No Poo

For about 2 months now I have not shampooed my hair.  Sounds crazy doesn’t it.  I have read and researched quite a bit on how to spend less money on stuff and how to become more environmentally friendly.  By not buying bottles of shampoo and conditioner and using only natural ingredients, this seemed to kill two birds with one stone.

When my shampoo and conditioner ran out I started using baking soda to wash my hair, apple cider vinegar to rinse and coconut oil to smooth it out.

I keep a jar with a sealed lid of baking soda with a tablespoon and a plastic cup (you know the kind that you bought about 5 years ago and always have around to keep beer in when you have a party and you can never seem to get rid of) in the shower to wash my hair.  I put a bit less than the tablespoon of soda in the cup and fill it with water.  I pour it over my head and then massage my scalp for a few minutes than rinse.  It took a bit to figure out what amount of baking soda worked for my head.  Everyone is different.  Too much and my hair felt heavy after washing and too little and it didn’t seem to do it’s job.

Next I have a spray bottle with one part apple cider vinegar and 2 parts water that I spray all over my hair.  I usually let this sit and soak while I finish in the shower and then rinse it out.

I let my hair air dry and if my hair has a mind of its own and becomes frizzy or goes every different direction then I take a small amount of coconut oil, rub it in my hands and then smooth my hair down.

I have found that I have to wash my hair about every 3 days.

In the two months time, this is the changes I have noticed with my hair.

• Much more body – not as limp and lifeless
• Less tangles
• Holds its colour much longer
• Less hair loss

Cost of this was

1.00 baking soda container

1.00 vinegar spray bottle

3.00 apple cider vinegar (I have used only ¼ of the bottle in 2 months)

2.00 baking soda (I have only used about 1/3 of the box in 2 months although I also use the same box for)

4.00 coconut oil (I have used 1.3 of the jar in 2 months although I also have been using the same jar for cooking and as a moisturizer)

Total cost of 11.00 which will last me probably the entire year and the environmental impact for the year will be nil.

Meal Planning

Continuing with the Plan to eat and Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution the next item was the Cracking Burger (Page 147)
Called the Cracking Burger because it is just so cracking good.  Got to love the British and their terminology.

This burger was perfection. I did use ground chicken over beef, bread crumbs instead of crushed crackers and basil instead of parsley (I really think I need to go out and buy some fresh parsley for next week’s recipes).  This recipe I found very similar to the meatballs in the ingredients used.  It made a very sturdy burger the cooked up quick enough and the flavours were marvelous.  It took about the same amount of time as thawing and cooking frozen burgers and these were so much more tasty.  It was a hit with everyone and I will be making this again.

 

Crunchy Garlic Chicken

To continue with the Jamie Oliver and Plan to Eat meal plans, although I am so far behind because of illness, I am posting the Crunchy Garlic Chicken (Page 241) with Dressed Asparagus (Page 215)


This was the second time I have made this chicken recipe and we loved it just as much as the first time.   Again I substituted bread crumbs for the crushed crackers and the only other substitution I made with this recipe was to but in rosemary and basil instead of parsley, not that I have anything against parsley, just that I had the rosemary and basil on hand.

The Asparagus was wonderful.  Sam ate it which was a testament to how good this recipe really is.  For the dressing I placed all ingredients in a jam jar and just shook it up to mix, which was much easier than whisking it together in a bowl, less dishes too.

I also made the Fruit Scones (Page 331) dessert that evening as well.
I didn’t have any clotted cream so butter had to do.  They were not my typical biscuit recipe, these scones were much more dense and heavy, but tasty none the less.

Food Revolution and Plan to Eat

Over the next while I will be making and reviewing recipes in Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Food Revolution .  Plan to Eat has a great challenge going on right now to plan meals around the cook book and since I already own and frankly love the cookbook, I thought I would follow along.  This is also great that someone else will be making the meal plan decisions for me for the next little while.

Day 1 was Spaghetti and Meatballs (Page 149)

I loved the meatball recipe.  It went together very quickly although I did use bread crumbs instead of crushed crackers.  I also substituted ground chicken for ground beef.  The meatballs stood up very well and cooked quickly.  For the sauce the only alteration I made was to whiz it with a hand blender to make a smooth and not a chunky sauce. Personally I would have preferred the chunky but the boys in my house do not like tomato chunks.  Woe is me.

Simple Mom Challange

  

Simple Mom  has started a challenge regarding cleaning the house.

I have decided to join because I always need an extra boost in motivation when it comes to cleaning.

Week 1 is focused on the closets.  This is difficult for me because I think I have weeded through my closet as much as I can, but we'll see about that.  We have a slit closet, which we had my clothes in one side and Shawn's in the other.  About a month ago we switched around so that both of our clothes were in one side and the other had the off season clothes.  The side that we combined our clothes in is easier to get to which made it much less frustrating for the person who had the unfortunate luck of having the hard to get to side.

But to accommodate both of our wardrobes we had to pare down quite a bit.  About 3 garbage bags full went to charity.  Who knew closets held so much.

This week will be my challenge to see if I can make the closet even more roomier.  I will also add the dresser drawers to the challenge.  I know I can get my drawers down to be a bit more sparse.  I seem to have an unexplainable attachment to t-shirts though.  I will post again on Friday with progress.

Todays Closets

Left side is all winter clothes, right side summer

dresser drawers

the less clutter we live in the less cluttered our lives are.

the less clutter we live in the less cluttered our lives are.  

A simple home, where everything has its place, multitasking on items
A clean home, where last minute dinner guests can show up without inducing stress
A calm home where mornings are spent enjoying time with the family and not rushing around to try to find a book or the keys to the car

These are my hopes for my home in 2011.

How I will be accomplishing this is by:

1. eliminating clutter in each room of the house
2. reorganizing each room to maximize the living space
3. get rid of unused items. The idea that I may use it some day does not work any longer
4. replace old, worn and inefficient items with newer more efficient items
5. donate old toys, clothing and unused items to shelters or charities
6. don’t buy anything new unless it has a specific purpose

Going through each room I am amazed to find things that at one point I thought were really important and now with my new way of thinking I realize that its only purpose was to collect dust.  My emotional attachment to certain objects have been eliminated due to the fact that it is just getting in the way.  An example of this is a very large stuffed animal that my sister brought home from Germany for me when I was in high school.  It was a mascot of the Olympics that year.  It is huge and I always thought is was very kind of my sister to stuff that animal in her suitcase and bring it all the way back for me.  Now 20 some odd years later I only see it as a matted fraying thing that I really cannot identify (cross the abominable snowman with a teddy bear) and cannot find a place for.  I also cannot think of any other person who would want this (my son was afraid of it when he was little).

Since I am the only one in our house at the moment that if gung ho on minimizing our clutter, I have to be respectful of the rest of my family.  To accomplish this I have bought more storage.  Shelving and bins that are attractive and have clean lines have replaced the mounds of clutter in each room.  The only rule I have imposed on my boys is that once the shelf or bin is full then they have to pare down their items to fit.  I will never be the person that own only 100 items and I am OK with that.  My minimalist goal it to be comfortable in my home with my family, to clean less and laugh more.  As long as everything has its place and is contained, that is the best I can hope for right now.

Yelling

One of my goals for this new year was to limit my yelling.  I am a yeller, I don’t think I have anger management issues, I think mostly it is frustration management issues.  

For this year, I have decided that each day as part of my journaling I will write the times that I yell, the reasoning behind it and if it was warranted or not.  If it was not necessary to yell, than I will write ways on which it could be handled differently.  Accountability is a key issue for me this year.

One of the most important reasons that I want to halt the yelling in my family is for my son.  I have accepted the fact when my son was born that every parent screws up their child in some way or another.  It is inevitable. But if you constantly look to yourself and try your best then the degree of screwed-upness may be limited.

Mothers yell out of anger, frustration or fear.  Yelling is natural and necessary at certain points in teaching your child the ways of the world. We yell at our child to keep him out of danger; ‘don’t run onto the road’ or ‘don’t touch the hot stove’. We yell at our child out of frustration; ‘how many times do I have to tell you to pick up your socks and not leave them on the living room couch’ or ‘why did you hit your cousin, hitting is never acceptable’.  We yell at our child out of anger; ‘you broke the glass because you were balancing it on your head, what did you think was going to happen’.

The trouble I have with yelling at my son is I feel like crap after, and I wonder what my yelling does to his self esteem and confidence.

My son is eleven.  I told him that this was going to be my goal for the year and that I would be writing in my journal all the times that I yelled and why.  I also told him that I needed his help.  To help out his mom, he has to let me know when I am yelling at him when he thinks it’s unnecessary.  I also said he has to be more aware of the things he does that cause me to yell at him.

Yesterday we had a discussion on yelling and I asked him how I was doing. His answer to me was very telling.  He said that I was doing great (said with sincerity and not his usual sarcasm) but after he asked me how he was doing.  That thoughtfulness was what made me think that my goal is helping him with his esteem.  He is actually thinking about his actions and how they effect others.

By writing in my journal the times that I have yelled, I have been noting a pattern.  Lately the yelling has centered around my son not respecting things, for example, he wrote on a computer mouse with a blue marker, a mouse that we only got 2 weeks prior.  It was the lack of respect that angered me and I was frustrated that we have had this similar argument before.  So writing it out I was able to see clearer and come up with solutions.  The thing that was the light bulb moment for me was realizing that he is very respectful to people and just needs to carry that over to objects and that I needed to tell him that.  So even though I yelled at him, we both got positive results from it, my realization him hearing that he does have good qualities, even if they are not pointed out immediately.

New Year New Goals

Shoot for the moon because even if you miss you land among the stars!

I hate New Years Resolutions.  To me it is a way for people to create opportunities to feel guilty about their shortcomings.  Every year I make a secret resolution to loose weight or create more or make more money and then by the time February rolls around I feel guilty because I have done nothing to help my resolution along or I have tried and I have failed miserably.

This year I am doing things differently.  I have created goals for the year, not a month, not something to accomplish immediately but an entire year to become a better me, one step at at time. Common sense right, so why didn't I think of it before?

I have set goals in the past, but I am fairly certain I did it all wrong.  I have set goals without any direction or a clear path to follow.  I basically set myself up for failure.

So I am going to go to school on goal setting.  Research not only how to accomplish my set goals but how to be productive in the goal setting.  Confusing right?  Not really.

So what have I found out?

Step 1 - Write every goal down in a place that is accessible.  For me this will be in my google documents. I can revisit and revise the goals as necessary on any computer.  I am a big fan of lists and bullet points. Each goal I have set has its own list of  bullet points within that I would like to accomplish and how to go about doing so. Organized and detailed is the way I like to be in most aspects of my life, why not goal setting.  Being as detailed as possible with the goal only makes it easier to to see things in a straight line and makes focus that much easier.  I have thought for a while about keeping a journal, thought that it would be a great discipline, but I never did start one mostly because I thought I would have nothing to write about.  Writing about my goals and the steps I am taking to achieve them, now that's a novel concept.

Step 2 -  Set up a time every day to focus on the goals at hand. I have chosen first thing in the morning.  Yes it means getting up earlier but it has been a wonderful way to start my day, with a cup of tea and my laptop.  I find it is like clearing out the cobwebs and starting each day fresh.  OK granted I have only done it two days in a row and this morning I had to convince myself that this was still a good idea, but in the end it was a great morning.  For each of my goals I write a paragraph on how I will work toward getting one step closer each day, it may be small or it may be a grand gesture.  At this point it really doesn't matter, as long as I can write one thing down every day to maintain focus and not give up.  That way set backs will not be disabling, just another step in a long line.


Step 3 - Forgive myself for the slip ups, set backs and a lack of motivation.  I am not running a race nor am I in competition with anyone else.  These goals were created by me and I can set my own rules and regulations.  Mistakes and mishaps are just a part of life, they are inevitable really if we want to life a full and complete life.

Each day is a new chance for moving forward. No longer will I wait in the wings for something to get me motivated to get going.

Wisdom Jar final week

I can't believe I actually got 365 quotes.  I don't think I have any duplicates, but the folks I am giving these to as a present will certainly let me know if I do, although there are some that I could have duplicated about 30 quotes and they never would have known.  I have a diverse group of friends.

Just getting over the stomach flue and I am leaving for Florida on the weekend.  It has been an insane week and month so far.  I am so looking forward to some down time.

1. people, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed; never throw out anyone. - Audrey Hepburn
2. At one point or another in our lives, we’re going to fail at something. The more risks you take, the more chances you’ll have at failing.  -Steve Kamb
3. Thomas Edison failed with 1,000 different filaments before finally perfecting the light bulb. Fortunately, he took each failure as “one more thing that didn’t work” so he could move onto the next thing. - Steve Kamb
4. “Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.” -Henry Wheeler Shaw
5. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -- Scott Adams
6. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. -- Annie Dillard
7. When things go wrong don't go with them. - Elvis Presley, rock idol
8. “We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.” ~Mary McCarthy
9. A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. - John Lennon
10. The more I see the less I know for sure.  John Lennon
11. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.  ~Henry Ford
12. It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.  ~Edmund Hillary
13. The important thing is not to stop questioning.  ~Albert Einstein
14. The difference between try and triumph is a little umph.  ~Author Unknown
15. You don't have to brush your teeth - just the ones you want to keep.  ~Author Unknown
16. You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly.” Ronald Regan
17. Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst ~  Marcus Aurelius
18. Everyone is gifted - but some people never open their package - Author Unknown
19. Bad Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables. Spanish Proverb
20. If speaking is silver, then listening is gold. ~ Turkish Proverb
21. To lengthen your life, shorten your meals. ~ Unknown
22. Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow ~  Swedish Proverb
23. Trouble is to man what rust is to iron  ~ Yiddish Proverb
24. Fools and obstinate men make rich lawyers. ~ Spanish Proverb
25. Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet ~ African Proverb
26. I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. - Harry Emerson Fosdick

Wisdom Jar Week 13

This is the second last week of posting these.  We are deep into Hanukkah now and Christmas is approaching fast.  With the ongoing renovation in the house at the moment, I have not even begun to think of anything Christmas related.  What I need right now is a Christmas miracle.

The quotes at the end are from Katherine Hepburn.   I always admired her fierce independence.

1. It’s possible to stay alive for 99 years without every really having lived. Jason Kotecki
2. “Some people use one half their ingenuity to get into debt, and the other half to avoid  paying it.” -George Prentice
3. "What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every     age can be enchanting, provided you live within it." ~ Brigitte Bardot
4. “You’ve got a lot of choices.  If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice. ” ~Steven D. Woodhull
5. "Be who you are, and say what you feel, because those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind." 
 -Dr. Seuss
6. You will make all kinds of mistakes but as long as you are generous and true and fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.  - Winston Churchill
7. Have no fear of perfection - you’ll never reach it.  Salvador Dali
8. Courage is very important.  like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.  - Ruth Gordon
9. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars - Ralph Emerson
10. A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has. - Ralph Emerson
11. Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. - Rabbinical Saying
12. Truth stands the test of time, lies are soon exposed - proverb
13. stupid people always think they are right. Wise people listen to advice.  proverb
14. Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.  Pierre Trudeau
15. It is no use saying we are doing our best.  You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary - Winston Churchill
16. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm Winston Churchill
17. It’s not the hours you put in your work that counts, it’s the work you put in the hours. Sam Ewig
18. Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow - Ralph Emerson
19. Humor is also a way of saying something serious. T.S. Eliot
20. When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere. - Rochefouchuld
21. Only the mediocre are always at their best. - Jean Giraudoux
22. Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do. -Katherine Hepburn
23. Enemies are so stimulating. Katherine Hepburn
24. If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead get married. - Katherine Hepburn
25. If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun. - Katherine Hepburn
26. Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.  Perhaps they should just live next door and just visit now and then. - Katherine Hepburn