Shampoo Bars: Get Sudsing!

So you’ve bought a shampoo bar.. ..That’s Great! I’m hearing it more and more as they are gaining popularity, “Yeah, I bought one but it doesn’t work correctly. I get a waxy finish and I can’t get it out!”

Well I’m here to tell you that of course not all shampoo bars are created equal. That is the nature of all natural products. However, I wouldn’t dish your bar just yet. Let me explain.....

We have been used to using a shampoo that have substances in them called sodium lauryl sulfate or SLS. The reason sodium lauryl sulfate is used in soaps and shampoo is because it is an inexpensive detergent and it makes substances lather. This makes it for a quick, easy convenient way of getting lots of bubbles which incidently the beauty industry has told you is luxury. It is also the way to wash out the product faster.

I’ll try to illustrate this for you....

If I were to take a bar of soap of any kind and drag it across a table top, if would leave in its wake a film of waxy residue. For us to get that off, we need to take a cloth and rub at it and add water to it until it turns into bubbles that wash away with a greater amount of water. Otherwise, we are there with a knife or other scraping utensil scraping it off the table. The same works for our hair. Because most natural soap bars (I can’t speak for all) use SLS-Free, including myself, we as users, have to put the work in.

Here’s how:

Start with soap in your hands with a bit of water to create a lather

Once we have a lather going on, we can transfer that to our head

With both hands and in circles around the hair, keep adding small amounts of water to add to the lather

and just when you are about to give up, keep going! That’s just your self-prescribed time frame for hair washing kicking in! This is YOU (or Uniqi 😏) time, so saveur It!

Once you have a good load of bubbles, massage it through the hair like you would any other shampoo product.

Wash it out

So your hair is going to be squeaky clean, probably cleaner than you’ve ever have had before! You will need to condition it as each hair shaft has now sprouted little spurs due to the positive ions. This is your hair cuticles opening up. To smooth them down you need to apply negative ions which is your conditioner and can be found in some hair driers.

Crazily enough, Apple Cider Vinegar is a natural product that can do this and is the base ingredient for my leave-in spray conditioner. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical thinking I would be walking around smelling like a chip van, but found as the hair dries or it is dried, the vinegar smell goes away! Happy Days!

Well I hope I have helped you a bit further on your quest for a natural choice towards your hair care products and love that you are trying! It does take a bit more thought and a bit more time but when you think that in the long run it’s for you, your family and even in a small bit, for future generations, I think you’ll agree it’s worth it!

Blessed Be

A Reason & Season - Goodbye Good Friend

I saw a rainbow

Just after hearing the news.

It was confusing and uplifting at the same moment. Tears rolled down to touch the corners of a shaky smile.

We haven’t been close in a long while. Probably as far as we were close, once upon a time.

As I look from your husband’s message, up to the dark clouds, pierced through with a brilliant sun, and now framed with colour, I see a movie reel of memories as our girls grew up together: 18 months to 18 years and counting.

It’s here in this courtyard that you persuaded us to come back from foreign lands.

It is also this courtyard where things turned somehow sour, never to be the same again.

I’ve grieved us before, back then when I realised there was no return, when I can all-now but assume, you believed I betrayed you.

I said something that hurt you. And for that I’m sorry as I intentionally would never.

What it was, I will never know, and that is mine to bear.

I thought if you wanted to be in my life  again and me in yours, you would come to me and we would talk…swear….cry, maybe, if we weren’t too proud…then laugh…then cry again but this time from relief and for time lost.

I started to hate the attempted reconciliation coffees and village get togethers. Each time the realisation that the crack was turning into a chasm.

We used to right all the wrongs in the world one red wine bottle at a time. You were my first and closest friend here in my new country and home.

You were my surrogate husband, helping me with school pickups as I started a business and Neil was away.

You hosted sleep overs, and days out, backyard BBQs and far-flung outdoor adventures at wherever we lived at the time. We took the days on, double teaming it all with our husbands, strolling calmly behind, shaking their heads in tandem.

To know that I was so far away from you to not know the important stuff: the passing of your father, and now your illness, pierces me.

And now I grieve you again. Acutely.

Words unspoken and never now to be divulged.

An understanding, maybe even a compromise that is now lost.

This rainbow….

Is it you?

So soon after your departure?

That in spirit, is it your sign that you see me hurting, confused, tormented, that I couldn’t be the confidant I once was and now you’re telling me it’s ok? Telling me to let it go with Nature’s language, one you hope I can decipher?

That you’re no longer upset with me, and that our friendship had a reason and a season?

Rest in peace, and out of pain, my good friend. I will continue to miss you, here with us all.

Musings 19.March.2023

OMG! It's a rat!!

I share with my mom the absolute paralysing fear of rats and with her add to that list mice. Me, it's bats. I do not do rats or bats.

I still regard The Secret of Nimh as the real deal. 🥴

"Kids get behind me!"

Mom urgently ushered us into the living room of our double wide mobile home, standing guard at the 'door' between the living room/dining room/study/kitchen armed with the avacado coloured broom.

The broom handle and bristles matched the shag pile carpet in the living room, which also incidentally, matched the bathroom suite - *sigh* you gotta love the 70's for its decor. I hear whispers of a revival?... I digress....

It was a hot summer's day and we had just returned from having coffee at a friend of my mom's where the visit was as much to catch up, as to get out of the heat box.

Then, even though the homestead is situated in 'downtown' Cloverdale - the crossroads of the 2 major roads into the town of Selkirk and the City of Winnipeg, it was still a trustworthy rural mentality of not locking doors and even leaving doors wide open as we had done that day. This let the wind blow through - door through to windows - and cool things down in our metal clad home.

Our unapologetically 70s mustard coloured fridge, which matched the stove, washer and dryer was being defrosted, manually. For those who have only ever seen a self-defrosting fridge, this consisted of a tea towel thrown over the door at the hinge end so the door of the fridge could not close completely. This would have to happen every once in while when things were frosting up or getting frozen in the back.

It was lunchtime and Mom was collecting things from the cupboards to make our lunches.

She turned around to get something from the fridge, opened the door and there he was. Sitting atop of her freshly washed, plucked from the garden carrots in the vegetable crisper, lining the bottom.

"OMG! It's a rat!" she screamed.

Mom slammed the fridge door, which ofcourse couldn't slam because of the tea towel stopper and bounced right back open to reveal a brown furred animal, long black skin textured tail and two beady eyes. The biggest rat she had ever seen.

In actual fact, it was a muskrat, which isn't a rat at all, although still a rodent, it is aquatic and resembles a beaver, really. It's the long skinny tail that takes you to the rat family instead of the beaver who sports the familiar flat tail. We have a marsh nearby, so it was concluded he must have been from there looking for food or water, or both. How he got into the fully enclosed porch, up the steps and in through the door and into the fridge, still remains a mystery.

The Common Muskrat -The muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) is a medium-sized semiaquatic rodent native to North America and an introduced species in parts of Europe, Asia, and South America. The muskrat is found in wetlands over a wide range of climates and habitats. It has important effects on the ecology of wetlands,[2] and is a resource of food and fur for humans. - Wikipedia

Wait! Food FOR humans? 🤢

Mom grabbed the broom and stalked towards the fridge. She bravely tore the towel from its job as the wedge and properly slammed and trapped the rodent in the cool box.

He, who was holding court on a pile of carrots.

The rest is a blur if I'm honest. There was a hysterical telephone call into Dad's work...actually two, after the wait for Dad to come home was deemed too long and when Mom phoned again, the receptionist said, "oh! It's YOU, Pam!".

"I'm sure it's just a rat," Dad mused once the phone had been handed to him.

"Tom, if the rats are that big, we are moving!" Mom countered. "Get home, now!"

There was an opportunistic photo of my mom perched on the desk taken by my father before he dealt with the beast. And then the cursing of my mother as she cleaned the fridge of all the nastiness that she scared out of the poor thing all over the fridge and food.

Mom the Warrior

Here on Mothering Sunday I'm giggling remembering both my mom's warrior stance and fierce protection over us in that doorway, broom-sword aloft, and then her vulnerability once someone else was there to take over. And that is how motherhood should be. That a woman's strength is demonstrated in so many different ways.

It is she, as my role model, that I look to be strong, if not optimistic, in tough times, for my kids to show them that everything is 'workoutable'. That we just need to take a beat, and work the problem, not to be a victim.

But also, to show that vulnerability is ok and that asking for help is not weakness, it is about creating a team of collective skills to get things done. That being part of a solution using your skill strengths is just as strong. That we don't need to lead all the time to count.

I have done my utmost to create independent women and hope that I am somewhat of a help that way towards the grandkids. I am equally proud that they know and feel they can come to me for advice, not necessarily the answer, or the answer they want to hear, but someone to engage with, work the problem and find a solution, even if it's temporary (a word a loath, but sometimes is necessary)

So thanks Mom! And I know you've taken some ribbing over Mr Fat Rat, the Muskrat over the years. Know this.... all the strength I can and have ever demonstrated over my lifetime has been because you and Dad have shown me how to work through it, to trust my instincts, and that there is a lesson in everything: win, lose or draw.

Happy Mother's Day.

Love You.

Nik x