Thursday, September 23, 2010

Catching Up - Peter

I'm so behind on blogging and there is so much I want to say about some things that God is showing me.  But real quick, over the next few days weeks I want to catch up with all the stuff that has happened and I never posted about it.  Like Anne's first birthday!  And Nathan getting baptized!  Oh my goodness!  How did I miss those!

But since Peter turned 5 months on the 20th, we will start with him.

Here are some sweet pictures at the hospital.

just minutes old
he's a keeper!


love at first sight!





one worn out mama
one sleepy baby
That's all for now.  I hope to do some more catching up soon with pictures of how big he has gotten.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

No Poo!

Since this is a mommy blog I'm sure most of you are thinking I'm about to go into detail of my children's bathroom/diaper habits.  Sorry to disappoint you, but this is about my experiment in quiting the shampoo addiction.  And other things I'm have been dabbling in this month.

What is the purpose of not using shampoo (or "no poo" as some call it)? 

Well, one reason is that using shampoo every day can strip your hair of it's natural oils and actually cause it to produce more oil than it needs. 

Another reason is that you aren't using chemicals.  Chemicals that end up in your body (and your baby, if you are pregnant or nursing).  These chemicals can do some crazy things to your body and even cause cancer!  Scary!

This is my third week, I think...mommy brain can make four weeks seem like one, and vice versa (sp?).
And to tell you the truth my hair is pretty gunky.  Stephen and my friends tell me it doesn't look bad.
But what do you expect them to say?  Go wash your hair!?
To me my hair feels, ummm....well...like I haven't washed in three weeks.

I'm ready to throw in the towel and sneak into Stephen's shampoo.  (which happens to be natural anyway so I wouldn't feel that bad)  But I did commit myself to at least two months and to tell you the truth I'm not usually that concerned with what my hair looks like....It's in a ponytail 99% of the time anyway.

And it's not like I'm just not washing my hair at all.  I'm using baking soda.  I'm also using baking soda for deodorant and roach bait/poison.  (I know gross, but we all have them for time to time, right?) And the other day I used baking soda to brush my teeth.  Really nasty, but my teeth were nice and slick :)

So, we will see how this all turns out. 

I've also started a whole new way of washing my face.

With oil!  I know.  Yuck, is what most of you are thinking.  But actually some oils, like castor oil, can be quite drying.  And castor oil (which is the main ingredient in the oil face washing combination) really does a good job of drawing out dirt, oil and toxins that are in your pours.   I'm still playing with the different kinds of oils to find out the right combination for my skin, but this is another thing that I'm going to commit myself to for a while to see if it really works.  Here is where I read about the oil cleansing method.

http://www.theoilcleansingmethod.com/

Something else I've been into the last couple of months is soap making.  Soap Making!  Now this is exciting!  (I know doesn't take much to get me excited)


I wish computers had smell-a-vision.  It smells that good!
 I first made some wonderful smelling patchouli soap with my mom and sister.  My mom is a veteran soap maker and knew what she was doing.



My friend Lisa and I then made some plain soap to practice with.  It was our first time by ourselves to make soap so we wanted to do something simple.



This week Lisa and I got together again to make soap, this time joined by our good friend Erin.  We decided to get really fancy and make peppermint colored with green swirls.  Fun!  And my whole house now smells like peppermint!  I love it!  


Beautiful!
 I have the soap curing in the boys bathroom and it really helps the whole stinky boy bathroom smell.
Anyone with boys knows what I'm talking about ; )