On Aging Gracefully and the New Trend

I just saw that #grayhair and #grannyhair is trending (as in, girls are dying their hair awesome shades of gray), which reminds me: I have many gray hairs, and they're slowly multiplying.

When I found my first gray hairs in high school, they were easy enough to pluck out.  Thankfully, no one, not even the girl behind me who would point them out, made a big deal of them.  I would hold the yanked hair between my fingers, laugh, and casually mention that my mom's hair was mostly gray by the time she was 18.  When my thought process gets to that part, though, the part where my mom started dying her hair its original dark brown color before reaching her 20's, my mouth stops the family story.

via Google 3.29.15

I don't want to dye my hair.  At least right now, I don't think I do.  For one, I'm cheap, and I don't want to invest tons of money on maintaining an artificial outward appearance that naturally comes with age.  Another thing, though, I would love to be happy with my hair, how it naturally is, and dying it could lead me into worrying more about it than I would like.

Lately Loves and Recommendations

I just realized that this month is the first since starting my 1,001 Challenge Reboot where I risk not submitting 4 posts a month as I challenged myself to do.  I did, however, recently learn my blood type, which crossed of item #43 on my list.

When you want to see beautiful things, look through my best friend's pins or read through her blog.

I've been slowing making my way through Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, which I am enjoying so far.  I believe I read rather slowly, which is a factor in why I haven't gone to the book club I've been invited to yet.  I'm afraid to get the book and fail to read it all in time.

I got myself a new coloring book!  I'm so excited to start coloring in it.  It's so beautiful!

As I've mentioned, my new job is taking up more of my time than I'd given before.  I'm looking forward to the month of April bringing a bit of a break, but I have been thoroughly enjoying my role and my team at The Iron Yard.

In my solo downtime, I've been watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.  Have you seen it yet?  I wish I wasn't almost at the end of the series!

Also, I'm a new fan of quinoa.

What about you?!

We're an Almost-Paleo Household (what the heck??)

In this second year of marriage, Caleb and I haven't fought very often, not really.  One of the nights we did, though, was about our diet.  Caleb comes from a rather active and health-conscious family.  His mom used to be a registered nurse and now sells Juice Plus vitamins, his sister is diabetic, and Caleb himself has researched the heck out of many nutritional topics.  When he came to me requesting that we cut out carbs and sugar from our diet, I knew he was coming from a position of knowledge and care, but something jolted in me (i.e. my love for ice cream), and we had an all in fight.

For the record, I firmly agree that refined sugars and refined carbohydrates are bad for your body.  The things they do to our our systems immediately and over time can have devastating consequences, and there are many other significantly better ways to reach your daily caloric intake.  Plus, so much of processed foods that are high in sugar and bad carbs have other things I try to avoid, too, like dyes and preservatives.  Really, Caleb was/is right in this conversation, but for the sake of all things delicious, I had to duke it out.

Picture by Webvilla via Unsplash

Lemon + Peppermint Essential Oils Review

With the new changes and subsequent new schedule, I haven't had much time for blogging lately, but I've had the opportunity to review some products, and I wanted to share!

InstaNatural sent me a bottle of lemon essential oil and >peppermint essential oil.  (They were going to send some lavender EO, too, but I think they ran out.)  I've wanted to explore what EOs could do for me and my household for a while now, so I was excited for this chance to try them out.