No poo and the rest of my hair care routine.

No poo is the way to go for me, but I have made a few changes. If you wanna know what I was doing check out my previous blog on it. Since I went no poo my hair has been growing like a weed. It is currently just about below hip length. I don't know if it is actually growing faster or if it is no longer all frizzy and kinked up on itself. After washing it now it looks like it use to after I would apply pounds of gunk and straighten it. But most importantly I can brush/comb my hair without it turning into a two foot wide ball of hair, even before oiling it, seriously it was really bad before I use to NEVER brush/comb my hair.

I did up the amount of ACV a bit, made it more conditioning. A few weeks ago I stopped using BS and just doing an ACV rinse. I did this mostly because I have hard water and soap scum was a bit of a problem. I also have been having problems with flakes, but I'm pretty sure that is due to my face soap or something because it is only around my hairline. It is not noticeable due to the fact that I have really thick hair and the color hides flakes amazingly well too. Or perhaps it is from the peppermint essential oil I had been adding since mid-December. I made a candy cane sugar scrub as gifts and had a lot of left over peppermint EO.

I looked around the The no 'poo method livejournal community, my intial go to source for info on going no poo, and came across this post and decided to give the flaxseed recipe a try. I boiled the flaxseed with cloves and infused that with chamomile and peppermint, it's basically what I had on hand. Here is what I ended up with:

Its consistency is like egg white so the container I have it in is not the greatest. I had issues with getting it out and staying on my scalp but will have better luck next time because I know what to expect.

I was also going to try lavander but the store was sold out last time I was there, I will probably try different things with subsequent batches. It was fine, nothing new to report versus BS/ACV. My hair seemed to dry a bit faster and it did seem to be a bit more bright in the red department but that just could have been an effect from being clean not the cloves, which is suppose to have red highlighting affects, it had been a while since I washed my hair. Here is a picture of it an hour or two after the flaxseed wash, pretty much looked like this after BS/ACV wash too.

I have my hair in two pony tails, the side on the right (my left) is flipped to try and show how the underside is a lot frizzier than the top side.

After I wash my hair I wrap it up loosely in a towel to get most of the excess moisture out and then comb it with a wide toothed comb and then air dry it. When it's mostly dry, not my roots, they take FOREVER to dry, I oil my hair with coconut oil. I got my oil at the local health food store and just bought food grade, they also had a tub in the beauty section but it was a lot more expensive for a lot smaller amount. Here is what I use:

I use a heaping 1/4 teaspoon for each side of my hair, I put it in two pony tails to oil it and only oil from hair band down. When I'm done I un-do the pony tails and use a tiny bit of oil on the hair that was above the bands, mostly to tame the little face framing fly aways that I am plagued with. Now that I say that I realize that this is the MAJOR difference in no 'poo'ing for me, the face framing fly aways were my main enemies and they are rarely on my mind these days. I don't even use headbands very often any more.

Here are more pictures of my hair in various stages of oiling.

Right (my left) side oiled and other side not oiled, yet.

A Close up of the oiled side, so shiny.

Both sides oiled.

My hair down after oiling and combing again.

The pictures really don't do justice to the effect that the oil has. The close up of the oiled bit is the best at showing how calm and great my hair looks after oiling. The oiling also works great as a detangler too. I have read that coconut oil can cause acne but my face has actually cleared up a lot since I went no 'poo but I did also change my skin care routine as well but at the least it is not affecting me that way.

I have to warn that this is probably not the ideal way to use oil for everyone. I know if my husband did this he would be a giant grease ball but he also is not a no 'pooer. There are somethings I just can't get him to do. A lot of people use the oil as a pre-wash conditioner. They put the oil on an hour or so before washing, some do it overnight, and they get similar results after they wash their hair of the oil. My hair has always been extremely dry and I have never had any oily hair issues. If your hair is thin and/or oily it might be too much to use coconut oil as a leave in. I don't want anyone to try this on my recommendation and end up with flattened down nasty greasy hair and curse me, although you can curse me anyways I'm use to it, hehe. My hair is a bit greasy seeming sometimes after oiling but after a few hours it soaks in and looks great till I wash again. I only wash twice a week at most and even between washings I do not get my hair wet like some no 'pooers do.

Also no 'poo doesn't work for everyone either. Even before no 'poo I would only wash my hair twice a week. I would have done it much less but it would start to smell. Since no 'poo my hair does not seem to grab on to smells as much as before. If you are the type that needs their hair washed everyday or it feels nasty to you and even perhaps looks nasty then it might just not work for you or you would go through such a drastic and long transition period that it just might not be worth it for you. When switching to no 'poo you are kinda re-training your body into taking care of it's self and not relying on something else to do it, kinda like kicking any bad habit, luckily this worked for me, unlike me trying to kick coffee, totally not worth it for me. So don't feel bad if you try and it doesn't work or if you don't even want to try.

Well that cured my boredom for a bit hope someone finds this useful, interesting, or whatever.

25 Random Things About Me

1. I'm so tired and see no end in sight
2. I love professional tennis
3. The Spanish men in tennis are probably the hottest group out there
4. I'm tired because the Australian Open is going on now
5. The time difference for above event makes me stay up to wee hours to watch live tennis
6. Apparently I'm going extinct because I'm a red head
7. Makes me feel bad for not breeding
8. OK not really but I'd hate for there to be no more red heads
9. I only shower twice a week usually
10. The majority of my week was pre-occupied with waiting and hoping for my cat to poop
11. I'm afraid of what might lurk in the dark, Vashta Nerada
12. The above is a Doctor Who reference, but still true, it just has a name now
13. The smell of bananas makes me gag
14. I collect my cats dropped whiskers
15. I make my own hair wash, no nasty chemical shampoo and conditioner for me
16. I almost exclusively use white vinegar for household cleaning
17. I live in organized chaos because I'm very organized but also very messy
18. I pick up animal poo with my bare hands almost everyday
19. I'm afraid of rodents, their teeth scare me
20. I once ran up a wall away from a groundhog, Liz saved me by picking him up
21. If I had more money I would be covered in tattoos
22. I worked with an Owl Monkey that looked at my eyeballs like he wanted to pop them out and eat them
23. I may be skinny but I am definitely not fit
24. My hair is almost below my ass
25. I have a 22 pound cat this is very picky about her food

Ipod cleaning

I wash and dried my Ipod the last time I did laundry, last weekend.  Did not realize until I was folding my laundry.  I felt a small hard rectangular object in a pocket in a pair of pants and I thought to myself, Oh crap I washed the remote to the Ipod dock, I took it out and realized no it's the actual Ipod.  I got really bummed and even more so when pressing the buttons did nothing.  I called my husband because a text just was not going to cut it for this.  This is a conversation that has to be done with actual voice so he can hear the sadness in me and I can hear the dis-belief that I actually did this in his, hehe.  

I call and tell him and we both kinda laugh but we also realize that I no longer have an Ipod and I use one a lot and so we are either going to have to buy a new one or he will give me his.  During the conversation I take out the cord for it and hook it up to my computer, OMG it comes on.  It still has all my songs on it, it still has total display function.  Now I have to test if it actually puts sound out, so onto the dock it goes, OMG it works, LISTEN LISTEN its Lynyrd Skynyrd!!! CAN YOU HEAR IT!!! HAHAHAHA!!!!  

So yeah it works but only when plugged into an energy source, so no using it with head phones or in the car anymore but I can't remember the last time I used earphones and it takes me 5 minutes to get to work and I do have a CD player and even a cassette player in my car.  At home I have docks for my Ipod at work I use my little dock that can be run by batteries or by AC so just no more battery for me, I have to plug it in, which is what I usually do anyways.  

I don't know why there is not any water damage, perhaps because I do large cold water loads in a front load washer or perhaps the washers don't actually work all that well, we have a laundry room at our complex so you never know.  I'm guesssing the power issues is from the dryer, the heat drained the battery.  I guess I'm lucky I use the medium setting on the dryer because the high setting probably would have totally killed the Ipod.  It is just too bad that Ipods have internal batteries that aren't worth changing like a cell phone.  

RIP Smoosh

Smoosh my green Iguana died last night. She had not been doing so well for the last few weeks, being quite lazy for her but of course still with her major attitude. Yesterday she didn't have her attitude and I knew it wouldn't be long. She was an old thing and had quite the interesting life. I believe I got her in 2000 or 2001 from Wild Wonders and they had had her since about 1997 if I remember correctly and I don't really know what happened to her previous to that. She was pretty much the same size from 1997 till now so she was not a super young Iguana but she didn't have the greatest life previous to that. She has no spines on her back, her dewlap is all messed up and she was a tiny girl for her age, and her mouth was all messed up probably from Metabolic Bone Disorder, lack of calcium and other vital vitamins (that's why we call her Smoosh, her smooshed up face), among other things. She had a pretty good life with me so I like to think the majority of her life was good and just a smaller bit of it was bad. Here are a few picture of her.