Remember.....

As we close in to the Christmas holiday, I thought this quote for the week is very fitting. While many of us are out shopping buying gifts for friends and loved ones, lets not forgot to spread love and joy not only for the season,but through out the year.

-Peace-

Shelly

Our Tree Is Finally Here

We're all excited,I'll post more about the tree later,and I'll have more pics too.

Quote Of the Week

Quote of the Week

It's Election Day

I participated in the early voting process two weeks ago, but for those who haven't voted yet, please get out and vote.

Musical Monday

Brrrrr, is what most of the U.S.A. is experiencing right now, but no matter how cold it is, today is still a lovely day. Happy Monday and remember to make everyday magical and musical.



Shelly :)

The Friday Film

This Friday Film follows two American families over the years and the changes in the American economy. Watch the film and play the online game Spent if you haven't already and read my blog post about the game too.  Have you been through any of the situations these families have gone through,and how did you handle them? Have you borrowed from credit cards to pay for a college education or did you forgo college?Do you ever think America will ever make it out of this economic downturn in the next 5 year or will we still be in the same position?



Shelly

Curriculum & Resources: SPENT, An Online Game to Understand Poverty — YES! Magazine

Many of use make tough decisions on a daily basis and the SPENT Challenge is a great tool for kids as well as adults to understand the nature of  living on the brink. Of course, we can't get a true perspective of what it feels like to be working parents,who still have a job or income,but are living in a car,because they lost their home, while trying to keep your family together,or shared/communal living of multiple families living in a small 2 bedroom/1 bath home.Spent deals with the tough decisions that we make everyday, but more importantly it is an eye-opener of how close many of use can lose it all at any moment.


I realized by playing this game that I'm more of an activist minded person, I got two strikes with my job(one strike was because I wanted to form a union and the other issue was family related),so I'm guessing if you get three strikes then you lose your job,but I managed to hold onto my job,albeit with a pay cut, but I still had a job.


In the game I started out the month with $1,000, I believe everyone starts with this amount,but everyone has the option to pick where to work (not many choices),where to live, which insurance plan for your family, or the decision to opt out and take a penalty. The goal is to try to make it to the end of the month while making decisions about buying groceries, and many other curve ball situations that life can throw at you.

I took the challenge and made it through with only $14;my 18 year old daughter,Kennedy took the test and made it through the month with a little over $400 at the end of the month. After she took her test, I revealed to her that I had made it through the month too, but I only had $14 at the end of the month. We talked about how I got two strikes with my job and how she only got one strike with her job, and how these scenarios play out in real life.Now everyone doesn't get the same challenges, and she didn't really have too many issues with her job, and we talked about some illegal tactics that companies try to employ with their workers,and how people living  in poverty or on the brink of poverty feel they can't afford to strike or speak out on low pay or dangerous work conditions because they're just trying to live and get by.

 As you recall earlier, I said, I really was more activist minded while playing the game. I knew that I could get penalized for trying to form a union, but it didn't matter to me, all I could see was the big picture and how forming a union could make a difference in lives of workers and their families in the long run. This doesn't me, that I'm better than the man or woman who decided not to form a union because they chose a roof over their head and food on their table; this means that it takes all kinds to make the world go around, and that I am my brother's keeper.

Let's all try to keep each other and give whenever we can,less judgement and more of a helping hand please.

Take the Spent Challenge,did you(or your kid/s) make it through the month, and if so,how much was left?

-Peace-
Shelly

 Curriculum & Resources: SPENT, An Online Game to Understand Poverty — YES! Magazine

Winter Hair Care

A few days ago I read an article over at essence.com by Afrobella about winter hair care and I decided to check out some of the ideas. As we all know winter is a very dry time of the year and our skin and hair can become extremely dry during this time, but we can alleviate dryness of our hair and skin by moisturizing on a daily basis. Shea butter, olive oil, hair puddings and deep conditioning should really be used during this time to seal in hair moisture.


The article went on to talk about increasing oil treatments and toning down the use of harsh shampoos that can strip moisture from your hair since its job is to cleanse dirt and oil from your hair. If you're using a product that is striping your own natural oils from your hair then you'll have to add that moisture back in with some type of conditioning.

Avoiding glycerin based styling products was another way to avoid dryness during the winter months.They say glycerin absorbs moisture from the atmosphere, but if the air is dry it can drain moisture from your hair, and because of this many naturals avoid the use of glycerin during the winter time because its moisture draining.Personally I can't speak on this one,but I might give it a try sometime over the winter.

 The basics of cold weather hair care is moisturize, moisturize, and moisturize! Moisturize externally, but don't forget to moisturize internally too! Make sure you're drinking 6-8 glasses of water a day, I personally try to drink half of my body weight in water a day, to stay hydrated.Water will keep hair healthy and help stimulate growth.Also,don't forget to maintain a good diet that includes protein,dark green vegetables,and omega 3's like:salmon, shellfish,and nuts.



 















Oh yeah, don't forget to  protect your tresses from the cold temperatures and wind by investing in a good satin lined knit cap or you could by a satin cap to wear underneath your knit cap. Once again....you want to keep that moisture in your hair and wind and cold can strip moisture from your hair.

Hair Art

Style & Stylist: Flora Gala by: Adenike of The Woven Wool Hair & Body Experience 
thewovenwool.com 

The Friday Film

Watch the movie and tell me what you think? Did it make you think about where your food comes from, did it make you think about growing some of your own food or maybe if you're lucky enough....All of your food? Sit back and enough the film and please, lets discuss the film.

Ingredients - Trailer

This film seems very interesting, I think of myself as a person who stays on top of the latest documentaries(especially green living & food related),but this seemingly gem of a film has slipped right past me. The trailer looks awesome!!! In the trailer when the farmer mentions that farmers aren't even included in the Census anymore, since they represent less than 1% off the population was eye opening to me because I honestly didn't realize that farmers weren't represented in the Census as farmers, but as other. Now, I knew that we were losing a lot of our farmers and we need more young people to become farmers, but I never thought the numbers for American farmers would be so low.



My question to you is, have you seen this film, and what did you think of it?

Photos: APS trial: Day One....Are You Following the Trial

Photos: APS trial: Day One 



Are you following this story? I know the story has been a national story, but how many people outside of Atlanta will be following this story?



Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall and all the teachers involved have basically cheated many school children out of an education, for bonuses, and that really sickens me.Because of greed, APS(Atlanta Public Schools) administrators and teachers were willing to play a hand at keeping many of APS children uneducated

and impoverished.....for a nice pay day.  



The ajc.com has always been my go to for local news, but with this trial coverage, I'll definitely be following the play by play of this whole trial. If you're following the story please follow along with me as I blog about this and my gardening adventures too.





Shelly

4 Black Natural Hair Product Makers You Should Know - Photos - EBONY

Some of these products, I've heard of, but I've never tried them. Have you tried any of these products, and if so, what did you like about the product? Do you feel the product is long lasting for the price or do you think the product is a bit pricey for the amount you get? Click on the link below to checkout the products and then come back and share your opinion about the product.



4 Black Natural Hair Product Makers You Should Know - Photos - EBONY





Shelly

My Small Harvest

 Just wanted to post my small harvest of some yellow wax beans, a handful of some ripe yellow tomatoes and as you can tell I also brought inside the green non ripe ones inside too. They can sit on the windowsill and continue to ripen indoors. I decided to take bring the tomatoes on in since the squirrels in my yard have been enjoying the buffet of tomatoes in my garden, I decided to pick the rest of the green tomatoes that were a decent size and bring them on in, so I can enjoy their deliciousness too.

As you can see, in the first picture I have some okra and pole beans too. One of my okra looks a little big and I'm afraid it might be a little woody, but with gardening you never know--earlier in the gardening season I grew this cucumber( supposed to be a pickling kind) that was huge( might post in future) and I thought the cucumber was going to be very bitter because it was so big,but it actually wasn't and we were able to use that cucumber for 3 days in salads and sandwiches.

Here's some more cucumbers that I found out in the garden and the adorable untied (ugggh!) sneakers are my handsome son, Myles', he's my assistant in this photo, and he couldn't wait to get in the house to make a salad.

Sorry, I didn't take pictures of his salad, but sometimes I forget to take pictures and post pictures, but there's always next time.

Peace and Happy Gardening to you!

-Shelly-

[*151*] Creative Side Swept Updo on Natural Hair

Very cute style I might try...love how funky it looks! It looks real easy, but I know I'll probably struggle with putting the rubber bands in. I don't know why,but they get me every time, and sometimes I can start off putting the bands in smoothly and then....BAM.....I get stuck! Does this happen to anybody else or is it just me? I hope it isn't just me, but it probably is.

Hmmmm so if you're going to try this look....which way would you style the front? In the video she did flat twists and curled with flexi rods or will you be two strand twisting  or putting bantu knots in the front? I'm more a two strand twist person, so I'll probably go with that.

Oh Onions

It's late summer, and I'm enjoying the bounty of tomatoes from the garden, but I've already started planting seeds for my fall garden. Yes, I live in the A.T.L.,but it's time to start planting that fall garden while still harvesting your summer crops.

This year my excitement can't be contained because I'm growing a new vegetable this fall........ Onions!! The reason for so much jubilation, you might ask. Well, I rarely step out of my comfort zone when it comes to fall gardening, and in fact, I don't think growing onions is really outside of my comfort zone since it's similar to growing garlic and leeks,but it's the first new thing I've ever grown in my fall garden in years.

Wooohooo!!! I'm growing onions, I'm growing onions!! I'm growing onions, I'm....growing, okay let me stop!

This summer has been a true learning experience on how to select the right onions for where I live, who knew there were different classes of onions, I didn't, did you?

The two classes are long-day and short-day onions, and if you're a Northern gardener then the long-day variety is perfect for you and your garden since Northern areas have long summer days. Bulbs form on most onions when temperatures and the length of sunlight has been reached, and since the opposite is true for short-day onions then it is well suited for the Southern gardener.

Honestly, I almost bought a long-day variety because they all seemed so appealing to me, but decided to go with the short-day instead. This really isn't the time to be a garden rebel and besides, I'm on a tight budget and  I don't have money to waste on a garden experiment.

After many hours of searching for the right onion to plant for my garden and household, I decided on the Violet de Galmi, a flat, pinkish-purple thick bulb short day, that apparently keeps well. Please continue to follow my journey through the growing process. Will I get bulbs or not...that is the question!

Happy Gardening :)

Shelly
 

Natural Hair Models Needed

 In honor of the 10th Anniversary of going-natural.com, Mireille Liong, is celebrating with a Grand Natural Hair Show and she has put out the call for some natural hair models. A free photo shoot will be provided and some of the best stylists in the natural hair world will be participating. So, if you ever wanted to be a model, and you love your natural hair then click on the link below for more info.

we-are-looking-for-models-with-natural-hair | 2014 | Events

Where's The National Media?

Recently an outbreak of the measles has hit some cities very hard. Many of these areas have been college towns like Columbus, Ohio where The Ohio State University is located where several students have contracted the measles on campus. An Amish community just recently decided to vaccinate their children because of an outbreak in  Pennsylvanian community. Now I'm not anti vaccine, but I am for a parent's right to make a decision for their child. With my own children, I decided to follow the vaccine schedule with my older two children, but after my third child I started out on schedule, but my daughter had a severe reaction to the Dtp vaccine. My infant child broke out with a rash, had slight swelling in her leg, a low grade fever and was in obvious pain (they said discomfort, but I said pain). From that day forward, my husband and I decided to wait until our children were old enough to talk before we decided to get any vaccines, and we even decided against the HPV vaccine for our daughters because we felt it was to vague and at the time, why vaccinate only girls and not boys if they are carriers of HPV.

I have a lot of respect for the medical community, but sometimes I think there are some very unnecessary things being done in medicine, and then there's the issues of pushing so many vaccines onto our young children. At this time, I don't know actually how many vaccines an infant will get before his or her's 1st birthday, but it just seems like we're not allowing our immune system to get stronger. 

With this measles story, it's fascinating that the national media never spoke about this, but instead decided to only talk about anti-vaccine families. Maybe other people have heard about this story, but for me it seems like an under the radar story. What is the article really trying to tell us about the medical community, do we need adult boosters or should would focus on a more holistic approach to vaccines?

Please read the article below and come back to make a comment below. Tell me what you think about the article, the lack of national media coverage, and your views on vaccines.


Measles Outbreak Traced to Fully Vaccinated Patient for First Time | Science/AAAS | News

10 Things Creative People Know by Peggy Taylor and Charlie Murphy — YES! Magazine

Creativity is something that many adults say that they don't have or they have lost. What makes a person creative and another not? Not to sound full of myself, but I think of myself as a very creative person and recently found an article about creativity and the power of it. After reading the article10 Things Creative People Know by Peggy Taylor and Charlie Murphy — YES! Magazine come back and share what makes you a creative person, and how does your creativity impact your life?  

Great Parody

                                                                                                                                                                  

Who knew that's what it took to grow long natural hair? LOL!!!

When you decide to go natural......well, let me say.....when I decided to go natural, I knew this would be a journey and I'd enjoy every step of this journey. Now don't get me wrong, there were some difficult times for me because I've been natural for 14 years now and the movement wasn't this big. Back then it was either you're growing locks, wearing braids, sewing in weaves or rockin the perm.
I've always loved the look of locks. Freeform locs are actually my favorite and I wished that I could've grown them.  My parents thought they were horrible ( when I was in high school) and my then boyfriend at the time(now my husband), didn't want to see them on me. Eventually at 23 yrs old, I decided to grow out my perm and I haven't looked back.

This natural journey should be a time of getting to know you're hair (if you're a newbie) and a time to nourish not only your hair, but your mind, body and spirit. So, don't keep fretting over how fast my hair is or isn't growing. It might be easy for me to say because I'm known for cutting my hair a lot. I seriously have a problem. My hair is very thick and grows pretty fast, but my hands always get real itchy when my hair gets past shoulder length, and then it gets cut to ear length.

So, I don't have a problem with patience with hair growth, but gardening is a different story.

Do you have patience when trying to grow out your hair? If not, why and why did you go natural?

Uplifting People and Communities

On March 17, 2014, HBO premiered the documentary Paycheck to Paycheck, a film about Katrina Gilbert, a 31 year old single mother of three who is struggling to make ends meet. Katrina works as a CNA(certified nursing assistant) in a nursing home where she makes under $10 an hour, caring for our elderly. She's a hardworking woman living on the brink and sometimes I just feel like some Americans just don't get it.

Before the HBO documentary premiered, I took the opportunity to watch a couple of promo videos about the film, I was already pumped to see the film, but I became even more enthralled with it. So, I decided to read the comments and I was shocked(well sort of, we all know about the trolls) to read such negativity and angered directed at the film, but most of all I was surprised that many people(especially women) would even think that she's gotten what she deserves because she doesn't have a husband, many even said, "no husband, 3 kids, what did you think would happen",  I just wanted to scream, SHE WAS MARRIED AND ALL 3 OF HER KIDS HAVE THE SAME FATHER!!! But instead I took a deep breath and thought about what people were actually saying. They were saying, we only feel compassion for a widowed woman or the woman who spent her life being a homemaker only to have her husband leave her the children with nothing, but you single mothers....you can.....just...kick rocks, and you better not ask for any kind of  assistance at all! I don't know maybe HBO and the Shriver Report should've said a 31 year old divorced mother of three, and many people wouldn't have been so pissed off, but to me it doesn't matter, she's still an unmarried woman working her tail off  trying to raise her kids.

After watching the film on youtube, I was moved to leave a comment because I was still pissed off about the harsh comments about Katrina and the film. My comment was basically a thank you note o the Shriver Report and HBO for airing such a powerful documentary that touched on issues such as: affordable childcare, health care, food insecurity and a living wage. I also asked others to think about what they can do in their own communities to help others, and then I shared a story about how I helped a young single mother of one when I used to be an in home daycare provider, and I decided that I would watch her infant daughter at half the rate( $70 a wk). This particular client did not have a car at the time, and she had just moved back in with her parents, so she would get a ride with her mother every morning to a train station (that was a 30 min ride) and ride the train across town and catch a bus to my house Monday thru Friday. Now their were some people who thought I was a fool for charging so low, but I just wanted to help anyway I could, and besides she seemed so determined, it just felt right and you know what, within five months she was able to get her own car and an apartment. So,  I said all of that to say, think about your special unique skills and what you can give back to your community.  Maybe you have clothes to donate to a family in need, maybe you're a frugal shopper, volunteer your time to help a struggling family become wiser shoppers and budget, maybe while you're at your child's school, you decide to put a little extra money on a neighborhood child's lunch account because you know one of the parents just got laid off.  Or simply maybe you're the man or woman behind someone at the grocery store that pays for their  groceries because there isn't enough money on the  debit card or EBT card to get your groceries. By the way please read this beautifully written thank you letter by Andrea Gardner to the woman behind her in line at the grocery store http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrea-gardner/to-the-woman-behind-me-in_b_5082769.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share  

So let us remember that impoverish people aren't just single moms and the elderly and there are many reasons why people might need a little help from time to time...don't look down on them....help lift them up. Many of us live on the brink or a few paychecks away, so while we're waiting on policies to change in America, lets be that change in our own communities.


Have a wonderful day :)

Shelly

Gardening Chores

My outside chores for this week are :

Separate a few of my garlic plants because there's at least 6 cloves of garlic growing in one hole together.


Turn compost, because I want to see how well the pile has decomposed.

Put compost around lettuce,spinach, kale, and broccoli.




I know this really isn't a blog post, but I wanted to do something on this blog, since this and Pinterest  are my favorite kinds of social media. People are probably wondering how can blogging be your favorite and you don't even post that often, but I had two blogs years ago and I loved writing and reading blogs. I just want to get my groove back and if it means posting gardening chores then so be it.

Have A Great Day :)

Happy New Year!!!

Hope this New Year I'll be more productive with this blog, I've been spending a lot of time over at Pinterest becoming a Pinaholic.  Pinterest is just such a wonderful place, you can't help getting carried away with building boards and building a following. This post wasn't really about anything special, I just wanted to have a post on the board for 2014. Well here's to 2014!!!!