I Like Names

I really like names. 

I have a name app on my phone that I play will for hours; I look up new names I've heard, find all the names of a certain meaning or origin. It's wonderful.
When i have to name anything i put a lot of thought and effort into it or i use names that are meaningful to me. For example my pets names:

• Jazz. She came with this name and I didn't want to change it. We started calling her Jazz Master but I also like that it ties into my family as my youngest sister is Jasmine.
• Blues. I wanted something that played off of Jazz and was unique and pretty. In truth her name is Blues Clues since who didn't love that show as a kid? People always compliment her name on its own and when I say them together; Jazz and Blues. 
• Sek. My sister named him after her favorite Dalek in Doctor Who, a show we both LOVE. 
• Drogo. After Khal Drogo in A Song of Ice and Fire. I was just into the second book at the time and I wanted a tribute to my favorite character. As a bonus I call his cage The Khalasar.
• Athos. My favorite book is The Three Musketeers and Athos is my favorite musketeer. In truth I would totally name my son Athos but the lizard already claimed it so that name is off the table. 

Yeah i have a zoo. Be that as it may I really do love to name things so as something a little different I'm going to be doing a names tag! Some of these questions as for names I'd name my children and I'm going to put names I would but not names I'm going to...if I even ahve kids. So they'd be names for 5th and 6th kids basically lol My top few names for actual children are highly personal and ever evolving. i want them to be known my a select few so that if I ever do have children I can have them and not feel everyone was already expecting them. Here we go:

1. List your favourite and least favourite names from the SSA 2013 BabyName List. (why do you like or dislike them and would you use a nickname?

Okay i chose 2 boys and 2 girls for likes; Alexander, Micheal, Isabella, and Mia. 

The name Alexander means protector and its such an old and strong name. I really love 'classic' names for boys which is also why i went Micheal. Micheal is a family name for me as well, i've always liked it. Both of these names i like for girls as well as boys and I'd nickname them Alex and Mike.

Isabella is the name one of my friends recently named her little girl and I love her so much I can't think of a prettier name right now! I call her Belle which means beauty and is the name of my favorite Disney princess. Mia is also a family name; in fact my cousin Micheal named his daughter Mia. I just really like the simplicity of it.

My least favorite names are Jayden and Madison, i hate names ending in 'den' or 'lyn' or any of that. And 've never really liked the name Madison.

2. If you had twins, what would you name them? (G/G, B/B, B/G)

Aislin/Alivia Micheal/Derek Alivia/Micheal

Aislin means 'dream', Alivia mean 'peace' or 'tree of life', Derek means 'famous ruler', and Micheal is a biblical name which means little and less but it's a family name. I love all of these names and I love them together as well.

3. If you could change your name to anything, what would it be?

I wouldn't want to. At all. I love the name Tarina.

4. You have 4 children. Any gender. Their first names all have to start with the same letter. What would their names be?

Zea, Zachary, Zues, Zarina

LOVE 'Z' names. The name Zea (just pronounced Z-uh) has been with me since I was a child. i always loved it and wanted a daughter named Zea Nichole. Zachary just because i like the sound of those 'classic' biblical names even if I don't like the biblical meanings. Zues, again love the sound and I love the historical, religious, mythological names. Zues is closer to my heart than a biblical name, I was/am very into Greek religion and myth. Zarina is my name with a 'Z', it also means golden and is simply very pretty.

5. Favourite animal inspired name.

Raven

I'm from Baltimore, I have a cousin named Raven, I love Poe and his poem The Raven. Lots of meaning and history there. 

6. Favourite colour inspired name.

Blue. I mean i named my cat Blues. I do also like Red, I go by Red a lot on various places online.

7. Top 3 boy names.

Leonardo, Jackson, Micheal

8. Top 3 girl names.

Zea, Alivia, Tuesday (I love day/month names)

9. Favourite celebrity baby name.

Blue Ivy

10. Ultimate guilty pleasure name.

Mira/Mirror

I pronounce the word Mirror as Mi-rah and I've always loved the sound of that and wanted to name a daughter Mirror for the longest time....

11. Most hated baby names.

Things that end in Lyn or den

12. Choose a baby name based on a food/drink.

Sunday Shortcake

13. Choose a baby name based on a month.

Spoiler alert, one of my actual 'Will use' names is a month!

I love them all so I'll say January because it's a close second for favorite

14. Choose a baby name from Twilight.

I don't know anything about Twilight....Can i do game of Thrones instead? In that case Myrcella or Aerys 

I looked it up and I like the name Renesmee if only it were spelled different.

15. Choose a baby name that is already in your family.

Micheal, Morgan, Josephine, Zelda

This one is hard because a lot of my 'List' names are based on family names. 

Okay so to top this off I'm going to do one of my favorite things. The alphabet game! Just the first girls and boys name I can think of and like for each letter. If they have only one names it's gender neutral. 

• Alivia/Aerys
• Blaney/Blake
• Cleary
• December/Derek
• Ever
• Friday/Frederick
• Gaia/Gabriel
• Hillary/Hasani
• Isabella/Ira
• JoAnn/Joseph
• Kai/Kahlil
• Lace/Leonardo
• Micheal
• November
• Olli/Omar
• Patricia/Patrick
• Quinn
• Rain/River
• September/Samuel 
• Terah/Tarin
• Ursula/Ulysses
• Venus/Victor
• Wednesday/Waseem
• Xian
• Yardley/ Yanni
• Zarina/Zues

DIY Rag Rug

We've all seen them! And it's time for my natural blog to joint the legions making rag rugs!
i don't think i need to go into too much detail here but here we go:

3 pairs of holey jeans

Get to cutting!

A morning of documentaries later

Wishey wash

My house was covered in these strips!

Jean Ball!

This took a few hours and rubbed my hands raw

This step was a pain in my ass, and lower back from leaning

DONE!!!

I put my new rug in front of my shower and it's working wonders! the cats like it too, its not uncommon to find them napping on it :) I loved making it so much i ended up making another tiny on out of old tee shirts jsut a few days ago:

It's only about a foot and a half across

I love my rag rugs and want to make more things out of the old worn clothes I have lying around. I don't like throwing textiles out if I can help it so we'll see more projects in the future!

PEACE!

NO POO CHALLENGE!

circa 1998 age 4

Me and my hair have a looong history of struggles. We have fought many a time. Tears were shed. Scissors have been involved. But after 20 years I think I've finally gotten my hair routine where I want it! Here's a quick history:

Age 0-10: My Daddy did my hair! Lots of Pink moisturizer, gels, and braids. He treated my hair just as if it were 'black' hair even though it simply is not but it worked well :)
Age 10-15: I started doing my own hair! It was a wreck, I washed everyday or every other day, was very lazy about moisturizer and I didn't have a proper comb/brush so tangles/frizz/split ends were rampant. My hair was quite unhealthy and I wore it in a pony tale always.

circa 2009 age 15

Age 15-19: I found a brush! Goody is a life savor, my Goody Ouchless paddle brush saved my life. I started brushing my hair out in the shower, moisturizing with Pink and then braiding my hair for bed. For the first time I could wear my hair out and I experimented with different routines over this period but I mostly washed every other day and used tons of Pink for moisture and shine. My hair finally started looking healthier.
Age 19-20: I discovered Mixed Chicks! (Review to come) I started washing only once a week, deep conditioning, and using a leave in conditioner instead of Pink. My hair has never been healthier or curlier!

Okay so my washing schedule was about once a week and between washes I brush it out in the shower and use leave in to help combat frizz. Since I'm bad at schedules though my wash schedule is more like every week or so, so i'd say 3-4 washes a month. So when i first learned of the No Shampoo challenge/experiment I though it could work but I wasn't willing to give up my Mixed Chicks (It's literally made for me!) but now my shampoo is running low and I'm out of conditioner so i figure instead of buying new i'll just try to go without!
Now part of this is wanting my hair to be as healthy as possible, I love my hair and I want it to be as wonderful as it can be but the other part of this challenge is to use less products. I've never been a 'girly' girl, i don't wear make-up of have a million different products to use but I do 4 products for my hair, not daily but I own 4 bottles and I want to limit that even more. Maybe I can get to just a bottle of shampoo for a monthly of bi-monthly washing one day and thus us less and put less bottles into landfills.
I know some people will used baking soda and vinegar for this challenge but I'm going cold turkey. No washing! Sounds gross but since I comb my hair under water it will be rinsed every day and i always loved my hair after a few days no wash anyway.
Since i have super curly hair i'm hoping that my natural oils will work well to keep it healthy looking and I won't get dry. So i started yesterday by washing all of the crap out of my hair one last time and I will keep you all updated each week (or so). Have some pictures!

Day 1 No-poo

Last month, a few days after wash

Organic Grocery Haul

Hi there!

I have been trying very hard to find the encouragement to come back to this blog. I love this blog. I feel this blog can go places. But I'm bad at finding interesting things to post so today we're going to do my recent grocery haul.

My New Years Resolution was/is to be more conscious about what I buy and how I eat and just where my money is going in general. I have been really good at that so check out our grocery haul and meal plan.

I had a budget of $70 for a weeks worth of food for 2 people and this is what I got! (Not pictured is a large package of chicken breasts and a large cantaloupe melon Oops!)

Okay so the first thing i picked up was actually at the flea market; I grabbed the melon, two ears of sweet corn, and a cucumber. All local and very large for only $4.50. I was pretty happy with that purchase because I LOVE cantaloupe and my roommate really likes corn and cucumber. So win!
Then I went to my local Whole Foods, not the *best* place to do my weekly shopping but I love that place. Normally I go to Giant and I stick to the natures Promise brand as much as possible but I find

that many of the Whole Foods 365 brand are cheaper than natures Promise, and I don't know if NP is GMO free and 365 is.
At Whole foods i got 3 bunches of bananas because my roommate made it clear that he wants "bananas erry day", and that is an exact quote. We go through bananas quickly though and are already almost out :( I also grabbed 2 mangoes because they were on sale, and 2 bell peppers.

Then I picked up chicken because it's super easy to prepare in many ways and cheap. I LOVE having chicken because we can bake it, fry it, cut it into strips, use it in pasta. Anything. Brandon is getting tired of it so I am not sure what to do about that. If it were up to him we'd have burgers all day erry day.
We have plenty of pasta because whenever there is a deal i stock up with 4-5 boxes so i grabbed 2 jars of this great pasta sauce (photo below). i got peanut butter and mixed berry jelly for Brandons lunches (though i forgot bread -_-) Last I grabbed eggs and some frozen veggies.

We only drink water and the only things I forgot were rice, and bread. But I can get my grandfather to get me those.
Meal plan? Well I made spaghetti with chicken Monday and we haven't had dinner since (we skip dinner a lot) but Brandon has been having eggs for breakfast everyday and I've been making smoothies for my breakfast. Monday we had mango banana, then Tuesday we had the same but I added a spoonful of peanut butter and Brandon hated it. I loved it though. This morning i had peanut butter banana smoothie. Next week i'm going to grab bags of frozen fruit and leafy greens so I can incorporate the things Brandon won't eat into my diet via smoothie :P

Brandon and I want to incorporate one vegetarian day a week, and this week it will be stuffed peppers with rice and maybe beans? Probably with broccoli since Brandon loves broccoli.

Okay so that's it I guess, we don't get much since we are on an extremely limited budget but we eat well and that's what matters! I really want people to see that healthy eating can be done at all budgets. We need to encourage more people to shop local, shop fresh, and shop real food! You don't need a Whole Foods budget but you can have great healthy foods from the grocery store or the farmers market.

See you all tomorrow for another life update!

Swamp Water: MRM Relax All

Sometimes I can't sleep. And it sucks.

I'm up until 2 or 3 am and I KNOW I need to be awake in a few hours but I can't get to sleep. So when this came in my Conscious Box for February I was pretty excited to give it a try.

"Relax-All™ is an amino acid and herbal supplement designed to support relaxation and calming to muscles in order to achieve a more restful sleep at night." - MRM-usa.com

Personally I prefer to drink chamomile tea to calm me down and help me sleep. it works wonders i swear but I was so willing to give this a try. Until I saw how big the pills were.
So much nope. I can not swallow capsules that big; I still break my pills in half! There were two included in the sample pack and the back said for sleep to take about 3 so I decided to open both and mix them with water. I have done this with many pill capsules in my past so I went into it expecting it to be gross but this was much worse than I thought!
It looked, smelled, and tasted like swamp water. Nothing I did could get my body to stop myself from simply chugging this glass of chunky mud. I tried so hard to drink it all. I paced my kitchen staring at it (at 2 am mind) trying to convince myself to just finish it off! I even called my best friend and told him all about the situation so i could try to get moral support to finish it. I'm not lying, I did.
In the end I couldn't finish it all. I drank about half but it was simply too much! I would NOT recommend doing what I did. Either swallow the pills or mix them with something strongly flavored.

BUT! The big question! Did it work? Short answer; yes. Long answer; it knocked me out in less than half an hour. i could feel it start to work soon after I drank it and I was asleep in no time. THAT BEING SAID! I'm sticking to chamomile for now. Delicious delicious chamomile :)


Final Verdict: It works but I don't want or need it.

Love Water: Soap Box Soaps

Today, the 22 of March is National World Water Day and Unify along with the lovely Ta'Kaiya Blaney invite us all to #lovewater at 3pm your local time. say a prayer, preform a ritual, contemplate what water means to you and why you love water. This global wave will kick off a year of action to save and protect water.

In honor of this I will be reviewing Soap Box Soaps a company that sells all natural soaps. They have a wide variety of hand soaps, body washes, and bar soaps. The great thing about Soap Box Soaps is that when you buy soap they donate clean water, vitamins, and soap to a child in need.

You can learn more about their movement and their amazing team HERE

 I ordered Black Body Wash from Soap Box. It's a bit on the pricey side, including shipping it cost me about $13 and I was a bit upset because I can buy other organic soaps much cheaper. It wasn't until i recieved my package that I realized $13 is a small price to pay...

Now here's a story about Soap Box Soaps:
My soap was taking a LOOONG time to arrive after I'd been notified it was shipped. Like 3 weeks. It was really bugging me because there was no reason for it to take so long and there had been no missed deliveries and I had the address correct. I was very upset to say the least. Well, out of no where at about 6 in the evening I received this:

Hi Tarina,

My name is Jason from SoapBox Soaps and am contacting you because of an issue with your last order, #8064 (1 Black Body Wash). Your package came back as return to sender due to nobody at this address by your name. I just wanted to confirm the correct address before i resend your Black Body Wash. The address i have is:

Please let me know if this is correct or if you have another address you would like for me to ship your order to. Thanks for your support!

Best,

Jason 

--

Jason Rosen

Graphic Design

SoapBox Soaps

jason.rosen@soapboxsoaps.com

301.442.7641

:D I was very  happy to say the least so I replied thanking him and apologizing for the inconvenience. I gave him another address to send the package to and thanked him again. Not even an hour later I received:

Tarina, no inconvenience at all! I just wanted to make sure your package got to you. Thanks for the quick response, I will try to get your package sent back out to you today!

Best,

Jason 

Sent from my iPhone

I cannot say I have ever been more satisfied with customer service as I was when I read that email. Soap Box really does care about their customers and they just earned a life long one! 
 Now about the soap itself. I love this soap. It is all natural which means no synthetic detergents, dyes, or chemicals. I can tell the difference. It doesn't dry my skin as much as regular body washes but I feel clean after using it. 
My friends and I couldn't figure out what 'Black' smelled like but once i used it in the shower it really started to smell like licorice. It's clearly the 'mens scent' but I like it. 

 All in all I LOVE Soap Box Soaps and what they are doing to help save the world one purchase at a time. They really do help the consumer mae a difference with our everyday purchase. It really is worth the extra money. 

In honor of National World Water Day (a bit of an oxymoron) head over and purchase some hand soap which provides clean drinking water for a child in need. The body wash provides vitimins and the bar soap provides soap.

Final Verdict:  Life long Customer!

Hipster Deck Box

My collection of Magic: The Gathering decks is growing and my lovely old tin deck box is just too small now. I don't want multiple boxes because that gets annoying so what does one do in this situation?

Upcycle of course!

I may or may not end up removing the label but for now it's fine. Living green doesn't always mean buying 'green' stuff, sometimes it's just using what you already have :)