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!!!!