the grape experiment

Hello all!  So, I tried dying my hair with kool-aid last night.  I followed the instructions I found online to the t, mixing the powdered drink mix with a little water and some hair conditioner to make a paste.  Though I think I added a little too much water...mine was a rather soupy paste.  I had an old craft brush hanging around the house, so I used that to apply the mixture to my bangs, which had previously been bleached slightly and colored purple with a commercial product.  I thought the purple from the commercial dye was a bit too subtle for what I was going for, hence the kool-aid.  Anyway, back to what happened.  I applied the mix to my bangs and wrapped them up very well in plastic wrap, then I decided to let the rest of my hair know that I love it too, so I applied a creamy deep conditioner to it and wrapped everything up in a couple more layers of plastic wrap then put a terry wrap on, just in case, and went to bed (from everything I read on the internet, they said to do that for the best results).  The mix itself looked a little bit (ok, a lot) black, but I was hoping for the best (you know, like it was just so purple it looked black).  So I woke up this morning to wash the stuff out of my hair, still hoping for the best...well, the water from the colored parts looked blue!  Not exactly what I was going for, but I really like blue so I thought that'd be pretty cool too.  Dried my hair with a towel and couldn't wait for it to dry naturaly like I normally do, so I busted out the blowdryer and got after it.  Well, I can't say as it turned out either purple or blue...it's mostly kinda blue, but there's a couple places that look kinda purple, all with a sort of gray-ish cast to it.  I think it's actually more subtle than the color that was there before...next time I'm totally gonna mix blue raspberry and tropical punch to get a good purple color instead of using grape.  On the upside, it doesn't look horrible plus my hair smells like grape!  It'll wash out soon enough anyway, so I'll try mixing the purple next time instead of trying the easy way.

In other news, we're still doing Meatless Mondays at our house, and it's going fairly well...last night we had cheese enchilads with rice and beans.  I cheated a little and didn't make these from scratch (it was a frozen meal), but they were pretty good none the less.  My friend J made rice and beans last night and I have to say, the pic I saw looked yummier than what we had.  Don't get me wrong, the enchiladas were good, but her dish was homemade and it just looked like it tasted better.  I really should have made our supper from scratch too, but it had been a long day and I just didn't feel up to it...but the frozen meal was still cheaper to feed everyone than take-out (I'm feeding 6-8 people every night here).  Last night it was only for 5 of us though, my cousin is still visiting her mom and hubby was out of town, so there was actually leftovers (usually I make enough so hubby can get 2 meals out of it...one to eat when he gets home and the other to take for his lunch at work the next day, so that doesn't really count as leftovers).  I'm trying to decide if I wanna eat that for lunch or make myself some fish sticks.  I may give my son the enchiladas, since he can eat those but not the fish sticks.  I got some baby food for baby girl the other day, so I'm excited to have her try it...she's only had cereal, so I think I might mix some of the baby food with her cereal so it's not a huge change for her.  I'm gonna do the same thing with her that I did with my son...start her out with the meats and veggies before giving her fruit.  Their doctor told me when my oldest was this age that it's better to start out with the savory foods first instead of the sweeter fruits so that they don't think all food needs to be sweet.  It works though...my son doesn't eat sweets very often, and he doesn't really ask for them either.  That's why on the rare occasions he does ask for candy or something sweet I usually give it to him, and even that's maybe once a week or two.  Sometimes I'll buy him a small piece of candy at the store if he's been super good, but even that's kinda rare (me buying him candy, not him being good at the store...that happens a lot).

The barmops are working out famously as an alternative to paper towels at our house!  My mom is still coming around to the whole thing...she keeps trying to buy paper towels when we're at the store and I keep telling her we don't really need them.  We have a good stash of barmops and larger dish towels now and they're conveniently located, so we can just grap one for a clean-up job and then toss it in the wash pile.  I do let her keep something like one or two rolls of paper towels on hand cause there are some things she just won't use cloth for...but I'm working on it. For instance, she thinks that you have to cover a plate of food in the microwave with a paper towel, but just yesterday I showed her that you totally can use a barmop for that.  I don't know if it sunk in, but I'm really trying.  Next up is converting her to cloth napkins instead of paper towels at meal times...we'll see how that goes.  I'm actually quite proud of myself as far as the whole conversion from paper to cloth is concerned...it's just second nature now for me to reach for a barmop or dish cloth instead of a paper towel.  In all honesty, I'd love to convert to cloth diapers too instead of disposables, but every time I mention it everyone just looks at me like I'm totally nuts.  Plus, they're pretty expensive.  I'd make them myself, but even the materials are kinda pricey...I know it's a little cheaper in the long run (especially if you have the multi-size ones), but I just can't put out that much of an initial investment right now.  Maybe material prices will come down soon and I can get the supplies to make my own...a girl can dream, can't she?  Wow, I really need to get out more lol.  Well, that's all for now...Until next time!