The exciting life of Igor

My hair-skills are really suffering from my injured hand. Sucks being dominantly right-handed and having it injured. Maybe I should put some work into getting more ambidextrous? I can’t even brush my teeth with my left hand. 
   
Today’s hair is a severely crooked braided Nautilus with the elastic showing, sigh.
    

  
It’s a beautiful bright and sunny, although cold day. Perfect for going shopping: Hubby needed some new shoes more suitable for spring.
   
I needed to get my favourite glasses repaired. Not only does my hand injury screw up my hair, it makes me really clumsy too. I dropped my glasses a few days ago and all the tiny screws in them sprang to all sides and they fell apart. I was actually impressed that the tiny screws could work themselves out on a single impact like that.
   
Ah, good as new.
   

  
I’ve had to resort to my backup glasses. They look very similar to my favourite grey pair, just in black with green details. I still don’t understand how I could have bought them though!
  

             

What’s the problem, you ask?
   
This.
         

  
The little square “block” thing is really catching my hair and hurting it. Hidden dangers to your hair… Let this be a warning to all the longhairs out there!
 
I got a nice bottle set at Åhlens that I fell for because of the flower print and pink cap.
    

   
Right now one of the big ones contains pure lemon juice and the small spray bottle contains a facial mist of my own recipe. Its half toner/skin tonic and half pure lemon juice with a few drops of honey. It has a nice skin brightening effect, the lemon acid combats outbreaks, the vitamin C gives skin a nice boost and seems to be slightly moisturizing too.
  

     
I got some smaller bottles too that I will need to send out oil samples in soon. The smaller bottles were 20 kronor each and the pink/flowery set was 55 kronor at Åhlens, if any Swede reading this should be interested.
     
After finishing our shopping, hubby and I went to New Delhi in Lund for lunch. They have a really good buffet and I would kill someone for their recipe for shredded chicken and their pickled onions!
    

    
Look how nice the oil samples looks! It seriously looks professional with my blog-sticker on! Hubby asked me if I was opening a hair-business, hehe. Maybe I should.
Maybe “Developed and used by Igor!” would have a certain attraction?
  

    
Feeling really satisfied with what I did with the bottles, I fed “our” little wild birds.
    

We have a minor army of chatty tree sparrows

  

   
great tits
         

 

blackbirds

    
and an adorable little family of blue tits. We have followed the little family since the male sat in the bush outside our kitchen window and sang. He attracted a lady and they nested in the vent in the next building where they got four chubby little babies on their wings. They stick together and are usually the first to spot it when we put food out for them.
  

  
From time to time we have a pair of common wood pigeons stopping by too. They make me smile because they always look so completely confused.
    

   
Last summer we had a family of wagtails visiting too with their fluffy grey babies.
      

I love watching the frantic happiness from feeding the little birdies just some scraps of food. Feeding birds is really good for the soul!

Now I’m sitting here typing this blog entry.

Once I’m done, hubby and I will watch some TV and have some chocolate fondue. I got it as a very early birthday gift (My birthday isn’t for another month) from Chemist Friend. So yummy dipping strawberries and marshmallows in melted chocolate!

After some chocolaty goodness, I’m going to finish up re-reading Making Money
 

      
and start on World War Z.
        

   
All in all a good day!

Family hair

I just shared this on UTT so I wanted to show my family and their hair here too. I think I’m really lucky with my hair genes! 
    

  
Left to right is:

Mother’s mother, age 86. That’s her natural hair colour, a dark brown with lots of silvers.
Mother, age 57. She used to be a honey blonde but went grey and then white. She has more white and grey than my grandmother :D I know she had waist+ length hair once.
Mothers father, age 85. He had very dark brown/light black hair when he was younger.
Yours truly. Looking very brunette in the light!
Father, age 70. (Yes, my dad is only 15 years younger than my granddad) He had light brown hair when he was younger.
   

I find it interesting that my grandparents who both had very dark hair got a blonde daughter and that no one in my family has even the slightest hint of red that I have. My guess is that it’s a long dormant gene back from my distant Spanish ancestor who made my grandfather so dark and Spanish-looking he would be mistaken for a local in Spain.

Almost killed my hubby last night

The weapon?   

A bottle of El Vital Color Vive leave in spray.

  

      

I was getting ready to go out with the girls (Punk concerts at Debaser in Malmö and yes, it was totally awesome!) and had to redo my figure 8 bun from the morning since it had started slipping and pulling on my slippery freshly washed hair. So with the help of a few smoothing sprays of the leave in, I turned it into a braided Nautilus bun.

   

I could just catch the end of a Spartacus episode replay and did my hair in the living room. I didn’t think about it until hubby almost fell on his face when he walked past me. The spray of this thing really went everywhere and made the floor insanely slippery.

    

  = Me, the murderous wifey.

Incoming loot

I just gave my credit card a little workout

First at http://prettyanntoinets.com/

Pretty scarves!

Beautiful beanies!

Two of these. One for me, one for a friend.

Bonnets!

Loc cover!

Silk pillowcases. I ordered a silver and a purple.

Not bad on the shipping either!

I emailed them to ask if they could do an alteration to the beanies so I could use them for sleep cap but unfortunately they don’t do custom orders. I’ll probably take them to Chemist Friend #2 and ask her to do alternations to them. Hopefully I’ll learn to sleep with a silk cap or silk pillow with an arsenal to experiment with.

Then I took my little plastic card to http://hairsense.com

I’m happy I tried with one comb first that I got in a trade from Teufelchen.I was so happy with it I decided for a bigger order from them.

I wanted combs for detangling, distribution of conditioner in the shower and for smoothing hair for up dos.

 

The last one is for a friend though.

 

I got free shipping on the order, yay.

Now for the impatient waiting for my goodies!

“The loot”

What I picked up from my parents’ place. 
     

     

250 ml macademia oil and 300 ml argan oil. Been itching to try both, but decided to bring them home unopened!

       
Vitamins. Hah, I had completely forgotten I ordered two packs. Ironically the large pack on the left is the 200 tablet pack and the small one on the right is the 300 pack. I always think they look like some sort of aquarium cleaner or fish food. Hmm?

We got to talk about vitamins when my brother and his girlfriend were there and she pointed to some of the herbs in the ingredient list and said they were really good for your immune system.

   

         
A hair specific supplement with vitamin Bs and fenugreek. I fell for it because it contains fenugreek and it seems to be found very regularly in herbal blends for scalp remedies or regrowth formulas. One pack for me, one pack to mail to a friend.
   

    
Two fibre supplements. I try to recommend people to take either a yoghurt supplement or a fibre supplement. No reason to pile expensive foods or hair supplements on if the digestion isn’t working well.
 

     
Left is fish oil that turned out to contain vitamin E. Ugh, the website didn’t mention that! It turned out my parents would take it so I couldn’t be bothered to return it and complain. I’ll get a vitamin free omega 3 supplement from gymgrossisten.com instead. Right one is a herbal blend for “detox” that I have tried before with some success.
   

     
The free stuff: A fibre supplement for weight loss purposes (Propped up against a can) and a tea tree oil that looked more like a full sized bottle than a sample.

Trim result

I had planned on getting a trim while in Denmark, but my mother turned out to be cheap on my behalf and offered to do it for me. When I insisted that I had planned on going to a stylist, she got a bit offended and thought I didn’t trust her. Oh well, it kept the peace and I saved the money.       

I had her take pictures before, after and of the trimmings.

    

I have to admit I was shocked to see what my ends looked like! I knew they were thin after No Trims in 2011, but the reverse U shape was a surprise. I guess it’s from my (bad) habit of snipping the tassel of my braid. No matter what I guess it’s difficult to get a good idea of when your ends really look like when your hair is knee length and you always wear it up?

         

        
After she took about 5 cm off. I wanted a little less off, but the last 2-3 cm didn’t consist of a whole lot of hairs and was barely enough to even the hemline up!
       

      
The sad leftovers. Mom teased me that it was less hair than when she trims her bangs. Hah…
    

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?

 

Blog break?

I have to admit I have almost completely mentally checked out of Sweden already. Haven’t even gotten around to blog for a while. Guess I really need to get away from things for a little while, even if it requires being around my family?

Anyways, I’ll be in Denmark until next Monday so I probably won’t check in.

Take care, everyone!

Unexpected results

It looks like the long sick streak for hubby has had an unexpected result. One of my “hair things” that he didn’t seem to make peace with has suddenly turned around.
    
Hubby had problems with accepting that I take supplements and he used to give me attitude for it. But a couple of days ago he started talking about how he had been sick for so long and I only finally caught it recently. First he had some sort of influenza, and then he got almost back to full health before getting sick with influenza again. Then he had what seemed to be a cold. Then he got the horrible cough he has had for weeks, first week with fever too. Hubby said he was amazed that after him being sick for some two months more or less constantly, I only caught it recently. After all, I must have been in his virus vapor a lot. He then said he had been thinking about it since we live in the same apartment, exercise about the same, do almost the same thing and eat almost the same things too. The only real difference is that I take supplements. He had obviously put a lot of thought into it!
      
It was a pretty unexpected thing to hear from him. I know his attitude used to be that they were unnecessary and a waste of money if you just eat healthy.
    
Well, I have always said that supplements needs to stay supplements and not the basis of your entire diet. I agree with him so far. I prefer seeing supplements as sort of a “backup” since it takes a lot of time and effort to eat a “perfect” diet. We try to eat pretty healthy in general, but we do have our take away, frozen pizzas and crisps…
    
It used to be the biggest annoyance between us when it came to my “hair” obsession (I will still object to that my supplements are only taken for my hair, but I wouldn’t have started with them if it wasn’t because I began learning on hair forums…)
    
We have our “The good, the bad and the ugly” disagreements when it comes to my hair.
   
The good (And silly)
Hubby has a weird obsession with my braid tassel. He likes playing with it, sniffing it and touching it. He also likes me to keep it long and fluffy. I naturally want to braid down as much as I can and keep the tassel as short as possible.

The bad
Hubby hates it when I wear head coverings. He dislikes that head coverings even exists to hide the “sinful and dirty female body that leads men into temptation” and says that instead of men blaming women for their own sexual urges they need to grow a backbone, develop a moral compass and take responsibility for their own actions. I absolutely agree on that. Women will never have equality as long as weak and stupid men blame their actions on women instead of taking responsibility for what they do or think. 
     
However, it doesn’t change the fact that there are plenty of unsuppressed and happily non-religious women just like me who likes to wear head coverings for their own personal reasons, sometimes even against the wishes of the people around them (Cough).
   
Although I don’t agree on his distaste for head coverings, I can understand and respect his opinion.
   
The ugly (And resolved?)
It used to be the supplement question. But now it seems that hubby is at least interested in giving it a try!
    
As opposed to the head coverings issue, I could never fully respect his opinion on this. I think I covered most of it in the first part of this post so there isn’t much to add.
  
I’m quite excited to follow the development on this!
Since I have several packages of supplements and oil waiting for me to pick them up when I return to Denmark, I really hope he remembers his epiphany when I have returned to Sweden and start taking my supplements again…

Pity party

I’m sick. It sucks. I blame hubby.

No, actually I blame myself. And irony.

Hubby has been sick for a week or so. Coughing and running a fever. I’ve been nursing *cough* babysitting *cough* him and he was worried he would get me sick too. Since it had been about a week since he started getting sick and I was feeling absolutely fine Wednesday when he last worried about it, I said “I think whatever you have can’t get me. Otherwise I would have been sick by now.”

Obviously that was tempting faith and/or irony?

I woke up feeling snotty Thursday. Today, Friday, I have a high fever; I’m snotty, sneezing, freezing and absolutely miserable.

To add insult to injury I should have been to Malmö with Biologist friend this morning and out for a steak and a stand-up comedy show later today with everyone.

The built in webcam in the purple laptop doesn’t do my bright red nose justice. I could win the Rudolf the Rednosed Snotdeer lookalike competition right now.

*Sniffle*