Living Blossoms

+ I finally got my hair trimmed today! Unfortunately, it's not as short as I wanted. I'm so bad at telling hair lengths when my hair is wet. I may well try to find a time to go back and have the stylist shorten it a bit, but her hours are basically only weekday mornings, so I'd have to have Mom watch Elijah again. At least it's much better than it was before I went in.

+ After my haircut we went to Target where I got another of these hampers. I got one a few months ago and love it as much as a person could love a laundry hamper. It holds about two loads' worth, takes up very little floor space, is easy to carry, it's sturdy and strong, and you can fold it away if you're not using it. Taking up less floor space will be very useful for Elijah's tiny closet. Anyway, I love it so much I convinced my mom to buy one and then finally went on the Target website and wrote a rave review. Also - Target has a lot of really cute boots in stores. I need to go back and try some on. The one pair of boots I own that actually fit my nonexistent calves is from Target.

+ On the way home we went to Dunkin' Donuts for lunch. Hehe. Elijah had his first donut - can you believe it's taken this long with me as his mother? - and he loved it. It was chocolate frosted with rainbow sprinkles, and he ate the chocolate part first by putting his nose in the hole. He had rainbow sprinkles all over his face because of it. LOL!

+ Isaac's 30th birthday is on October 2nd and I really want to do something fun for it, but he's too busy to really think about it. I suggested an '80s costume party, since you can buy '80s stuff at thrift stores AND regular stores right now, but he was meh on the idea. Too bad, 'cause I think he and I could be a cute Maverick & Charlie from Top Gun.  ;o)  Any other suggestions for ways to celebrate?

+ Speaking of costumes, Isaac and I separately came up with the idea of dressing like the A-Team for Halloween. We had repeatedly joked about dressing 'Lijah up as Mr. T, and somehow that spurred us both into thinking of doing a whole A-Team thing. He would be Hannibal because he's old (my reasoning) and definitely has a mastermind thing going on (his reasoning). I would be Face because, well, my love for Face has gone on since I was a kid. When my brothers and I played A-Team, I was always Face. And we think Seth would be a great Murdock. So we'll see. I'm sure dressing E. as B.A. would stir the pot less than my other costume idea: dressing him like George W. Bush. *evil grin*

+ In other amusing bad parenting news, someone at church gave Elijah a stuffed camel and I promptly named it Joe. It amuses us greatly even though we're totally anti-smoking. And 'Lijah is scared to death of my slingshot monkey. I may just use it the next time he throws a doozy of a tantrum...  ;o)

When I did my 25 Random Things About Me the other day, the random thing that got the most comments was:

17. I haven't brushed my hair or used shampoo in it for more than 4 years now.

I guess it's been so long since I stopped doing those things that I kind of forgot that many of my friends don't know that.


In the fall of 2004 I discovered an online community for Christian girls with curly hair. My hair was quite long at that time and was far better-looking than any previous time I'd had it long because I didn't even own a hairbrush, but it was still a little frizzy and I had a flaky scalp. The online community was based on the book Curly Girls by Lorraine Massey, which challenged everyone, but especially wavy and curly girls, to stop using shampoo and stop brushing your hair. Shampoo has a lot of chemicals that strip your scalp and hair of its natural moisture, causing frizz. I probably would've thought it was crazy to stop using shampoo if I hadn't befriended several of the girls in the community who hadn't used shampoo for months and had beautiful - clean - hair. The book suggests that curly girls just wash with conditioner. This works for most of my friends, but even after the shampoo detox period (usually 2-3 weeks, as your scalp gets used to not having its natural moisture stripped away each day), my hair was not getting un-oily. So I took some suggestions and I tried a baking soda rinse and an apple cider vinegar (ACV) rinse. Hallelujah! My hair was totally clean and healthy, and - bonus! - the acid in the ACV helps get rid of flakes! It also makes it so I have to wash my hair less frequently (every other day or two days in between), and I don't have any split ends. (I used to have a ton of those when I was a teen.) I remember how amused Isaac was that I was putting food in my hair. LOL. Since then, that is all I've used. I do use some organic (because it doesn't have the "evil" ingredients) shampoo when I travel, for convenience sake, but I really dislike it because my hair has to be washed more frequently and the flakes come back.

So. Here's my hair care recipe routine. I'm sure it would work for anyone else with any hair type.
1) Mix 1 Tbsp baking soda with 1 Cup hot/warm water. (I keep the ingredients and measuring tools in my bathroom.) Stir it up in a cup or something, and pour it in your scalp. Massage it in with the pads of your fingers, and then rinse it out thoroughly. (You could make a large batch of both rinses and keep them in, say, a 2 liter bottle, and that would save you time when you shower. I've just never bothered with that.)
2) Mix 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar with 1 Cup warm/cold water in a different cup or whatever. Pour it on your scalp, massage it in with the pads of your fingers, and let it sit for a few minutes (while you shave or wash your face, etc.). Then rinse it out thoroughly. Your hair will not smell like ACV; it will smell like whatever conditioner you follow with.
3) Put conditioner on the canopy (top part) of your hair. Then get a bunch of it on your fingers and comb through your hair with your fingers. This is how you detangle, if necessary. Let me tell you - I go to the beach often, drive on the highway in Isaac's convertible with the top down, and had my hair teased like crazy yesterday, and every single time I have been able to get all the tangles out by just using conditioner and finger-combing. Normally I don't have very many tangles in my hair at all, though, despite not even owning a brush or comb.
4) Gently dry your hair by scrunching and/or blotting with a towel.
5) Use a bit of gel or mousse and scrunch it into your hair. Then air dry or blow dry with a diffuser. (My hair is always the shiniest and least frizzy when I air dry, so I nearly always do that.)

Oh yeah, and if you have any wave in your hair at all, layers are your friend.

And that's it! I am more in love with this method than ever after my photo shoot yesterday in which my hair was teased (tangled) into 3 different, big hairdos and sprayed with enough hairspray to make a long-lasting homemade flame thrower. After finger-combing with lots of conditioner and doubling the ACV, my hair is back to its normal, shiny, defined-curls self. No extremely drying clarifying shampoo necessary.

If you have any questions, just ask!