Sharing a picture

I was back in Denmark visiting my parents for a bit and of course I had to go out hunting with dad. I snapped this quick picture of him in the sunset and I liked it so much I wanted to share it with my readers :)

Hair-blogging 101 with Igor!

Want to learn the simple rules of hair-blogging? Well, wait no more!

Igor is here to teach you!

Rule #1: Post only flattering pictures of yourself!

Rule #2: Take good care of your hair and make sure to stick with old methods that are proven to work!

Rule #3: Take good care of your skin!

Rule #4: Beer is actually good for hair!

Rule #5: Applying rule #3 and rule #4 in the wrong order can be pretty annoying.

Rule #6: Improvise!

Rule #7: Ignore the Hubby when he calls you a moron.

Funniest video ever. Seriously.

Okay, I admit it: Often when someone asks me how I “manage” having long hair, I compare it to having long nails and then argue that I can always just put my hair up and away, as opposed to those with long nails.

And I’ll admit that I think it’s absolutely crazy that some people will have such long nails that they can’t even type on a keyboard properly.

And I’ll admit I’ve been wondering how they ever manage to wipe their asses.

Well. This video explains exactly how you wipe your ass with long nails. In great detail.

And it’s just the funniest thing ever.

Little package lost

I’ve been tracking my Pretty AnntoiNet's package since it was shipped out. First in hopeful eagerness waiting for my silky goodies, then in baffled confusion.
            
Allow me to demonstrate why. Here is USPS’s tracking information.     
                                  

            

Recognize that the locations are repeated?

          
Let’s put that on a map…

         

                                                   
The package is accepted at a post office at A (Bloomfield), then to B (Kearny) and C (Jamaica). Then it gets shipped almost back to B (A different place in Kearny). Finally back to C again (Jamaica).
     
Seriously, what the hell, USPS?
       

It’s good to be back!

I had a good and relaxing week at my parents in Denmark but now it’s good to be back with my loving hubby in Sweden. I injured my right wrist a bit helping dad put up some insulation, but I’ve had a tendency to get outbreaks of carpal tunnel ever since I first discovered a computer so it’s nothing new. It will take me a while to sort and crop pictures though.  
   

Until then, I want to show this: It’s some old tree across the street, but in all the time I can remember I always thought it looked like some sort of creature with high piggy tails, floppy ears and sunglasses. It always made me smile!

 

What do you guys think?

 

Argh, seriously?

Blogger… What a headache. I seriously regret my choice of blog platform!

I’m well aware of the consistent trouble with posting comments. Even if I wasn’t already, people tell me on an almost daily basis. And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. Ugh.

Now all my “right sidebar” stuff is moved down below my blog posts and there doesn’t seem to be a reason to. There is nothing I can do to change it and everything appears to be absolutely fine in my control panel so…. Huh? WTF?

  

Best blog comment award

Goes too…

*Drumroll*

ms n00b!

Couple of non-hair comments and answers

Well, I guess it isn’t really a Q&A so in random order…

I love Terry Pratchett! I recently re-read The Colour of Magic and I swear it gets funnier and more insightful with each read!
~ umphie

So true! The first time reading his books I just want to know what will happen next and the second time around I can really just enjoy the “ride” and his insights

Really sorry to say that, but what's wrong with your legs? It seems they all are covered with bruises...

~ Anonymous

That would be the result of a severe and painful allergic reaction about 6 years ago. I had a violent reaction to something unknown and was treated for a year at a dermatological department. Unfortunately they treated the reaction with a whole lot of steroid cream and after half a year or so of treatment and without progress, an allergy test revealed that I’m allergic to budesonide, one of the steroids in the cream. The skin of my legs is thin and fragile and will probably never return to normal ever again. Even ingrown hairs or simple scratching results in bruising and big dark “wounds”.

Luckily my hubby and my friends aren’t so shallow they feel the need to comment on it or judge me for it (!)

You're such cute woman, you deserve better clothes, honestly! Wish you the best ^_^

~ Anonymous

Well, I take donations or cash towards that if you feel it’s such a big problem that you need to comment on it?

I know you're been considering getting a satin sleep cap so I thought I'd give you a review for mine.
First off the slippery part of the satin is on the outside of the sleep cap so it won't touch your skin. The bad news is that it hurts my ears a little because of the elastic.
Here's a link to the one I got, I believe they ship worldwide: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Black-Satin-Hair-Bonnet-Night-Sleep-Cap-Large-Size-/370574373403pt=US_Hats&hash=item5647f4321b#ht_1816wt_939

~ Adelina

Cute! Totally cute in a kind of old fashioned way! Too bad it hurts your ears though. I think that would be a “deal breaker” for me? Think you could maybe stretch/expand the elastic a bit?

I was actually thinking of trying one of these: http://prettyanntoinets.com/category_4/Beanies.htm and cutting a whole in the back of it to pull my braid through. They look pretty “snug”. Or maybe one of her loc covers. Hm?

Do you have Aveeno products available where you are? They are amazing for skin issues--I use them in my bath (a powder to stop itchy skin) and they have lotions etc. My skin gets itchy after I'm at the barn and get sweaty and such, and I find these really help.
I've also found neutrogena moisturizer that my mom gave me as she couldn't use it, and it helps with flaky skin--I get eczema on my forehead and between my brows, and this helps better than the prescription stuff.
I have wanted to try clinique--I've also used marcelle brand items and they are hypo-allergenic and they were good, but neutrogena has really helped with my flaky, itchy patches--now, if I just kept up with it ;)

~ Darkhorse

I’ll put Aveeno at the bottom of my suggestions list. I quite literally have a document with all the product recommendations I’ve ever gotten. Once a product screws up for me, I go to check out the next one on the list.

I have some different Neutrogena visibly clear in my product graveyard. They had no effect at all and I felt I ran around smelling of the chemical “icy mint” thing all day.

Now ain't he cute eating your laptop. How often does he eat? It could get expensive feeding him...

~Kathy

Hehe, he was a pleasant surprise since he and a little crocodile buddy was a Christmas gift from my mother in law and last year she got us both… A small decoration pillow with a fox motive… *Twitches*

Do not disturb.

Guess who got their greedy little paws on the latest Discworld novel?

I wanted to buy it right away but hubby pointed out that since we couldn’t find it in paperback it wouldn’t fit into our collection. He does make sense from time to time.

So, I had to settle for the library version for now.

My plans for today and tomorrow pretty much only involves the book and tea. Yay!

    

Hello, 2012!

I hope everyone got well into 2012 with no fireworks injuries and hangovers?

2011 was the year where I started this blog and where I finally reached that cursed knee length.

Going to focus on what I’m good at for my blog for a while; Writing. At least I think that’s one of my strengths?

We’ll see if I return to the videos at some point. But for now, I have a new page up: Hair geek dictionary.

Hubby and I had a pretty quiet new years eve together. He managed to get me with the influenza he had over Christmas, so both Christmas and new years ended up pretty subdued.

 

Look what my darling hubby got us for New Years Eve:

   

 

I have the best hubby in the world!

  

Totally random Christmas present picture:

Cute!!

I love getting mail :)

Seriously, receiving a package in the mail feels like getting a visit from this guy:

 

 

Doesn’t matter much what the package actually contains ^^ Still feels like Christmas

  

Well, my mailbox today contained this

  

The secret item will remain secret because it’s going to someone I know reads my blog and I don’t want to ruin the surprise!

    

   

The little box on the right contains a bunch of the cards shown in the front and the red thingie is a stamper thing with “Betald”- the Swedish word for “paid” that I figured we could use for bills XD

   

    

I love the cards with the beautiful design made by the very talented Madison!

   

    

Had to stick one of the stickers on the first best thing XD

  

  

I’m pissed off at the crappy job they did with the pens. On the website with their design tool it showed the design being wrapped entirely around the pen and taking up all the white area. In real life though… Bleargh! 

A brief history of the fact that Igor is a nutcase

I have a few things in my life I’m a complete control freak about. My calendar is one of those. I’m a chronic list maker and this one basically runs my life.

I have everything in it including my suggested hair and skincare schedule. It’s always stuffed full of little souvenirs from my life. Some people keep pictures, receipt and little memory things in their valet, for me it’s in my calendar.

I’m extremely picky about the calendar I pick out and even buy new pens every year to fill in my schedules and information.

• It can’t have a spiral back because my keys always get stuck in those.
• It has to be one page per day, although one for both Saturday and Sunday is okay too.
• It has to be the right size, A6-A5.
• It needs to have a notes-section.
• It needs to have enough room for stuffing in extra pages, pictures and receipts.

Funnily enough it turned out that Chemist friend is just as weird as me when it comes to calendar so we went shopping together! I have never met anyone who is as weird when it comes to calendars as me.

I found one I had never thought of before, a Filofax that could be completely closed like a big clutch. It was instant love, I had to have it!

 

Here it is next to the calendar I got for hubby. That one is more like the kinds I have usually gone for. I would have picked that one if I hadn’t fallen for the Filofax. Then of course I needed to replace a whole lot of the papers inside it. Why do the Filofaxes always come with one page per week as standard? I don’t know anyone who likes that!

 

Look how brilliant it is on the inside with plenty of room for cards and papers.

But... Big fail: It turned out it was too small to even contain the one day per page calendar. No!! The rings inside were simply too small in circumference!

One heartbroken Igor had to return to the store to see if it came in a bigger size. It did, but then I had to jump to an A4 size and that would take up most of my bag. Fail!

But then I spotted a calendar that were like a combination of the rejected one and a regular calendar. It had the calendar part and a zipped off “clutch” part. The rings were plenty big for the one page per day calendar too.

 

Not as much in love with this one as with the completely zipped off one, but it is still pretty sweet!

 

Now it’s time to start filling it up with information. That always takes some time! Then stuff it full of my “little” collection of souvenirs from my life and people I love.

I really think I have a good plan outlined for healthy hair 2012 and will enjoy filling that in…

Will post pictures of the finished calendar if I haven't bored everyone to death :)

Graphics and general weirdness

It was a surprise that I had so much fun with the simple little pictures I did in paint some time ago: The leave in conditioner-murderers, the conditioners purchase and the time line over my length. Maybe I should find some sort of photo editing program so I can do more fun and silly things with my pictures?

Any suggestions?

For a very long time I’ve also had the idea of getting some business cards printed for the blog. Then whenever I encounter curiosity about my hair in real life, I could hand over a card with the address and go “Start with the Beginners guide to healthier hair”.

Heh.
It actually happens more often than you would think!
    

      
Usually I’ve been telling people search for “long hair care” which of course works better if your native language isn’t English. It’s funny though; even with all the information you can find, a lot of people haven’t even thought of that you can find a whole lot of knowledge about growing healthy hair online. I swear, 99% of the time people respond with “Oh, I didn’t know I could find that…” Maybe it’s a sign that there is so much junk out there online that people have stopped using the internet for real information?

Of course now that I have my blog and have collected a lot of information in it that I think could be useful to people no matter how well they take care of their hair already, I have a specific place to point them to.

But now it seems that my internet has started reading my mind, because everywhere I go online I swear I see ads for Vistaprint that makes business cards at a very nice price! Huh.

Should I be very, very scared? Are the terminators taking over the internet? Is my little HP laptop equipped with a brain scan chip?

Of course if I were to get some business cards printed there, I’m back at an old issue I have here on the blog: I really need a nice icon or logo!

I have been playing around with putting some of my pictures up as logo but never felt happy with them. Then I drew the girl with the laptop and even though it was a quick 10 minute thing and I took the picture of it with my phone, I still feel it’s the best logo/header yet. Of course it would be better if I somehow could incorporate a bell or a tower in it, but how?

    

   
If I order business cards, what information should be printed on them? Naturally the address, but what else? My email? Some sort of slogan? A description?

So, maybe I should spend a little more time on that tonight. Create a different and better version of the girl with the laptop and get the business cards ordered?

Webcam frustrations

My mini HP has a built in webcam, but no program to take still photos with. I guess I would never have noticed this, except that I’ve been receiving some questions that would make it convenient to use it for demonstrations.

A quick sidetrack: I don’t want to be an ass here, but it’s annoying to receive questions about my blog on other places like my Facebook and on UTT. You can leave a comment on a post or even contact me on the mail belonging to the blog. I even made it possible to leave anonymous comments, just to get out of people asking me about my blog in other places when I have a blog specifically for my hair.

Anyways. Finding a webcam program turned out to be really difficult. I just wanted a normal, simple program to take pictures with. It seems 95% of all programs out there come with all sorts of crap.

Want a “like totally cute and funny” picture of yourself with bunny-ears to show how cute you are?

Want a “like totally cute and funny” picture of yourself on fire to show how totally funny you are?

Want a “like totally cute and funny” picture of yourself with a funny hat to show how free-spirited you are?

I don’t. I just wanted a [Bleeping] webcam picture.

I thought I struck gold with a program called Photobooth that takes simple, normal pictures. It even went “3…2…1… Click!” It seemed perfect until I found that I couldn’t find the saved pictures. Anywhere. Huh? I made hubby take a look at it too, but he couldn’t find it either. So yea, I guess we discovered the most useless program ever made?

Well, I ended up with a 30 day trial of Webcam companion. It can take normal, simple pictures, but also comes with a whole lot of crap I don’t want. It will have to do for the next 30 days though.

In 30 days the hunt continues. Sigh.

No, I’m not an Aquarius, I just took the picture for fun

Webcam programs suck! Screw it all, I’m going to the gym…

Dieting, hair and me

I’ve been debating whether I should be putting this in writing and on my blog or not. On one hand, I feel exposed and that it’s deeply personal. On the other hand, it’s a part of my life (And of concern to the topic of my blog: My hair) and I have a strong dislike against those blogs where women go on about how they “Eat anything they want to!” and posts pictures of their food, lots of snacks and candy and still weigh less than my favourite boots.

I don’t want to promote such a fake view of reality.

The reality is that I weigh 64 kg.

The reality is that I have a very narrow window where I like my body: 54-56 kg.

Below that and I have bones poking out and look unhealthy.

Above that and my fat starts piling up between my hips and upper thighs and I absolutely hate my body.

So yes, I hate my body. I have gained 10 kg in the less than two years I have known hubby. Talk about relationship-gut!

I have tried cutting out candy and snacks, but forbidding them makes them even more tempting! I love cooking, I love food and I love eating.

So, without controlling my diet I eat more than I can burn. It doesn’t help that hubby and I want to snuggle up on the couch with movies and snacks.

And it doesn’t help that this is what I feel about going to the gym at the moment:

But whenever I try to go on a diet, all the “forbidden” food is tempting me.

Strangely when I fast (About once a year) I’m doing really well. Maybe it’s because I have systemised my day and organised what I can eat and when? So whenever I feel cranky or hungry, I know I have so-and-so long until the next allowed meal or drink.

Maybe that’s the way to go? Calculate a diet with the exact number of calories and what foods and when I can eat?

I will have to pay attention to how much protein I get on the diet then. About 3 years ago I went through a really, really stressful year and I lost a lot of hair without noticing. I must have lost a just few extra hairs each day since I didn’t notice it, but it all adds up. I can clearly see the regrowth today. It adds up to about the thickness of a finger, so it’s quite a lot!

Of course this makes me very paranoid of any diet changes. Protein shakes aren’t a lot of extra calories for a lot of protein if you just use low fat milk. I really should incorporate that in a diet to make sure.

I’m really tired of hating my body. I should get myself together to do something about it…

To be continued!

Hemp oil rules!

Yesterday was wonderfully warm and sunny and hubby suggested we took a long walk together. So I put on a T-shirt, shorts and this pair of heel-less sneakers shoes I have. They’re really great when it’s too hot for sneakers and I don’t feel like wearing sandals.

But I overestimated how hot they would become in the sun and the long walk and they started burning my feet. It hurt really bad!

When I came home I sat with my feet in the tub and cold water for like an hour. I limped pitifully and had to nap on the couch with my feet hanging freely over the side. I couldn’t even stand touching the mattress! I hoped they would stop hurting after the nap. They felt skinless, burning, crunchy dry and I could feel 6 blisters developing.

After my nap I ended up on the UTT chat where I whined about my sore feet. Longhairedfairy (At least I think it was her. Let me know if it isn’t so the right one can get credit!) gave me the advice of using hemp oil because it has healing properties. So I sat with my sore feet in a plastic bag with hemp oil for an hour before patting them dry. The hemp oil instantly soothed them and they stopped burning. Such a relief!

So… Hemp oil rules!