Fashion Friday

Hi everyone,

I'm out for the weekend to a family reunion, so this will be a shorter entry.  I'll have travel pictures and possibly some good stories when I return.

This week I have a couple of outfits to share with you all and a quick "How-to" for the method I use to dye my hair (with help from my husband).

I start off by using Beyond The Zone bleach on my hair.  It comes in a great kit that contains powder and a bottle of developer, gloves, a hair cap you can use to highlight or just protect your stuff from bleach/dye, plus a little highlighting wand and a brush for applying the bleach.  I always use this kit because it works incredibly well.  It takes 30-90 minutes depending on your hair, mine usually works at around an hour.  And this is the result:

I could wait for it to get more white blond, but I also run the danger of waiting too long and frying a bit of hair.  I've only had this happen once, and serendipitously it just gave me some cute bangs.  But it scared me enough to never wait too long again!

After the bleach process is washed out of your hair you have to it's fully dry before dying it.  The bleach makes hair dry, but the color I use by Manic Panic is a stain, so it can sit on hair for hours and not hurt a thing.  I find it actually moisturizes my hair really well as long as I leave it on for a couple hours.  This time I left the color on overnight, and put on the hair cap from the bleach kit to protect my pillow.  When I went to wash the dye out very little came out because it had soaked in so well.  As for the color I started by adding bits of After Midnight (blue) and Enchanted Forest (dark green) strategically where I wanted them to show best, then I put Atomic Turquoise on the rest.  Bryan helped me spot and fix places I couldn't see.  I'm blind without my glasses, so I'm very glad to have him helping me.  Here's what it looks like with the dye in my hair:

and then after it's washed out and complete:

Other than sometimes using a hairdryer to help the dye or bleach soak in better (use sparingly for the bleach unless you really know what you're doing), I don't really do anything fancy.

Anyway, now for the outfits:

The top is from Maurices, the jeans are skinnies from Torrid, the flip flips from Old Navy and the necklace was made by a fellow artist at the Crafty Cotillion Handmade Expo back in 2009.  I tried to track them down, but I couldn't find her site.  I love this piece though! 

 

This top is one I tried from Gwynnie Bee, I was going to wear it on the trip today, but at the last minute decided I really wasn't so into it, for several reasons - the fit and for comfort's sake.  So I switched to the top pictured below from Anthropologie instead, but brought the floral button down from Anthopologie in case I needed it, and kept the zip ankle jeans and converse sneakers too.

That's all for today, but I'll be back to talk about my garden Monday.  Till then do you readers have any suggestions for new ways I can try wearing what's in my wardrobe?

Love,

Lydia

For more on my clothing (what capsule wardrobe for summer 2015 consists of) click here.

For more on the idea of capsule wardrobes check out this post.

Book Reviews in Fiction and Non-Fiction

Hello everyone,

I'm finally getting my thoughts down about all these books I've been reading.  Hopefully my mini reviews will help you discover some great new reads!  And if you're yearning for more after this I'll be writing many more posts like this in the future, usually on Wednesdays, or you can look at my Goodreads page to see my full reading history.

Without further adieu here are two of my fiction selections to start out with:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a classic that I've watched many times on the big and small screen.  The A&E version is my favorite of course!  I couldn't help but love it after watching it at girls nights at Mrs. H's when I was a teenager.  Mrs. H had all boys and would invite the young ladies from my church for a movie night and some of her home cooking, we'd always have a great time.  I'd bought myself a copy and read part of it, but finally came back to it and read it while also reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, going back and forth every few chapters.  I supremely enjoyed reading Austen's work, but found myself disappointed by Grahame-Smith's.  It's a period book, and Grahame-Smith nor the illustrator Philip Smiley took the time to properly research the clothing, and many other aspects of the time.  It just ruined it for me, and I didn't think the writing was particularly great either, since many aspects of characters were changed.  The dialogue was sadly much too modern in parts, which I also found jolting.  However, Austen's work engrossed me and I could easily imagine the world and characters she created between the films and her masterful prose.  There was a really lovely quote I wanted to share with you all, but I can't find it now that I'm looking.  Isn't that always the way that works?

Next up some non-fiction:

The Weekend Homesteader by Anna Hess is a great starting book for those who wish to start a home mini farm or be more self sufficient.  I really liked how it grouped different activities by the month they should be done in (more or less depending on climate of course!).  And she even ranks things by difficulty, which is helpful for those just getting started.  I found that at least half of the activities weren't the type I was interested in persuing, but still found it an interesting read.  If you're thinking about raising chickens and doing some serious work in your yard/garden this is a great read to start with.

Call the Nurse by Mary J. MacLeod is the memoir of an English nurse on the far Scottish isles of the Hebrides.  Her stories are both funny and poignant, which made me unable to put this book down.  She captures a time around 1970 when only a bit of modernization had come to the islands and many people still lived much the way their ancestors had for centuries.  Having picked this book up on a whim I'm now happy to recommend it to all of my readers who might enjoy a book of short stories that's sure to please.

My last selection in this category is Paradise Lot by Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates.  This is book documenting the journey of a pair of young single gardeners as they move into their first home and change the landscape into an urban oasis.  There are bumps along the way, lots of garden talk, and a bit of romance too.  I found it was a very insightful book for those looking to create edible gardens, but it's written more as a story that just happens to involve lots of plant life than a guide to growing.  It's an amusing read if you're into gardening and ecology, but a bit less approachable compared to the other two books above.

On a related note I've been writing an entry about gardening at our new house to share with you all next week.  I want to show you the whole house, but I'm not quite happy with everything just yet.  So I'm delaying the post on that until I can get things up to snuff.  Between the house, yard, fashioning my capsule wardrobe, games with Bryan's family, planning trips for summer and fall, making art, and reading I've been keeping quite busy!  I'll see you all Friday for another fashion themed post.  Till then keep being wonderful.

Love,
Lydia