Crunchy FAILS

I'm a little heartbroken about this post.  I love sharing and promoting "green", "crunchy" choices.  But I feel its only fair to share when those choices don't necessarily work out. 

My first crunchy fail is my garden.
 
Isn't that heartbreaking?  Those sad wilted lettuce leaves.  The dried up and droopy tomato and cucumber sprouts.  And where is the strawberry plant you may ask?  It disappeared.  The plants were sitting on the deck getting some sun, and when I went to get them the strawberry plant was just gone.  I couldn't find it. Disappeared.  So we thought.  A few days after this picture my mom found it.  It had fallen off the deck and was hiding under something.  But its in pretty sorry shape too. 

I didn't manage to get them transplanted into bigger containers fast enough.  Their roots were stunted and died.  I'd think about doing it, but whenever I thought about doing it the weather would be all cloudy and rainy.  And then on sunshiny days I'd be too distracted playing with my kiddo until it was either too late to do it or it was time for me to go to class.  So they died. The lettuce actually has some new baby leafs so it might be salvageable.  I'm not so confident with the others.  Next Saturday Market though I'm going to pick up some new plants and they will be transplanted right away.  Maybe they'll actually live longer than a couple weeks.

My second crunchy fail would be the Oil Cleansing Method.  It is essentially No Poo, for your face.  Using oil to clean your face instead of commercial face washes that over-dry your skin and have all sorts of nasty chemicals in em.  Sounds great and I was excited to try it.  Read a bunch online about it, tons of rave reviews, some troubleshooting. So I started and it was great at first. I broke out at first but that was part of the expected detox.  Then the breakouts didn't go away, and more sprung up.  The worse part was I got tons of little bumps all over my forehead.  I figured I was doing something wrong so I read more online, thought I found the solutions and gave it another couple weeks for the previous breakouts to clear up.  Except that didn't happen.  Instead I started getting the little bumps on the sides of my face.  So I threw in the towel. I hope to try again in the future, maybe try different oils or be more consistent with it.  We'll see. 

This is a two level fail though.  When I went to buy some face wash to use I happened across this natural face wash at Safeway called In-Kind.  No parabens, sulfates, pesticides, or other gross stuff in it.  And it smells FANTASTIC.  So I grabbed that and the In-Kind moisturizer.  I only used it twice though, because my skin still felt greasy after I used it.  Its probably not really fair to label it a fail, seeing as I only used it twice though.  But, I don't really feel like dealing with a greasy feeling face, so we're putting it on a shelf until my skin has a chance to level out. 

Instead, I'm going to try doing just a baking soda wash.  I figured if the baking soda is good for taking care of the oils in my hair, it should take care of the oils on my face as well.  I looked some stuff up online and found that a bunch of other people use baking soda as a face wash and get great results.  So thats what I'm trying, here's hoping it works out better than OCM did!

Gardening

Yesterday in my Earth Day post, I posted that I was wanting to start a garden.  Silly me though, I forgot that we already did kinda start.

 
(Left to right- lettuce, strawberries, cucumber/tomato, basil)

For Christmas this past year I got my mom a little basil kit that you grow in side on a window sill. We finally got around to planting it and have got a nice little basil plant going.  Mercy loves helping to water it, so when I was out shopping the other week, I picked up another little kit.  This one was specifially aimed towards kids (Disney's Cars themed) and came with cucumber and tomato seeds, along with a little plastic lid to make a little green house.  Those things have been growing like their on steroids!  Then today at our local farmers market my sister and picked up some veggie starters from a local organic farm.  We got some strawberries and green leaf lettuce.  Now we just need to get some planters so I can transplant them and move them out onto our deck.  I'm also hoping to get green peppers, broccoli, onions, and maybe a few other things to grow to.   I'm excited!

Happy Earth Day!

Its Earth Day today!  This is probably the first year that I've actually really given any thought to Earth Day at all.  Largely in part because switching to cloth diapers made me much more aware of the impact my choices have on the earth.

So aside from cloth diapers, how else am I trying to be Green?  I'm using reusable water bottles instead of disposable ones.  The ones I use are still made of plastic, but I figure a reusable plastic one is still better than a throw-away one.  I try to reach for our actual dishes instead of paper plates.  I recycle. Use reusable bags (when I can remember to bring them...) and am working on switching over to cloth napkins and UnPaper towels.  I'm also wanting to start a small vegetable garden. I No' Poo, use Oil Cleansing Method, and mama cloth.  We lean towards wooden toys instead of plastic ones for Mercy.

There are more changes I'd really like to make, but figure going slowly is better.

I'm excited for everything that Earth Day represents, and with this as my first one of really "getting" it, I'm really looking forward to all the ones to come.

 
^^My girl in her special Earth Day dress that I made her!

No Poo update!

Here is a brief glimpse inside my head almost every night after my girl has gone to bed....
"blog or sew? blog or sew? sew or blog? blogorsew blogorsew blogorsew?"
Then I usually end up sitting on Facebook or Babycenter. 
*sigh*

But tonight I am actually going to update! 

I've been doing No Poo for about four weeks now and I absolutely LOVE it!  It is so easy, and my hair feels sooo clean and soft.  The detox period wasn't bad at all, I think mainly because I opted for the more drawn out detox.  For the most part I washed every two days, I think once or twice I went 3.  Tomorrow is a wash day and my hair right now feels barely greasy. 

I am still sticking with the standard 1 tbsp per 1 cup of water for both the vinegar and baking soda.  I did try to lessen the amount of baking soda once, but after my hair dried I found greasy patches.  Less baking soda just doesn't work well for my hair I guess.  For the vinegar rinse, I mix up 1 cup and put it in the squirt bottle, but only use about half each time, so 1 bottle lasts me two washes. 

I am so glad I made the switch.  If things keep going this well, maybe I'll never have to 'Poo again!

No More 'Poo!

No, I'm not sayin my girl has potty trained, because she hasn't, and if she had, I would be sad to say goodbye to all the Fluff.  I'm talking about shampoo.  I've been wanting to blog about this for a couple days, but time just keeps getting away from me.

I've read about the method thats called "no 'poo" or, shampoo-free numerous times online, but never really gave it much thought. What is it?  Its exactly as it sounds, well maybe not exactly, but its not using shampoo.  Instead of using store bought shampoo and conditioner you use baking soda and vinegar.  Essentially what you do is "shampoo" your hair with baking soda, and "condition" it with vinegar. The most common starting off point is 1 tablespoon baking soda in 1 cup of water, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar in 1 cup of water.  These amounts might change once you figure out what works best for your though (more baking soda/less vinegar if you have naturally oily hair, less baking soda/more vinegar if you have naturally dry hair).

Why would you want to ditch shampoo?  There are a couple reasons. 

Your scalp produces oil naturally because its good for your hair.  The checmicals in the shampoo strips all those good natural oils away, and then your scalp goes into overdrive to produce more oils.  So you shampoo again because your hair is all oily.  Its a vicious cycle.

There are all sorts of chemicals in shampoo and conditioner, chemicals you might not necessarily want on your scalp and skin.

Shampoo and conditioner are expensive! (especially if you have long hair)

There is a wealth of information out there, written by people who know more about all the intricate details of this than I do, so I'm not going to go into it any deeper than that brief summary. 

Like I said, I've "heard" about it a couple times online, mainly on the Crunchy Mamas board on my parenting community.  I hadn't given it much thought before, but lately my hair has been driving me crazy.  No matter what I did or what shampoo/conditioner I used, or how much (how little) I used, my hair felt gross and weighed-down the day after I showered, sometimes even the same day I showered.  So I read about it some more then decided to give it a shot.  Its not like I had anything to lose. 

I did my first No 'Poo wash on Friday. I just grabbed two mugs from the kitchen and put 1 tablespoon baking soda in one, and 1 tablespoon apple-cider vinegar in the other and then a cup of warm water in each, and stirred the baking soda a little bit.  Then took em to the bathroom.  I pretty much just dumped the baking soda mixture on my head, tilting my head back and using one hand as a visor to keep it out of my eyes.  Then rubbed it all over my hair, making sure to be thorough and not miss any spots.  I let it sit for a little bit, then rinsed it out, making sure it was completely rinsed out.  Next came the mug with the vinegar mixture.  Same as before, poured it over my head making sure not to get it in my eyes, let it sit for a little, then rinse thoroughly.

I was extra thorough with rubbing it all in and rinsing it all out because I had read on other mamas blogs that not doing so could result in problems.  I was also worried about the vinegar smell.  From what I read the only reason you would still smell the vinegar once your hair was dry was if you used too much or didn't rinse it all out.  I was paranoid, especially because the vinegar smelled so strong when I poured it on.  After I was done rinsing though I couldn't smell it all, even though my hair was still wet.  I was relieved.

It felt a little coarse at first, and I had little frizzies (which I had always had before.)  Once my hair was dry though it felt WONDERFUL.  It was soft and silky, smooth.  No frizzies, no greasy/oily/weighed down feeling.  I loved it.  My hair actually felt clean for the first time in awhile.  It was doing pretty good the next day too, didn't feel or look nearly as greasy as it did on the days after I used shampoo.  The day after, I was feeling kinda grungy though, and my hair definitely looked oily.  It was to be expected though, there is a transition period after you quit/reduce shampoo where your scalp is still overproducing oil before it adjusts to the new lower demand. You can either have a longer less noticeable detox by gradually spacing out washes (every day, every other day, etc) or you can get it done all at once.  I read of one woman who waited 13 days before she did another wash, some go a week.  I went two days.  First wash on friday, nothing on saturday or sunday, and did washed again monday morning.  I don't think I could handle going longer than that at this point, just waiting the two days was pushing it for me.  Once the transition is over though, it should be fine.  There were a couple pictures people had posted of their hair on the third day without a wash and it looked like they had washed it that very day.

The results today were the same as the first day, my hair was ridiculous silky and smooth, I just kept wanting to run my fingers through it and play with it.  I went out today and bought little squeeze bottles to use, instead of mugs, so hopefully that will help with application.  Not that using the mugs was difficult, just a pain to carry two mugs and a measuring cup upstairs to the bathroom with me, not to mention the worry of them being glass. 

So final conclusion after two no 'poo washes is that I love it.  We'll see how it goes and I'll try to remember to update about it.  Next experiment is The Oil Cleansing Method.  I bought the oils today, I'll let you know how it goes!