Shampoo & Conditioner Empties!

My reviews of skin and hair care products continue! This time I collected a bunch of shampoo & conditioner products that I finished over the past few months.

First up! Moroccan Oil Hydrating Shampoo. This is a fancier salon product, which obviously I did not buy, but I stole from my cousin, probably when she left it behind at my grandma's house. There wasn't a ton left but I used it up. This was nice shampoo but I think knowing it was fancy made me like it more? It's sulfate free which is something I'm thinking about getting into, but you want sulfates to clean the silicones out of your hair and I love the silicone laden conditioners & leave-in products that beat my hair into submission leave my hair tangle-free.

LUSH Big Shampoo sample, and not pictured, Rehab shampoo sample. I got this when I was on my quest to deal with the patches of dry & flakey scalp that weren't responding to dandruff shampoo and I eventually cured with a visit to dermatologist and rx-strength shampoo & steroid treatment. Anyway. Big is a weird shampoo with large sea salt grains in it, it's supposed to exfoliate your scalp or something. It was fun to use, if awkward, smelled great, sudsy as all get out, but really, kind of a gimmick? I was sad to find out that Lush hair products have SLS (see: sudsy) so I don't think they are worth the price. I mean, it made my hair feel light & fluffy but also dried it out a bit. As for the Rehab shampoo, at least I think it was Rehab because the label wore off, I kept the sample so long it started to separate so it couldn't have been that good. Personally I love the strong smell of most Lush products but I know they are not everyone's cup of tea.

It's a 10 Miracle Hair Mask sample. I love a hair mask, I love a free sample, I love It's a 10 leave-in spray, so I loved this. Similar to Aussie's 3-minute Miracle this is a heavy, creamy hair mask that you can use while in the shower shaving your legs or whatever. I got two uses out of this packet even on my long thick hair. Makes my hair silky soft. Win.

John Frieda Root Awakening shampoo - I could not WAIT to be done with this shampoo, I probably had it for 5 years! Longer? The bottle was literally disintegrating by the time I finally finished it. Side note: the bottle is super annoying because of the cap at the bottom, which allows water to pool up in there and grow slime. This did not cause problems with my hair but it didn't do anything either. I was probably on my endless quest for products that will keep my super-thick and fine hair from just lying there heavily and limply, dragged down by its own weight, and keep my problematically dry & flaky scalp happy. This didn't deliver. 

I have nothing to say about this hotel conditioner except it was fine for travel but not memorable.

Not sure why I took this picture in front of the toaster. 

Herbal Essences Long Term Relationship Shampoo, and, not pictured, Conditioner - This name is accurate because I bought this when I started spending a lot of nights at my then-boyfriend's house, and now we're married, and I finally finished the products, like 5 years later. Why does it take me so long?? I have too many products in use at the same time, and I wash my hair only twice a week. I used the conditioner first because I use a ton of conditioner (thick hair) and it was pretty serviceable, not super thick. The shampoo was also fine. I started to hate them before I was finished.

Trader Joe's Nourish Spa Conditioner - this used to be a bit of a cult product for curly-haired people, but I heard they changed the formula. It's super cheap, like $4 or something, and it's a nice, light, I think silicone free conditioner. I got it when I used to dye my hair with henna and needed copious amounts of cheap conditioner to wash out the henna paste. But it also lasted forever. I really prefer super thick conditioners but this did a good job despite being thin.

also pictured: an empty jar which held homemade shaving cream, which wasn't that impressive and I went back to using soap and/or BioOil or homemade sugar scrub when I'm feeling fancy, and a small jar that held homemade salt & oil exfoliating scrub which was fun but honestly, most homemade products like that go bad before you can use them up, especially living in the humid environment of the shower, and especially things you dip your wet paws into. Hence the tiny containers, but still I didn't use this very fast as the salt was pretty abrasive and the oil made the bath surface slippery.

Flooring Update

As you remember, last time I blathered on and on about the ugly carpeting in our bedrooms and the horrors that likely lie beneath. I thought we maybe had linoleum based on the age of the house but after further research, and talking to someone at Home Depot, I now think I was wrong. It does happen.

1880s-1890s linoleum would actually be super awesome looking, likely highly patterned like in this historic home:

This post suggests sheet linoleum in a marbled or swirled pattern would be authentic, not the checkerboard tiles that most people think of. Sheet lino is that stuff you sometimes think of in schools or hospitals that curls up the wall forming the baseboard. It's cool too. Here's some modern examples. As discussed previously, it's a natural material, made of a canvas backing and linseed oil mixed with powdered cork and other things. That's what makes it kinda squishy and comfortable underfoot. A lot of times when people have cheapo sheet vinyl, like my mom does in her kitchen, they say linoleum, but that is inaccurate. This is the stuff that is like plastic contact paper, and easily gets holes if you drop a knife. You can repair a knife cut in linoleum, it's like a starfish (not really but you can fix).

However, everybody says that if you have 9"x9" tiles that are rigid, it's probably vinyl tile. Vinyl tile has a lot of names, VCT for vinyl composition tile which has more limestone in it, luxury vinyl tile, or LVT, etc. A lot of the cheaper fake stone and wood-look tile I saw at Home Depot are vinyl tile. LVT is totally waterproof, made of polyvinyl choride or PVC, and is pretty new. There's also laminate flooring, which is basically a layer printed to look like wood glued to high density fiberboard. It is similar to IKEA particleboard furniture except high density instead of medium density fiberboard (MDF). At least in MDF there is a concern about formaldehyde, I'm not quite sure about HDF. Laminate is generally cheap and kindof crap.

Anyway, I have 9x9 tile, in a weird off-set grid pattern in black and white streaks. Much like this:

This is straight-up VCT. You can still buy tiles like this, but according to a comment on this post, most 9x9 tile is VAT: vinyl asbestos tile. Asbestos is a naturally-occuring mined substance used to make things stronger, heat-resistant, etc. It's a big business removing it but it's my understanding that it only really causes health problems when it become particulate and is inhaled in large quantities over a long period of time, mostly in an industrial or work setting. However, I'd prefer not to take too many risks, especially for my little cat who never leaves the house and has a small body. So after doing some research on local companies, I decided to take a sample and send it out to a lab to get tested! Wish me luck. If we do have asbestos, I might take the cat to a friend's house during demo and then get the air tested.

As you can see in the top photo, under the tile, and the paper or cloth backing, there's wood!

Angels sing.

AND we pulled up a corner in the bedroom and there's wood floors underneath and no tile! Thank you, floor gods!

This makes me think that the back spare room might have been used as a kitchen, once upon a time. That would explain why you would put vinyl tile (or whatever it is) in a bedroom, and I also learned that it is directly above the upstairs neighbor's kitchen so the plumbing may have been aligned at one point in time. The kitchen we have now looks pretty 90s, so if it was moved out there say, 20 years or more after the kitchen in the back room was built, that makes the likelihood of my tiles being in the asbestos era even higher. But still, there's hope.

Dimmer Switch

After my last super long post about the house, where I admitted I'd been putting off installing the dimmer switch in the kitchen overhead light fixture, I got a Monday off and decided to just go for it. It was really easy! I think anything electrical can be intimidating for a lot of people, but it's not hard. You just need to have access to your breaker switch and make sure it's turned off!

When I first took the cover off the old switch I was most intimidated, as the screws in my new plate would in no way be able to attach to the wall or the current regular switch box. I shouldn't have fretted because the friendly guy at Ace had already been through this with me twice, and because the new light switch box has differently placed screw holes.

The interior of the wall is, as expected in this house, truly horrible. The wires are wrapped in this gross dusty cloth. I ignored that. Basically you unscrew the original switch in it's little plate, which is easy, pull it gently a little out of the wall so you can get at the screws. In my case the screws were on the side of the original switch and the wires that came out of the wall were pretty thick and substantial, and they just bent around screws coming in the side of the switch box and the screws had been tightened over them to make the electric connection. This is much like the inside of a light socket, how the wires connect. The new switch had an easier kind of connection, where you twist a more flexible multi-strand copper wire around the thicker wall wire, making sure they are making a solid connection, and then you place the little orange plastic wire cap on the connected wires and twist it on.

Ours was a little more complex because it was a three-way switch, meaning there is another switch on the other end of the room that also connects to the overhead light. I didn't realize this the first time I bought a dimmer switch so that's why I had to go back to Ace. Basically in the three-way box, there's a black wire that was also labelled "common." This connects to the black wire from your switch box. The two other wires go to either of the two red wires. It doesn't matter which is which. I didn't have a ground wire which made me nervous, but also, whatever. Anyway after all the wires are connected you just shove them all back there in the box, carefully, not tearing out your connections, and then screw the switchplate back into the wall. Then the cover fits nicely with it's tiny little screws.

Here's the finished product! So neat and tidy. I tried taking a photo of the difference when it's dimmed but it's hard to tell, and the kitchen is super messy since I also just rearranged the stuff in the cabinets, so it's not worth showing. But you know what a dimmer does! I'm excited to have a nice dinner with less harsh, more romantic lighting. The whole project cost about $35 including the fancy 100W equivalent dimmable LED bulb. Not all LED or CFL bulbs are dimmable, so you have to make sure everything is going to work together. Old-school incandescents are of course dimmable but this is the 21st century so that wasn't an option for me. LEDs (and CFLs) do have a bit more blue light, which is less mellow, but you can get them pretty warm, just look for a K around 2700-3000K. These pictures are taken with flash so they don't represent the color of light at all, obviously the light was out while I was poking around the live wires.

Flooring Sadness

One of the bigger and more intimidating tasks on our list of things to do to improve the house is to rip out the carpets in the spare and bedroom. Both small rooms have this horrible tan carpet which is super dirty, stained, and dusty around the edges. Also after my bookshelf crashed down and some of my nail polish smashed, it has some stains of dark green nail polish. We both have allergies, and the carpet is just the absolute worst and needs to go. I'm sure you would agree if you saw it.

Most of the house except the bathroom has seriously decent wood floors. I don't know if they are hardwood or engineered, or original to the house. There are cracks between the boards that dirt gets stuck in, and some boards are slightly cracked or dinged, but on the whole they are in great condition. There isn't the thick layer of varnish you see in a lot of rentals. There are, notably, no nails visible. Also the boards are on the same level as the carpets. Anyway here's a corner in "my room" showing our great (dirty) baseboards, and the hideous carpet. That trim on the left is the same pukey brown that all the kitchen trim used to be, ew ew ew. Sadly we don't have any original doors, they are all kinda cheap-looking plain hollow-looking wood. Lame.

Ok. I decided I'd take the plunge and see what's below the carpet. Maybe it was hardwood floor?? I really hoped. I mean, maybe the house originally had wood floors? I just used some pliers to grab the carpet and ripped it up, it was easy. The wood around the edge has nails sticking out, it's this trim that keeps it down. The blue stuff is the top end of this padding that goes under the carpet. The whole thing smells kindof bad. I was really afraid this thing has been peed and vomited on by pets and there would be a horrible mildew situation but this was more of a chemically stale smell?

Gross. The specked stuff, which I love the look of whenever I see it in giant rolls, because it looks like these bowls, lifts up to reveal a paint-spattered linoleum floor. WOMP WOMP.

It kinda looks like it might be linoleum tile, based on the black and white sections. Although it's hard to tell having only looked at the corner. Real linoleum is supposed to have a unique smell, maybe that's the smell?

Here's a closer, nastier look. You can see the furring strips, but also that the baseboard looks like there might have been a higher floor at some point? See how the paint is kinda chipped away in the corner close to the furring strips, and it's like, grayer in a strip close to the ground? I don't know. That could just be from the carpet. God, it looks disgusting.

Linoleum might actually be the original flooring. Linoleum has been around since 1860 and was widespread in 1880s/1890s in the US. It's made of natural materials, unlike vinyl flooring, which it is sometimes confused for, which wasn't introduced in US until 1933 Chicago World's Fair. I think in art class in high school we used tiles of linoleum to carve and print with, because it's pretty soft and bouncy. Wood flooring, according to this source, was likely still a luxury (and it kindof still is). Houses might have a pine subfloor and then they'd paint it, cover in parquet or a "wood carpet" or cover in linoleum or oilcloth. Or carpet.

There is the possibility that this is a later addition, maybe vinyl flooring. I need expert advice, or even an uncle in construction. Anything. If it's vinyl, it could have asbestos which would make it a seriously more heinous undertaking. However it's unclear to me if real linoleum, assuming that's what this is, would contain asbestos.

Anyway a comment on this blog and all over, really, suggest that it's possible, though painful, to remove all the linoleum and find wood subflooring, which you can then refinish and they can be beautiful. Another worry is that the subflooring could be gappy and uninsulated to the basement. Pulling it up, putting down plywood, and putting it back in would be the recommended, and terrible, best solution then. The subflooring could look gorgeous if it's wide-plank pine, I would want to keep it light and natural, maybe a soap finish. We could, instead, just paint the linoleum? It's unclear since a lot of people talk about painting vinyl but call it linoleum. Or try to clean it up? 

ARGHH! I DON'T KNOW! HELP ME!

Vintage House Quirks

Hi! Welcome to our house! This is the view from the front window where the cat likes to watch the world go by. When I was writing this post about our house, I had a lot more to write but blogger somehow crashed and I lost a lot of work. 

When I first realized I'd probably be moving in here (March, almost a year ago) I got interested in the history of the house. I read this blog a lot and was super impressed by how Daniel tried to keep his (extensive, insane) home renovations true to the historic character of his 1865 house, and the other properties he worked on (because one home reno isn't enough?) Plus I like watching a lot of HGTV when I'm on vacation.

Anyhow I wondered how to identify the age of the house and the general architectural style. I looked at some books and pamphlets about Chicago architectural styles - Georgian, Edwardian, Victorian, bungalow, American Four Square, Dutch Colonial, etc. This article pretty clearly describes the "frame two-flat" but said the era varies from 1900 - 1920 and could be in a variety of architectural styles. Ours looked similar-ish to the illustrated Victorian, with the bay windows and dormered little front porch off to one side. But the descriptions of other architectural styles seemed to sometimes fit too. The exterior of our house has been covered in vinyl siding like most old houses around here, making it a bit harder to really tell what it used to look like. Then I remembered that our moldings around the windows and doors looked a lot like the windows in Daniel's old Brooklyn apartment, and he had said they were original and 120 years old, and that was in 2011. So I googled around trying to describe them correctly until I found some images of molding that looked just like ours with the date of the house they were found in. That confirmed the general ballpark era, and I was able to search around more effectively. I decided on 1887 although never could find the original building permit.

Here's the first picture I took of the moldings, you can kindof see here where I think someone sawed off (?!) the top bit which is like a little crown. I remember reading somewhere that back in period the house was built the moldings likely would have been painted white with patterened wallpaper on the plaster walls. The walls are still plaster but full of cracks, so many cracks. I am afraid fixing them is going to end up really expensive.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see the little crown. Sorry about the poor contrast in the photo, white on white was hard to capture well. First of all, I don't know why some of the trim has no crown and others do. The kitchen only has basic, boring trim around its three doors and two windows but it does have the super tall grooved baseboards the rest of the house is #blessed with. Second of all, look even more closely at the picture above and notice how the trim on the right side of the closet (that's my closet, you can see my striped dress poking out of the darkness) just disappears into the wall. WTF. This really gave me pause, because I was so convinced that the trim and walls were original and I couldn't imagine why they would have just designed it like this. It just looks so much like an afterthought, like they wanted a closet and put it in and then they were like oh, crap, the trim doesn't fit here, let's just cut it off, no one will notice. 

By the way, see how narrow this closet is? There was a folding door in there (you can see the tracks for it) but when folded, it took up precious inches and wall space, so I took it off. We don't use this room as a bedroom so it's ok with me to have it open (you know if you have your closet door open at night that's how the monsters get you). I'll show you my closet some time, it is a work of art how I squeezed everything in this tiny narrow space.

Back to the topic at hand, which is the crazy things going on with the trim in this house. Ok, this is basically my view right now, lying in bed, except we now have an IKEA light fixture instead of this broken sad thing. The acoustic tile drop ceiling is horrifying and I hate it. I especially hate the parts that are coming loose. But I can't do anything about it, and that's not the point of the picture. The point is where the diagonal line of the bottom of the staircase that that leads up into the neighbor's place cuts off the window trim. Daniel, my hero from Manhattan Nest, dealt with a similar situation on the outside of his house, and concluded that the windows were added later, disrupting the trim line, and so I wanted to conclude that the plastering over of the stairwell bottom was a later addition, but after noticing the closet trim abnormality in the spare room, I am wondering if the original builders were just not as detail-orientated as they should could have been.  I mean, it was a working class dwelling, built probably pretty quickly in a subdivided urban lot with a lot of basically identical working-class dwellings. I was raised in the 1990s version of this, and let me tell you that the builders are not always perfect artisans. However, the tract home nature of the house makes me think, wouldn't they have worked out the kinks if they were working on a plan that they did over and over again? But then again, I think that the original owner was a carpenter. Maybe, just maybe, he decided to take the plans into his own hands, but messed up a few details. I really like this idea. I now have a whole personality in my head for him (basically the dad from Home Improvements).

Now that I showed you the terrible ceiling in my bedroom, I might as well show you the even darker underbelly of it, as a further example of the madness that went into the multiple renovations of this old house. The light fixture that was here when my husband moved in (before I met him) was an ugly frosted glass dome with flowers etched on it that was held flush to the horrible ceiling with the three hook looking things you can see in the picture. One day the bulb blew out and I discovered it was a weird-looking tiny halogen tube. We didn't replace it for, like, a month. I went to Ace Hardware (which is located next to an Ulta, Kinko's, Pizza Hut, my phone carrier, and a coffee shop and across the street from Binny's making it basically the most amazing shopping strip ever) and found the bulb but it was kinda pricey and I hate the light fixture anyway, so I convinced husband we could replace the whole fixture, no problem. I wanted to install in the bedroom the chandelier which I had gotten him to help me install in the kitchen, and in the kitchen I would put a globe light I'd been carrying around for years since I found it in a dumpster. This is making me sound crazy and kind of awful, I know.

However, that plan was not to be. We took down the ceiling tile to assess how possible it would be to install the chandelier and found the scene above. The yellow line of wire comes from the light box, which is sensibly mounted into the ceiling, travels about a foot or so horizontally, and then goes through the foam-board ceiling tile to attach to the light fixture. The whole weight of the fixture is just hanging on the quarter-inch or less of foam tile that hangs on the cross-bars, which as you saw are not all attached to the wall and basically falling down. I reassessed my plan and decided to get something extremely lightweight and something that would detract attention from the ceiling instead of attract it, which in retrospect was a way better plan and a chandelier would have been a terrible mistake.

So we went to IKEA. It was amazing as it always is. I drank a bunch of coffee and bounced off the walls but managed to choose this funny paper lamp. Husband said he thinks his parents had a similar one in a different shape in the 80s, and it does have a sort of retro-futuristic style that I don't hate. Its a very different style from the classic 1880s/90s style that I was going for, but it gets the job done, weighs basically nothing, and has a lasts-forever LED lightbulb. I actually like how the dots on it mirror the dots in the ceiling tile pattern. Since we aren't going to remove and replace the drop ceiling anytime soon if ever, it seems a decent compromise. Once I saw what lies beneath the drop ceiling, which is open ductwork and pipes and a horrific collection of dusty wiring, I see why there is a drop ceiling, and lost interest in trying to tear it down. And after a month of crashing into stuff in the dark trying to get to the bedside lamps, having an overhead light is amazing.

 Here's some more pictures of the living room windows to apologize for making you look at the atrocities behind the ceiling tile. You can get a shot of our bay window, which is a pretty cool thing to have, actually. We are about half-a-story above street level, so we don't get a lot of light, but this window really maximizes what we do get. It's kinda messy; we've made some changes recently since we got terrariums for a wedding present! The cat and his paraphernalia get pride of place. You can see in the top photo the white globe on the floor. Around the time I was in grad school I walked past a dumpster outside one of the 1960s era buildings that was getting some mild renovations and they had tossed out some glass dome light shades. I took three -- two like this white one and one really huge, beautiful gray smokey glass. One white one broke almost immediately, all over my former roommate's apartment building lobby. The gray one went with me to several more apartments, used as a vase, a source of Darth Vader voices, and eventually I dropped something on it and it cracked. However, I knew I could use this globe and it would be worth it, but I needed lamp parts. I tried a lot of places: Ace, Home Depot, and a lighting store. I was finally directed to Midwest Lamp Parts, which is in a giant warehouse in a random part of town. We went over one day only to learn they are only open 9-5 Monday-Friday unless they feel like closing up for a few days randomly. Finally, ages later, I was sick enough to stay home from work but well enough to get in the car and drive over there. I was a little shaky and felt weak and feverish but I am very committed to this project.

It was amazing, dusty, jam-packed with light fixtures and well, lamp parts. I was helped by a Russian-sounding Orthodox Jewish man who at first seemed grumpy and was annoyed with me for not knowing the names of the parts I was looking for, but turned out to be awesome and nice once he realized I was planning to do all this myself. He made me an honorary construction company when he wrote up my invoice on a carbon copy machine. Cash only, of course. At this point I was still planning to put the chandelier in the bedroom so I got a whole new chain, ceiling mounting hardware, etc.

Putting this light fixture in was... difficult. Husband was not happy with me, because I can't reach the ceiling even on the ladder so he had to do all the hard work... four times because we couldn't get it right. It took hours, with lots of going down to the basement and back up to flip the breaker switch. There were a LOT of parts to get in the right order, and at the right height, and get the wires to connect. He is now officially done with DIY and I'm on my own, but all the ceiling-height work is done so I think I'm fine. Anyhow, we had bought the little (plastic!) ceiling medallion when we put up the chandelier, but forgot to put it up. It is necessary because there's a big ugly hole in the ceiling tile (this place and the ceiling tile!) that isn't fully covered by the light ceiling mounting plate thing (edit: canopy. See above where I don't know lighting terminology). I know it looks really tilted in the photo but it's not nearly so bad in real life. I bought the brightest dimmable LED lightbulb I could find, because the original light fixture (pre-blingy-chandelier) had 3-4 bulbs and the kitchen needs as much light as it can get. I haven't installed the dimmer switch yet mostly because I think the heat went off when I switched the breaker and it's just too cold to risk that. But it'll look so great on a dimmer when we have a meal at the table, or if we have people over! And I can crank it up to 11 when I cook, as I require professional-kitchen level lighting or I get grumpy.

In this photo you can also see the boring nondescript trim in the kitchen. The tiny bathroom is on the left, the two windows are on the wall to the left of that, and next to them is the sink and some cabinets. The door to the basement stairs and back porch is in the back. The door to "my room," aka the spare room, is in the right hand corner, and next to it is a strange piece of furniture we use to store liquor and spare glassware (we have SO MUCH glassware), and then cabinets on that wall include the stove and fridge. I want to replace the strange liquor cabinet with a nicer one, that doesn't have ugly faux-rustic metal scrolls on it. Maybe I could use one of our two identical leaning bookshelves, as husband and I both owned one before I moved in.

Here's the living room couch, which is a gigantic dark brown suede-like sectional. I was looking through my phone for photos of the apartment and there is a massive collection of photos of us and/or the cat on this couch, so it is basically where we spend 95% of our time. It is a little bit ugly but extremely comfortable. I got a lot of light-colored pillows to try to make it look better. I also put up one more painting on the wall as I thought this looked like there's a gap. I bought the map of the world that looks like a strange geometric shape for $20 at Brown Elephant thrift store. It's a Buckminister Fuller projection showing ocean temperatures, and it's awesome. Previously he (husband, not Buckminister Fuller) had a non-working weird modern clock there, and while I see (kindof) where he was going with the asymmetry, it just wasn't working for me. I don't want to hear that we hang the art too high-- we are both tall and the ceilings are tall and just let us live, ok? The tall bookshelf on the left has been mine since the apartment after college. It's a Billy and it's much more stable than the wider standard-sized Billys. My wide Billy fell down spontaneously in a giant crash on New Years Eve, after listing to the right dangerously for months, so I'm on the hunt for a replacement. The nice solid wood bookshelf on the right has been his since he bought it at a proper furniture store in New York. I tried to get him to let me spray paint the oval-with-cut-out wood lamp base gold but he said no. I just think there's too much dark brown going on in here.

See, he does love me! This was taken before the kitchen light installation, so I guess it actually proves nothing, except that we are weird adorable and I had just gotten a new phone to play with. This is taken from short end of the sectional couch. You can see the door to the bedroom and the cool archway opening into the kitchen with the spare room door open in the background. That's an IKEA rug and IKEA coffee table, and one of our two leaning bookshelves (the other is in the basement, awaiting its next role). See the strange underwater rippled effect on the blue wall of the kitchen? That's from the blingy chandelier! When I convinced my boyfriend or fiance at the time to buy it because it was on sale, he had a voucher, and it was fabulous,  I didn't realize it would do that, effectively dimming the light and generally just being Too Much. When I saw the same chandelier in multiples in a River North bar, I knew I had made a mistake. 

The blue walls with dark blue trim in the kitchen were another one of my ideas that I regret. Boyfriend did all the painting, but I gave him the idea, and now I feel guilty. You should have seen the walls before, though. They were tan with brown faux-aged sponging. I think the trim was a nondescript but beigeier tan. They were hideous. Together with the light brown wood floors, light brown wood cabinets, faux-aged metal chandelier, faux-aged metal liquor cabinet, and dark wood furniture, it was a brown abomination. However, white on white is what we should have chosen for the walls and likely will repaint. The apartment is too small for creative trim colors, in my opinion. 

Anyway, it's coming together, slowly. I try to get rid of things, style bits and pieces as I go. For example, I want get rid of a lot of glassware, which is so hard for me, and get some boxes or even shelves to contain the random mess on top of the cabinets, but more on that later. You can even see that I've improved the capacity of the spare room door to hold my entire 54 scarf collection. The issue with this apartment is that there are no closets besides the two tiny bedroom closets, so stuff that needs to be reasonably accessible (only long-term storage in the basement) has to be crammed in somewhere basically in full sight. I plan to address this partly with my larger, better, more sturdy shelving unit in the spare room. To be continued.

Skincare and Coconut Hair Oil Empties

Hiya, I'm back with more exciting pictures of empty bottles. WHY? Don't care, embrace the mystery.

Here we go!

Vatika Coconut Hair Oil. I bought this at the Indian store on Devon for about $4 and it lasted me a really long time. I think I got it even before the coconut oil craze. My logic was that if I used this maybe I'll look like a non-Indian Aishwarya Rai. Although that didn't work, I highly recommend it! I used it as a deep oil treatment, usually putting it on dry hair and leaving it overnight then washing out in the morning for shiny, silky hair. My friend with very curly, much thicker/coarser hair used a little bit to tame down her dry hair. It smells great - not just pure coconut oil. I'm on the fence about re-purchasing - I might try to simplify, avoid more products and unnecessary ingredients, and use straight coconut oil or other DIY concoctions for my oil treatments.

Alaffia Africa's Secret Multipurpose Skin Cream: Oh boy, oh boy! This stuff deserves it's own post, coming up next!

The Body Shop Almond Oil Intensive Hand Rescue - This was some really thick hand cream I'm pretty sure my cousin got when she used to work at The Body Shop. It also came with an almond oil brush pen for the cuticles. I'm really into putting cream on my cuticles (so much that clients have commented) but I didn't think these were particularly special. The cream was a bit too thick to use throughout the day so I mostly used it at night.

Nip + Fab Coconut Latte Dry Skin Fix Body Butter - I think one time my husband (boyfriend then) went to the UK without me, and I said, "bring me back some stuff from Boots," and he got me this and some Boots hand cream. First of all, he's sweet, secondly, I should be more specific with my UK-only beauty requests. I love shopping the sample areas at Boots especially in the airport, there's just so many new skincare products! This was nice and light, I think, I used it up really quickly. Now you can buy Nip + Fab stuff at Ulta and I think at Walgreens, now that Walgreens & Boots have merged.

Clinique "Take the Day Off" Makeup Remover - This was particularly for eye makeup. I don't think I ever had the full bottle as this is part of the stuff I took from grandma's bathroom ages ago. It worked fine on a q-tip or cotton ball to remove any eye makeup left over after cleaning my face, but I don't think I'll buy eye makeup remover again. I did pick up some fancy French Bioderma Créaline when I was in Paris this summer because there is so much hype about it and other micellar water. So far it's pretty impressive but I don't need it very often. When it runs out I might DIY some or just go back to using lotion only.

OM SHE Anti-Aging Rosehip Oil - This was good stuff! According to this post, rosehip oil is super-orange and like a self-tanner, however I did not find that to be the case at all. I was just as pale when I used it as when I didn't. It went pretty fast, but my favorite way to use it was to spray on some kind of light mist, Evian or even better, water and glycerin mixed together, and to put it on while still damp, as referred to in my skincare holy grail article about dry but acne-prone skin, plus every other article ever about sealing in moisture. I actually used up two small containers of rosehip oil, but think I forgot to get a photo of the first one. It has a strange, strong, almost woodsy smell. I've got a skin oil now from L'Oreal (even though the reviews aren't great, I got a sample in a magazine and used it when traveling which is a weak spot for me, when I can't see all my other stuff at home!) but when that's gone I might go back to rosehip. It should be cold-pressed, this one is. The useful little bottle is now filled with a castor oil, almond oil, rosemary and lavender essential oil mix for oil cleansing.

Andalou Naturals Fruit Stem Cell Revitalizing Serum - Another TJ Maxx purchase! This was a nice vitamin C serum which I used under moisturizer to repair my skin from sun and pollution damage. Sometimes it tingled a little which was strange. To be honest I didn't see any big changes but it was really more of a preventative measure and also I just plain enjoy skin care.

This ECO.Organic Rosehip Oil is the other rosehip oil I used up back in August. I got it at my local TJ Maxx for super cheap. I can't remember where I bought the other one. I actually checked with the company and it is also cold-pressed. Both are from Australia. This bottle was super messy, you can see how it's gross and crusty on top. It had a stupid lid shaped like the pump which led to wasting some of it. I think I bought this because the other stuff isn't pure rosehip oil so I wanted to try it straight up. I think either way is fine, but 0.5 oz doesn't last long.

Aveeno Protect + Hydrate Sunscreen Lotion - I got a sample of this at Target. I'd already used up another sample before, see here. For being super tiny this tube lasted a freakishly long time. This time it didn't make my skin sting, I don't know what I was doing before to irritate my skin but it wasn't a problem with this tube. I somehow just don't like this product though so I am glad to see it finished.

How I wake up early and go to the gym

Somehow, although I don't even recognize myself, I have become the kind of person who goes to an hour-long barre class before work almost every day. Before that, I wasn't a total sloth, but I didn't really ever work out for the sake of working out, except for a 6 month-1 year stint of Core Power Yoga a couple years back which hurt my knees. When I started this class in the spring, they have you fill out a little intro with how often you exercise and at that point all I was doing was the odd weekend hike, bike ride, or xc ski, and in the warmer months biking around the city a couple times a week. I have been going pretty religiously for about 9 months now. For awhile now I've been going only to the 7 am classes on weekdays. Not going to lie, it's rough getting up, especially after daylight savings as it gets darker and colder every morning. Here's how I am doing it:

1. Find a workout that is tough enough that you can brag about it a little, but not so tough that you won't go. This is the secret, I think. If it's spin classes or P90x or something called Sweat, I'm scared and disgusted and won't go, but I also want to feel like I pushed myself and got more fit. Bonus points for being able to see myself look more fit, and have other people see it too. If I don't have some trouble walking down the stairs afterwards, it's like, what was the point. Also, find a place with some kind of rewards program since getting fit is nice and everything but saving money is much more motivating. My friend said she used to go to a lunch-hour class where the instructor was particularly attractive as an added motivation.

2. Prepare everything the night before. I have the world's longest before-bed routine. I pick out my clothes and earrings and put them in my gigantic purse, along with any products I'll need the next morning to get ready. I grind my coffee beans and set my timer coffee maker with milk already in the cup and put it by my bed so I can grab it right after waking up. I prep whatever breakfast and lunch (leftovers) I'm lucky enough to be taking with me the next day. I have workout clothes already hanging up to put on. I hang them over a floor heat vent, so if I'm lucky they are warm when I put them on. I do my skincare routine at night and I don't even splash water on my face in the morning. This way, in the morning, I lie in bed, drinking coffee, looking at my phone, and cuddling my cat and husband for 30 minutes, then I throw on my workout clothes, brush teeth, put in contacts, and leave in 10 minutes.

3. Soften the blow of getting up in the cold and dark. I recently put a star-shaped lantern in the living room and put it on a light timer so as soon as I open the bedroom door to let the cat in, I can see it's nice soft glow. Hanging star lanterns were popular in Iceland in January when we visited, and I think they are big in Scandinavian winter/Christmas decor because they really help with the long dark winters. I also surround the bed with soft plush things like a faux sheepskin rug and my slippers so exiting the warm bed is slightly less painful. The next step is to get a gradual light alarm clock!

4. Minimal morning routine. After my class, I always shower. Quite frankly I am confused and disgusted by the girls who don't, which is 90% of them. Who are you, non-sweating people? Anyway I really only have 15 minutes from end of class to when I should head out to the train. So I don't wash my hair, I just leave it up, sometimes I wash my hairline/scalp around the bun which, you know, don't knock it until you try it. I've been using DIY deodorant; it's been an adventure. I used to use this spray moisturizer, or the regular lotion version which is provided by the locker room, but usually this step takes too long. If I'm in a hurry I do makeup on the train, but usually I do it there. I mix some SPF lotion with BB cream, or just do the SPF lotion if my skin is even. Sometimes I use some concealer, and/or mascara. Boom, done, out. The endorphin boost from the workout helps me to feel like I look great even if my hair is a mess or I didn't put on as much makeup as carefully as I would for a special event or night out.

5. Second cup of coffee. Eat breakfast once at work. Congratulate self.

*terrible phone picture is from my office window around 4:45 pm, to illustrate early sunsets and late sunrises.

Vitamin E cream & DIY masks

This not-so-lovely picture is actually a two-fer of empty finished products. First, a long time ago I finished the original Puritan's Pride Vitamin E Cream. I got it from, you guessed it, my grandma's house. It was amazing! A really thick, lovely simple cream that kept my face soft and smooth through a harsh Chicago winter. I definitely planned to buy it again but haven't yet as I'm a product junkie and like trying new things. Vitamin E is a famous antioxidant and has moisturizing properties, so I was right to love this cream.

After I finished this jar, I cleaned it out and hoarded it, then later on I made a mask from activated charcoal, bentonite clay, coconut oil, aloe vera gel, chamomile tea, and peppermint and eucalyptus essential oils. The recipe can be found here. It made quite a lot-- I filled up three similarly-sized recycled containers. I didn't use it super often, and a little lasts a long time, so by the time I was finishing the last one the consistency had lost it's light fluffy texture, but it still seemed to work fine. The idea is that activated charcoal draws out dirt and oil out of your skin, and bentonite clay does as well. If I were to make it again I think I'd leave out the essential oils. I think they were in there as they have antimicrobial qualities, but Paula and others think they can be irritating to the skin, especially peppermint and eucalyptus. They did give it a really nice smell, though. I've already talked about how menthol is supposedly irritating even though I've never felt or seen any negative effects. Paula hates on all the "natural" plant-based ingredients that feel and smell "clean" to us, and she scares me by saying things like "skin can be very good at concealing it's being irritated." It seems counterintuitive to think that even if you don't notice irritation, somehow essential oils are damaging your skin anyway. She gives them some credit saying in low enough concentrations they are ok and they do have some benefits.

I'm on the fence about essential oils in general. Some people are really ALL ABOUT essential oils. There's a whole community of people online who are like snake-oil salesmen and swear by them for everything. This sounds mean but it's often the same people who live in Utah and are gluten-free even though they aren't celiac. Some of the essential oil hype I sortof buy and want to try: Lavender oil in your mascara for longer lashes! Essential oils as a bug repellant! DIY clove perfume! A subset of those people really caution you against putting them undiluted on the skin, but then you get others who are like, go ahead! As a teen, I used to get a cotton ball wet with water, drip a couple drops of tea tree oil on it, and use it on my face to treat acne. Now I think diluting it with oil would have been smarter. I still love my oils in steams for congestion, or in my winter humidifier, or I put my oil-cleaning mix in an old tea tree oil bottle so it has trace amounts of it and smells of it. More on that later. How do you find this shit, Amy? Pinterest. The answer is Pinterest. And Mormon bloggers. Enjoy that last link, I really am fascinated.

Right, but did the mask work? It was supposed to be a DIY version of the super popular and super expensive Glam Glow mask. I didn't feel like spending money on activated charcoal but found it was the main ingredient in some anti-gas capsules I had lying around (TMI??) and also I had some old Indian charcoal tooth powder, which although I couldn't confirm this, I suspect was made of activated charcoal. I just used a combination of those instead. Now that I finished it all, I think I'll just go with an easier version, which is Bentonite Clay mixed with apple cider vinegar. My bentonite clay is the brand Aztec Secret and I got it at Whole Foods. Because this mask is simple I can make it in one-dose batches and it has the same face-clearing effects. I don't have raw apple cider vinegar anymore but I have a load of regular kind, so I just use that, and it's nbd. It's better to use vinegar than water or the tea/oil mix in the charcoal recipe because it balances the pH making it gentler on your skin. It does smell funny but it helps to keep acne at bay and my face feels smoother afterwards. The charcoal one worked about the same, it helps dry up any pimples and to keep breakouts from getting started. I'm not great about regularly using a mask unless I have current breakouts, but my current skincare regime of oil-cleansing and the odd mask seems to be working for the time being.

Dry Shampoo

I use a lot of dry shampoo because I only wash my hair about once a week. It does get pretty greasy by the end, especially when I'm working out, or biking, or it's summer. So by the end of the week it's usually about 50% dry shampoo. I've tried Klorane since it came highly reviewed by every blogger and magazine and website, but to be honest it didn't seem anything special, and the bottle went super fast. I felt I only got a few uses out of it, and for the cost, it was not worth it. 

I got a three-pack of these batiste dry shampoos at Ulta on sale. They have horrible scents, like "sassy and striking mamba." I have no idea what these smelled like besides artificial. However. They soak up oil like a boss and make my hair magically look clean and fluffy again, which is the job of dry shampoo. They also barely leave any white residue and I can just fluff and go rather than rubbing it in a lot and brushing. Despite being tiny, I feel like they lasted longer than the Klorane, and they were super cheap. Batiste in general is cheap and I would buy it again, in an unscented version.

Except, I've been using plain cornstarch and it actually works fine. It's much messier and takes longer to apply, and it doesn't make the hair as fluffy as an aerosol can of dry shampoo does, but it works. I either keep it in an Altoids tin, where I just put my fingers in there and pick some up sticking to my fingers, then work it into my hair and repeat and repeat, or in an old cleaned out spice container with the little holes so I can sprinkle it in my hair. But cornstarch is kinda clumpy and it tends to not come out and then dump a ton out. The cornstarch also tends to really need a lot so it builds up if you are using it a few days in a row. However it is basically free, and it's travel-friendly as it is not a liquid, gel or aerosol. The internet also suggests using arrowroot powder which I also purchased fairly recently, and might try out. I think the same issues would apply. Although it's cool to go DIY, save money, and reduce the waste and chemicals associated with aerosol and packaging, though they no longer destroy the ozone layer, sprays tend to work better for me. I'm still looking though, and might try the Bumble and bumble Prêt-à-Powder.

Another similar product I've tried is Sally Hershberger Caffeine for Major Body 3-in-1 Volumnizing Spray. I read this review and went to a bunch of shops until I found it at CVS. At first I really thought it was working, but recently I've noticed if I spray it on hair that maybe already had some dry shampoo in it, it leaves this horrible sticky white residue. So, I no longer recommend. Maybe it's best to add volume to clean hair but that's not why I need dry shampoo.

tl;dr Dry shampoo is a life-changer.

DIY: potato prints

I was visiting my grandma this past weekend and she wanted to do some crafts. Gma has always been a master crafter. She can sew entire outfits from scratch in a few hours. She has made countless quilts, including one she made for my parents wedding that I now use in the warmer months. She was the one who taught me to sew and instilled my love for DIY.

Gma had a stroke about a year ago and her physical limitations have really frustrated her, she can no longer create and craft and garden and cook the way she used to. I was hoping that a stamping project would be something she could participate in. I thought about a book my mom gave me for Christmas a few years ago, Lotta Jansdotter's Lotta Prints. I think I had done potato printing before, but Lotta makes it an art. Anyway, we got some potatoes and dug up the acrylic paint from the basement where I also found some simple canvas. I drew a mushroom outline on some paper, cut it out, and stuck it to the halved potato, and carved out the negative space with an exacto knife (you could totally use a kitchen knife). Then I put some acrylic paint in a plastic plate and brushed it on the stamp with a paintbrush. I tried dipping it in the paint but that picked up too much paint and produced a messy outline. Then I just went to town stamping the borders of the canvas. I used the shorter length and sewed it up into a simple tote bag, using thick shoelaces for the handle, and used the long length as a table runner. Gma provided technical assistance on using her sewing machine and emotional support. We were all (me, mom, gma) very pleased with the results! 

Post-Christmas Decoration

In my house, Christmas isn't over til it's over, and by over, I mean May. So early in January I made this cute wreath (I think it's cute) out of random evergreen clippings which I likely found on the ground. The wire frame is leftover wire from the IKEA curtain hanging project, and I tied it on with dental floss. The rocks are from Lake Michigan, either the dunes or maybe from the Upper Peninsula, and I learned on a recent trip to the Field Museum that the holes are actually caused by small crustaceans slowly burrowing through! I strung them on library cord when I had that library job where I spent hours in chilly stacks shelving forgotten European dissertations and re-wrapping Indian books from the 70s.

Storage for Rainbow Shoes

This is my room! I've been very excited about this shelf I made-- since it got cold and I took my sweaters out from under the bed, I needed to make room for them. The boxes where the sweaters now live was busy holding my shoe collection. So I found some IKEA brackets I'd squirrelled away and my friend got me a board from Home Depot. I figured that it made sense to put it up high so you don't have a moment of "am I gonna hit my head" fear when you walk in the door. It's too bad that short people can't see the rainbow of shoes unless they stand on my bed.

Also pictured: a print I got at Renegade several years ago, candles from Athenian Candle in Greektown (they're made in the back!), birthday cards, an absurd amount of earrings, random crap. Someone told me once "Wes Anderson would have a field day in your room." I'd be a terrible Quaker, I love clutter too much.