Hair Color Schism

Pink polyester princess.

There it is. Au natural. Pre-gray "highlights". Yep, it's auburn. I think it's auburn. I was never really sure. No one told me when I was young what it was meant to be.  However, I did get a comment as a teen from a random guy. "That's a very unusual hair color." Yeah, I knew.  

I remember being asked to describe my hair-color on the phone once and using all three basic hair-color words I knew at the time.  "Well it's kinda brownish blonde with reddish tones."  I didn't learn for many years that "brownish blonde with reddish tones" is "auburn".  It's nice to finally understand myself.  Well, at least my hair anyway. 

Over the years I did the usual hair experiments (and while young several unusual ones).  There was blonde, white-blonde, golden, bright red, dark burgundy, and as a teen, many unnatural colors to do streaks and some overwashing in pinks and purples....and blues....and greens....well, you get the idea. 

I have found through trials and errors some lovely off-the-shelf colors that go very well with my skin tone, etc.  So I know if I ever want to go blond exactly which champagne blonde works.  I've also settled on a coppery auburn (after trying nearly every shade in that family) that is my go-to color for as close to natural as I can currently get while dealing with the little grays sprouting and giving back the luster that age takes from us "reddish toned" types. 

I'm good with those colors. Really I am.  

No make-up, but it's just between us friends, right? 

So here's where we are today. Sorry about the scary-eyes.  It was the sun making a weird little highlight.  I'm not going to zap you with my laser beams or anything.  Laser beam eyes, that would rawk...where was I?  Oh yeah, so I was trying to capture the color with the sun and it's pretty close. I do love this color,L'Oreal Preference Intense Red Copper and it make my grays (less than 10%) look like shimmery highlights. This pic is after about a month of fading and not being careful to wash my hair with cold water. Hey, I'm an autism mom give me a break. A warm shower is the only mini-vacay I get most days...where was I? Oh yeah, it's still a lovely color with shimmer, highlights and low-lights.  It's just a lighter shade now than I prefer. 

So it's time to re-dye.  Or is it....? Dun, dun, DUNNNNN. 

I must change it. I must, I must, I must.  It's not anything against it, but I need to change it or I'll go mad, MAD I tell you.  Sorry, I'll let go of your collar now. 

So, here's what I've been contimplating: Definitely some pink.  I've got a fresh jar of  Manic Panic New Rose just burning a hole in my bathroom shelf. But what with the pink?  Black and pink? Maybe.  Red (auburn) and pink? Sounds interesting.  All pink? Very tempting.  Decisions, decisions. So, I will make up my mind this weekend and get back to you. 

Stay tuned, this could get amusing. 

Mommy and Me Craft: Painted Thank You Cards

This post is slightly belated, but I wanted to shared with you how The Wubie and I came up with some nifty Thank-You cards for his two swimming instructors this year. These precious teens are swim team members who volunteer their time over the summer to teach special needs children basic swimming and water safety.

In projects like this I try to incorporate as many of The Wubie's skills as possible so that the gift is especially from him.

We started with a large (12"x16") sheet of Canson Canva-Paper.

I love this stuff because it is thick and textured and can take the harsh treatment of The Wubie's more aggressive scrubbing paint strokes.

We used acrylic paint in shades of blue and aqua to simulate water. We also used this as a teaching opportunity to learn more gentle and longer painting strokes.

After the paint dried (the next day) we created two cards by dividing the paper in half, cutting it and folding the two halves in the middle.  

Next we created two sets of 'swimming pool divider floats' using plastic beads and fine gauge wire. The Wubie is an expert beader. 

We attached the beads by cutting two notches in the approximately halfway down card and taped the loose wires on the inside.



The insides were decorated with stickers depicting sea creatures. This also served to hide the wires and cover some of the paint splatters.  

The Wubie LOVES stickers!



This project was the perfect use for some bad school pics from the end of the year.  They apparently had to put him in his backup clothes so his nice outfit wasn't in the picture. Nevertheless, the faces were usable so I cut out two circles.  I had the idea to make them resemble portholes of sorts. 

The Wubie used a glue stick (less messy) to attach the photos. Oh, and we added some sea creature stickers to the front and back of the cards as well.



We were on a time crunch. So instead of portholes exactly, we covered the raw edges of the photos with a bead of blue glitter glue. Life lesson: Everything's better with glitter glue!



The insides were finished with a handwritten note. I think those are more personal, even with a handmade card it's a nice touch. Then The Wubie signed his name. Which he is very good at.



The final step was gluing the "Thank You's" and names with the glue stick after printing a cool font in a matching shade of blue. This was a bit of a shortcut as well, but as you might have noticed The Wubie was already in his swim-shorts at this point and it was time to GO!

Step one: Drink Tons of Diet Coke™ . Step two: ???? Step three: PROFIT!!!

Oh yeah, and Fresca™  too. 

So ... I have a problem. I'm a Diet Coke™-aholic.  This is my dirty little secret. I know it's quite early in our relationship for me to be so self-revealing.  But that's just how I am. All my cans on the table. Take me or leave me. 

Meanwhile, I will continue my joyful consumption of my favorite beverage, neigh friend, Diet Coke™ . 

Although friends and family have made attempts to slow my pace with silly concerns about health and whatnot. I am undeterred. But to mitigate the situation for them I have fortunately found an upside. (Aside from the thousands of saved calories from years of finding "regular" sodas as appealing as drinking anti-freeze with urine cubes.)  I have discovered this neat little code inside of the 12-pack boxes that I regularly constantly bring home.  This wonderful code is also in the plastic caps on the bottles and apparently on the other Coca-Cola™ products (but who cares about them).  

So, you go to the My Coke Rewards website, register, and enter these codes in order to accumulate points. Then after you accumulate enough points (which should take you like, one or two days) you turn them in for gift certificates, magazine subscriptions, sweepstakes entries and various gifts including Coca-Cola™ logo-ed items (for you collectors). It is an awesome deal.  So, less calories plus free stuff. Bi-winning! 

Disclaimer: O.K. maybe it won't take YOU one or two days. Not everyone is as awesome as the queen. But don't fret my loyal subjects, at 10 points for the boxes and 3 points for the bottles you can score a tidy sum in a reasonable amount of time.  The magazines are frequently 133 points and up.  ( I even got one subscription for only 66 points during a special offer.) 

So now I have more magazines than I have coffee table! 

(Pay no attention to the Mardi Gras beads and the bits of torn up Lei on the floor. My son was home sick today and...well, he was home sick today. )

There will be another use for these cans to be revealed a bit latter this year.  Yes, it will involve "upcycling".  I love that word. 

It's not You. It's Me...I Don't Like You.

We once had a good thing. We understood each other. We didn't give each other drama or headaches. I never had to hang my head in shame when people found out that I was with you. You were dependable, reliable, and cute.

Now...well, you know how it's been. You freeze me out during the simplest of interactions. You use all of my stuff and leave none for me. You make me question my own sanity. My friends keep asking me why I still have you around. I guess I'm slow to accept reality. My fault.

Well, I've moved on. Firefox, we've had our time. Now I've found Chrome and we are getting along just fine. I'll always remember our better days. No hard feelings.

That being said, for all my techie and non-techie friends. I've done the research and while Google Chrome has been officially edging out Mozilla Firefox for the last several months on speed, ease of use and reduced add-on hassles; Firefox has been making strides to regain ground with quick release updates every 6 weeks or so. However, they have had conflicts with one of my favorite add-ons Google Tool-bar (coincidence? I think not.). I can't just type in "Google.com" in a browser window anymore. I have a reputation!

As with all internet techie stuff. YMMV. My system, which is a pretty spiffy Intel Dual Core, just doesn't care for Firefox anymore. You may not experience the problems I did. Try both. Especially if you have only ever tried factory installed IE. God help you.

It's not What you Know, It's Who you Know...and What they Know

Advice from my slightly younger brother once.  Go up to someone whom you admire for whatever reason and say, "Teach me everything you know."  You would be surprised how many gullible nice folks are willing to do just that.

This nice eBay-er Shipscript is just such a folk. You will find a plethora of eBay page making guides, free templates, free gizmos, doodads and whohas.  I just updated my auctions with this thingamajiggy and now I have a clickable scrolling list of my other auctions' thumbnail images.  *sniff  I've always wanted one of those. And it isn't even Christmas yet.  Bless you Shipscript. Bless us everyone.


xsell2