TNSE: Week 1

I have been using the homemade/natural shampoo for a week now. I don't love it yet, but it's not as bad as I feared.
After the first wash- hello, dandruff. It wasn't horrible, but it was definitely noticeable (thanks, hunny.) So before the second shampoo, I took a comb and massaged my scalp with it until I felt I got most of the flakes up. It was yucky.

Second wash- I started to notice that my hair was feeling a little dry, not bad, but not as soft as I prefer. The lavender smell is awesome. The scent stays in my hair for days. Still had dandruff issues, so I did the comb thing again.

Third wash- used a lot more of the vinegar-water mixture to see if it will soften things up a bit. It didn't, but it hasn't gotten any worse. The dandruff was much better. I ended up putting some bio-silk in my hair since I was going to curl it, but I'm hoping to not have to do that forever. My hair holds curls better.

Fourth wash- I need to refill the bottle, so I decided to add a little more oil than the recipe calls for, but I didn't actually measure it. Big mistake. My hair is now oily, but since the oil is good for my hair, I'm going to leave it in for a couple of days. (The shampoo can be fixed by adding more soap and water.) I also didn't do the comb thing before washing today, and the dandruff is back. I think that I am going to have to do the baking soda scrub to take care of this problem. But I'm going to go another week before I resort to that.

Thoughts so far: I like it. The dandruff is annoying, but it could be a lot worse. Once I get the recipe exactly how I need it, I will be much happier. My hair isn't as shiny as I would like it, but a little bit of beer in the shower will fix that.
I'm hoping to post some pictures for you in the next couple of days... once I have washed the oil out.

Thanksgiving

Yesterday my little family and I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time. Thankfully, we didn't have to cook everything, so we were able to actually enjoy our Thanksgiving. I think the key to hosting is not getting too stressed out. I thought that I would be a nervous/pessimist wreck yesterday, but never once did I think things were going to go badly. Maybe that's because Nick was in charge of the turkey, not me. But it still helped to be positive. 

Here's what we had:

Gordo the 30lb Turkey (I kid you not, he was really 30 pounds) with a mixed fruit and walnut stuffing

Honey baked ham

Normal Stove-Top stuffing

Butternut squash and parmesan bread pudding

Mashed potatoes

Green bean casserole

Stuffed mushrooms

Sweet potato and apple gratin 

Red chile

Homemade gravy 

Crescent rolls

Pumpkin pie

Mince meat pie

Rocky-road cake (because we believe chocolate should be featured on Thanksgiving)

Yeah, it was a delicious day. I have to say, though, my favorite dish was the bread pudding. It was a pinterest find, and I had never made it before yesterday, but it was awesome. Want the recipe? You can find it here. I cooked it in a crock pot, so I'm not sure how similar it is to the original recipe. Either way, it was amazingness. 

So, in the spirit of the holiday that was yesterday, I am so thankful for my family. I love each and every one of them and I don't know where I would be today without them. I am soooo thankful for my husband, especially since he woke up at 5 yesterday, but let me sleep in. And of course, I'm thankful for my little monster. He may drive me crazy, but he is the best part of my life. 

I hope everyone had as nice of a Thanksgiving as I did. 

The Natural Shampoo Experiment

As most of you know, I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. A lot of time. There are a ton of "natural/homemade" versions of everyday products on there, and since I am a BIG fan of saving money, I've been spending most of that pinning time looking at all of these natural recipes.
Then I found this. I have to admit that I was really tempted by the whole no shampoo thing- it's easy, it's cheap, and it's supposed to work.

Why are all these people not using shampoo, you ask?

Well, according to Simple Mom, the stuff in shampoo is bad. Not evil-bad, but not really good- bad. You know that oiliness you get after a day or two after washing? It's natural. And good. And the reason it drives us all crazy is that there is a lot of it. Apparently that oil is good for your hair and shampoo's (and conditioners) form a sort of protective layer over your scalp, preventing the oil from being released. So once that layer has started to come off, your scalp dumps a ton of oil to make up for what it thinks your hair is missing. Or something like that.
Going natural (in Simple Mom's case- just using some baking soda once a week) is supposed to fix that, resulting in nice hair without having to actually 'wash" it often.

I have no idea how accurate that information is, but she has been doing it for over two years now and swears that her hair is better than it was before. That I like. But there is a major ick factor for me, so I decided to go a different route. Why did I tell you about the no-shampoo thing if I wasn't planning on doing it? Because the whole oil thing can still be taken care of in a less icky way- by going "natural."

So here's my recipe:
1/4 cup castile soap ( I am a big fan of Dr. Bronner's, especially the lavender one, which is the one I used- you can find it in health food stores like Sunflower and Whole Foods)
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp. sunflower oil (supposed to be carried in major grocery stores, but the only place I could find it was Sunflower...go figure.)

I just poured it into an empty shampoo bottle and used a few "handfuls"- it's watery, so it's easier to just pour some on your head.

I finished it up with a few squirts of a mixture of half apple-cider vinegar and water. (It smells terrible, but the smell goes away once you rinse.)

My thoughts: the shampoo feels strange. I'm used to the creaminess of regular shampoos, so putting what is essentially soap on my hair is weird. But it smells great! The vinegar, as previously stated, smells awful. But, it actually feels just like conditioner and detangles immediately.

So there is supposed to be an "adjustment" period- where your scalp is supposed to get used to being able to release oil without a barrier. Which means a few weeks of oily hair. I think. I'm not looking forward to that, but maybe it will be worth it in the end. Hopefully I will stick with it long enough to find out. And if , for some reason, this shampoo doesn't work for me, I will probably invest in this line. It's expensive, but amazing.


Oh and if you're wondering, the creepy neighbor is avoiding me now. I haven't seen him in a couple of weeks. And I'm pretty OK with it.

hello, beautiful

I got a new toy the other night, and I loves it (so far).

It's a Brother CS-770 computerized sewing machine. And it's super fancy shmancy. In fact, it's fancier than I need, but the price was great and it works (something my rinky-dinky Shark stopped doing, hence the new one.) I've been working on my costume for Decemberween (a themed Halloween party in December). This year's theme is Tim Burton and I'm dressing up as the Oogie-Boogie man from The Nightmare Before Christmas. (The hubs is going as Danny Devito's character Amos Calloway from Big Fish.) Between Decemberween and all the Christmas gifts/decorations I will be making, this little machine definitely has its work cut out for it. And me. Hopefully we make it through the next two months in one piece. Now all I need is to finally set up my desk in the office/craft room/guest room so we can use our entire kitchen table.

Also, if you look in the background, you can get a peek at the painting I'm wrapping up today.

And ten points to whoever can guess which movie we were watching. Hint: "oh my giant blue head!"

The duck is actually my measuring tape. The monster likes to make it "swim" around the mat.

I've been featured!

Yeah, that's right. I, Aliza "Von Burglarstein" T., have been featured on another blog! I meant to add this yesterday, but got a little caught up in birthday extravaganza. Which I'm kind of ok with.

My friend is the Hot Pink Mama and for the second year in a row, she has done a little something called "Soup Week" over on her blog. It is seriously my favorite week of the year. I love soup and Audrey shares this love- perhaps that's why she and I get along so well. Her recipes are amazing and have given me the opportunity to make soups that I have either never tasted and/or never made. So you can imagine how honored I was when she asked me to share one of mine. Hopefully someone out there will actually try it. Either way, I get bragging rights for the next year, and we all know how much I love to brag!

Wreathed!

I decided that as a birthday gift to myself, I would make a fall wreath. Exciting, right?! I wasn't really planning on blogging about it, so there aren't step-by-step pictures, but it was really easy to do, so with a little creativity, anyone can come up with their own. 

I've been gathering things for a wreath of some sort for weeks now, and now that Halloween is over, I figured that it was time to switch out the wreaths (you know, because I'm one of those people who have the creepy crawlies from AHE still hanging about when Christmas arrives- motivation is a very powerful thing.) 

Here's what I used:

A grapevine wreath 

A fall garland (mine had leaves, mini pumpkins, and some weird flower thing)

A large silk flower

Yarn

A wood letter

White acrylic paint

sandpaper

hot glue gun

The result:

All I did was clip off some leaves, pumpkins, and flowers from the garland and cut the stem off the silk flower. Then I layered them onto the wreath and glued like crazy. I painted the letter white and used some sandpaper to roughen it up. Then I glued that into the center and bam! wreath complete! I used the yarn to wrap around my Halloween wreath hanger. I think it took a total of 45 minutes to do- half of which was spent wrapping the hanger and looking for more hot glue stickies. 

The flower kind of gets lost in the leaves in these pictures, but not so much in real life. I like the uniformity of it. 

Here are some additional views, because for some reason I felt they were necessary.