Hair Cut Talk

My hair grows fast. I mean, not crazy fast or anything- but fast enough that everyone is always observing my change in hair styles and commenting on how fast my hair grows. I've always used this as the excuse to why I've kept my hair so long for so many years. After all, 6 inches of growth on long hair is hardly noticeable but 6 inches of growth on a short cut would make me look horribly unkempt. Keeping it long was just cheaper and easier. But that's not the whole reason. In fact, it's not even most of the reason.

If there is one thing in the world that makes me horrifically uncomfortable it's hair cut talk.

'So....... you go to school?' 'No, I finished a little while ago' 'Oh.....are you married' 'Yep' 'Where'd you meet him' 'He was my brother's roommate' 'Oh... that's fun...' < ......pause........> '........Yep........ '

By this time she is exactly 1 1/2 mins through a 45 min. hair cut and we already know enough about each other to know that we have absolutely nothing to talk about for the next 43 1/2 minutes. Then the worst is when you go back. You both already know you have nothing to talk about, but you gotta get your hair cut. So then the stylist sits you down and starts having a conversation literally over your head with the stylist next to her about something you feel completely uncomfortable even listening to. I really can't think of another situation where it would be ok for two people to stand up, sit someone down between them, and then chat for an hour.

So basically I really like to put off getting my hair cut. I can go a LONG time before I feel the need to go through that again.

A few months ago I was looking at my hair-which had gotten REALLY long and needed to be cut- and realized it was almost long enough to donate to Locks of Love. I was really excited. Not only did it give me an excuse to put off getting my hair cut for a few more months (it had to grow just a little bit more) I got to do something good for someone that I never thought I'd have the discipline to do. (If I'd actually planned to grow my hair that long it would have felt like FOREVER. Waking up one day and realizing that it was long enough was pretty nice)

Then we bought our house and got so busy that I never got around to getting it cut. My hair got SO long. Longer than it's ever been. It was nice- I was able to donate 11 inches instead of just the 10 I'd planned on. Check out how long it was-


Here's the new look (with the hair that I get to send in the mail- something I'd never really thought of doing before...) I'm pretty excited. I can put off cutting my hair for a while now and if people ask I can just say I'm trying to grow it out!

Happy Halloween!!!

I've been thinking a lot lately about enjoying every day more. It seems so easy to let months or even years slip by just waiting for things to change or wishing that they hadn't. I can't tell you how many times I've started a sentence with something like 'Back when I lived in Ohio we used to..." or "When I finally fully recover from this stupid South American disease we can...". I think everybody does it- it's just such an easy way to think. So about a month ago I decided to change. Or at least try. I took a little personal inventory of all the things that make me enjoy life and decided to make a specific plan to put them into action. Here's part of the list

-celebrating holidays (even little ones)
-being around people
-cooking amazing food
-sharing that amazing food with people who OOO and AHHH over it
-decorating my house

This past month my plan of action was to plan a Halloween party which would, of course, involve all of the things in the above list. It's been great! This month has been so full of moving and remodeling and being sick and all sorts of things that would normally make me think- 'wow, I can't wait until October is over so that we'll be done with all this!'. But instead I've seriously had so much fun every day thinking about how to decorate a table with the things I found in boxes as I unpacked, using my sick time in bed reading all sorts of recipes and then day dreaming about Halloween Dinner menus while I scrubbed walls and ovens to ready our apartment for the new renters. It's really been such a great month!

So that was my crazy idea for the month, and here are the results! (I spent all month planning this, so every detail was really exciting to me... I guess that's why I'm including SO many pictures!)

I painted this for our screen door. I just cracked myself up every time the doorbell rang and I got to stick my face through Frankenstein's head to see who it was.



We invited all of our Christensen cousins over for dinner and a movie. All the while we took turns handing out candy to Trick or Treaters.


I was so proud of myself when I thought of putting water balloons in vases!

Dinner started with a Frankenstein Cheese ball, followed with Butternut Squash soup (served out of a pumpkin!), biscuits (cut with a pumpkin cookie cutter) and a salad with pear, bacon and sweet onion topped with toasted curry pumpkin seeds and a honey dijon vinaigrette dressing with roasted garlic and sunflower seeds. All of it was completely made from scratch, including the salad dressing. Yum. I'm loving the having the leftovers sitting around today!



After dinner we watched 'Corpse Bride', sipped a warm vanilla almond drink, and ate caramel apples (with homemade caramel of course). It was such a great night and so fun to be with the cousins all together! I can definitely say that I loved living every minute of October!