’t feel coated or weighed down.  I am very impressed and very possessive of my shampoo and conditioner now.

It is safe to say that I am very much in love and may have found my Holy Grail. I can’t wait for pay day to add The Sleek Perfector Oil and the Sleek Restorer 1 Minute Treatment to my collection.  You can find out which Ultimate Blend would suit you on www.garnier.co.uk, or you can just work your way through the ranges until you find the combination you like.