Homemade Hair Care: Deep Treatment

So, my hair is dead.

A hairdresser a few weeks ago actually held up the bulk of it into a loooong ponytail and exclaimed, "ALL of this hair is DEAD! You need to cut it all off!"

Not gonna happen.

If it is true that ALL of my hair from my ears down is dead, I will have to find another way...I was never cute with a bob.

Proof:

Normally, I blow dry my hair once a week, wash it 7 times a week, and barely brush it or dye it.  This is why I know my hair is just brittle and thin and probably isn't meant to be long. I don't care. I like long hair. (My mothers hair, aka the ultimate "mom" haircut above may have scarred me)

That is why this morning, I did this:

3 eggs

2 tbsp olive oil (or safflower oil)

1 tps vinegar (I used the clear one)

Mix together, apply it to your tresses, cover with a plastic cap (or plastic wrap), and leave it on for 30 minutes. You will look awesome.

Then shampoo as usual.

Okay, I just got out of the shower and my hair kinda feels the same. Wah.  I'll update if anything unexpectedly glamorous happens. Stick around...

UPDATE: I brushed before going to bed and my hair feels a lot better.  This stuff definitely works well as a deep treatment. Highly recommend.  

Day 2: My hair feels even smoother today! I think this stuff made a huge difference! Love it!  


xoxo
L

YUM: Overnight Oats with Chia

A friend of mine posted a recipe for this on facebook and I just knew that I had to steal it and make it.  

Done and done.

The hubs and I did a test-run last night with a taste-test this morning resulting in a tastebud explosion, resulting in a unanimous decision. Chia shall soon become my sister-wife. We're in love! This breakfast is SO easy and SO healthy. And even more than that, it is SO filling.  It's definitely an amazing alternative to an egg and cheese bagel sandwich.  Although, I probably shouldn't mention those guys in a post where I'm trying to get people excited about eating chia seeds. I apologize. My b.

Here's the Overnight Oats with Chia recipe (with a couple alterations from yours truly):

1/2 cup Rolled Oats

1/2 cup Vanilla Greek Yogurt (you can use Plain)

2/3 cup Almond Milk (you can use regular Milk)

1 tbsp Chia Seeds

For later:

Healthy (less ingredients on the label/no processed stuff) strawberry jam

1 Banana

Mix all of the top ingredients together in a glass bowl or jar and leave overnight in your fridge.  The next morning, add some strawberry jam and half of a banana or a whole one if you're crazy and voila! Breakfast is served.

My camera is on the fritz, so these awful phone pictures will have to do. Sorry!

Yes my chia is in an old salsa bottle.

It's possible you think this looks grosser than the food in your grandmother's nursing home cafeteria.  That is possible, but please...hold your throw up.  This stuff tastes good! I promise. Now, close your lids and try some. You are going to LOVE it!


xoxo
L

Homemade Face Lotion

So, as I scoured some of my favorite blogs this week I came across a homemade face lotion recipe (from ohdeardrea.blogspot.com) that I knew I had to try.

Normally, I use Olay Regenerist in the mornings while swapping out Vaseline to use at night because I am too afraid of using 2 possibly toxic lotions in one day. Paranoid? Too bad! Because now I won't have to!

The new cream is made up of:

2 tbsp Coconut Oil.
1 tbsp Organic Baby Butt Cream
A few drops of Organic Almond Oil.

I bought everything from Whole Foods.

It isn't the prettiest concoction, so there's no huge plus of seeing a finished product. It really just looks like pasty white poo floating around the bottom of a glass jar. What matters is the application.  NOT TOO MUCH!  Just dip your fingers in and smooth evenly over your face.  I even put it on my lips and it seemed to moisturize them, so yay, laziness wins again.

I'll be updating this for the next 7 days to see if:

a) my skin looks and feels any better

b) the cut on my chin heals and how fast

Day 1 - So far, I significantly freaked out at how oily my face looked directly after application.  Decided to take a 10 minute breather from looking at myself or applying makeup and revisit.  Upon revisiting, I felt good! My skin is super soft. Let's see how tomorrow goes...

Day 2-3 - Loving it!  Cut on chin - still there.

Day 4 - reapplying at night now and my chinny chin chin is healing!

Day 5 - 14 - Loving it.  The key is not putting on too much. Whenever I do, I feel gross and wipe off the excess.

BREAKING NEWS: It is August 16th and this stuff lasts forever. The hubs and I have been using it since the first day we discovered it and we still have a ton left! 

Crafty Crafty: Adding Ankle Straps to Flats

This is either an amazing way to update a pair of lame old flats OR a way to ruin them.  Depends on your level of crafty-ness:

http://thepennyrose.com/blog/2012/7/26/upgrade-your-shoes-with-diy-ankle-straps.html

xoxo
L

Sinks are more fun than my rebellious uterus.

Since I've been home from taking the best vacation ever, life has been HECTIC! With a capital...everything.  You see, for the past year the hubs and I have been dealing with some rather annoying issues pertaining to a certain body part of mine that hates complying with the reason it is there to begin with.

Basically, my uterus is not up to snuff.  I first found out that things were amiss in May with doctor 1.  However, upon switching doctor's (to doctor 2), I found out that YES my uterus was still crazy-pants, but I was previously misdiagnosed.  Blah blah blah, surgery was needed (I was excited), a septum had to be removed and it all took place last week. I'm in the healing phase now and will hope to hear how things went on Monday.  Obla di, obla da.

However, I am a TERRIBLE waiter (both laying on the couch and working in a restaurant). I have the shortest attention span and I simply cannot sit still for too long. How long is too long? Probably around 29 seconds.  So, since I've already rearranged (aka - told Jeff where to move things) multiple rooms in the house, I figured it was time to focus on our 3 x 4 miniscule bathroom again.  Hooray!  

Out with the old sink (in the above link) and in with the new...

I can't wait for it to get here!  I mean, with the extra 4 inches of space we'll be getting, who knows what will happen! 

xoxo

L

Shorter Road Trip Recap Vid

Because there can never be enough road trip footage to gawk at, right?

Road Trip Shortie

Check it out. Then, book your Cruise America RV and GO!

Cross-Country Road Trip VIDEO!!!!

Yay! A recap of our 18 day cross country RV extravaganza is FINALLY here.  Long awaited, I know.  It has been a whole week and a half.  Whew.

So this 8 minute (and change) video can give you a taste of life inside the metal walls.  Edited to some lyrical love from Mike Snow, Calvin Harris and Jack White. 

Holler:

CROSS COUNTRY RV RECAP VIDEO

Flashback: The Wedding

Since I've been consumed with editing the road trip video and an upcoming surgery to fix something that needs fixing (I'll explain later), I haven't had much time for much of anything.  However, over the weekend, the hubs and I found our missing wedding video and finally posted it to Youtube.  Only 3 years later. Go us. 

Anyway, here it is:

Kast/Thompson Wedding Music Video - 9/25/09

I'm obviously trying to plaster this thing everywhere, so that it CAN NEVER BE LOST AGAIN. Whew.

A few details:

Took place at The Knoll West Country Club in NJ

Edited by me

An amazing day, not an amazing edit of the day.

Happy Tuesday (?)

~L

Au Revoir to the RV lifestyle.

Saying goodbye to RV life has been surreal.  It truly was a lifestyle.

You wake up, make crummy instant coffee, drink it outside in your brand new totally-different-from-yesterday's yard, take a public shower with tree frogs (here's looking to you, Napa California!), pack up and go. To anywhere!  

On the road, I felt no anxiety, no stress, no burdens.  It was life-changing/viewpoint-changing for me, quite honestly.

I think that when you see the entire country laid out before you like that, you realize how AMAZING it is. And ripe for the taking. Yes, every state is SO different.  Yes, every person is SO different.  But, for the most part, everyone is GOOD, kind and awesome. Like, really really awesome.  

On the flip-side, I do understand why we're always so frustrated with far off states and their beliefs/what they believe is important.  We all lead completely different lives with completely different problems.  How are my problems going to effect the citizens of Thayne, Wyoming with a population of 300?  They aren't.  Why should they care?  They don't.

When speaking to one of our horse cowboys instructor guys, I mentioned how weird it would be to see the Pacific Ocean in a couple days since I felt like I'd just left the Atlantic.  His face was that of complete indifference.  To him, that sort of conversation is meaningless because he's never even SEEN an ocean.  Nor does he worry too much about making it happen.  I mean he has cattle to tend to! And horses!

Cowboy - "Biggest place I've been is Salt Lake City. Furthest I gone was Worden, Montana."

Me - "What did you think of Salt Lake?"

Cowboy - "Too many people"

Me - "Would you want to see New York City?"

Cowboy - "I'd be too afraid I'd get shot or something!"

(sidenote: I've never seen more guns or dead things than when I was on this 18 day trip while I've actually never seen one in 29 years in NYC.)

And there you have it.  Our country will never have completely similar lives with similar problems or goals.  However, I do believe a trip like this would be the best starting point for everyone.

Video recap in the video tab!!!!

Road Trip - Day 16 & 17

Due to a very serious low-battery issue, I will make this brief.

Day 16:

We left San Fran and headed to Monterey, CA.  

On our way we stopped at the Redwoods:

ooooh. aaaaah.

Then to Santa Cruz for a yummy lunch (from Aloha) on the beach...where we saw a sea otter. 

Life complete, we moved on and bought some awesome roadside produce for cheap.  7 avocados for 1 dollar and Driscoll Strawberries straight from the farm!  At night, our luck with zero-preparedness in the where-shall-we-park arena finally came to an end when all of the RV parks turned up full.  Poo. However, since we are masters of the road we were able to find a Red Roof Inn with a free spot available (bonus: it had electricity and water hookups too!)  It was a lot closer to other RV's (crap, people!) than we would have liked, but beggars can't be choosers.

 

Day 16!

As we got ready for our big night in Monterey, Jac made some amazingly fresh guac with our earlier findings and we headed out on foot to dinner and bowling.  

Both were awesome.  Especially bowling since the guy kept the place open an extra 30 minutes for us. 

um, this might be my highest score ever.

This morning, the crew awoke to a thick layer of fog and mist.  It actually really felt like Seattle weather...not Cali at all, so we packed up the homestead and drove off into the sunshine.  

On a recommendation, we grabbed the most amazing brunch at Nepenthe. And thank goodness we did.  You get to eat in the trees! With hummingbirds! Overlooking the ocean! It's actually crazy beautiful and these pictures do not do it justice.  Oh, the food is unreal-amazing too.

After that we managed to find the hardest hiking trail ever along Highway 1.  The Nature Trail @ Ragged Point. 

 Do it...just not in flip-flops, like me.  We didn't take any phone pics, but I'll update this later because the secluded black pebbled beach we ended up on was gorgeous. Also, Jeff getting creamed by a wave was also pretty hilarious and we miraculously have it on video.

Now, we're heading to Malibu for our LAST night in the RV.  I could cry thinking of this journey coming to end.  It's been so surreal and life-changing.  I mean, we saw zebras today. Zebras! And then we stumbled upon a beach with dozens of Elephant Seals. Elephant Seals!  

All I'm saying is...Ed ate a scorpion.  That's it. That's all I'm saying.

EWWW! It's escaping!

~L

Road Trippin - Day 15

San Francisco, I love you. 

Yesterday the crew and I drove further into civilization (scary). We were San Fran bound!  However, with having learned the true meaning of spaciousness on this journey, we definitely started to see what the hermits of Wyoming were talking about when they spoke of not wanting to be around people.  People and traffic are messy and hectic. I get it.

With a little luck (due to zero reservation/preparedness), we parked our house at Treasure Island RV Park right outside of Downtown San Fran.  It was nice-enough (aka- the only option) with showers, electricity and laundry.  Plus, it was close to the subway (or Bart) and we didn't plan on spending our night among the permanent residents of Treasure Island, so it was perfect.  We took the BART (Bay Area...something transport?) into the city to let the exploring begin...

Don't forget to call your Mom whilst on the road.

I tried my best to soak up the vibe of the city quickly, knowing we only had a day to meet and become friends with a lady as complex as SanFran.  Most conversations picked up on in passing seemed very friendly and laid back, chatting about their week, their dog, or their beard.  But at one point, two men left a cafe and I overheard:

"Everyone's just nicer here, man.  New York SUCKS.  Maybe I'm becoming an old man, but it's BAD there."

lol. 

After thoroughly giving our butts an up-hill exercise to remember, we stopped into The Rogue for some beer.  Or a chocolate stout, IPA, Magic Hat,  Oatmeal stout, Shakespeare, and Mocha stout to be more exact.  The beer was awesome and the atmosphere was even better.  Not too touristy and trendy. Just right.

At night we met up with two of Jeff's Seattle friends for dinner at Barbacco - an Italian tapas joint that had the most unbelievable burrata.  It felt so weird being around fancy people who didn't just shower in the parking lot of an RV park,  but somehow we managed. And we tried not to judge them.  

Ultimately, San Francisco is probably my second favorite city in the US, after New York. The people may all dress exactly the same (something you can really only coordinate in pockets of New York like Williamsburg, Brooklyn) but there is something really unique and beautiful about it.  The landscape, the townhouses, the charm, the people and the massive layer of fog sitting atop it entice me.  SF, you won me over. 

I'm sure I'll be back!

What day is it? Where am I?

We're on our way to the Redwoods right now before heading to a more beachy scene.

Til then!
Laura