What Mashiki meant was that using showracemenu can break your perks. You can safely use showplasticsurgeonmenu to change your face and showbarbermenu to change your hair.
Go to: \Steam\steamapps\common\fallout new vegas\Data and drop your meshes, textures and esm or esp files in there.
Thanks Ghoulsrpeople2 - What do you mean by "showplasticsurgeonmenu" = where do I find that - is it a function within the game? Thanks for the install info - that is exactly what I was looking for. I think I had an "installer" mod for Fallout 3 and didn't really need to know where to put items lol.
Thanks you all - appreciate the info.