For years I have been wanting to use a homemade shampoo consisting of Baking Soda & Water. I don't like using the shampoos from the store. All those chemicals. Because of the price of Organic and no chemical shampoos I would continue to use regular shampoo. I did buy the 'good' stuff here and there but again the price would drive me back to the chemical stuff. Sometimes the kids would not notice that the shampoo fell in the tub while they were bathing. By the time I found it half of my expensive shampoo would be gone.

I am finally taking the plunge!!! I haven't used store bought shampoo or conditioner for a month.

When we ran out of conditioner over a month ago, I decided to try using a vinegar rinse instead. I have tried before but never stuck with it for more than a few days. I mixed equal parts of vinegar and tap water. I used white vinegar because we didn't have Apple Cider Vinegar. I'm going to purchase ACV tonight and try it.

I also purchased a shampoo bar from www.virginiasoapsandscents.com The bar of soap is wonderful. I lather it up in my hands then wash my hair with it. Our bathroom is small and doesn't get much ventilation, so my shampoo bar is going faster then normal :( Next week when my bar is gone I'm going to use the Baking Soda & Water shampoo. I'm going with In A Shoe's recipe; 1quart water and 1/2 cup of baking soda. I don't have hard water but I'm still going to boil the water the water then add the baking soda. Let it cool and add to a container. Again I'm taking In A Shoes's idea and putting it in a liquid dish soap container.

With using the Shampoo bar (soon to be baking soda/water) and my vinegar rinse my hair looks so nice.

I have frizzy curly hair.I don't brush it during the day because, well, think afro. It gets very tangly. I have to take a shower everyday because once I brush my hair out it's just so frizzed.

 I have tried many products and spent lots of $$$ trying to control my frizz. I was even going to get it straightened at a salon. My scalp use to itch all the time. I would use Head & Shoulders (I know, major chemicals). Now my head doesn't itch. My scalp feels so healthy. My hair looks great, I even go to the mirror just to stare. I love my hair now. Almost all my life I couldn't stand my frizzy our of control curly hair.

Regarding the vinegar rinse. You have to stick with it. At first my hair felt tangly and yucky. I'm so use to the conditioners and how it detangled and felt silky. The first two weeks are the hardest.

My morning routine:

• Brush hair before jumping into the shower
• Wash with shampoo bar or soda water
• rinse with vinegar/water rinse. At first I  was using 1/4 cup of vinegar & water. I think that's a bit much but my hair didn't dry out. I would put it in a cup and gather my hair (med-long) pile it, pour some of the vinegar rinse, let hair down and pour the remaining vinegar rinse. Massage and rinse. Most people use a spray bottle but I don't have one thus using the cup. Again, most people don't use that much of the vinegar rinse but it's worked for me. Eventually I'm going to use honey bottle (the honey is almost gone)
• At the end of my shower I squeeze all water out of my hair and use Olive Oil as a leave in conditioner. I put about a quarter size in the palm of my hand, rub with other hand  and finger it through my hair. Wrap hair in a towel. Once I'm done dressing and such I let my hair out of the towel pin my hair back and I'm done.

Currently I am using Olive Oil but I have read that Coconut oil works well too and I ordered some to try.

Here are some links I found that may be helpful:

•  Simple Mom
• Natural Homemade Hair Conditioner
• Nature Moms
• How to Go No Poo
• Dandruff Remover (this is probably why I don't have an itchy scalp. 
• Another Poo Free site.
• Hair Conditoner-Honey you can click on the link but I'll put the instructions here too:

  Mix 1/2 cup honey with 1/4 cup olive oil. (Use 2 tablespoons of oil if you have normal to oily hair.) Using a small amount at a time, work mixture through hair until it is evenly coated. Cover hair with a shower cap; leave on 30 minutes. Remove shower cap; shampoo well and rinse. Dry and style as usual.

• Here is another Honey Conditioner this one uses buttermilk.

To add some shine mix TBS honey to 4 cups warm water. Work through damp hair. Do not rinse out.

Honey Deep Conditioning 1TBS honey & 1TBS Olive Oil, mix and warm in microwave to melt. Apply to hair. Leave in for 30 minutes then rinse out.

Next I'm looking into a face cleanser consisting of olive & caster oil

The intended purpose is to " improve the well-being, health, and development of children by enabling the establishment and expansion of high quality programs providing voluntary home visitation for families with young children and families expecting children."

"Health and safety inspectors are to be given unprecedented access to family homes to ensure that parents are protecting their children from household accidents.

New guidance drawn up at the request of the Department of Health urges councils and other public sector bodies to “collect data” on properties where children are thought to be at “greatest risk of unintentional injury”.

Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks.

The draft guidance by a committee at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been criticised as intrusive and further evidence of the “creeping nanny state”.

Where are the safety devices for the "creeping nanny" who keeps sticking her nose into our personal lives?

Why homeschoolers support this bill or President Obama is beyond my understanding.

-Spunky

Cross-posted, with permission, from SpunkyHomeSchool

This morning Josh and I were able to-replace our spacers with wires. We both have braces on our upper teeth. He chose a nice blue and I went with a light pink. Wasn't too painful, thank goodness. Just feels like I have yucky, gunky stuff on my teeth. I'm sure I'll get use to it.

Joshua, is a trooper. He didn't want braces at all. He's doing great. No complaining or anything.

We didn't get too much of our school done. I did give everyone a lighter load then usual. This week is pretty busy. Today we got our braces on, tomorrow my Sweets & I go for blood test and Thursday we all have our yearly doctor appointment. Lupe, took Thursday off because by the time we are done with our doctor appointment half our day is gone. We are blessed to have a doctor who will see our whole family in one day. When we were first looking for a family doctor; not many would see us all. They would say the most we can schedule is three or four a day. Well, that doesn't work for us.

Since we moved our doctor is an hour away but worth it

My boys are so into the outdoors survival stuff. They enjoy anything army or Daniel Boonish :) Yesterday, Josh was practicing his knife throwing skills. Oh, my children are growing up.

I found some nice stuff to get the boys at Vision Forum. The only thing I don't like about ordering from VF is the 8% tax. I paid over $15.00 in tax. Oh, well, I did have a 20% off coupon and that helped. It's about the only time I buy from VF because of the tax thing. I know, cheap, cheap as my dad would say.

Our school year is going great. Everyone is happy with their curriculum. Not jumping for joy but happy.

Math Mammoth is working out great. I'll have give a review sometime. Character Quality Language Arts is working well with Caleb. My only problem is we take a little longer to finish a week. I try to sit with him everyday but sometimes things come up. Yesterday my dad came for a visit (he usually stays for 4hrs.) today Caleb has a headache and has been sleeping all day. There goes two days of CQLA.

This year I'm not stressing about our weeks. I'm taking one thing at a time. As long as we are making progress in our studies, I'm not going to lose sleep ;) With Social Studies/History & Science I figure if as long as we finish over 75% by the end of the year we'll be a-okay. I remember when I was in school, we hardly ever finished all our workbooks/textbooks. Actually, I don't remember finishing any of them. My SIL's kids are in PS and they never complete every page either. Besides my children have already been exposed to a lot more history then I ever was. Same with Science.

With math, reading, grammar and writing I'm a bit more strict. We continue some of this through the summer.

Blessings,

Linda<><

Today Caleb and I  worked on his first outline using CQLA. It was so fun to do this with him. I really enjoy my time teaching Caleb. We read a picture book on David & Goliath. We had to write the title, author and when it was published. He then had to give a short summary which I wrote down, we wrote the main characters and the plot. Next wee I think we will finish it.

Caleb doesn't like reading the same passage everyday of the week but hey, it's life. We read the passage. He had to highlight the main subjects. We used an orange highlighter. He really enjoys using highlighters. Makes it more fun than just underlining or circling .

On the Well Trained Mind forum someone mentioned that they use Elementary Speller by William Henry Wheeler, so I took a peek and loved what I saw . I thought I would add it to our homeschool. Today, Brent & Caleb copied the first half of the poem, underlined the vowels and illustrated it. I love how Caleb, put different layers of soil. He made top soil and other layers under it. Brent, made a picture of a seed sleeping deep in the soil. Next week we will finish copying the poem and illustrate how the seed will wake.

Here is the first half of the poem: In the heart of a seed,

                                                             Buried deep, so deep

                                                              A dear little plant

                                                              Lay fast asleep

Caleb & Brent also finished Week 10 of The Phonics Road to Spelling & Reading. They still need to practice some words but I think they will be ready for week 11 on Monday. I keep their spelling list on the wall and through out the week I drill them (weekends too). The list hangs in the kitchen so it makes it easy to remember. I just call out, "Brent, how do you spell house?"

Something great is happening at the Beltran house. Caleb is a reader. He is reading books. Yesterday he said, "Mom, the reason I don't read very well, I think it's because I'm not desperate to read."

He has not been interested until now. He wants to work at Yellowstone National Park when he grows up . He knows if he is going to work there that he must know about the plants, animals and so forth. Now he is interested in reading about animals. Yahoo! He has been reading Christian Liberty Nature Reader.

I'm so much more relaxed than I  was with Josh. I look back and see how stressed out I  was with Joshua. Feeling he was 'behind'. I know I did a real disservice to him. I see how I was shoving so much curriculum down his throat trying to keep at 'grade' level with his peers. By doing so I think I hindered him more than anything.

 As we all know, each child is so different. We can read books like The Well Trained Mind or Never Too Early which promote early reading or Better Late Than Early or School Can Wait which is more for waiting until a chld is older. And to make it more confusing they all have their research to back-up their book. You get pulled in so many different directions. Unfortunately I found  books that were bent toward reading early. I panicked when Josh wasn't reading at an early age.

It seems my boys aren't in the 'early' category and I'm fine with that now. We still start phonics instruction in 1st grade but I don't expect them to 'get it' all at that age. I see with my boys that phonics and all the spelling rules is very overwhelming for then at that age. Even though I  would love to get phonics over with and be done with it after 2nd grade  that it's not happening here. My boys need to continue their spelling & phonics instruction. I'm so thankful that we found The Phonics Road. This seems to be what we need. It's not cartoonish or anything, so even though the program is technically for 1st grade, my 3rd grader doesn't feel that it's babyish. No cute little animals or title. The binder cover actually looks more for the mature and grown-up .

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Some of the things the children are up to these days.

1. Joshua, is making a rope from plastic bags.
2. Annette, is writing down all the states & capitals as well as the state birds.
3. Caleb, is reading and loving it!
4. Brent, loves to copy maps
5. Ethan, continues to catch lizards.
6. Lance, loves to act like he is reading.

Blessings,

Linda<><

So many things going on. Christ-Centered Phonics is going well with Ethan. A little bit slower than I hoped. There is so much to cover in this curriculum. We are going over suffixes, and some spelling rules.

Ethan is six years old but like the rest of my boys at this age, some of this just flies over his head. Since he will eventually use The Phonics Road to Spelling & Reading I am not having him master everything. It is a lot. I'm mainly concentrating on the phonics portion  and of course  Bible.

We usually start with going over the flashcards, then practice some blends and go over our Bible lesson. We are suppose to do a lot more but if we did EVERYTHING that is in the teacher manual; it becomes to much and Ethan gets bored. Once we are done with what's in the TM then we do the workbook pages. He enjoys the workbook. It takes us about 30 minutes. If we did everything it would be longer and we would have to break up our day.

Other times, I'll do flashcards, blends and so forth one day and do the workbook pages another. It depends on our day and how much time we have.

Regarding MFW Exp1850; I mentioned that I am not going to combine, well that is not set in stone. I would like Annette to use MFW Exp1850 in 7th grade & 1850 to Modern times for 8th (like I have it planned for Josh) so if we combine than she would be done. I know I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be, but we are not your average MFW users. As you know for the last two years we have been using textbooks . Anyway, I'm fine if we combine or not. For today it looks like we won't combine. I might find something that will be around the same time period for, Annette.

To complicate things more, I might combine my three youngest with Josh, since it's kind of like they would start Adventures. I have all the books because we used this with Josh, Annette & Caleb three years ago.

Why am I even thinking about all this? It's only November. LOL. I think it's because I want to  pre read the books for MFW Exp1850, so it's got me thinking about the rest of the clan . Also Annette & Josh work well with workboods/textbooks but Caleb I'm not so sure. For some reason Ii can't see him sitting with his textbook. I think it's because he is still learning how to read. When we did MFW Adventures Caleb really enjoyed the States sheets. I am sure he would love to go through Adventures again.....

That's it for now ;)

Blessings,

Linda<><

Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They didn’t fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments.