Day 25: What I spent Day 24 Doing...

I have been coloring my hair since I was 17 years old.  That is 20 years of damaging my hair with synthetic dyes.  I've colored it burgundy, auburn, black, copper, pale blonde and strawberry blonde.  My natural color is dirty blonde with a whole lotta grey and I've always made a point to hide it the moment it starts showing again.

I have known about henna for a long time, but had always been wary of trying it.  A lot of the women I've seen with hennaed hair have odd colors of red or orange that look less natural than the synthetic dyes I've used.  But the girls at Lush Cosmetics finally convinced me to give their henna a go.

Les Cacas aren't just henna.  Each one is red henna set in Fair Trade cocoa butter (that's how they make it solid, in the design of a tea brick) with essential oils.  The darker three (Brun, Marron and Noir) also contain indigo henna.

Caca Rouge is now my favorite.  I've been using it for about five months now and have received all kinds of advice about it.  One person told me that it's easier if you grate the henna brick or finely chop it.  So, so not necessary.  All you need to do is cut the henna brick into the 6 tiles and plop the ones you need (my hair only needs 3 tiles) into a bowl.  If you let the tiles steep in the hot water for at least a few minutes, it will give the cocoa butter a chance to melt.

I have also been told that the henna will stain everything it touches.  As messy as the process can be, it's really not much more than with synthetic dyes.  The big difference with clean up is that any henna I've missed hasn't actually stained anything...but there are still blotches on my bathroom door and cabinet from the last time I used a box dye - which also stained my scalp and face if I didn't wipe it off in time.  To protect my face, I apply Ultrabland (also from Lush) to my entire face.  You don't have to do anything beyond your hairline and ears, but I love this stuff, especially leaving it on for a couple of hours.  Ultrabland is gentle, but a seriously effective cleanser and taking it off in the shower with Ocean Salt feels just lovely.

One more - I was once told not to use a metal bowl or spoon when making it.  With traditional henna, that may be true (as most are made using metallic salts), but Lush's henna does not contain anything that will react to metal.  In fact, in the video below, you see Mark Constantine (one of Lush's inventors/co-founders) using an all-metal double boiler to prepare the henna.

Then there is the good advice I've gotten (and not always stuck to, regretfully):

It is true that this process is easier with someone around to help you.  Mostly because someone else can see your head from all angles.  It's also a hell of a lot more fun with company.

I believe I read in the instructions to apply the henna from back to front, but I disobeyed the first few times I did it.  Turns out it's easier to start at the back.  The henna is a muddy texture and will make the hair stiff as it dries, so this method really is the best.

Covering my hennaed head with cling wrap has been wonderful - no more flaking Caca onto the floor or having to stay in the bathroom for the two hours that it takes for the henna to finish up.  However, if you want a "bluer finish" instead of more red highlights when using Brun, Marron or Noir, don't cover up.

This is another excellent video that shows you all the steps:

And the last is a piece of advice just from me:  Don't start by rinsing in the shower - you'll end up with muddy shower walls that are a pain to clean.  I do my first rinse kneeling in the tub, with my head under the faucet.  That water is stronger anyway, but I also follow the initial rinse with a conditioner, then rinse again.  And I shampoo last.  I don't feel like I need the conditioner to nourish my hair after having the cocoa butter in it for a couple of hours (I use it after the first rinse to remove more of the henna)...but sometimes I use it anyway.  And it may take me longer than most to get it all out because my hair is coarse and curly.

In the end, my hair looks as if I've never done it harm, much less 20 years of it.  My curls are bouncier and my hair looks shiny without adding any product to it.  What's more, my hair stays in this condition for weeks and even once my roots start coming in and it's time to henna again, my hair is still healthier and happier than it has ever been before.  I can never go back now.

Hot Pink, That's the Ticket!

I try to be open to new things and other people's suggestions.  I'm not saying I'm very good at it, but I do try.  Lately I've been a bit glum and my stepmom, who treated me to a mani-pedi, suggested that I try using brighter colors in my life to help combat my negativity.  So, while we were picking out nail polish for our pedicures, she rejected all my standard color choices and asked if I wouldn't consider trying something more fun and summery.  Maybe pink?  Maybe bright freaking pink?  I found one that I thought I could live with...secure in the fact that I wore closed-toe shoes to the salon, took a deep breath and went for it.  Once all my toes were painted and I got a good look at the opalescent bright pinkness of it all, I remembered why I don't like opalescent colors (explains why I have none at home), but it was fine.  Because it's good to try new things, right?


That pink polish barely lasted twenty-four hours.  I thought I could live with it, but I was wrong.  It wasn't just the wrong pink for me, I really didn't want to be wearing a bright, happy color on my toes.  What makes me happy is looking down and seeing a deep, almost-black blue or a sparkling wine red, or even a sullen stormy gray.  I am not one for pink, especially a glittery or shimmery or opalescent one.  It is decidedly not. my. thing.  But I can say that  removing it the next morning was absolute bliss.  And even though I suck at polishing my own nails, it still makes me happy to look down and see Rock Star - a shimmery midnight blue.  That is the polish color for a girl like me.


However, my stepmom wasn't wrong.  Adding a little color when things seem unusually drab or dark is always a good idea.  So a big thank you to her and to Sara Lynn Paige, who let me know about Feria Copper Shimmer hair dye a few weeks ago.  It is truly an awesome red and just the color change I needed.  


A couple of other ways to brighten your day:


Music is another great  mood-changer and Colleen from Inspired to Share has put together some great music you should listen to: Music to Motivate (you can listen to each mix on her site).  

AND

Melissa from Embody Style is an inspiration to plus-size ladies and cute as all get out.  Keep an eye out for her recommendations on Twitter - she has great shopping recommendations - or just admire her style.  Meg and I have both had a good time admiring her Tumblr.

Spring Cleanup

Yesterday I didn't post a damn thing on any of the LostGirls sites.  I was a bad, bad, bad girl.  But I did do a few things I've been meaning to do for several weeks now.  Let me start by saying that (I know it's not a good excuse, but) I had a slightly unpleasant, unhappy weekend prior to doing all this.  It's funny how much a slight change, some tidying up and learning a couple new things can turn a crap day into something you actually want to write about.  Whether or not its interesting for your readers....well, here's hoping.


First, I finally got around to coloring my hair (which was dyed a pale strawberry blonde, which faded into dirty blonde and had lots of gray roots showing).  I used this...  (same item, different models and those hair colors do not look the same!).

And got this...

Which dried to look like this...

Suddenly those mismatched models up there make sense.


The second thing I did was a disk cleanup on my laptop.  A friend of mine once deleted a bunch of seemingly unnecessary files from her family's desktop computer.  After she restarted it, she found out that erasing those files had rendered the computer utterly useless.  I like to learn from other people's mistakes once in a while (but not too often).


So when I want to do something technical and have no clue how to not destroy whatever I'm trying to work on, I start with simply going to the item in question's manual, or in this case my computer's Help and Support menu.  I don't do a general online search, because that's just going to confuse my techtarded brain and I will undoubtedly do something that looks complex but should've been simple and have to go buy a new computer.


My computer was running a bit slow and I had already moved a bunch of stuff off to an external hard drive, so I just said, "Hey,Computer...'sup?" And asked it how to make it run faster.  Obviously, if you have an IT person/team or someone you know who can get you up to speed, you should use them instead.  But some of us are not so lucky and I'm all about being independent, as long as it's in a smart way (a dumb way would be insisting I don't need help moving the couch to another room and scratching the hell out of the hardwood floors while putting out my back, not that I'd know about that or anything).  The cleanup was easy, didn't take very long and I read the instructions very carefully.  Understand, that last part is a rarity for me.

But the best thing I did with my day (though it won't sound like it in a moment) was to sit down and research applications that will make using Twitter easier for me.  Since I don't have an assistant to time my tweets, as it were, and organize the folks I follow, I decided that I need some tools.  There are a very many apps/tools/whatnot out there that can help you get a bit more organized with Twitter, Facebook and your blog (it's all saving your time up...so you can spend more time on Pinterest).  Now, were I not a blogger, I would not care about any of this (my mother mocked me today about just that).  But once you're doing something business-y with social media, you have to recognize that you will lose your mind if you do not use whatever tools are at your disposal.  This part of the post is mostly for my blogging buddies, but even if you aren't using social media for a blog or business, these are excellent tools if you're devoting a lot of time to Twitter.

Twitter Feed:  I use this app to have every new post (separate feeds for each site) sent to the LostGirls Facebook page.  I already have the Facebook page setup to link automatically to Twitter (creating a tweet for anything that I share as LostGirls), but Twitter Feed can also auto-post to Facebook for you (your user wall or your page).  This tool means that I won't have to worry about going to all these different programs the moment I finish a post - everything updates automatically for me.

Tweet Deck:  The first program like this that I saw was Postano, but I quickly realized it wasn't the one I wanted, especially since its free service is so limited.  Tweet Deck's freeness is fantastic and they have a mobile app to match (though I haven't had a chance to explore it).  I use this app to look at the lists I made on Twitter (you can add people to lists that you create, see our Blogs We Love list - @LostGirlsDC) in a more organized fashion.  So instead of looking at one list at a time, I can look at 3 to 5 columns of tweets (each column contains a list that I made).  The number of columns you see depends on the size of your monitor, so I probably wouldn't use this on an iPad or Netbook, but on a big ol' external monitor, it's the bees knees.  I now log in to this app instead of Twitter.  I use the Chrome extension of Tweet Deck, but you can download  it here, as well.

Buffer:  I put this last, but it was actually the first app that I signed up for.  Buffer is my lazy tweet system.  This app is actually an incredibly efficient tool for Twitter.  You can record up to 10 items to tweet with the free version and create a timeline so that they will be released into the world at the times of your choosing.  The point with this is to keep up a regular stream of tweets (4 times a day is a nice option, that way you're still out there and you can retweet anything you like on your own schedule) so that you're staying in touch with your followers, without being a slave to Twitter.  This is also great if you want to retweet something you sent out before (seems to be a regular practice on Twitter, to make sure you don't miss anyone based on time of day).  Tweet tweet tweet.

If I write tweet one more time, I'm going to slap myself.