So I’ve been telling myself to not spend so much lately (after the holidays and all) but I don’t think I’m succeeding. For one thing I got my hair ombre’d last week (whooo) which was awesome but the the bleaching + dye + tip was over $100… not including the haircut I got before that! (In my defense the haircut was BADLY needed.)

It looks red but it’s actually pink!

The problem with me is that once I start getting interested in something I tend not to stop. Awhile ago it was makeup videos so of course I had to go out and get makeup to try out the stuff I watched. This time it’s hair. The stylist blow-dried and flat iron my hair after my cut and it was awesome! Never in my life has my hair been so straight! So tangle free! So silky! So… so flippy! I was determined to recreate it, so I started to research. (This was my first professional cut + hairdry + flat iron by the way, please excuse the excitement).

First obviously, was flat irons. Now I have a flat iron. It’s a cheapy Conair one I got when I started college and I always thought it was good enough. It sorta straightened and it did make my hair feel smooth, but after the visit to the salon I knew what straight hair really felt like. My friend told me to get a Chi but hell, those are at least $70 bucks or so! I’m just not that ready to spend so much. So the research goes on in that department.

In the meantime, I started looking at hair products! Now from my understanding there are shampoos, conditioners, creams, serums, and oils that you can use to help straighten and defrizz you hair. Eshhh! This doesn’t look that great for me as I try to keep my hair relatively product and chemical free. My normal hair routine is using a natural shampoo by Shea Moisture followed by an apple cider vinegar rinse, blowdry, then running some jojoba oil through my hair and then sleeping on it (which helps flatten it).

Now I figure it couldn’t hurt to add a serum with heat protection it and maybe something to defrizz. I was hesitant to change shampoos though. I did no-poo for quite awhile but honestly it’s just too annoying to keep up with in this city (the water is suuuuper hard). I decided in the end that I should at least get a color safe, sulfate free shampoo and nice conditioner (to try to liven up my bleached ends). Here are the products I ended up with:

Hair Products!

Let’s look at shampoo first as this was the one I was most hesitant to get. I found this bottle at TJMaxx and figure it was worth a try. They sell a huge bottle of this too for around $13 so I may get that if I really like it. It’s sulfate free and safe for color treated hair and 100% vegan. I also liked that it had protein in it as I think my hair really needs that right now!

Johnathan Weightless Smooth No-Frizz Shampoo

Verdict? It’s pretty nice. It smells delicious (I normally hate artificial scents). It does not lather as nicely as a normal shampoo (typical of sulfate free shampoos), but it cleaned my hair and I noticed that almost no color ran out of my hair! I also didn’t lose as much hair in the shower as I normally do. Not sure if that’s due to the shampoo but I’m always happy with less hair loss. With the price so cheap I suppose I wouldn’t mind using this until I’m tired of my colored hair. The long ingredient list does bother me a bit though so I will probably switch back to Shea Moisture once my head is all natural again.

Next up – conditioner and hair creme. I decided on trying out John Frieda’s Frizz-Ease stuff:

John Frieda Frizz-Ease Hydrating Conditioner and Straight Fixation Smoothing Creme

Verdict? Conditioner seems much like any other conditioner to me. I’m not too fond of the scent but it left my hair nice and smooth. This is for extra dry hair so I like to put a lot on my ends where they were bleached The smoothing creme protects my hair from heat and doesn’t look greasy. It works pretty well too. Even though I braided my hair after and ran heat over it (with my flat iron – I wanted a few waves), my hair pretty much reverted back to straight soon after. These two products along with the shampoo did leave me with somewhat softer and less poofy hair after blowdrying (I poof up like a lion usually).

And finally, hair serum! I settled on a bottle from Garnier Fructis:

Garnier Fructis Sleek & Shine Anti-Frizz Serum

I actually spent a TON of time looking at different oils and serums at Walmart. I wanted to compare the ingredients on all of them and settled on this mainly because there weren’t that many ingredients and also because argan oil was pretty far up the list (I think 3rd or 4th whereas it was 5th or below for other brands). It has the signature Garnier scent (that I love) and makes my hair nice and soft. It does not leave me looking oily (jojoba does that sometimes) and seems to absorb pretty quick. I can’t say it adds more shine to my hair or controls that much frizz, but overall it seems pretty nice.

That’s it for hair goop! I’m still iffy on the hair serum and creme – having so much product in my hair makes me feel like it’ll start looking oily sooner rather than later. I might try a lighter application of both in the future.

I did get one more thing for my hair New brush! Also from TJMaxx:

Earth Therapeutics Ceramic Styling Brush

I have a rounded brush like this but it has an aluminum barrel and I read that ceramic is much better and less damaging to your hair than metals because it helps output negative ions which helps keeps frizzies away! I haven’t actually used this yet. Since it’s from TJMaxx and people rummage through there all the time, I feel like I should wash it down first before running it through my hair. So I’ll probably wipe it down with some alcohol or something tomorrow.

I got a jar of argan oil body butter as well but I am returning that since it’s also from TJMaxx and I can’t help but think about how many people might have opened and “sampled” it before I bought it… then I think about the creepy crawlies that might in that cream and I just can’t bring myself to use it. I was originally just going to mix some tea tree oil in there to kill off anything that might have come off someone’s hand… but no, that is not enough for me lol.

This post is getting a bit long but I do want to just post these last few things I got over the weekend. The Target near me finally put this bag on sale at the price I wanted:

Mossimo Satchel Bag

I’ve wanted this bag forever but I just didn’t want to pay the $25 bucks for it. Around the holidays I saw it at the Target near my sister’s for $12.49! Unfortunately they only had one there in purple and there was a rip in it. I’ve been stalking the Target near me for ages to see if it would drop down to that price (it’s been on sale for ~$17 for ages) and finally it got marked for $12.49 so I snatched it up. I wish it was tan or pink but this lavender color is lovely too. I just love satchel style bags!

And finally: makeup. Target had a few Botanics items on sale so I grabbed some eyeshadows. I don’t really need them but there was a lovely purple and nutmeg color and a purple + pearl duo palette. Plus they were so cheap! I also finally broke out this Urban Decay Femme Palette I got during the holidays. I’ve used it one so far and it’s quite nice:

Eyeshadows

I realized I should have posted these with the palettes opened so people could actually see the color but it’s late now… maybe I will do another post on a review of them plus swatches

Anyways, first a little update on the no shampoo thing I was doing. I did find out the reason why the baking soda wasn’t working for me! It turns out that the baking soda doesn’t really dissolve that easily in hard water and the city I live in has pretty hard water The solution I found for this was to essentially boil the water for about 10 minutes (you will see a pool of white stuff at the bottom of the pot) then scooping out the “softened” water to use in my mix.

However this is just a HUGE hassle. Honestly showering is usually the last thing on my mind during the day. It’ll usually be maybe 10-11PM when I think, “Oh damn, I gotta shower”, so having to wait another 10 minutes to boil the water, then make my mixture, then wait for it to cool, and THEN finally shower really just isn’t ideal. I know, I could boil a giant batch one day and store it somewhere but I just haven’t really gotten around to buying a container to hold the mixture and it’s just not going to be that ideal once winter hits (who wants to rinse their head with freezing cold baking soda water?).

I also moved about 2 months ago and during that time it really was just too much trouble to bother with between packing and cleaning so I switched to trying an all natural shampoo. First I tried Alba’s Botanica Hawaiian Mango Shampoo. At first I liked it because it smelled great! But then later I realized it wasn’t a very good shampoo. For one thing I was having dandruff problems and I have never in my life had a problem with dandruff. With black hair, dandruff is just really embarrassing because it stands out so well! Another thing, it said it was sulfate free but I’m pretty sure its not as I saw the offending sodium lauryl sulfate ingredient in the list (though I cannot confirm this right now as I have long tossed the bottle).

Well a few weeks ago my sister recommended a shampoo by Shea Moisture. The one I got is their coconut and hibiscus one for curls (though I don’t have any curls). It was about $8-9 bucks at target and it smells delicious. Seriously it smells like candy. Best of all? It’s all natural and organic. The label has a list of all the things it doesn’t containing, including parabens and sulfates. It lathers quite nicely and leaves my hair clean and soft. Though not as soft as when I was still using conditioner. I don’t have to use a ton of this stuff either to clean my hair which is good because it’s not the hugest bottle.

Although the Shea Moisture shampoo is great I have recently been trying to get back into the baking soda thing again. This is partly because about 3 weeks ago I started running almost everyday and was showering everyday because of it. This seriously ruined all the work I had done to condition my scalp to not overproduce oils. I found myself going from 4 days without washing my hair to barely making it to 2. And I noticed that the oiliness I was getting that the gross dirty feeling kind, whereas before, even if my hair got oily, it still didn’t look that gross. So now I would like to get back on the no ‘poo track and try to readjust my scalp to normal oil production levels. I do not think I will boil water for a full 10 minutes though. Instead I’m going to experiment with heating at different time intervals with water that I have first run through a Brita (or in my case a Pur) filter (hoping that will soften it a little but who knows). I did this a few days ago and used the apple cider vinegar rinse and my hair just felt so much cleaner and softer than it did with shampoo!

In other news, since I liked the Shea Moisture shampoo, I decided to give their lotion a try as I have been looking for a good moisturizer. I picked this up at Target for around $8 bucks:

Shea Moisture Olive and Green Tea Lotion

And it’s great!! This stuff is super thick though – more like a thick cream than a lotion. I don’t know what they were thinking using this kind of bottle for it. It literally doesn’t move and is super hard to get out with this kind of bottle. A squeeze tube or one of those pot/jar things would be much better. It’s quite worth struggling to get it out though. Its very moisturizing and it’s not super greasy the way most lotions are. It also absorbs into my skin pretty fast which is nice because that means it also absorbs into my palms easily meaning I don’t have to wash my hands after applying lotion all the time. Also, like their other products this is all natural and doesn’t contain any: parabens, phthalates, paraffin, gluten, propylene glycol, mineral oil, synthetic fragrance (nice bonus! seems hard to find fragrance free stuff nowadays), PABA, synthetic color, DEA, or sulfates. And also no animal testing.

I’m not super strict on the no paraben and all natural/organic thing. It’s especially hard with makeup (I love my Missha BB cream!) unless I want to pay a ton, but I do try to reduce the amount of stuff I have that contains it.

I was using coconut oil as a lotion for awhile and while it’s great (there’s no denying the goodness of coconut oil), it’s just too messy and too oily for me. It does not absorb very well into my skin even if I use it while my skin is still damp and it doesn’t really glide on well either. Since it doesn’t absorb very fast, that means I can’t really use it in the mornings unless I want to feel greasy for the next few hours.

I have found that coconut oil is great for removing makeup! I always have the hardest time removing eyeliner and ever since I started using Urban Decay’s primer, I feel like I’m going into battle when I try to remove eyeshadow. I’m skeptical about eye makeup remover. For one thing I’m scared of getting it in my eye even if it’s suppose to be safe lol. Hovever, one of my friends mentioned that coconut oil removes makeup very easily so I’ve been using it on my eye makeup since! Plus its great for moisturizing the delicate skin around my eyes.

So, this post is getting a bit long now. I do have to apologize because this is not the infinity dress tutorial I promised. I WILL do that one. I have the pictures loaded on my computer; it’s just I’ve been too lazy to write it all up. I will post it eventually though!

I decided today that I would blog about a little mixture I made before it turned into a later that never came. This scrub was made to get rid of that nasty rubber glove smell that lingers on my hands after washing the dishes. You see, up until this year I have always washed dishes with bare hands because I hated that rubber smell that gets stuck on your hands afterwards. It wasn’t much of a problem but this winter my hands would get so dry and cracked that I gave in and decided to use gloves (for some reason it never occurs me to use the dishwasher until its too late). But now I have that nasty rubber smell problem to deal with. The smell just takes forever to wear off.

Well awhile ago I remember reading about a soap someone made with coffee grounds to get garlic and onion smell off their hands and I figure I could make something similar but not a soap (I’m no soap maker). So this is what I came up with and it worked great!

Coffee hand scrub

Just mix equal parts coffee grounds and brown sugar and put it into a jar by your sink. Pour a little into your palm and scrub your hands with it. I used a vanilla flavored coffee and it left a nice vanilla-y coffee scent on my hand that is not strong at all.

I also added sea salt to mine but I think it made it too rough. So I’m thinking I might add oil to my mixture to make it smoother and moisturizing. I want to go with coconut oil though I would rather use something that stays liquid. So maybe olive oil instead? I do think it’d be a great idea to use another one of those flatter mason jars I hold my deodorant in and mix the scrub with coconut oil, then I could use it like a lotion?

Also here’s a sneak peak at my next post: Infinity Dress How To (sort of)

Infinity dress

I DID make some progress on my quilt though. I cut the smaller triangles and chain stitched them. I probably should have planned how to mix and match the pieces a bit better since I have more of some colors than others but I suppose its too late for that.

Chained pieces

I laid out my quilt today on my bedroom floor. I decided to just go with the scrappy look. I have too uneven of a number of prints to make a pattern. And since I’m a bit OCD about these things I tried very hard not to have any sort of pattern accidentally show up in the quilt (it’s either all random or not random at all, I can’t have half and half). I must be really bad at counting though since I found that I was short 7 pieces of the larger triangles. I just finished cutting them out but I’m too tired to get out the sewing machine and sew them up. I still need to cut out the white pieces as well.

Pieces laid out

I’m debating whether or not I want to add more around the sides. Maybe a white border?

Here are all my tools together:

Quilting Materials

The checker blue is something I already had and decided to just use up the rest. I guess my quilt will be a bit scrappy but I wanted brighter colors for spring. Since those two packs each have 4 yards of fabric I actually have way more than I need for one quilt. I’m thinking I might use the rest for the back just to save me having to buy more. I still need to buy the solid color fabric though.

I started cutting the kaleidoscope triangles yesterday and got them all done (with some extra). I learned you gotta cut like you mean it with the rotary cutter though. At first I was barely even denting the fabric. Maybe the blade just isn’t sharp enough? And I don’t know if my pattern was off or if I was just moving the ruler when I was cutting, but I wasn’t able to ever cut, flip the pattern to cut again and have the edges line up like the person who wrote the instructions was able to… Thus my cuts aren’t ALL the same but I think it’s close enough?

Kaleidoscope cuts

Kaleidoscope cuts

I meant to do the 45 degree triangle cuts today but I got too distracted making dinner and… watching Youtube (oops). So I guess I will do that tomorrow.

Big Buttons Dress

While working on it I began thinking that perhaps the yellow pattern I got wasn’t the best choice – it looked so much better in the store than it did once I started sewing. But its still cute (reminds me of doll dresses) and looks nice over white leggings. I think I want to make a second one but with a brighter color for spring. I’m not sure when I’ll get around to it though (I get bored of patterns after doing it the first time).

The dress took me much longer than I expected! Maybe it’s because I’m not used to using a sewing machine. I also ended up taking it apart and resewing after trying it on the first time I got the zipper in. I realized it was just a tad tight and I should have perhaps used 17 inches as my shoulder measurement instead of 16. It wasn’t tight enough that I couldn’t wear it but I knew that if it wasn’t comfortable then I would never wear it and it’d just become a waste of cloth. So I took apart the darn thing to let it out an inch and now it fits great. Taking it apart also gave me the chance to serge the seams between the top and the skirt (which I had forgotten to do before putting on the zipper), so I guess it all worked out.

By the way – I love having a serger! I never knew such a thing existed until recently. It made my dress feel so nice and complete once I was done. I was so proud of the neatly serged edges on the inside of my dress that I took a picture of it lol.

Serged seams!

On another note, I’ve decided my next sewing project will be a quilt! I’ve seen so many on Pintrest that I want to try! At first I was just going to do boring squares but then saw this quilt along and loooved the kaleidoscope look. It’s not quite so boring as just squares and I got quite a few ideas going through the Flickr group associated with the quilt along. I’m just not sure if I want to use fabric I already have or go and buy fat quarters from Jo Anns or Walmart (which has a smaller selection but is 50% cheaper).

I figure I will start soon though. I have a friend coming up to stay for the weekend in March so it’d be nice if I could let him use a real blanket instead of the Snuggy I usually give him lol! I think the only problem is how I will wash it at the end. I have one of those half sized stacked washer/dryer combo things and I highly doubt the quilt will fit in the washer once it’s done. I’ll have to find a laundrymat somewhere outside my area since there are only apartment complexes around here and they all have onsite or in-apartment machines.

Hobbe's head

I have to admit, it feels a little weird having his head sit on my desk though…

Hobbes in progress

Over the weekend (when I got this yarn), I also made a new base for the cage of my rabbit. I used to use a rug I got from Walmart but she chewed a hole through it and I was worried she’d end up chewing the apartment carpeting. So no more rugs for her! Instead I got a piece of wood and some self adhesive flooring tiles from Home Depot. It was quite annoying that I had to pay for the whole wooden board (8 feet long) even though I only really needed half. I ended up just getting two pieces… just incase I ever need a piece of wood lol.

Momo's cage

I think the tiles are a bit too slippery for her. Bunnies don’t have padded feet like cats and dogs so they need flooring with some friction. I threw a towel in there for her for now but I think I’ll have to buy a piece of carpet or something to line the cage.

I also cheated on my no shampoo thing this weekend. Sort of. I used diluted dish washing soap to get rid of some of the oil. Just some of it. I was going home for Lunar New Years and didn’t want my mom making comments about my hair haha. I cheated a bit yesterday too. I decided to try making a paste of coconut oil and baking soda. I’m not sure why I thought to put (more) oil in my hair but I thought the coconut oil might be moisturizing. And it was! I used a bar of soap to wash it out after working it into my hair and my hair was really soft after. Of course I realized I may have ruined my efforts in trying to transition my scalp to the whole no shampoo thing…

My sewing machine also came back yesterday from repair. I am still quite pissed that it came broken (even though it was new!) but I’m glad to have it back and working. The guy who repaired it did what Singer SHOULD have done: left a piece of cloth with test stitches sewn in to show that they actually tested the damn thing. Now I gotta email Singer to get reimbursed for the return shipping… They told me they would pay for it but the guy at the warranty place said that they only do the warranty repairs and that I have to pay for the shipping back. Seriously, I am very unhappy with their customer support. It took the longest time for me to get a reply from them in the first place.

New Sewing Machine

Well anyways, I’ve decided this dress is going to be my first project. It looks simple enough and is mainly straight lines. I’m going to look for fabric this weekend. I figure I can wear a long sleeve shirt under it while the weather is still cold and then can wear it alone in the spring!

One last crafty thing before I go. Here’s an interesting paper heart fold I did. I found the tutorial on Pintrest here. I’m not sure if I followed the directions correctly (diagrams aren’t exactly super clear). But it came out pretty good:

Paper Heart

So because I’m horrible with directions and tend to only glance at maps going, “oh easy,” of course I got lost. For some reason I thought Michaels was on the right side of the street but it was really on the left. I did at least remember the cross section so I knew when I passed it and turned around. Although I still didn’t see Michaels I did find a Jo-Anns and a Target (yay! I LOVE Target). I got some nice sock yarn while at Jo-Anns since it was on sale:

Yummy color

I don’t really plan to make socks (though the idea does intrigue me) but I thought it might be nice to make fingerless gloves with. I have been wanting to make some fingerless gloves with a lighter weight yarn since my first set came out rather bulky and stiff. I figure yarn made for socks would be nice and flexible at the end. Plus the color was awesome. I don’t know why but I’m always drawn to greens and blues.

I did ask the lady behind the register at Jo-Anns where Michaels was and found it eventually. It didn’t have any of the stuff I was looking for though. I was thinking of trying this homemade deodorant recipe I found here but I don’t think a craft store is what I want. I probably need to go to a GNC or something to find that stuff. But I thought maybe Michaels would have beeswax or shea butter since they do sell candle and soap making supplies.

This Michaels felt a bit small though compared to the one that was in my college town. Or maybe it just felt small with the overwhelming amount of moms and kids in there. Anyways, I walked out without buying anything.

Onto my next stop: Target!

I love Target so of course I had to take a look. I also wanted to see if they had any jackets for sale (which… oddly they did not even though it’s winter) and I wanted to pick up a thing of e.l.f eyeshadow primer. I ordered Urban Decay’s primer a few days ago but I heard that e.l.f’s is really good too and only a dollar so I figure why not give it a try. I picked up a bunch of their other $1 items as well:

e.l.f products

I tried the primer today and it seemed pretty good. My eyeshadow was still at the end of the day. I liked the lip gloss as well but I have a problem with biting or picking at my lips so that didn’t stay on long lol.

Plus I don’t trust Fantastico after I saw it was passing all the information I filled out (username AND password) through the URL! How unsecure! For those that don’t know, information such as passwords SHOULD NEVER be passed through the url – for login or account creation (you can check by looking at the url, do you see something like “&password=[your password here]?). It’s just bad practice. Plus they didn’t hide my password as I was typing it so of course my browser saved it as a form field I filled in… that reminds me, I need to clear the history in my browser now.

I suppose I could have wrote my own blogging tool but man, thinking of the upkeep sounds like a pain.

So I figure this time instead of trying to blog about my daily life (let’s face it – my life ain’t that interesting enough to warrant a blog dedicated to it), I’ll try to blog about something specific. In this case I decide to keep a blog to track various craft and DIY projects. I’m hoping that having this blog will encourage me to do more craft projects at home (instead of just bookmarking stuff for “later”) and that by crafting I’ll be able to keep a blog going for once. Afterall, I got all these domain names registered, I might as well use them for something right?

So one of the things I’ve been trying so far is this whole no shampoo thing. I’ve been at it for maybe a week now (or a week an a half, I don’t remember) and I can’t say I’m loving it. I’ve been doing the baking soda scrub (for washing) with apple cider vinegar rinse (for conditioning) and I can’t really say it’s as great as real shampoo. Though I have read on various blogs and sites that the first week or so can be rather “slick” (aka greasy, omgwtfhorrible) as your scalp adjusts to producing less oil since you’re no longer stripping all of it away everyday with shampoo.

So maybe I just need to tough it out a bit longer? I have to admit that today I was very tempted by the shampoo bottle in my tub. I just kept thinking how great it’d be to lather and condition until my hair is squeaky clean and silky smooth. I held back though. Why let my efforts go to waste? But it is especially disgusting to blowdry hair that is not grease free. I do have to admit that my head does NOT feel dirty though. Usually if I go too long without washing my hair (which I never do of course…) my head starts to get itchy and that doesn’t happen when I was with the baking soda. So I guess it’s clean in a greasy way? I don’t know. I am getting quite tired of wearing hats to work though. I could tie my hair up but I still worry! Hats just cover it all

So a few days ago I remembered that I read about someone using lemon juice to help with the greasiness. At some point during this week I had gotten a bit desperate for clean feeling hair so I tried it. Squeezed half a lemon into tupperware and worked it into the top of my head after the baking soda wash. It worked great! My hair did not feel greasy at all. Well the back part felt a bit (it’s where oil tends to build up the most so maybe I didn’t use enough juice back there) but other than that my hair felt pretty clean.

At the start of this experiment I also tried a lemon + cucumber mix to wash my hair in. I used a whole lemon and half a cucumber and blended it together and took this to the shower with me. Man that must have been the most horrible idea ever. It was not the easiest to get in or out of my hair and I think I spent another 20 minutes or so after rinsing down the sides of my tub to get the pulp out. I have a hair strainer so I had to keep emptying the pulp out of that as well so it wouldn’t block the drain.

Well today I was getting ready for my shower, making my baking soda and apple cider vinegar mix and decided to give the cucumber and lemon thing a try again. I knew lemon worked with the grease and thought maybe the cucumber would help condition. So I blended half a lemon and half a cucumber and added the leftovers from the previous mix I made. Only this time I strained that shit first! A coffee filter probably would have been great for this but unfortunately I’m not a huge coffee drinker and I use a coffee press anyways so I don’t have any filters. What I did instead was use a paper tower and ripped it into 4 sections and strained a bit at a time through them. I had to squeeze on the pulp to get all the juices out so I did “pop” a few of the tissues (luckily none of the pulp fell in the mixture). What I was left with was juice only – no pulp to clean out of the tub! I poured it into one of those glass jars that Japanese rice seasoning tends to comes in:

Strain that shit first!

I think the cucumber diluted the effects of the lemon though as my hair feels like nastiness right now. I am hoping that the greasiness will fade soon because if this is how the whole no shampoo thing feels forever then I don’t think I can do it. I really do love the feel of my hair when its all clean and smooth. What to do tomorrow though… make a quick trip to the grocery store for lemons? Try combing some flour into my scalp to soak some of it up?

Whew that was a long first post. Wonder if anyone other than me is ever going to read it haha. And nice! It’s awesome that WordPress lets you upload and insert images right from their dashboard now. I’m not sure if that was always there. I do remember having to upload the images myself to the server before inserting it when using older versions of WordPress.