Tag: hair

Random whatnot (including magic hair)

How is it already mid-January? Yeesh. At least we’ve actually had a winter here. Though freezing temperatures without snow are pointless. So if we could just have a flurry here while I’m home at the same time the boys are, that’d be great. Thanks.

We had a busy weekend – the boys had a sleepover Friday night for a friend’s birthday, then Saturday night one of their friends slept over, then Sunday we went to yet another birthday party. (Fortunately they had Monday to recover.)

Random pictures of kids stuck to a wall from the Sunday birthday party:

I also did some baking over the weekend. Make pizza dough for the boys’ dinner Saturday night, then made a king cake for breakfast the next day.

I used this recipe, but halved the yeast. (In the past, the king cakes I’ve made have tasted too yeasty.) It came out pretty well. I should have baked it at a lower temperature, I think. The outside was getting dark, but the inside was still possibly not cooked as much as I’d have liked (but not raw.) I could just hear Paul and Mary critiquing it. But everyone else liked it, so I’m going to stop pretending I’m on the Great British Bake Off. (I do have some other ideas on how to improve it for next time…)

In other news, I ordered two fun things from Amazon that I’m excited about.

Hair straightening brush. This is magic! My sister has one and I used it when she was in town, so I treated myself for my birthday.

CHECK THIS OUT!!! That’s before – I didn’t touch my hair this morning after washing it. No brushing or anything. That’s totally air dried. And the after is from six minutes of brushing with the magic brush! Insane.

Usually straight hair involves blow drying (pfft no way) and then flat ironing for 15 minutes while I curse the hard to reach hair at the back of my head. This was just brush, brush, brush, avoid ears because last time I burned the crap out of the back of my ear. I mean, this thing gets hot, but as long as you’re careful, it’s fine.

Rose gold glitter sneakers. For Mardi Gras, but also, you know, for always.

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I also wanted to share the post I wrote for New Orleans Moms Blog. All about my love of football. (Yeah right.)

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Life as of today

I haven’t posted a normal post in a while, just an update on what’s going on in the world. So let’s see…

The boys are a couple of weeks into fourth grade. So far so good. Except they’re not super fond of the bus driver, who is apparently very strict and gruff. Which is exactly how bus drivers should be, I’d say. Well, except for last Wednesday when he forgot that school got out an hour early so we waited at the bus stop for over an hour. Fortunately, the bus stop is the mall, so I dropped into Ulta and made an appointment to get my hair did. Fun colors to come!

Speaking of fun colors, last night, I put in some extra-orange color (blood orange, to be exact) into Oliver’s hair because it was getting too hard to tell him and Linus apart at a glance. Better now. Pics later.

I have a work trip coming up in a couple of weeks, to Whistler again. I’m super excited to see everyone, but the forecast for the next ten days is not making me happy. I need some autumn weather while I’m there, dammit! I’ll get there a few days after the end of the forecast, so all I can say is, a cool front better arrive before I do.

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Speaking of weather, it’s very weird here, thanks to Harvey. Pouring one minute, clear blue skies the next. Can’t complain, though. Seeing what’s going on in Houston makes my heart hurt. Just sickening.

If you’re looking for something you can do to help people in Texas, this page has some great links.

I made pesto (no nuts, George is allergic to most of the ones that would go in pesto) out of the basil I grew this summer. First time it really thrived, probably due to the very wet summer we had. It was not bad, but maybe I’ll put one fewer clove of garlic in it next time (sorry person I worked out next to this morning!)

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A good thing this week – Evan and Ellie are in town! I love seeing that girl (okay, both of them, really) and I can’t believe how grown up she is! (Look, we’re both bigger! Hahaha)

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Ooops, I went down a rabbit hole looking for old pictures of Ellie and me, and found this…gah!

One last cute thing…Ziggy now has his https://www.instagram.com/ziggymcziggerson/ so you don’t have to look at boring pictures of my kids to see what you really want – DOG.

Temporarily identical

 

Well, -ish. As close as I could get, anyway.

Linus is staying brown (well, -ish. As close as I could get, anyway. There’s still a greenish blue tinge that isn’t not kind of neat.) But Oliver wanted his purple back.

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And then Miles wanted me to figure out this specific hairdo. (Did I mention I also cut his hair? Go me!)

Who said you need little girls to have fun with your kids’ hair? (I mean, hopefully no one actually said that.)

 

Miles then and now

Miles surprised me the other day by saying he wanted to go back to his natural hair color. Considering the amount of times I’ve told them their hair needed to be “normal” again, I was surprisingly sad about it. But we went to Walgreens and picked out a box of medium brown and this morning, put it in.

Before:

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Good, bad, and ugly

Good:

The boys had their slumber party (now over a week ago!) The cake was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Love so much. They had a great time, and most importantly, I survived a night with nine 8 and 9 year old boys.

Oliver had his last day at the zoo classroom. Got to watch him in a movie and he gave a presentation on endangered species.

Oliver’s new purple hair:

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Miles got his roots done:

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Bad:

How I felt the day after we went out for tiki drinks. But it was totally worth it. 🙂

Linus is currently sick. His asthma is acting up. We’re leaving soon for our trip, so I really need everyone to be healthy again. Yeesh. I mean, look how sick:

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Ugly:

Ziggy has heartworms. 😦 I was so upset when I found out, but I’m a bit calmer now, after doing some research. We seem to have caught it pretty early, thank god. Not looking forward to keeping him still for two months, though.

These sweaters:

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Apologies in advance

I want to say I’m sorry to all of the boys’ teachers, friends, grandparents, cousins, etc.

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Miles, Oliver, Linus

Spent the weekend doing a bit of a switcheroo on the ol’ hair colors. So now you need to remember:

– Miles is white-blond-pink-cotton candy
– Oliver is deep purply blue
– Linus is aqua blue

The main issue is that Linus’s hair is the exact color Oliver’s was before. We may end up adding some green to it at some point. I imagine after Linus comes home from school tomorrow after being called “Oliver” fifty jillion times, it’ll be sooner rather than later.

Accountability and public speaking and green hair and other things

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted a real post. The kind with words and stuff. I feel pretty bad about just posting a bunch of pics about Austin, when I have lots of great memories that I really should be writing down. Let’s just hope the pictures help me remember them later. Or maybe I’ll end up editing that post with more details. We’ll see.

I think the best way for me to organize my thoughts is with bullets, since this’ll be all over the place.

I’ve been thinking for a long time about doing some kind of bootcamp fitness program, but I’ve been unable to find one that was at the appropriate times, etc. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago and she mentioned she was going to Orange Theory Fitness so I looked into it and ended up going to a class yesterday.

It was tough, I gotta say. It’s funny, you think “I can run a few miles at a time, and I can do half marathons without dying, so I must be in some kind of shape” and then you do a class like this and

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It’s high intensity interval training, and there are treadmills and rowing machines and weights and floor exercises and wow, when I got off the rowing machines after a few minutes my legs were like jelly.

So I signed up to go as much as humanly possible and try to get really fit over the next two months (and beyond) because in two months, this is happening…
Say hello to our next group of #WCEU speakers!

Yes, my coworker Erica and I are giving a talk at WordCamp Europe in front of, oh, I don’t know, more than the 20 people I spoke to at WordCamp Dayton. At least I can hide behind Erica, except she is tiny.

Anyway, my only point is that I want to feel good about myself before getting on a stage in front of more than 20 people.

In non-me related things, I continued to allow my children to really express themselves through their hair. I mean, it’s not hurting anyone. It’s temporary (ish, I mean, I did have to bleach their hair to get it this vibrant, but hair does grow) and if you could have seen how happy Linus was after we made his green, well, any doubts would have been wiped away.

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Miles wanted to be in the picture too. He of course also now wants to dye his hair, but I pointed out that his acting career might suffer if he does. So we’re leaving it as is for now. Anyway, if I have to end up dying Linus and Oliver’s back, I’ll need a reference for the original color. Ha!

I had a really fun weekend with the boys, not just dying their hair. We saw Jungle Book (really good) and watched a bunch of baking shows on Netflix. MilesCupcake Wars in particular inspired us to whip up a batch of homemade vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream frosting. I even scraped seeds out of vanilla bean pods, that’s how serious we were. They were deeeelish, in spite of the fact that I apparently left a box of powdered sugar at the grocery store after paying for it, so our frosting was more butter than anything. Nothin’ wrong with that

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Miles approves of my frosting recipe.

March 28, 2016 {little boy blue}

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Yesterday, Oliver asked if he could have blue hair. It would be hypocritical of me to say no, so I said, okay. (Only temporary dye, though.) So today we went to Sally’s and got some Manic Panic Atomic Turquoise, which just feels right, since that’s what I used back in the 1990s.

Look, it turned out to be almost the exact same shade as his eyes. Can’t really say it’s not a good color for him, eh?

February 2, 3, 2016

Brace yourself for some EXCITING photos…

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This is me trying to get a photo of the back of my head. Because when in NYC, we dyed the underneath blue. Because why not?

 

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Took the boys out for Chinese food Wednesday night.

Monday morning things

I wanted to blog about a few things that don’t really merit a post of their own.

I baked a king cake!

I’ve been wanting to try this for a while, and finally got around to it this weekend. I used the recipe in this blog post. [Please ignore the line, “(Pronounced Nawlins in case you don’t want to sound like a fool)” because that is absolutely, 100% untrue. Please don’t ever say “Nawlins” in my presence.]

The only changes I’d make next time are:

1. Three strands instead of two. It was very puffy. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there was definitely a higher ratio of bread: filling than I’d prefer.

2. Get a real baby, not a LEGO minifigure that I sterilized. Though it made for a hilarious photo. I crack myself up.

You're going to put me WHERE?
You’re going to put me WHERE?

3. Get the colored sugar to sprinkle on top. I colored the icing instead, but sugar would be prettier sprinkled on top of the icing (not in lieu of.)

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I was really happy with how it came out, though. So yum! And P was really happy to get the “baby.”

Hair product recommendation

Saturday night, I went with some friends to a walking parade, Chewbacchus. I think you can imagine what the theme was. I looked all over the house for the Princess Leia wig I had at one point, but then I remembered that I have long dark brown hair. No wig needed, just a Pinterest tutorial!

Worked like a charm, and I was so enamored with the bun-making technique, that I went and bought a hair donut thingy yesterday from Ulta.

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Oliver’s writing

Oliver had his writing journal from English class in his backpack and HOLY COW it was a treasure trove of cute. I can’t wait to get my hands on Miles’s and Linus’s. My favorite entry was the one that said, “Today I will inoy my dad.”