Toys, toys, toys

Ugh! So the newest itch I've gotten surrounds my daughter's toys.

They are ALL plastic! Plastic, that I am now learning, may not be all that safe.

Most of them are light up toys or just plain noisy. Which I am now learning is really not great for her development.

So what's a mom to do?

Well I'm sure as heck not just going to keep things this way. I'm going to sell all of her toys! And then use that money to buy her simple wooden toys that will let her use her imagination, and help in her cognitive development. The first to go will be anything using batteries! Eventually, I would like to be mostly plastic and battery free in toy land. One step at a time, though. We'll get there, soon enough.

One thing I really want to do for her, as she gets a bit older, is to give her a HUGE dress up wardrobe. I always loved playing dress up when I was little, but never really had the resources, so that is one thing that will definitely be happening in this house:). Who needs noisy light up toys, when you're pretending to be a doctor/nurse/astronaut/princess?

Update on my lack of 'poo;)

I have changed things up a bit. I'm now attempting to completely forgo my hair touching water between my bi-weekly rinses. I've been doing a lot more reading around and have a very good reason as to why. I have hard water! So when I get my hair wet and put nothing in it, mineral deposits build up on my hair, yuck! If I do need to do something with my hair between washes I will probably just take a shower and use some sort of acidic rinse to prevent any buildup (probably apple cider vinegar,) but leave out the baking soda. Right now I'm trying to get my hair used to only being washed twice a week, because eventually it will slow down the oil production and will no longer look like a greasy mess;) haha!

It's really not that bad now though! I washed Sunday, accidentally used a bit too much oil, so I did a water only rinse yesterday (before learning the mineral deposit thing.) Today it was a tiny bit greasy, but just powdering a bit of cornstarch in there for a minute and brushing it out, has my hair looking like new... well almost new, lol. My ponytail is my new best friend:). And my boar bristle brush does wonders for my hair, too.

Twice a day I brush my hair out really well with my regular hairbrush. Then I go over my whole head with the boar bristle brush several times. After that, I flip my head over and brush out the back of my hair several times. Once I flip back up my hair is poofy and huge, haha! This is just to help the sebum (natural oils from your scalp) move from my scalp out to the ends of my hair. So once I'm done doing this I use my regular brush over it once more.

Around the house I HAVE to keep my hair up, or else I am constantly playing with it, making it much greasier than it'd be if I could just leave it be, haha. I use scrunchies though, so it's relatively easy to go from being up all day, to wearing it down if I want to.

Anyways, just thought I'd share:). I feel like I learn new things everyday!

All about no 'pooing

I'm sitting here trying to think of just one topic to write about. It's kind of hard to pick just one, so maybe this will just be a little update about everything:). On second thought, I may just dive more deeply into explaining "no 'poo."

No 'poo is going wonderfully. Being a stay at home mom, I never really got too dirty or sweaty, so I didn't shower daily, or even every other day. I would shower about every three days or so. Well now with going no 'poo I've found that if I just jump in the shower every morning to rinse my hair out and do a quick scrub down, I feel great! My hair looks great, and I feel refreshed and ready for the start of the day. After my hair is done going through the detox phase, I may go back to showering every other day, but for now, I'm enjoying this routine.

If I don't shower daily, my hair does get quite greasy, because of the awful detox period, and my hair getting rid of the years of buildup from my old shampoos and conditioners. If I shower everyday though, you can't even tell that I'm not using shampoo or conditioner! Right now I'm trying to keep my washing routine to twice a week, Sunday and Thursday.

In case you haven't read earlier blogs, the actual wash routine is as follows.

• I put 1 tbsp of baking soda into a cup. In the shower I fill my small cup with water and scrub that into my hair. I let it sit for at least a minute, usually while I'm washing my body, then rinse.
• Then I take my other cup that is half filled with apple cider vinegar and fill it the rest of the way in the shower. (Note: I used to pre-mix my ACV and water, before my shower, but it was just way too cold, haha!)I pour this all over my hair and let that soak for at least a minute, usually a bit longer, like you would with conditioner. This is usually while I'm washing my face and doing any shaving that I might need to do.
• After I've let it sit I rinse my hair VERY thoroughly. I let the water run over my hair for almost as long as I let the vinegar sit in my hair. I use my hands to press the water through my hair, and press my hands along my scalp as well. I do this to prevent any of the vinegar from remaining in my hair, and I never have a vinegar smell after my hair has dried.
• Also, in each step I massage my scalp very thoroughly, like enough that I can feel my scalp move a bit with my fingers. When I don't do my wash routine I also massage thoroughly in the shower and help the natural oils move from the scalp down through to the rest of my hair.

There are a lot of good sites out there to help in learning about no 'pooing and why you should do it. Today I found an amazing site that I'm going to start using as a reference guide. Here's a link in case you're interested.

Honestly my hair looks better than it has EVER looked before. And this is without even using styling products. My hair is softer, silkier, and has more body. I've never been happy with my hair. Even on past "good hair days" it still was never all that great to me. Now I LOVE my hair, and I think it looks fabulous:).

No 'pooing might be "green" and "crunchy" but that's really not even why I decided to try it. I tried it out because I wasn't happy with my hair and I wanted a change. The green/crunchy part is just a plus.

A break in the "No TV"

So I'm taking a little break tonight, for the finale of The Bachelor! I watched every episode this season, couldn't pass up the finale! Honestly, I haven't been paying much attention, but I want to see who wins.

Things have been going really well around here. I'm loving my natural beauty products: my homemade facewash, the apricot kernel oil as face lotion, EV coconut oil as body lotion, homemade deoderant. It's all working really well, and makes me feel great! Then of course there's the twice weekly baking soda wash of my hair and apple cider vinegar rinse:). My hair has never felt better!

McKaleigh and I ate some really good food today. Almost nothing processed, lots of veggies, yummy! I need to look into some more vegetarian meals. I'm not a vegetarian, but I only really eat fish and chicken, and there's only so much fish and chicken you can eat, haha!

McKaleigh has a cold, which really stinks, since she hasn't quite figured out how to blow her nose. Being the great sharer that she is, she has given that cold to me. Wasn't that sweet of her?

Going green/crunchy...

I am now entering my second phase for going green and crunchy!

Phase one was eliminating paper products and using primarily cloth. I still have TP on hand for guests, and paper towels on hand for especially gross cleanups, but for the most part, I'm all cloth! I also started "no 'pooing" during this phase, although that technically fits in better with phase two.

Phase two is switching to all/mostly homemade cleaners and health and beauty products. I bought white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, baking soda, cornstarch, witch hazel, chamomile tea, borax, honey, and I think I am forgetting a few things I've already purchased. I still need to get essential oils and some containers. With these products I will make an all purpose cleaner, disinfectant, window cleaner, other various household cleaners that I'm forgetting at the moment, face wash, deodorant, and will wash and condition my hair. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with most of my old stuff.

Phase three is partially started, but that's when I'll focus more on food. Right now I've been focusing more on just avoiding processed foods. Eventually I'd like to buy more organic, and even grow some of my own food. Who knows what the phases after that will be, but this is what I have set out for now!

I'm really loving these changes and it's not as hard as it might seem. Just do things slowly. You don't just wake up one morning and you're all green/crunchy. It has to start with one thing at a time.

For me the starter was cloth diapers(still use a sposie here and there.)
From cloth diapers, I went to cloth wipes.
From cloth wipes, I went to cloth household.
Not sure how, but from cloth household, I went no-poo, haha.
And that's where we are now, with the homemade products!

It's definitely a process, and the more I educate myself on the dangers of the products being consumed by the average American, the more I want to actively do something. Not buying their products is the first step.

Day 2 of NO TV!

Like most Americans, I watched a lot of TV. So much in fact, that I felt like I never got anything done, because between the shows I watched, keeping up with all the social networking sites I frequent, and taking care of my daughter, there wasn't much time left for anything else!

I noticed that more and more often, McKaleigh was zoning out on whatever was on TV. I never watched any kids shows, but she was still hooked to the TV at times. This was my primary reason for no more TV. I may still watch a few select shows here and there, but only the ones that I REALLY love. I will no longer be watching the shows that just happened to be on. Heck, if it's not on hulu.com, I probably won't watch it, haha.

I truly believe that not watching TV has made it so much easier for me to get things done. I just did things today, without really thinking about it. I was constantly thinking of the next thing to do, instead of vegging out in front of the TV and my computer all day.

I did the following things today:

• Made pancakes and eggs for breakfast(instead of the typical cereal or bagel.)
• Decluttered a majority of my kitchen(the side I actually cook on... other half still needs a lot of work:P.)
• Moved my full sized bed into the guest room, to make room for the king, got the bedframe today.
• Did a bit of vacuuming in my room and the guest room, but still need to clean them more thoroughly.
• I cleaned up the dogs' room, like completely cleaned it up (yes my dogs have their own room:P.)
• Finally got the futon mattress from the garage and into the dog room.
• Vacuumed the futon mattress because it was gross from being in the garage.
• Re-organized the furniture in the dog room and set up the kennel that was in my room, in their room for big ol' Jack.
• I lost track of time, so we had a late lunch.
• After lunch, I actually cleaned up everything I had used to make it, and all the miscellaneous dishes that had been laying around!

On a typical day, before no TV, I felt productive if we had 1 cooked meal (the other two would be packaged) and I got the dishwasher loaded! And I would feel extra productive if I vacuumed the living room, haha.

Today was day one of using all cloth, and I've got to say, I love it! It just works so much better than paper, and with as many paper towels as we were going through, we're going to save loads of money!

Tomorrow will be day three of "no 'poo"ing, and my second time using the baking soda wash and apple cider vinegar rinse. I was going to wait three days, but we have playgroup tomorrow, and I don't want to be too greasy.

McKaleigh decided to not nap until supper time, so I better sneak off and cook while she's sleeping:). Today has been a good day.

Wow, so much has happened in 2 months!

I'm 12 weeks pregnant! I can't believe I haven't blogged since finding out! I'm due September 3rd and am soooo excited to be having our second baby.

Things have been rough lately, last week McKaleigh was sick for most of the week. Then we had to put down the oldest dog, because he couldn't walk anymore. We knew the alternative was hauling him back and forth to the vet for a few months before he would end up just dying naturally. I'm a small girl and he was a big dog, so it just wasn't a feasible option:(.

This week has been much better so far. McKaleigh finally got over her sickness this weekend, so we made the jump into cloth diapers. I love love love them! I have more on the way and wish I would've been cloth diapering from the beginning! I'm so excited to cloth diaper baby #2.

Switching to cloth diapers has led me to want to live a generally greener life. I'm thinking about switching to cloth all around (even mama cloth *gasp*) because I'm tired of buying things to throw away, when there are reusable options out there!

Today was also day 1 of me switching to a "no 'poo" routine. Instead of shampoo I used a baking soda/water combo and instead of conditioner I used an apple cider vinegar/water combo. My scalp is a bit dry and itchy, but I know that it's just part of the process of my scalp getting used to producing it's own oil again. I may have to make up a natural deep conditioner for the mean time though. I saw a good recipe in Cosmo, lol.

So that's just an update on some stuff around here... I know I don't really have many followers, but I write these more for me than anyone else anyways:).