I have naturally curly hair, the big loose, frizzy spirals that make it VERY voluminous.  I have seen what I look like with straight hair though.  A friend of mine who was taking Beauty Science in high school straightened it once.  She didn’t use a fancy flat iron though, she used an old-school hair dryers, and it took a LONG time!

It was sort of neat though, my hair looked so….small! It was also super smooth. I don’t have a lot of patience for ‘doing hair’ though, so if I were to get into straightening on a regular basis (doubtful – I wear a headcovering!) I’d need a fancy gadget like a chi flat iron, that would make EVERYTHING go much faster!

Though we’ve had cows for many years we go through periods where we aren’t milking, due to the cycle our cows are in or the amount of time and determination we have!  Right now we ARE milking, a cow that is my daughter Kaelynn’s (she received her from us as a calf), her name is Alpha .  In any case, she just started milking a week or so ago and is shaping up to be a great little milker, nice temperament.  Yesterday we had enough skim milk after separating to make fresh pot cheese and I got my oldest daughter to help – she can’t wait to make it again! (It’s SO easy ladies, maybe I’ll post instructions in a bit!)

In any case, it’s GOOD to have our own dairy products again.  Not enough cream saved up for butter yet (Dexter’s aren’t super high-producers) but when that day comes, yummy, yummy!

I was mentioning our typical hillbilly loads recently, and I have to warn you – don’t try them without a tie down (make that lots of tie downs!) You don’t want your big pile of ‘treasures’ to go flying out the back of your pickup after all! If you want to go for the ‘tough hillbilly’ look you can even pick up some grade 70 chain, but stay away from the Shipping Blankets, that could make you look a bit too professional .

If there’s something that I can say about homeschooling, it’s that it will make you flexible. I’m the type who likes to do a lot of research, and before our children were school aged I’d researched, planned, formulated, you get the idea. In any case, I had so many idealistic, formalized ideas about what our lives as homeschoolers would be like. What our educational philosophy would look like. What we’d allow and wouldn’t allow.

Isn’t life funny though? Homeschooling has stretched me and made me more flexible. Part of it is obviously that the ideas I’d picked up weren’t true convictions, but were rather external philosophies I adopted and tried to make my own. Other times I realized that my children needed something different than I thought they would, they turned out to have different needs, and be different people than I thought they would be.

We were never going to use ‘readers’, we’d go straight to reading ‘real books’.  We were never going to use computer software to supplement one-on-one teaching, it was going to be all Mom, all the time.  And we were definitely never going to watch silly cartoon movies on DVD, we would be media-free.

I’m not saying that we’ll always do these things (life changes, and we have more children coming up the pipe), but yes – we do them sometimes, we do them…often.  And that’s okay.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of mailVU. All opinions are 100% mine.

Maybe your family is like ours – you have a digital camera, but you’re feeling blessed if it takes 30 consecutive seconds of film.  Streaming communication services like Skype need two people online at once, and you don’t want to mess with downloadable software.  You don’t want to post videos of your child saying hi to Grandma at youtube where everyone can see it, but you’d like to dabble in sending some video by email to friends and family.

Where to start? http://mailVU.com is a great, free service that allows you to record videos with a webcam (many computers have these built in) without special software, that is sent directly to another person’s private email, and contains fancy self-destruct features too!

http://mailVU.com is also super-easy to use, the website is great, easy to navigate, and has a nice clean design so you don’t become confused. Better yet, your messages can even be up to five minutes in length. Goodbye 30 second recording times!

For a free service it’s also remarkably compatible, working on all types of computers and mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, most new smart phones, and all the main internet browsers.

Our ‘tiny baby’, as we call our in-utero child (either Anne or Jonathan depending upon gender) has been moving for a couple of weeks now, and it’s always so exciting.  I think I can even feel some movement with my hand, but whenever I call someone over to have a feel tiny baby stops moving!

Ah well, it won’t be long now and my family will be able to SEE tiny baby moving, as well as feel tiny baby with their hands .  I think baby movements are one of the greatest joys of pregnancy, when I feel tiny baby I’m always reminded of the new life growing inside me, and it brings a smile to my face!

Remember in the ‘good-old-days’ when women used to iron their hair flat with…irons?  Okay, it was before my time too.  Hair styling technology has certainly come a long way though hasn’t it?  You can now buy hi-tech fhi flat irons, chi rocket professional hair dryers, and hair cutting shears that are all designed for high performance.

Actually, I need to get a pair of good shears for doing my husband’s hair with.  Using regular scissors is SO frustrating!  I’ve actually been using my BIG sewing scissors, but the tips don’t cut straight for hair, it sort of ‘spoons’ it.  There are some BEAUTIFUL pink/jewel tone shears, but the student models are more in our price range.  If you compare cutting at home (even with the cost of expensive shears) to going out for hair cuts, it’s still much cheaper!

I think I’ve finally found a source for xsmall gloves that don’t have latex or corn starch in them!  I have so many ‘fussy’ things I look for for my sensitive girl!  BUT, now I need to see if they will ship USPS for me instead of UPS.  I recently bought some size small nitrile gloves in Edmonton, but they are a bit big on Kaelynn (she uses some ‘hair-do’s’ around the wrists to keep them from sliding off.)

If you’ve been looking for xsmall vinyl or nitrile gloves so a little one with eczema can be more comfortable helping with dishes and house cleaning chores, you should check out SKS Bottle.  Their disposables are pretty cheap ($6-$9/100.)

When our family moves we look a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies.  You know, our old pick-up is loaded to the gunwhales.  Sometimes we have our livestock hauling contraption built from plywood on the back, sometimes we don’t, we just load up the back and away we go.  (I normally sit in the front seat though and not on top of everything in a rocking chair.)

Most people want to do things a bit fancier though with moving blankets, moving pads, and furniture blankets, and I suppose that’s okay too .  Getting some padding DOES reduce scratches and dings for sure!

I’ve been researching making lotion for my eczema prone daughter, and I have to say – there’s a bit of a learning curve here.  Right now I’m just learning about ingredients, but the one that is currently working for her is a type of silicone/herbal extracts shielding lotion, and if I can just figure out this whole silicone thing I’m sure I can whip something up for her that will cost less than $19 for 4 oz.

Have any of you tried to make your own lotions for children with skin issues?  Any successes or recipes that you’d like to share with me?  I HAVE found a supplier of silicones in Canada, which is pretty much the first step for us, because some of them have a low flash-point, they’d have to go UPS, and we all know how expensive that brokerage is!!!