Yummy Breakfast For On The Go!

Not everyone gets up at the crack of dawn and throws some bacon slices and eggs on a sizzling pan, toasts some bread or pours a bowl of crunchy cereal. Most of the time, people don't even think to eat a breakfast because of how late they are running or how it makes them feel. I personally don't eat breakfast often at all. It makes my stomach upset and/or it makes me eat more during the day. I have no clue why I feel the need to snack more on days where I have a decent breakfast, but it doesn't help me in my quest to a better body.
For my job, I open up our store a lot of times. Tomorrow being one of those days, I decided to pack my lunch, as I usually do, and share it with everyone! I have learned that packing your lunch at night before you go to bed is MUCH more beneficial than rushing and just throwing junk into a brown bag in the morning...just because you may be running late.
On to the topic of this post! A recipe for on the go! While I was packing my lunch I found some fruits and other yummy things that we had just purchased and decided to try something new!
I call it.... The Strawberry Banana Bagel!
This took me about 3 minutes to make (10 minutes in real life because I'm an obsessive photo taker).
All you need is: 1 mini bagel (or larger bagel if you prefer), cream cheese (I prefer the light Philadelphia), strawberries and bananas.

This snack 4 has steps. (Too easy!)
1. Smear about a teaspoon of cream cheese all over each side of the bagel.
2. Cut up strawberries into slices and place them on one side of the bagel.
3. Cut up a banana into slices and place on the other slice of bagel.
4. Put the top of the bagel on top and smush together! Waaaa-la!

1 tbsp of the low fat Philadelphia cream cheese is approx. 30 calories (Google).
1 mini bagel (white bread) is approx. 120 calories, depending on the brand you get.
Strawberries and bananas have lower calories because they're fruit, but watch out because even though they are fruits with lots of vitamins, they have a lot of natural sugars, which consuming too much is just like taking in processed sugars. So rounding a little, you're looking at about a snack around 180-200 calories, depending on your bagel and how much cream cheese you put on..not bad considering the worse things you could eat for breakfast! (Plus no grease!)
Hope you guys enjoy this little on the go snack or breakfast! I took a pic of the rest of the lunch I packed for my shift tomorrow at work:

If you can't tell I'm on a health kick right now, which I will be writing about more and more! Thanks for reading and hopefully trying out the snack! Adieu :)

A Natural Hair Mask! Coconut Oil and Honey

Ello!

Tonight I decided to try a little special something for my locks.

After hours of Pinterest-ing, I finally found a recipe that I actually had the ingredients in my kitchen.

The hair mask I chose included coconut oil and honey! Two simple products you can pick up at any grocery store in no time. The instructions said to mix together 1 tbsp of coconut oil and 1 tbsp of honey into a small sauce pan on very low heat. As soon as I put the oil in, it started to pop and fly up at me....so I highly suggest putting in the honey first. After heating it, I poured the mixture into a coffee mug. I brushed my hair out thoroughly and started rubbing the substance all over my hair. I recommend trying to avoid the scalp, because the mask is aimed towards helping with dry ends. At one point I just dipped my ends into the coffee mug and worked the mix upwards. As soon as I covered all the hair, I left it sit for about 30-40 minutes.
The smell is pretty good, but after awhile it started to get a little old... after the time limit, I jumped in the shower and washed it out as much as I possibly could! The directions did say to wash with your favorite conditioner afterwards, but since I am trying to not put anything extra with chemicals in my hair, I just rinsed and rinsed until I could rinse no more!

It has been about 4 hours since I did the treatment and my hair feels marvelous! It really does make it feel soft and the ends are not drying out as fast as they usually do. My hair does feel a little rough/sticky..like I still have honey left somewhere in my hair, so next time I will most likely rinse with a conditioner, but all in all I very much like this hair mask and recommend at least trying it once!

Adieu! <3

Get To Know! Shampoo Chemicals

One of the best things I have done for my hair is research.
Yes, that sounds incredibly nerdy of me, but as it turns out there is plenty of information out there that most consumers of hair care products do not know! Today's topic is the chemicals in shampoos.

At the moment, I am currently doing my Natural Hair Care Challenge (previous post) so I am not using any shampoos. For anyone who still uses shampoos or uses them every now and then, make sure when you are at the store to READ THE LABELS and INGREDIENTS. I know it is so tempting to impulse buy on the products that are the biggest, brightest colors, and unique shapes, even smells as well, but if you want to help your hair at all, read what chemicals are in the product you are about to spend your hard earned money on!

Some common chemicals that are bad for your hair include:
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate
Ammonium Laureth Sulfate
Ammonium Xylene Sulfonate
TEA Lauryl Sulfate
Sulfur (in dandruff shampoos)
Selenium Sulfide (in dandruff shampoos)

Other very dangerous ones are magnesium sulfate and sodium thiosulfate.
A good amount of the drug store shampoos such as Pantene, Dove, VO5, and Suave contain these products unfortunately. Some brands that do not have these chemicals include Garnier Fructis and some L'Oreal products as well as Back to Basics.

So for any shampoo users, please read labels! The difference can be amazing or brutal to your gorgeous locks!

Adieu! <3

Natural Hair Care Challenge!

I love hair. There is no two people on this planet who have the exact head of hair, making each human being incredibly special in their make up. I believe hair is one of the many great examples of self expression.

Lately, I've been noticing how dead my hair was becoming. Now, I am a huge fan of beautiful colors, and very many different colors in my hair. As of recently, I had bleached a very large portion of my underneath hair so I could put a lilac dye in. After about 4 hours of playing with my hair, the finished product was absolutely disappointing. I had an ugly blonde with a green tint and no purple in my hair. So I decided to leave it for about a week or two to let my hair recover from the bleaching. Then my mom helped me go over the blonde again, but this time with a box dye. This dye created the same odd greenish blonde color that I had before. I also use heat a very large amount on my hair. Granted, I do use a heat protectant (AS SHOULD EVERYONE), but because of the heat, the ends of my hair are destroyed, brittle, and just a mess.

A while back, my boyfriend had told me about how it was actually healthy for you NOT to shampoo your hair. I of course exclaimed about how dirty and gross I thought that was and I just was not buying that it could be beneficial to your hair to not wash it!

As I started this blog, I was day dreaming about what topics I could write about and one just popped into my head! I decided to give myself a challenge of going all natural for a good while. I thought to myself a month and then maybe that was too long, but I am just going to take it day by day and update everyone on how well or not well it is going!

Before completely deciding to naturally fix my hair, I thought it smart to do some research on the subject before hand. As stated on Web MD, dermatologists agree that shampooing everyday is a little unnecessary. The website claims that longer, thicker, curlier hair can go longer in between washes. Now, I have said type of hair, but after two days my hair usually gets really greasy. The reason why is mostly because the hair is trying to make up for what it usually thinks is the shampoo. So I figure, after a week or so it will stop being greasy and begin to become soft? I guess I'll see! And I promise to update about the natural hair care experience as I do it!

Adieu! <3

The Summer Bucket List.

Every summer brings the chance for new adventures and special moments that will last a lifetime. I began to think that the "official" last summer of my childhood would be the one before senior year, knowing that the next summer I would be working a lot more and preparing for college.
I was right and wrong on this assumption. Right because I did get a great job and started working a lot more, which left less time for a social and personal time life. I was wrong because I was able to make time for my friends and spend some good times with the people I loved before they went off to college.

Summer of 2013 has brought a whole new perspective on life. I started dating the most amazing guy and came up with so many ideas in my hopeless romantic mind of what we could do in these blazing summer months. So here it is! My summer of '13 bucket list:

Stargazing.
See fireworks.
Go dancing.
Get a piercing.
Finish designing my bedroom.
Make homemade cookies together.
Have a campfire and cook s'mores.
Go fishing.
Drive In movie.
Check out books from the library.
...Finish the list of books I have....
Find a photo booth and take pictures.
Harry Potter marathon day!
Kiss at the top of a ferris wheel.
Build a blanket fort.
Zoo date.
Lay in the road in the middle of the night.
Recieve flowers.

And my number one thing I would love to check off:
Kiss in the pouring rain. <3

I'm such a hopeless romantic.