Gray Hair

30 Days Down and a New Hobby

Hey, y’all.

I made it 30 days.  🙂

No sugar.  No grains.  No Soy.  20 of the 30 days without dairy.  It was hard but I did it and I’m going to keep going.

Just a reminder…I’m following Whole 30 ‘rules’.

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They allow potatoes (white too) plus nuts.  No sweeteners at all.  My plan is to continue with this until Easter then reevaluate.

Let’s see…what else has happened since we last met…

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Another pressure cooked pot of stew.

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Mama B accidentally clicked the camera button as I was turning my head and caught this great picture of my hair color.  I love it so much.

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The first few grape plants of mine and Papa B’s future vino empire.  🙂

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Homemade macadamia nut butter.  Homemade nut butters don’t firm up like commercial butters because they don’t have any stabilizers.  They’re way more delicious though.  🙂

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Salt encrusted baked potatoes and blackened Mahi.

And the star of this week…

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That’s right, y’all.  At allegedly 40 something…I’ve decided to teach myself how to sew.

What?  I know.

Meme, Mema and Mama B were all phenomenal seamstresses.  Phenomenal.

Mema used to make our dolls clothes.  Meme made gorgeous quilts.  Mama B made most of our clothes until around Junior High.

How did all of that rub off me you ask?  Not well.  Back in the dark ages we had to take home ec in 8th grade and then again sometime in high school.  I took mine my sophomore year.  The cooking portion of the class = love.  The sewing portion?  Hate x a bazillion.  I’m not even exaggerating when I say that my version of the shirt they made us sew looked worse than the shirt Denise sewed for Theo on Cosby.  Of course Mama B saved it and I now have her on the hunt for it so I can take a pic.

Back then I hated everything about sewing.  The rules.  The need for perfect lines.  The cutting…ironing.  Just everything.

So right about now you must be wondering…if she hated it that much why did she just go buy a sewing machine?

Well if you followed the old blog you know I’ve been trying to find a new hobby ever since I had to stop baking / creating in the kitchen.

For some crazy reason I’ve decided that sewing is going to fill that void.   I mean with all that sewing in my DNA I can’t completely suck, right?   🙂

I’ll write more about it as I get going but for now…

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This is waiting for me.  Wish me luck.  🙂

Hope y’all have a good weekend.  If you’re partying for the Super Bowl be safe.

Y’all know I’m a huge football girl.  But I’m an even bigger women’s issues activist.  Given all the domestic abuse cases brought to light in the NFL …I just never could get into this season.  I always try to leave my political views and modern day feminist opinions off the blog…and I won’t write much more than this…but today instead of leaving with a song I’m gonna leave y’all with this super bowl commercial.  People faked all sorts of moral outrage in Sept and then just moved on once the season got going.    Thank You, UltraViolet for not letting this go.  🙂

See y’all next week.  🙂

Happy New Year

Hope the hangovers have subsided and 2015 is off to a roaring start for y’all.  🙂

Before sharing my 2015 goals I thought I’d look back at last year.

Looking back over the year…it was good in some ways and absolutely horrible in others.

I spent so much of the year (around 28 weeks total) sick…but at the same time we ‘cured’ Mama B of her year long cough.   I’m very grateful for that.  She’s still rocking right along with her low acid / no sugar lifestyle.  🙂

I don’t do resolutions.  If I want to do something I just do it instead of waiting for a date on the calendar.  But last year I did have a few goals.

One of them was to stop coloring my hair.  The dye was making me sicker and sicker each time.  I probably had a PPD allergy all along and just didn’t even know what that was.

Dec 20, 2013 was the last time anything bad touched my hair.  🙂

For those of you who don’t know me in real life…Mama B’s side of the fam suffers from premature graying.  Her dad was completely white haired in his 20’s.  I started graying in my early 20’s and started dying it immediately.  Every 4 weeks like clockwork.  For over 20 years.

Needless to say I really didn’t know how saying goodbye to the dye and hello to the gray was going to go.

Was I going to cry?  Was I going to start drinking coffee at the crack of dawn and watching Walton’s reruns?    Ya know…like a little old lady.  😉

Thankfully no.  None of that happened.  I completely embraced the process…even practically shaving it all off to just go ahead and get all the non-gray growth gone.

And it’s been one the best things I’ve done for my health in a long long time.

It was also so very completely empowering.  Saying “nope…sorry…media / advertisers / superficial people’ you aren’t going to tell me how I need to look…it’s seriously empowering.

I’ve been telling y’all for a while that I was going to do a before and after post.  I promise I will.  I just don’t have the amount of growth I thought I would have by now so I’m still saying no to pictures.  I think the short hair makes my face look humongous.  I did allow ONE single pic at Christmas for Mama B.  After cropping everyone else out it’s not very big at all but I’m gonna stick it here just for those of you who’ve been wondering how it’s going.

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It’s a cool mix of gunmetal gray…white and some buried natural brown that hasn’t turned yet.

I seriously love it.

Maybe by Easter the sides with have some good growth and I can do the full before / after post.

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For 2015 I have some goals planned too.

One I’ll share because I’m sure I’ll write about it a lot as the year goes on.

I’m going to work on a more holistic approach to treating my Lupus.

I first started having symptoms in 1998.  I was finally diagnosed in 2002.  From 1998 – today I have really only totaled about TWO years of feeling well.  Not a consecutive two years.  Just days and weeks added up.  I’ve been on various medication the ENTIRE time but yet feeling worse and worse.  🙁

So I figure giving something else a try can’t hurt and very well may help.

I’ll keep taking my blood thinner but am going to try weaning myself off of everything else (safely of course).

I’m also going to eliminate the last small bits of soy remaining in my diet.  So that means a lot of experimentation in creating a homemade mayo recipe.  Because if ya know me…ya know life without mayo isn’t an option.  😉

I’ll share more as things happen but that’s about it for now.

Hit me with your best shot, 2015.  I’m ridiculously determined to make you a million times better than previous years.  🙂

Happy New Year and thanks for stopping by.  🙂