Runaway October

Okay, so after a 7 month hia­tus, I am back. If you ever want to get com­ments on your blog, just stop blog­ging for a really long time. I hope to be back blog­ging reg­u­larly now. I over­hauled the whole blog, got rid of unnec­es­sary “fea­tures” and setup a new gallery tool. Be sure to check out the pic­tures, by click­ing on the links either above or to the right. I update with pic­tures of the boys reg­u­larly.

New Year by *Sally M*

On another note, 2009 has come to a close. It was a year of ups and downs for us, like I’m sure it was for most other fam­i­lies. We were taken to court by one of my day­care clients, and nice guys always fin­ish last. My hus­band bought me a won­der­ful new home! He also plowed through mas­sive lay­offs at his work and even ended up with a pro­mo­tion. We were sur­prised with an unex­pected preg­nancy and sub­se­quent mis­car­riage. We made new friends, lost fam­ily mem­bers, and all in all I think we weath­ered the storm nicely. We can only hope 2010 is as good… Well, maybe with a lit­tle less of the downs, of course.

As is typ­i­cal for me, I hope that I can use my blog to stick to my New Years res­o­lu­tions, which are pretty typ­i­cal for me, just look at the one’s from years past. But this time I have a whole house to dec­o­rate and make homey. On a bud­get. I also con­vinced Matt to buy this lit­tle pretty for my Christ­mas present…in pink of course.

Cav­allini 2010 Daily Planner

My hope is that I’ll have plenty of space to sched­ule things ahead of time, so that I don’t end up scram­bling the day before a birth­day or 4 weeks before Christ­mas again. My plan is to make Christ­mas presents through­out the year, and maybe setup a cou­ple craft­ing get-togethers. So if any of you are inter­ested in meet­ing to have some good food, a few drinks and make batches of Christ­mas presents with friends, let me know.

I have lots of new recipes to try, crafts to make, sewing to do and I hope to do a bit of can­ning. And by a bit, I mean I think I’ve been bit­ten by a can­ning bug. I found a new source for cheap, fresh pro­duce and home­made jam and jel­lies has never sounded bet­ter. I still need to set up and dec­o­rate my “craft room”. I’m kinda ignor­ing the fact that half of it is sup­posed to be for Matt’s com­puter stuff. We debate over the name of it con­stantly. Matt orig­i­nally named it the S.O.R. — Server Oper­a­tions Room. I’ve decided it’s the Sewing Machine Oper­a­tions Room — S.M.O.R. That’s a  much nicer name, don’t you think?

So those are a few of the things I’ll be work­ing on this year. Wont you join me?

And remem­ber, a blog­ger lives for com­ments. Please don’t be shy. If you drop by, lemme know you were here! To do so, just click on the link below that says “Leave a comment/# of com­ments” and type in what­ever your heart desires.

Thanks for read­ing!

While I was work­ing I could eas­ily spend all day cruis­ing the inter­net, with lim­ited acces­si­bil­ity because of fire­walls and IP block­ers. I spent most of my time perus­ing par­ent­ing forums. My favorite was Mothering.com, which is where I came across the crazy notion that sham­poo was mak­ing my curly hair unruly. They called it No ‘Poo, I called it nuts. While doing some research I came to real­ize that typ­i­cal sham­poo was chock full of chem­i­cals, most that I couldn’t pro­nounce and didn’t want to rub on my head. 

There are a cou­ple of premises behind No ‘Poo. A few are:

• Sham­poo is a deter­gent and lit­er­ally strips your hair of mois­ture, oil and shine, mak­ing it prone to dam­age and break­age.
  
• Curly hair is espe­cially prone to sham­poo dam­age because it is more porous and frag­ile.
  
• Because hair is fre­quently stripped of its nat­ural oils, your scalp goes into hyper­drive. This is why some peo­ple describe their hair as an oil slick.
  

Start with three main ingre­di­ents — Bak­ing Soda, Apple Cider Vine­gar and a good con­di­tioner. When pur­chas­ing a con­di­tioner, read the ingre­di­ents.

• Try to find some­thing that does not have any ‘cones’ — Dime­thicone, Sil­i­cone, etc. These will coat your hair and you’ll end up with a greasy mess.
  
• Avoid min­eral oil, a nasty byprod­uct of gaso­line dis­till­ing. Your body id unable to absorb it, so it will also cre­ate a greasy mess. It also blocks the scalp from releas­ing built up tox­ins and oil. Acne any­one?
  
• Also avoid Sodium Lau­ryl Sul­fate (SLS) and Sodium Lau­reth Sul­fate (SLFS). Known skin irri­tants, SLS and SLFS are com­monly added to sham­poo and other deter­gents as a foam­ing aget. They are cur­rently being ques­tioned regard­ing can­cer and toxic build up in tis­sues.
  
• If you use a gel, use a clear one. You may find that oils work well for you now, such as coconut oil, jojoba oil, apri­cot oil, extra vir­gin olive oil. Some peo­ple like to use alcohol-free Aloe Vera gel.
  

When Declan was born, I was a shower and sham­poo every day kind of girl. I used lots of extras to keep my hair in check. I tried No ‘Poo for about a week before I couldn’t han­dle it. My roots were detox­ing and super greasy and my ends were dry, split and straw like. I had to go in pub­lic like that for 40+ hours a weeks. Eek.

Now that I stay home with the boys, I don’t get out as often and sham­poo­ing has come down to 2 or 3 times a weeks, to save time in the shower. I’m hop­ing that my hair wont have to detox nearly as much this time, and if it does, oh well. I can always wear a hat to the gro­cery store.

I’ll be photo doc­u­ment­ing my jour­ney and post­ing more info as I go. Next Up — No ‘Poo routines.

Here are some No ‘Poo sources:

What is No ‘Poo?

Info: Sham­poo Free

The No ‘Poo Method

The No Sham­poo Alter­na­tive — No Poo

Of Course I Washed My Hair Last Year (I’m Almost Certain)

How to Ditch Shampoo

All about the No ‘Poo Routine

Break the Sham­poo Habit

Treat­ing Your Hair Like a Bath­room Sink

Conditioner-Only Hair Washing

Wise Woman Forum — The No Sham­poo Thread

Moth­er­ing Dot Com­mune — Going No Shampoo

Have you ever con­sid­ered chang­ing up your beauty rou­tine in such a dra­matic way? If so, how or why not?

Have any of you tried No ‘Poo?

Some­times it’s so nice to just wipe a slate clean and start over again.

Last years res­o­lu­tions were hit or miss.

1…) Stop cussing, com­pletely. Neg­a­tive

2…) Smile more. Kinda sorta, I guess.

3…) Spend more indi­vid­ual time with Declan and treat him like an adult. Yes and no.

4…) Cre­ate and add some items to my Etsy shop. Nope.

5…) Do more craft projects — for myself and with the kids. Yes!

So, once again I’m going to set some res­o­lu­tions and think about them ran­domly throughtout the year and feel bad when I don’t hit them 100%. Yep. Sounds about right.

1.) Stop cussing, com­pletely — How did I end up wih such a potty mouth? While I admit that Declan telling me my ass is too big makes me gig­gle, it’s also quite embarass­ing in public.

2.) Detox­ify the house — This one is dif­fi­cult because my mom buys her own clean­ing prod­ucts and calls me, jok­ingly, a tree­hug­ger for my choices. It’s just so easy to have things build up under the sinks. Thank­fully I clean so infre­quently that it’s not a real issue to toss every­thing. I’m also going to start “No ‘Poo“ing my hair again. I tried before while work­ing but couldn’t han­dle going out in pub­lic dur­ing the really wonky phase. Here’s a great Live­Jour­nal com­mu­nity for it. We have an on again, off again rela­tion­ship with the health­ier beauty prod­ucts, mainly because of finances. I think it might be time to just suck it up and buy what I know is best for the fam­ily — not best for my bank account.

3.) ETSY — Seri­ously, why can’t I get this going? I’ve decided not to do any­more swaps, so maybe that will make it eas­ier? Wih the purc­ahse of a new sewing machine (50% off clear­ance sale) I’m definitly going to com­plete more projects, but I’d like to make a lit­tle extra cash too.

4.) Try to cut back on HFCS and MSG — With that com­bi­na­tion it leaves next to zilch to buy. Thank­fully Matt is on board with me and we’ve both done some research into the issue. Frankly it scares us.

Alright, I think that’s enough bab­bling. And the boys are wait­ing on me to watch a movie.

Thanks for reading!