First Product Review - Umberto U Color Italian Demi Color Kit

Last October my hairdresser decided to close up her shop and move down to Florida, which has left me in a bit of a lurch for my hair care.  Pre-pregnancy I was a 6-8 weeks color, cut, highlights, and eyebrow waxing kind of girl.  For those of you who don't know, you're not really suppose to regularly color your hair during pregnancy - so I went once.  Since then I have been hoping around hair dressers trying to find one I like, trust, and is reasonably priced - one of things that makes me most nervous is color.  So I have gone back to saving the $100+ bucks and started coloring my hair again by myself.

In the past year I have tried many brands - Garnier, Clairol, John Friedia, etc.  I made a rare trip to Ulta to pick out some hair dye (I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay with the champagne color or go back to a golden blonde).  Ulta has a much larger selection of hair dye than the grocery store/pharmacy, so I was hoping this would help narrow down my decision.  I walked away with the Umberto U Color Italian Demi Color Kit in very light blonde.  One of the reasons I chose this one was that in came with two packets of color, which is nice for $11.99.

My newly colored hair.

This system is interesting, you have three packets that are attached together, all you are suppose to do is cut across the packets while folded together and work the mixture into you hair.  Let it sit for 25 mins (which seems a little longer than usual) and rinse.  Now the interesting thing is, after you rinse the dye out, you are suppose to shampoo your hair, and use your own conditioner.  This had me a bit worried, as often pre-conditioning my newly colored hair feels dry and brittle.  But not so much with Umberto!  My hair still feels like it did before (if not a little better), and the color looks great (I was worried about it looking orange).  Also my hair didn't have that hair dye smell, which is often the case.

My only complaint so far is that it only comes with one glove per packet and is a little messy compared the bottles/foam dyes.  I highly recommend wearing an old t-shirt while using this product, and keep away from any bath mats in case you drip while coloring (although it was fine during the 25 minute processing time).

So I give it 4.5 stars out of 5 for  the home hair dye coloring experience.

Goals-November

I've decided to try making monthly goals, rather than weekly.

Craft Projects
-Make a granny square for Friendship Square Exchange
-Start Swap On A Budget Project
-Finish baby blanket for baby receiving sweater in previous post.
-Finish C's pajamas
-Make 3 more tote bags

Christmas
-Complete 1/2 of shopping
-Figure out everyone's gifts

Health/Exercise
-Drink 5 glasses of water each day (I can seriously drink 2 things of water/juice and be fine).
-Get back on track with exercise plan (core exercises - I do everything but the crunches, and arms)
-Lose 3lbs

Financial
-Keep groceries to under $550 for the month (We are at $353 currently).
-Cut back to one lunch out a week, one starbucks run a week

Other things:
-Organize desk at home
-Finish akellydesign website
-Design and print business cards

Crafty Stuff

The one good thing about this past week is that I have completed a ton of craft projects (some have been "in progress" since 2010!

I forgot to mention when going over my goals, I did make the living room curtains!  I also made matching pillows with the leftover fabric.  Earlier this month, I used some of the fabric to cover a side table (I bought years ago in the As-Is Section of IKEA, the top has a giant price tag on it, so it's always covered up).  The fabric in this project is Heather Bailey's Pop Garden Sway-Brown.

This pillow was "designed" by myself and just filled with fiber.

This pillow used a pillow form for its stuffing.

This is the table, I found something to make this easier to do was to use Iron on transfer paper to get it to stick to the top, then I stapled gun/glue gunned the underside.

For some reason this is upside down, but this is the right side of the curtain.

This is the back side (what you'll see looking into the house).

 The second project I completed was a baby sweater for my friend who is due in January.  I made the decision to make this project on a whim when I found the yarn at JoAnn Fabrics.  The yarn is Red Heart Team Spirit in Burgundy/Gold, the burgundy is much closer to crimson than what I think of as burgundy.  Crimson and Gold were our fraternity colors in college - and my friend and her husband are both brothers, so it only seemed natural that their baby would have something in those colors. This was my first time working with self-striping yarn, I think in the future I would buy extra yarn or choose a pattern that didn't create the jacket in one go.  It's the just the stripes are different sizes in the front, back, and sleeves.  The pattern I used was from Lion Brand's Crochet Baby Christening Set (which I had previously made for C.)  It's a free pattern on Lion Brand's site.

Love the penguin buttons, in honor of the fraternity bird.

 The very last project to mention was the start of my gift tote bags!  This year I've decided to make some tote bags as part of people's gifts rather than using wrapping paper.  The first one I made is for my sister E's birthday gift.  I used this tutorial from Skip to My Lou.  I'm pretty happy with this bag and plan on using the pattern to create other bags (I love that it allows the flexibility to change sizes).

Finished bag

Stuffed with goodies

Lining inside

 Have a good night and a fun weekend!  I hope to get another project finished before my next post!

Busy, Busy Weeks

Sorry for the lack of posts (not very good for a month old blog!)  Somehow things got busy last week(I still haven't pin pointed why) and I have spent all of this week catching up.

I'm really excited to announce that my business A. Kelly Design seems to be taking off - I actually have paying customers!  If anyone would like Christmas/Holiday cards designed, I'll be offering my skills for $10 a design - it's my Christmas present to you!


Last week's grocery shopping went super well - I did the curbside express pick up and only spent $108 ($5 though was part of the fee).  This past week I went shopping on my own again, and well I was back up to $200 (in my defense I decided to stock up on a bunch of meat, Giant Eagle was having a buy one get one free sale on a lot of the beef).  So clearly I need to use the curbside express...even if it does cost $5.

Highlights of the past two weeks include:

Going to the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium's Zoo Boo!  My little tiger is posing with the real thing !  We had a great time seeing all the animals and hanging out with Bethany and Grayson (from In This Crazy Life)!

Halloween Party at Fun Buy The Pound.  We called it the Itsy-Bitsy Halloween Party, for kids 2 and under.  We offered snacks, storytime, songs, playtime, and a photo.  As you can see C did an amazing job of staying still and posing for the photo shoot at the party...



On Friday, my friend Ashley and her classmate came over to "observe" C for their class.  Ashley wants to work with kids with Autism, so it's important for her to learn how to assess kids (they start with kids who seem to be developing normally).   C had a lot of fun (he thinks its just play!), and I swear since their session C 's vocabulary has grown and become more understandable!  M and I both think helping students/research like this is a great way to contribute to society, one of C's first studies was at Carnegie Mellon's Infant Cognitive Lab, if you're interested in trying something like this out!

Saturday was our Trick Or Treat (it was moved due to Hurricane Sandy), it was C's first time going around. We just walked around our block, but it was a lot of fun (we got to meet a lot of our neighbors for the first time. Then we handed out candy until we ran out (our block seems to get 2-300 kids each year, and apparently I didn't stock up well enough this year!).

Monday was Guy Fawkes Day, which I know normal Americans don't celebrate, but I'm first generation English-American, so we do.  My parents seem to throw a bigger bonfire every year, there were probably at least 30 people there this year.  My dad made Carrot & Honey Soup and Bacon Sandwiches (which are delicious, but terrible for you).

Also on Monday, my sister (J), flew in to town from Phoenix.  It was really great spending time with her, and I am really looking forward to visiting her in December.  We spent some time getting coffee on Monday, she came voting with me & C on Tuesday and then ate dinner with us (while we watched the election outcomes).  I took Wednesday off to spend some more time with her - we went shopping at Grove City Premium Outlets.  I was excited to get some clothes for C at Carter's, including an adorable Thanksgiving outfit as well as finally finding an I LOVE NANA shirt at Old Navy in his size.  I also got some Christmas shopping done (which is great, since I feel really behind, last year I was a third of a way through before I had C.)  We also went to the Wendall August store, which I just love.  Their pieces are so pretty, and its a cool local business.  My mom got C a Christmas Ornament from there, and they are personalizing it with his name.

In between all of this, I finished my first baby gift for one of my college friends- will post photos later!

I promise to be better about updating!