Honey and Oil Hair Treatment

I always oil my hair or do some sort of treatment before I wash it and I thought I would share one of the hair treatments I use that's very simple, easy and effective. 

Hot oil and Honey Hair Treatment 

First, you will need honey and an oil - is this instance I use pure, unrefined coconut, but you can use any hair oil that you prefer.

Combine the honey and oil in a bowl

You'll need to heat the oil - I just microwaved it, but you can double boil it too.  (I also microwaved my honey which will kill some of its peroxide properties which have been known to lighten hair.  I don't mind the lightening, I just prefer to have it more liquid than solid when I'm applying to my hair.) 

Comb your hair

And be a goof 

'Cause it's fun being a goof 

Next, apply the oil to your hair.  If it's during the cold season, wrap your hair in a hot towel to help the oil absorb more.  Keep in mind, you will have honey in your hair so it will be sticky - do not wrap the towel tightly or it will adhere and use one that needs to be washed. 

You should leave the oil in your hair for at least a half an hour.  Take the opportunity to indulge 

Or to take photos of your fish 

And you're done!  Take a shower and wash and condition your hair per normal.  The coconut is a great oil to absorb into your hair and the honey is a humectant, which means it attracts moisture.  If you are going to keep the oil in your hair overnight, I would recommend foregoing the honey because it will get messy.  

I find that in the summer months it's easier to use coconut oil because it stays solid when it's cool out and that makes it harder to apply to your hair, but I have found it to be the best oil.  I'll use olive oil as well, but it doesn't seem to absorb into my hair as well. 

I hope you like, and I'll be sure to post more hair masques and all that jazz. 

Past hip length and a good hair day!

So I took pictures of my hair yesterday because it just looked really good and was behaving extremely well. It also shows off the length nicely.

I'm now at hip length as you can see, and I'm technically past it.  I've been braiding my hair at night instead of the top bun because it lays much more nicely when I do, but it also gives me wave which cuts a bit of length.

(sorry my shirt was flipped up a little in the first photo)

I tried to get decent shots of the back, but I'm not sure if you can see it really well; at least it gives you an idea :)

Woot!  Okay, enough of the silliness.

Quick announcement!

Hello all,

Just as a heads up for all of my readers; I am not splitting my Bible Study Notes into a separate blog called www.proclaimthytruths.blogspot.com

Please feel free to take a look.  Thanks!

Faux Barley Risotto

Time for my first recipe to be listed, woot!  You should know that my husband and I never use recipes....ever. So, when we make something, it typically never conforms to the traditional recipe which first inspired it.  I decided to make a barley dish which turned into a kind of risotto curryish like thing.  Enjoy!  (Also, I hope to be making these more beautiful in the future, but I'm just now starting to learn illustrator so you'll have to bear with me. 

Faux Barley Risotto 

Ingredients: 

Purple Cabbage 

Red Apples 

Green Onions 

Barley 

Bacon 

Chili pepper (optional) 

Brown Sugar 

Cinnamon

Flour

Almond milk

Directions: 

• First thing you're going to need to do is cook your bacon.  We used about three/four strips and the bacon we used in our recipe was bacon we already cooked and had frozen.  Cook till it's done and chop into cubes. 
• After that, set two pans of water to boil; one for your cabbage and one for your barley 
• Preheat a large pan with olive oil (or, if you just cooked your bacon, use the same pan with the bacon grease - yum!).  Thinly slice your green onions and cook for about five minutes. 
• Add thinly sliced apples.  Cook until they have a little bit of give, but don't overcook otherwise they will be too soggy.

• Clean your cabbage and clean about three leaves.  I cut the base off so it's easier to grab the leaves without tearing them to pieces, but it's optional. 
• Once your pots of water begin to boil, add the barley to one and let simmer.  Add your cabbage to the second pot and turn the water off completely.  All you want to do is to soften the cabbage. 
• Take your bacon and add it to the apples and onions.  Once your cabbage is soft, chop it into slices and add to the mixture. 

• At this point, add the brown sugar, cinnamon and chili peppers. You want to add enough to give it a sweet and spicy kick.  
• Once the barley is done add and stir into mixture. 

• When everything has cooked down together for a few minutes, push everything to one side of the pan and add about two tablespoons of flour to the empty part of the pan.  Add about 1/4 a cup of almond milk to the flour and mix until you have a smooth paste.  
• Once the milk and flour have mixed completely together add another cup of almond milk to the paste and mix well.  
• Mix everything together in the pan and cook for a few minutes on very low heat.  You should have a thick creamy mixture. 

• Serve and enjoy! 

This is a very creamy, but mild indulgent dinner that will give you the feel of eating something really rich, but without the added fat.  The cabbage is great for your digestive system and the apples give it a sweet crunch.  This is a perfect dinner after a day out in the cold. 

Tell me what you think.  Next; Chicken and Apple melts! 

You would look better if...

I read this article back when it first came out on yahoo and I had to laugh because I could relate to it so well.
We've all been there; where some well-wisher tells you how you would look/sound/be/exist better if you just followed their advice, because obviously they know better!

It got me to thinking; how often are we that person? And what are some of the most frustrating things people tell us?

I think one of the biggest problems in today's society is that we are so striving for greatest every single moment of our life we forget to appreciate the achievements we've made. Oh we're so busy trying to "encourage" and push others to be better that we overwhelm them and they give up.  Sometimes, the only thing we really need is just a pat on the back and a "job well done."  Then, when we've taken a breather, we can keep climbing.  You can't hike and entire mountain without take a break every once in a while and those who can I'm fairly certain are not human.

The flip side of this, is that we begin to resent the people who are really trying to be as encouraging as possible and they don't even realize that they are in actuality, bringing you down.

For the remainder of this month, I'm going to dedicate myself to believing the absolute best about people when they try to tell me something needs to be different or improved and I'm going to do my best to try and not overwhelm people with my own words of encouragement.  If we make a point of assuming innocence, it changes the outcome of so many things!

So yeah, there is my soapbox moment.

Here, I took a picture of my ducky collection and over saturated it with fun effects for you:

Of solemn moments on a silly blog

Hello to my readers.

I want to take a moment and break from all the silliness and shallowness of my blog.  This may seem out of character, but there are only so many times I can talk about hair and makeup and pretend like the rest of the world isn't happening before I go crazy or you all think that I'm some flippant creature with no thought for humanity.

The reality is, I use this blog as a means to escape, and I'm beginning to realize that the potential for harm to my self and others becomes greater and greater everyday I choose to blog about unimportant thing.  I have the opportunity to share, and even alongside the beauty, more about my faith and beliefs and I have the opportunity to encourage each of you in more ways that I've been doing so presently.

I may be hit or miss as far as posting regularly because I want to really revamp how I'm doing things, and I want to make sure that I have a schedule for good wholesome and helpful reading material for everyone who stops by to take a look.  I'm going to cease the picture a day project; it's really quite vain and I just don't have the time to photograph anything else right now.  Instead, I want to actually take the time to photograph my actual life - the way I live, the way I see others living around me.  I think it's so important, especially in this broken world that we live, to remain connected and encouraged to  and by each other, and if I can help by doing that even the smallest of way, by golly, I'm going to seize that opportunity and do it!

My goals for this blog are as follows:

• Encourage and Edify
• Photograph my own life more
• Recipes and Healthy Eating
• General Health Care - medicine alternatives
• Beauty care that is pertinent and helpful, not just as a girly time-waster
• Continue posting Bible Study Notes 
• Videos when I have time
• Poetry and art - Maybe? 

The above is really more for my benefit than anyone else's I like having a list that I can refer to.  

SO! That's my story and I'm sticking too it.  I hope that it works out as well as I would like it to.  Any comments/suggestions are more than welcome.  

 

And if anyone is interested in how this all started, please read Mike Boldea's most recent post on his Hand of Help blog "The Burden of Knowing".  This is my sentiment right now with life in general. 

Thanks all, have a blessed day! 

Sickie

I know, I know I'm behind.  Sorry guys, I need to take a break; I got hit with the flu and so did Husband.  I will start up again after I've caught up at work and all that jazz.  Thanks.

I will list the rest of the photos I have left in my photo a day project, but also be aware that I'm changing up a  few of these because they were becoming a little redundant for me.

1. Family member's hair 
2. Favorite short 'do 
3. Curly hair - maybe; I'm not going to curl my hair methinks, so I'll probably just post an old photo
4. Hair Swissssshhh
5. Worst hair moment 
6. Straight of out the shower hair 
7. Your hair as a child 
8. Hair product you used today 
9. Bed head 
10. Hair don't (hair you really don't like) 
11. Where you did your hair today 
12. Daily hair routine 

Beautiful lengths photo a day, day 10

Hello all!

Well, it's time for some inspiration!  Day 10 is technically a long hair post, but since I've posted about my long hair already, I'm going to instead post some photos of what I wish my hair looked liked:

My number one inspiration right now is not just because she has absolutely lovely hair, but because she is one of the best, most laid back, down to earth, and not egotistical youtube gurus I've seen.

TorrinPaige
TorrinPaige is absolutely wonderful, and she is sweet and very kind, and at some point in time I hope to be able to feature her on my blog, but we'll see how that goes.

Loepsie
Loepsie is lots of fun to watch; she's also very laid back and has a lot of great advice for people who have dealt with hair loss sustained quite a bit because of a reaction to SLS.   Her hairstyles are lovely; right now she is sporting hip/tailbone length hair.

Arrow Odenn

This lovely lady is very sweet and awesome and she has lovely I think hip length hair; she hasn't been posting very often with hair related information.  Another great and down to earth poster. LilisimplyIf ever there was someone whose hair I truly, truly envied, it's this gal's hair right here.  Very beautiful, layered, classic length hair.  She dyes, and rarely conditions, as far I know she never deep conditions and she exposes heat to it, and yet she has the most beautiful head of hair I've ever seen.  Grrr.  All the joking aside though, she is a very awesome youtube guru, and if you are at all interested in beauty or hair tutorials that are very simple and easy then she is the gal to look out for.Beautyklove Last, but certainly not least, we have Beautyklove; another very awesome guru with the coolest methods for curling your hair without heat.  She uses straws, cans, rubberbands, you name it.  It's just cool to see someone willing to try out new methods for the sake of others' benefit.  So there you go, these are my youtuber inspiration people; you should definitely check them out and subscribe to them if you like hair stuff. Tomorrow is day 11: Dream hair.  We kind of did that already, so we will not have a photo a day tomorrow, but my regular Bible Study notes will be available in the evening. 

Beautiful lengths photo a day, day 9

Hello all, it's time for our beautiful lengths, day 9! Straight hair.


Hahahahahah, that's not gonna happen.

I used to have bone straight hair, but it has definitely waived up in the past few years or so, so I am going to show you how straight my hair will get because I don't expose it to heat products and I never will.

As you can see there are definite waves there.  They didn't used to be and I do keep my hair up now at night.  So this is "straight"-ish hair.












Stay tuned tomorrow for day 10 - which I believe is long hair.  Since my hair is not yet what I would call long, I'll probably just post some info about my favorite hair guru's that I follow.

Beautiful lengths photo a day, day 8

Welcome back, everyone! I hope that you had an excellent weekend.  Okidokies, time for more silliness and beauty stuff with my photo a day, day 8: favorite hair accesory!

Woot!

Um....except, I'm going to post a lot more than just a few photos because I have a ton of accesories, and honestly I don't have a favorite.  I really don't wear a lot of hair jewelry, I just tend to hoard them and look at them when no one is around.  Kind of like Gollum....*enter bad impression of Gollum saying "my precious...."

Okidokies.  Also, for those of you who are familiar with my youtube channel, check it out in the next few days, I'm going to be sharing some new stuff.  I've decided to start actually recording my piano playings and will be posting a couple of those in the new future.  I don't have a great quality camera or setup right now, and my piano is very, very old and has seen a lot so it has some creaks and groans every once in a while.  You'll have to bear with it until I can find a better alternative.

So, I'm going to just give you a quick tour of my treasure lol.

Here are the hats - I used to be a big fan of swing and blues dancing and you can't be a dancer without a decent fedora, so I decided to get several just to be on the safe side.

For those of you who love hats, fedoras in particular, I got all of these, save the two black, at target; they have an awesome selection.  The first black fedora I got at Walmart and the second at Spencer's - though they no longer have the decent selection that they used to.

Moving on to my sparklies, I have a lot - be warned.

Headbands that I very rarely wear.  The first bead thing is technically a bracelet, but I like it better as a band.

These are all barrette like things; the butterfly is also not an actual hair toy and it's a new piece, but I plan on using for something hair related.

Again, sparklies I don't use a whole lot.

These are special because I wore them at my wedding.

These are my flowers; I have a blue flower that didn't make it onto the page because it's somewhere in the back of my car waiting to be rescued.

After that, it's on to hairsticks!! Woot woot! - Here is what I have in "wood".  You'll notice one pair of the white sticks look like they have been taped in the center and that is because they met an untimely death months ago, but they are my favorite still because Husband got them for me; I just can't wear them anymore.

These are all my metal hair sticks; sorry about the photo quality - my flash was on auto and I didn't have time to redo it.

My dragonfly - and a couple of random ones I didn't know I had.

And last but not least, my sparkly hairsticks!

Whew! I think that's it.  So, not really what the project asked for, but since I couldn't think of one, I hope this will do.

Thanks, and stay tuned for day 9: straight hair

Friday Feature Fun!

Our next reader is *trumpet music* MY MOMMY!!! My mommy is my bestest friend, besides hubby, and she has been my hair inspiration for a long, long time. Here is her interview:

Name: Diane 

Hair character/type: My hair is wispy and thin, but each individual hair is coarse, so it gives volume. (1b/M/ii)

Natural hair color: Chestnut brown (I have to admit, that I actually said this, because my mom always reminds me of the girl in the song "Star of the County Down"

Starting length (if growing): I've always had long hair as a child, but there was a period when I was 17/18 that I had it layered and around armpit length

Current length:  Tailbone length

Are you currently growing your length or maintaining?  If growing, how long have you been growing your hair?  If maintaining, what is it about your current length that makes you happy?: I am actually trying to grow my hair a little bit longer after having allowed a hairdresser to go at my hair with scissors I realized the folly of this and because, having been a long hair for so long, anything that is less than being able to sit on is TOO SHORT!

As a fellow hairaholic I find it very interesting to hear what exactly about hair it is that others find fascinating.  What started your interest/obsession with hair?: Growing up in the 80s, everything was all about the shag and the short hair. You were different having long hair, and there was a time in the 80s when I had long hair (18-19), and I ended up getting it cut and I immediately thought, even though it's easy to take care of, "a part of me is missing". I've always had long hair, and reading being raised on books like Little House on the Prairie and the like, women had long hair. I'm not very feminine, and so my long hair is my one feminine thing. My female-ness comes out in my hair.


As with any hobby, there is always something that irks us just a little bit. What are some of your frustrations/pet peeves as a person with a hair hobby, be your hair long or short? (i.e. nasty comments, getting stuck in doors, hard to take care of, styling, etc.etc.): My pet peeve is twofold: 1) the people with the short hair coming up and telling me that my hair would look better or trimmed or that I would look better with short hair. It's all I can do to stop from saying to them in return, "if you kept your mouth shut you wouldn't sound so stupid." If it's trendy or not, long hair is me I don't care if it's not a fad. This goes for the same with people with long hair who feel entitled to tell you what to do with your hair because their hair acts or looks differently. 2) The people who tell me to donate it. I say to them, "I feel it would be better to teach kids to be confident no matter how they look than to force them to adapt to how everyone else thinks they should look."

If money, damage, social stigma, etc. where not a factor, what is the one thing you would love to try out?: I'd shave my head. This is of course, only if it were reversible the next day. Or to try something funky and weird, but I would want my hair back the next day.

What do you love about your hair: Something I'm really liking about it right now, is the color and the way it frames my face.

What do you hate about your hair: I'm having a hard time adjusting to the different textures as my hair is getting older. Once it's all white I think it'll be okay. This is also changing the way I can style it.

What’s something you like to do as a “treat” to your hair?: Coconut oil with a capful of tea tree oil mixed in. I don't really treat it though, so much as I just don't use bad chemicals on it. And I don't wash it a lot.

What are your favorite products?/What are you currently using?: My favorite products is focus 21 Sea Plasma, but it's a product I haven't used in a while. They have since changed the formula. Currently, I'm using Suave Almond and Shea Butter

What’s your hair care routine? (In a nutshell; I know most of us have pretty extensive hair care regimes): Wash every few days and only wash the roots. Condition everything. Comb it wet, if it's really cold outside I'll blow dry just enough to get the drippies out, but usually air dry.

Many of us have one thing that we will never, ever do to our hair no matter what (i.e., bleach, curl, straighten, color) what is that one thing for you?: Dye it. I permed it once when I was 18 and I looked like a lion, but the damage I see from dyeing keeps me from that. I would never perm again.

If you have a favorite hairstyle, what is it?: My favorite style is probably an off-center part and wearing it down, but my most practical style is a bun or a pony tail.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received regarding taking care of hair?: A long long time ago, when I was young and I had long hair and I was about ten. My mom thought my hair looked fine because I was brushing the top layer everyday, but then she realized later that the underside of the hair wasn't getting brush. It took a road trip from Northern Idaho to Mexico and a bottle on conditioner with a wide tooth comb to get that hair untangled. It's amazing she didn't cut it off. After that, my mom talked to someone about dealing with the tangles and the lady said, "start at the bottom, work your way up" That has stuck with me ever since.

Any additional comments: I think it's cool that long hair is coming back. People are starting to stick with it; people are starting to show commitment to it, and it's cool to see them doing their own thing instead of falling prey to the trends. It's especially cool to me that the younger generation is starting to do it.

Beautiful lengths photo a day, day 7

Okay, well here I'm going to break the cycle here and not post a photo.  Why?  Because regardless of the times I've had good hair days it's never occurred to me take a photo because someday I might be doing a photo a day project that asked to post a photo of my best hair moment.  In fact, I can't even really think of one.

One might automatically go back to their wedding, but I wasn't happy with my wedding hair because it was way too short and I was in the process of growing it out.  It's not that I didn't like it, it's just not what I would consider a best hair moment.  It served its purpose.

I honestly can't think of a one great hair moment.  Really, it's more a matter of confidence.  My hair has gotten a little bit wild in these past few months and I absolutely love it - I don't use a lot of product; I make sure it has the right nutrients, it's the one part about myself that I have absolutely no self doubts about, so any day with my hair is a good hair day.  When I didn't have a decent routine down there were definitely good and bad days, but lately they've all been very good.

Another key I think is not trying to force your hair to do something it doesn't want to do.  And example would be this morning; I tried leaving it down and that just wasn't gelling, so I tried a half ponytail and again, not happening.  I settled on just pulling back the very top of my hair with bobby pins and it looks fine.   If you don't try to make your hair do something it doesn't want to do and if you maintain confidence you're sure to have a good day.  Also, if you take care of your hair and don't subject it to heat, dyes or bleaches on a regular basis it will pay off in the long run.  So many people lament their hair, but they keep doing the same things that will kill it over and over and then they want to know what they did wrong.  Well, you exposed a very delicate part of your body to 300+ degree heat, stripped it's color with a chemical, forced colored chemicals back into it, you strip the oils everyday with shampoo and don't deep condition - I think those things are probably what you did wrong. Just sayin'.

So there's my mini soapbox moment for the day. We will resume the photo a day project on Monday - tomorrow, my featured reader is my Mom! Woot!

Beautiful lengths, photo a day, day 6

And it's time for my photo a day, day 6: hairdo of the day!

I keep my hair in a damp bun on the top of my head; this morning I let it down and gently combed through it with my boxwood comb and gave it a deep part.  This is a pretty typical hairstyle for me.

Tomorrow is Day 7: Best Hair Moment