Curly Girl Method, Simplified!

I'd heard a lot about the "Curly Girl Method" but until now I have been reluctant to try it.  Several things about it were a little too weird for me, like not shampooing your hair (I like shampoo!), not combing after your shower, and not using regular towels. 
Well last week I was so frustrated with my hair (mostly this horrible haircut) and Colorado's extremely dry climate, that I decided to give the Curly Girl Method a try.  And so far it's not nearly as gross as I thought it would be, my hair today feels cleaner (and healthier) than it has in a long long time. 
The method really consists of 6 things:
1. Use a sulfate free shampoo.   It won't lather like a normal shampoo, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  The Deva Care Lo Poo is really nice, and it smells like orange sherbert.

2.  Comb through conditioner in the shower.

3. Don't use a normal terry cloth towel to dry your hair, use a t-shirt or microfiber towel.

4. This was the tricky part to me.  If you cut out sulfates from your shampoo, then you also have to cut out silocones from your hair products, because without the sulfates they will just build up on your hair because they're not water soluable.  I thought the only ones without silicones would be expensive organic products, but the super cheap drugstore products like V05 and Suave work too (not all of them, but a lot).

5. Plopping, this is what plopping looks like:

and this is why Zach laughs at me every morning, but it works so well!

6. Diffuse, but don't dry your hair all the way (I really hate having wet hair, so I probably dry it too much but whatever)

The result? I feel like I have new hair! Which is creepy, like someone else's hair is on my head.  But it feels so much better than it did before, so I guess figuring all this out was worth it.

ugh

So I'm frustrated and a little confused. I feel like I'm a little bit of a failure, or a little bit lazy, because I only like to paint certain things....because those are the things I want to paint, those are the things that I'm drawn to. Images where I can use wide brush strokes and bright colors, where I can make changes easily, where I can make it look like what I want it to. I'm not excited when things turn out too realistic. I know that I could paint an apple and have it look like a photograph, but I don't want to, it's not really satisfying. And I've spent a long time trying to loosen up and stop doing that. But I do like my work to be representational, I'm never very happy when I create something that is completely abstract. It somehow doesn't feel valid to me. Like there are far too many options that I haven't explored so this one couldn't possibly be the best one, and there are not enough hours in the day find it.

But then I think, am I only drawn to these certain things because I know that I can paint them well? That I won't have to put in a lot of effort to make it look how I want it to? Maybe it's not that they inspire me, maybe it's that I'm lazy, I haven't had a lot of experience painting the figure and that's why I don't want to? It's hard for me to tell.

Then I think back to the paintings and artists that always inspire me, their subjects are often the same as mine. I don't think I'm lazy...I paint almost everyday it seems. And I'm not nearly as scared of failure as I used to be, but obviously not completely over the "maybe I'm supposed to be doing this" and not actually what I want to be doing.

This post probably makes no sense to anyone but me.

Here's my next problem: I really enjoy the whole etsy thing, it's great because my studio gets cleaned out. It's also great because sometimes the paintings I like the least are the ones that sell, and I don't have to look at them anymore. But here's the problem, the one's that I like the least are the ones that sell! Why?!

Ok I like some of them. But why is it that well over half my sales have been the ones that are fruit?

Here's what it feels like, I spend 40 minutes painting a pear, I list it and it sells in an hour. I spend considerably more time painting something that I feel is more successful in the end, and it just stays in my shop forever. And now I feel like I have to keep painting fruit over and over so that I can keep the rest of my shop open with the things that I like more. Maybe this shouldn't even be frustrating. It's not that I don't like to paint fruit, I do! But I just feel like I should keep painting different things because I feel like a creative failure to do the same type of thing again and again. I wish I had an answer. I also wish cradled masonite panels weren't so darn expensive. I guess I'll just keep painting.

Poor old house

Our house has been having a hard time lately, poor old house. I don't blame it, it's cold here, if I was a house I'd move somewhere warm.

For a few weeks our furnace was broken, luckily we have two, which is weird because our house is pretty small. Anyway, the living room was nice and warm, and the bedroom was frigid. I'm pretty sure the chapstick by my bed was frozen. And just our luck, when we plugged in the space heater we lost power to half the house.

A few days later my computer died :( I don't think it would be so bad except that macs are too pretty to die.

Good news is the house is all Christmasy! Zach hung lights outside, and they're perfect :) We have stockings above the fireplace, and Zach wrapped all the presents.

We went to a holiday block party last Friday. Everyone is super nice, but I'm afraid I won't remember all their names. We were the youngest by far :) but there was one couple who was pretty close to our age, and they were new to the block too. I baked an apple pie to bring (Zach did the hardest part, peeling all the apples.....and helping me figure out how to turn on the food processor). I tried a new pie crust recipe....and LOVED it. Ok I have to stop talking about the pie because now I want to eat some.

I made us a mini pie because I didn't want to wait to try the big one :)

My charlie is cute, but not as cute as this one:

Christmasy

I got to be crafty last night :) Making a wreath is easy and fun, and highly recommend it. And it gave me an excuse to use the hot glue gun, my favorite thing ever. This one still needs some tweaking still I think, but overall I was very happy with it (I just have to find a good place to hide it till after Thanksgiving, charlie keeps trying to eat it). And I have an extra wreath that I get to decorate with the extra decorations...now I just have to find someone to give it to :)

I had to force myself to leave Michael's the other day, it just smelled so good in there I wanted to eat it. I discovered the source, cinnamon scented pine cones. They are now in bowls and vases all over the house :) mmmm cozy.

In other news, we now have curtains and no longer live in a fishbowl, yay! But our heater is broken, and it's unbearably cold in half the house.

Look! Snow is fun!

Especially when you have a backyard full of it!

FYI

My painting blog http://sharon-williams.blogspot.com/ is now http://sharonschock.blogspot.com/

because it's much less generic :)

The Wedding

I don't think I could have asked for a better wedding day. It was everything I wished and hoped it would be. Well I guess I wish I hadn't almost set the church on fire, and hadn't spilled hot wax on two of our guests, I wish the organist had peripheral vision, and that we hadn't killed any poor animal on the way to the reception.... but those are minor details.

I guess I should start at the beginning of the day. We woke up early and made the condo bridesmaid central. Since Emilee is amazing we had a new hair girl who was great, I liked her so much and she did such a good job. The makeup girl never showed up, which was weird....and we still don't know why. But I think I had more fun doing my own makeup anyway, and Crystal taught me to how to have super lashes.

We drove to the church and finished getting ready in the bride room at the church... with only minor hiccups.

The ceremony started and I was standing outside with my dad, wishing I could watch the wedding too, I don't know why I thought I would be omnipresent on my wedding day! My dad practiced lifting my veil while we were waiting... just to make sure he did it right. Then the doors opened for us to come in... way way before the actual bride processional song. My dad apparently has terrible stage fright and practically ran me down the aisle, then forgot about the veil completely. Maybe he'll be calmer for my sister's wedding :)

My mom tells me we got compliments on our kiss, which kind of cracks me up

The ceremony seemed to last only 2 minutes, it was all over so fast. We took pictures, then headed to the reception. Zach swears that he was chasing me while I was running from him to talk to people. I thought we were talking together! We were very excited about the food, we were SO hungry. And my grandma said she just loved the music, which pretty much was the goal. Then it was time for toasts, which I was a little nervous about, mostly because I would be nervous having to give a toast. But Jim's was great, and so was Emilee's, and I found out my sister had hers written out but ab libbed according to how the crowd responded, which I think is great. 







Then it was time for our first dance, Zach's grandma said it made the whole trip worth it. I had so much fun even though my bustle died pretty much at the beginning, but Zach did such a good job not stepping on it. I'm so glad he's my forever dance partner.







One of my favorite parts of the day was the dancing (and my feet paid for it later :) but I remembered once again that I must know all the greatest people in the world because I don't think there's a group of people that are more fun than the ones I left in California, or who left for other states. I don't like to think about it, it makes me sad that I can't hang out with them all the time, and that I don't get to see my family very much either. Thankfully a few of them are in Colorado :) and maybe we can convince Mother Chandler to come here too!



My ipod DJ wasn't as awkward as I thought it was going to be, and the 12 hours spent picking music for it seemed to be worth it :)
I'm so happy with how everything went. And I'm SO glad Montana is awesome, I love our pictures and I can't wait to see the rest of them.