MY NEPHEW'S SAMPLER AFGHAN IN PROGRESS!!

I'm making progress on my nephews sampler afghan slowly but surely.  Well to be honest my progress that's been made hasn't been too slow since I only have four more squares to go before I done, and I've already completed five of them, so I think that I should be done before this week is over!!

KNITTING AWAY!!

 It's difficult to see but the first row of my nephew's afghan is done.

I just finished this zig zag eyelet by Leisure Arts earlier today and I'm not on the second square of the second row of this afghan. I almost want to kick myself for not taking the time to try to complete a sampler earlier.

MY NATURAL HAIR UPDATE

FINALLY! MORE PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE!!

Have you ever tried to master something but had the most difficult time doing so and, in response to that, became EXTREMELY frustrated????  Well that's been me for the past couple of weeks because I 've been having such a horrible time trying to figure out what my hair wanted and needed from me since it had started to break on me AGAIN.  Yes I said AGAIN.

Some months back, due to me having a new baby a brand new baby and taking care of my mom, I honestly had pretty much zero time for myself to breath, let alone try to take care of my hair, so I came up with a plan to wash my hair every two weeks instead to help save on time and to also save on products since we go through them rather quickly.  Within the first months my hair was doing well with the arrangement so I had no complaints but the last couple of weeks, before I made the big change, proved to be troublesome on my hair which resulted in some of my hair towards the front breaking.  And this doesn't include the breakage I experienced from my post postpartum breakage that I had!

 

So one to two weeks ago I decided that I was going to restart wash and deep conditioning my hair just I did before once every week.  Well I've been doing this for two weeks now and my hair feels like a completely different head full of hair because not only is it back to having some shine but it's very soft to the touch:-) 

There is no doubt here that I should have been deep conditioning more often and ESPECIALLY since I have color treated hair but again, I had to change things due the lifestyle that I had going on. But now that I'm in a different time in my life I know that it's time to continuing to practice the basic things that I was doing back when I first restarted my hair care journey and stick to it.

My hair hasn't been easy to understand but now that I'm understanding how to handle my hair with each day that passes, I'm getting that much closer to my ultimate hair goal which makes me super excited!  But until then I'm just happy to understand more and more with clarity on how to keep my hair healthy and strong.  So if you're one that's been having a hard time trying to understand your hair and you've been hitting a lot of road blocks with your hair, please be encouraged to not give up!!

EMBRACING THE REAL STRUGGLES OF MY 4C HAIR!

KNITTING CHRONICLES : A SAMPLER FOR MY NEPHEW! SQUARES ONE & TWO!

This pattern is called Little Fountain and is available in the Leisure Arts book called 99 Knit Stitches.

This is Cloverleaf Eyelet and this pattern can be found in the book stated above as well.

I have three handsome little nephews and nothing makes me happier than knitting something special up for them and what makes me even happier is knitting something up for them that I actually like!  Maybe it's just me but I have a really bad habit of being extra picky when it comes to the pieces that I make for my family, which makes it hard for me to get their gifts to them on time.

Well after finishing a baby blanket that I just did not like at all I decided that a sampler afghan would be a much better assignment for myself, so here we are!  I plan on making 9-12 squares in total so this project shouldn't take all that long.

What am I using?

I am using the Leisure Arts 99 Knit Stitches book, three skeins of the I Love This Yarn by Hobby Lobby and size 10 circular knitting needles.

BANANA CREAM PIE!!!!!!

 My banana cream pie :-)

Recipe can be found here : http://www.food.com/recipe/old-fashioned-banana-cream-pie-14979

Good afternoon to you!  It never ceases to amaze me as to how quickly time can just go on by, so with that said please forgive me for taking so long to get back to this blog.  There's a lot that I want to write about so I want to get started with this banana cream pie.

Okay so we moved a little over a year ago and have settled in, for the most part, pretty well.  The weather is nice and the people are friendly but I've been missing my favorite spots to eat and I've been missing them BAD.  So earlier this week after making a killer batch of chocolate chip cookies, which I will try to write about later, I had the strong craving for Marie Callendars banana cream pie.  Sadly there isn't one around so after moping about missing one of my favorite pies in my life I decided to get up and look for a recipe to try, and not long after looking I found this lovely recipe online. 

I followed the directions ALMOST exactly but decided to casually spread whipped cream all  over the pie, which wasn't in the instructions.  Let me tell you right now that this pie is AMAZING and if you like banana cream pie and haven't tried this recipe out for yourself then you're missing out big time.  My husband, who isn't a dessert man by the way, loved it and even asked for another piece!

So in conclusion yes this recipe is great because its cheap to put together and it doesn't require a lot of skill to make this treat happen.  Let me know if you've tried this yourself!

KNITTING CHRONICLES: FLAME CHEVRON BABY BLANKET SHOW AND TELL!!

What's Going On Lily Sue?!

LiLo (Lily Sue) and I!!

Hey ya'll it's a blessing to be back to share another post with you guys.  So after getting lunch, dinner and dessert started for the family I decided to look back on the past couple months of blog entries just to see what I may have missed writing to ya'll about.  And to my amazement I realized that I completely forgot to write about our Lily Sue, so here's the low down on our beautiful girl.

For the longest time my husband and I have talked about getting a dog of our own but just didn't have the money or space to make that kind of commitment.  Early last year my husband and I found out that my mom had become extremely ill and after a year long battle my mommy went up to be with Jesus.  Her passing completely BROKE us all  because we were all extremely close for so long and all our kids, excluding our youngest, had grown up living with her all their lives so her passing was a huge hit to us all.  My mom was the best mom that I could ever ask for and with her being gone it's like there's a huge piece of me gone that I will not get back again until we see each other again.  She was my best friend and my mom at the same time all throughout my life and the ache of missing her will never cease to exist.

Let me move on before I start crying..Alright so after we got back home from laying mommy to rest, we all decided that we needed an extra dose of LIFE in our lives so we decided to bring a puppy home.  It didn't take very long to figure out what kind of dog we wanted so we went searching online, found Lilo (Lily Sue) and brought her home not long after.  She's seriously brought so much mischief and joy into our home that I could not see our family complete without her here with us.

LiLo's first day home :-) She had just turned 8 weeks old.

Plenty of thoughts raced through my mind of all the judgements that we would probably get due to us bringing her into our lives, but that didn't matter to me because I knew that we had made the right choice.  LiLo today is a huge lap dog, if we allow her to be, and all she wants to do is play and relax with her humans.  

LiLo getting attacked by my toilet paper.  Can you tell by her eyes that she KNOWS that she's in trouble? :-D

All in all over these last 4 going on 5 months she's proven to me to be the best dog that I've ever had and I wouldn't replace my sissy dog for the world!  Yes we call her sissy dog at times but there's a reason for that  :-) I'll do my best to keep ya'll updated on how she's doing because I really did mean to write about her by now and I might even do a couple of dog product reviews here as well so keep a look out for that!  Be blessed ya'll!!

Lilo at 9 weeks taking over MY comforter, so we now have to get another one.  Silly goose.

MY 4C NATURAL HAIR JOURNEY UPDATE!!

Wow I can't believe that's it's really been a little over three years since I restarted my hair journey.  Well either two or three.  Anyways good afternoon readers!!  I don't want to make this blog to long but I just wanted to share a few before and after photos of my hair from the last two to three years.

This is a picture of me attempting my first high puff a year or two ago.

 These two pictures are from today:-)

Now a lot has happened between now and then but the lessons that I've learned have helped me to retain the length and denseness that I have today.  The two top things that I practice with my hair is to 1) keep  my hair regiment simple and 2) to embrace the magical awesomeness of protective styling.  Honestly if I could wear my hair out like this everyday I totally would because I love how my hair looks and feels when it's out but I know that if I were to constantly wear my hair out in this style, or something similar,  I know that my hair wouldn't retain it's length like I would want it to.

I won't be doing a length check for a while because I want to build the anticipation up for myself for when I finally do, and I'm just trying to focus more so on the health and density of my hair more so than just the length.  So with all that said I will go ahead and sign off here because I didn't want to write this much because I have a blanket to finish up.  What's your favorite hair tool to use on your hair?  I LOVE my Eden Body Works Curl Enhancing Creme :-)

BE BLESSED!!