Essential Oil Scalp Mask

I said a long time ago that I was trying something new by jumping in to the world of essential oils.  Well, long story short, I am in love with my Young Living oils.  My stash is growing, I'm integrating oils into my daily routine, and I'm noticing big changes in my wellness.

Any reader of this blog knows how much I love crafting, making, and DIY.  Essential oils, along with some products from a local health food store or Amazon, can replace a lot of store-bought products.  It's often cheaper to DIY these products, and you also remove a ton of the toxins and questionable ingredients found in store-bought products from your home.

One of the first places I started integrating essential oils was in my haircare.  My hair is an important part of my identity, and it's not always in the best shape because I color it.  Coloring my hair also limits the products I can use, because some ingredients will strip color.  I've struggled over the years with an unhealthy scalp, but now I have my homemade Scalp Mask.

There are only six ingredients in this recipe!  Three of them are essential oils, and three are carrier oils.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when shopping for products:

-With carrier oils, it is important to look for expeller- or cold- pressed oils.  This means that no chemicals were added to pull the oils from the nut or seed

-Make sure your carrier oils are hexane-free.  Again, it means chemicals were part of the extraction process.

-Do a little research on your carrier oil brand and be sure you feel comfortable with them.  All of the carrier oils I used here are NOW brand because it's what my local health food store carries, but it's not neccessarily my favorite brand or one that I'd say is significantly better than others.

-For essential oils, I only use the Young Living brand.  Their Seed to Seal promise makes me certain I'm getting pure, potent, unaltered oils made from plants not treated with toxins.  Young Living oils are grown with therapuetic properties in mind and are tested to ensure those properties are intact.

-There are many store-bought brands of essential oils, but they are often diluted with fillers or made from plants that wouldn't pass Seed to Seal testing.  I've compared other brands side by side with Young Living - I don't buy store brand oils.

Essential Oil Scalp Mask

In a two-ounce bottle combine the following:

1/2 ounce argan oil

1/2 vegetable glycerin

1 ounce almond oil (also known as sweet almond oil)

30 drops each of Cedarwood, Tea Tree (Melaleuca alternifolia), and Rosemary essential oils

Shake well before each use.  Apply directly to the scalp all over or wherever needed and let sit for 1-2 minutes before shampooing.  If oil remains, shampoo a second time before conditioning. 

This recipe has been a God-send for me.  I use it each time I shampoo to nourish my scalp.  I'm no longer scratching or dealing with an embarrassing scalp!  And as a bonus, Cedarwood can help promote strong hair growth. 

My hair is thick and a little on the drier side, so these carrier oils working great for me.  I also only wash my hair once every few days.  If you find that this particular combination of carrier oils leaves your hair feeling oily, there are lots of other carrier oils that you can swap in until you find the right balance for you - not all carrier oils are the same!

Budget Basics

The summer I finished college, I quickly got a part-time job.  Don't misunderstand, though, this was not the kind of part-time job that helped me squeak by - the first few months, as I worked my way into more hours, I was making $300-400 a month.  Talk about being broke.

By the time the winter came, I was more in the realm of $600-800 - enough to keep my car rolling and make the minimum student loan payments when they kicked in while my parents covered everything else in my life.

The next spring, I got a promotion, and started making enough to put me above the poverty line.  I knew it was time to make a budget.

There are a million people and blogs out there that will tell you how to set a budget, and I did a lot of research before making my first budget.  Two years later, my budget has changed to reflect a growing income and changing student loan payments, but the main tenets have remained the same.  A budget is personal, so my budget theory is personal.  I believe a good budget should:

• Focus first on paying for necessities: rent, groceries, utilities, transportation
• Focus second on paying off debt.  NOT minimum payments, but aggressively paying it off.
• Be envelope-based.  This means that you intentionally set aside a certain amount to spend in each category (groceries, gas, clothes, enterntainment, etc) and when you run out of money in that category, you stop spending for the month.
• Think long-term.  If you're paying insurance every six months, calculate the monthly amount and include it in your budget so you aren't spending money you'll need soon.
• Reflect your priorities.  It's more important to me to build up a "romance fund" so I can see my long-distance guy than to buy new clothes, and the amounts I put in each category reflect that.
• Be zero-sum.  The total of your spending categories should equal your income.  Every dollar should go to a category, with no extra.  If you plan out each category and have extra, recalculate.  Give yourself a little breathing room in tight categories, add to your debt pay-down plan, or put the money in your savings every month.
• Hurt a little.  If your budget doesn't pinch a little and make you think twice about purchases, then it is probably not getting you toward your long-term goals (yes, you should have long-term financial goals).

If it's your first time making a budget, it can seem kind of impossible to figure out what categories to create and how much to put in them.  To help get started, I really like Dave Ramsey's Monthly Cash Flow Plan.  It lists more than 50 categories you should think about, and it offers "optimal" percentages to help you see what's reasonable or not.  Again, my percentages don't always line up because some categories are more important than others - I don't always agree with Dave Ramsey - but it helps me be more conscious of where I might be spending too much.

Triumphant Return

I've neglected this blog much too long. 

I could blame it all on being busy at work, but that's not honest.  The fact is, I've been pretty darn lazy over the last ten months, and when I'm not being lazy it's because I'm overwhelmed.  Or in some cases, dealing with emotions that I can't take captive.

Starting my new job last July was a whirlwind.  Being in event management full-time is exactly what I wanted, and I am so pleased to be back in the non-profit world.  Non-profit work, by definition, is mission-driven.  I am always emotionally connected to my work, no matter where I am. I need something to believe in that is more than the numbers  on my paycheck.

I'm now working at an RELC.  Don't know what that is?  Trust me, no one does.  RELC stands for Residential Environmental Learning Center.  In short, schools arrange to bring a group of students to our site.  They stay overnight (typically 3-day, 2-night trips), and we teach the students about a host of different subjects - everything from macroinvertebrates and sustainable energy to historical Ojibwe culture and teambuilding.  We also work with community colleges, universities, and private events like staff retreats and weddings.

My job is to schedule all of that.  After almost a year there, I can understand why my position was created; there used to be two people that were me, one who handled educational groups and one to handle private events.  Now I'm there doing both, and while I think it's going more smoothly (based on horror stories I've heard), it also means I have zero downtime.  While my ed department colleagues have a season from September to June (the school year), I have the ed season and all its busyness, followed by the absolute busiest season for private events.  So it goes.

There are struggles in my job, like any.  We've sadly lost staff members this year - one abandoned her contract for a new job, one was diagnosed with a rapidly progressing cancer, and another also fell ill.  We also had to wait ten months to fill a full-time position (we're still working on that one) and we turned over our entire kitchen staff.  Despite them, we've worked with over 1,000 K-12 students this year, and we have the thank you cards to prove they had fun and learned with us.  I'm not sure there is anything more satisfying than watching kids learn.

When the days get hard, I can take a break to check out views like this:



Like all things in life, there is so much beauty and joy inside of and despite the struggles.

Moving, Again

When I was a kid, we weren't one of those families that moved.  I never, ever had to change schools.  My family moved once, from a trailer house into a house, when I was a toddler, and that was all it ever was.  We swapped bedrooms a few times, rearranged furniture regularly, remodeled and remodeled and remodeled, even had our address change when the county installed rural street names, but my house was always my house.

From 2009-2013, I moved every three to nine months (thanks, college).  Honestly, I got to be a pro at it.  I could fit everything, including a tv, mini fridge, and microwave, in my Buick sedan.  It became a cycle of knowing when to unpack, what to leave behind, and when to start bringing things back home to make those last days of school less cluttered.

After graduation, I stayed with my parents for eleven months.  Then I moved again, into my new apartment onsite at my job, with no firm idea how long I would be there or where I would go after.

It's time to move again.  Almost 15 months later, I look around my apartment, and my thoughts are all about how to pack and which items can leave first.  It doesn't feel like I've been here so long, and yet every day I've been here also feels like a week.  So many things have accumulated in my apartment.  As my first time living alone, I supplied everything in this room, no more college roommates to split half of the household items with, and an entire space to hold whatever craft supplies and books and papers my heart desires.

With just a couple days left, I'm at the juncture of needing to pack and having zero desire to pack.  I've already taken home several boxes, and a few more are all ready to go, but I hate committing to what I won't need in the next couple of days.  Knowing how little time I will have to do any packing on move day is just making me that much more boxes in by the entire process.

The only good thing about packing and moving is purging.  I have already taken my garbage out three times this week.  Things that had gotten shoved on a shelf or mixed in with a stack of "keepers" are now exposed and on their way out.  Old catalogs? Recycled.  Dried up pens?  Tossed. Out with the old really does usher in the new - and I am so, so ready for the new.

But I still hesitate before I throw some things away, even some obvious things.  I know that I can be a bit of a hoarder, that I don't always let things go when I should, and I have those moments about the move and job as well.  This is where I'm comfortable, this is where I'm safe, and this is where I know my place.  It takes courage to change; I've never considered myself particularly brave.  But here we are.

"...If he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat."        --Theodore Roosevelt