A lovely day here, there were flurries of snow, but loads of sunshine, beautiful blue skies and a real feel of the promise of spring in the air.
I spent hours chopping wood, which is quite my favourite thing to do, second only to planting out seeds or bimbling around in the polytunnel, or feeding the animals, or building stuff. Ok, I love all of it, but I have always enjoyed chopping wood. Ady had various things to get on with including the compost loo regular maintenance, an oil change on the genny and other such things.
So I played my music and sang along and created heaps and heaps of chopped up firewood. Enough for this week hopefully, although I will do another couple of hours before we go on Saturday to make sure we have a day or two supply for when we get home. Ady came over and we sat and chatted looking out at the snow capped peaks and blue skies for a bit. We’d had Vikki up for dinner last night and we were debating how we’d feel if we were just a couple of weeks away from leaving Rum.
We came in for lunch and Ady made pancakes for the kids and cheese on toast for us while I made some more peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies which went down really well this week so we needed more. I did a few rows of knitting and the kids were playing with a box of toys with Doctor Who stuff in it as they have been watching loads of Doctor Who recently. Ady said ‘look Davies’ childhood is all over the floor’ and sure enough there were characters from everything he has ever been madly into – Toy Story, Brum, Doctor Who, Wallace & Gromit, Peter Pan, Primeval, Harry Potter, Ben 10. It was very poignant seeing them all in a heap like that. I do love that Davies and Scarlett still spend hours every week playing – with lego or geomags, or figures. I remember desperately wanting to play still with my Sindy dolls when I was about 13 but somehow feeling embarrassed even to get them out and dress them up alone in my room. I am glad that they are extending this period of childhood, imagination and games beyond what most kids their age would do.
Then back out for another hour wood chopping. I finished and headed off with Bonnie for a circuit of the croft, lingering in the top right corner where I almost never visit. You can see the sea and have a lovely view across the bay and over to the mainland from there. It is not suitable for a house plot but could one day make a nice spot for something else to linger and catch your breath.
Back indoors I got dinner prepped and in the oven super low, made bread dough and an apple pie. The kids were having showers and then I brushed Scarlett’s hair. We are experimenting with different shampoos and conditioners and the one we have just now leaves both our hair really tangled then greasy within a day. Although I have been reading about good organic natural shampoos sometimes doing this because they strip all the chemical residue from normal shampoos and start to let your hair be natural which can take a good while to get used to but is worth persevering with. Not sure, but it took bloody ages to brush the tangles out of Scarlett’s hair.
Ady came in and we had a fairly early dinner, watching Martian Child which was good.
ooh – I hadn’t blogged my shampoo change. I stopped using sulphate containing shampoos last September as was getting sore spots that I’d then scratch and they became irritated. Scalp is no problem at all now. But yes have gone through a few expensive options. C has a fab detangling spray with silicon in which is awesome.
Ooh what is the silicone detangler spray called?
Evlon Equave. http://www.revlonprofessional.com/en/equave.html lots selling online. Silicone doesn’t really sit comfortably with the organic natural desire though! And that product has the worst type of silicones http://www.naturallycurly.com/curlreading/kinky-hair-type-4a/silicones-good-bad-the-ugly/
It works with very, very little product (one spray is enough) and is great for those approaching midnight situations with a very tired child and equally tired parent when child has a head full of tangled hair and insists she needs to tame it and plait it. I guess T wouldn’t worry about going to bed with her hair down.
What we always do is use a detangling brush with the conditioner when she washes her hair. The detangling spray is for after a day of it being down and blown about and needing to plait or put in a bun for cadets. Or if she’s used someone else’s hair products that turn her hair into a wild crazy mess.
She has historically just used cheap plastic brushes, single moulded if possible for the combing through the conditioner but for Christmas I got her an aqua splash tangle teaser (http://www.tangleteezer.com/products.php#%23prod=AS-BL-010712&cat=aqua) which she says is great and should cope with always being used in water.
My products aren’t organic/natural either (and from Big Bad L’Oreal at the moment as Sainsburys had a 2for1 deal so I bought lots). But I was simply going sulphate free and the natural organic ones I initially tried were not good for my hair and horribly expensive. Lush use sulphates in their shampoos which surprised me – I was using up C’s Lush shampoo bar she’d been given for her birthday but didn’t get on with (she’s gone back to L’Oreal kids) but C said it had sulphates in and I checked and it did. So now just using it as a regular soap. If you find a product organic and natural and not too expensive, I’d like to know. I had very much liked the Burts Bees but can’t afford that all the time especially when L’Oreal had on offer :-(.