Rachel Knows... You've been doing what?!

I've had several things I've meant to blog about, but things kept coming up and I kept putting off blogging. I was all ready to take pictures of Jeremy making his low calorie Taco Soup and then I found out that he'd not been following the low calorie recipe and he's been doubling some things and leaving out other things and I was just mad and didn't know the new serving size and the calories in each serving and I was just mad, so mad it made me write a paragraph length run on sentence!

Then I was going to take pictures of Jeremy building his raised garden bed and I wake up one morning and he’s already built the damn thing! Then I was going to take picture of him planting our vegetables and he did that before I could take pictures of that! I think he’s not digging the picture taking for the blog thing. That’s an understatement!

I’ve also been pretty immersed in my exercising lately. Including all of the working out, shower taking and hair drying it is about 2 and a half hours of time taken up.  I’ve been doing Turbo Fire for 3 weeks now and I love it! I’ve lost 1 and ¾ inches on my waist so far! I don’t know about weight. I was weighing obsessively every morning and my weight kept going up and pissing me off. I’m building muscle, so my weight doesn’t even matter. It’s the inches and the jean size that matters. Speaking of that, I’ve gone down a size already!

I still am not feeling very great and I have an appointment with an endocrinologist on the 12^th, so I’m hoping I find something out about my thyroid condition soon after that.

Wedding planning was pretty much done in one week, but considering how long me and Jeremy have been together and how long we’ve been engaged it’s not like this was my first rodeo looking at wedding things. The only part of it that has been stressful is the honeymoon planning. Isn’t that supposed to be the relaxing and fun part? I’m just so confused about where to go. Reading reviews of resorts or rental houses makes it 10 million times harder. It is hard for me to look past the negative reviews of places. I’m also scared to fly, but then I think about hours and hours and hours in a car and that idea sucks too. Anyway, hopefully I think of some sort of craft or take pictures of some more swatches of makeup or something. I’ve missed blogging, but my mind has drawn a blank at this point in time. I’m going to think hard about things to write about.

Rachel Knows... Ladies, Be Aware and Share. A first hand account of a heart attack by a female survivor.

My mother asked me if she could write a post warning women about the different symptoms we experience when we're having a heart attack. Everyone knows to be wary of pain down the left arm, pain in the chest and all of the other classic signs, but a lot of women don't experience those at all. Women experience symptoms that are easily confused with many other things. Staying on top of your heart health is very important. It is the one way as a woman we can put two and two together to realize these symptoms are most likely a heart attack. As my mother will go on to explain in her guest blog we had no clue she was having a heart attack. She experienced what the American Heart Association describes as discomfort in other areas of the upper body and other signs. You can click on each of those tabs on their website to see what falls under those categories. I thought maybe she was suffering from exhaustion at the most, so I didn't even ride along in the ambulance at my mother's insistence that it was no big deal. I wanted to go and be with her, but I knew that I didn't need to argue with her at a time like that, so I just let her go so she could just get to the hospital faster. I know my mother though and she is as tough as nails and if mentions the hospital (which she never, ever had in my 21 years on earth at that time) then by God I'm taking her to the hospital without hesitation because something is very wrong. Without further ado here is my lovely momma!

Rachel Knows... Balayage (Hair Painting Highlights) and eSalon.com

I have been dying my mom’s hair at home for many years now. I stopped for a little while and she was doing it herself, because I seemed to become extra sensitive to the strong smell of hair dye. We found a brand that was ammonia free and it was a lot better for me, but it seemed to make her hair very brassy and orange. She had decided to go completely gray, but I wasn’t fond of that idea. My Mommaw never went gray. I just assumed my mom would do the same and I never even gave her going gray a second thought until she said she was doing it. She went about 4-5 months without dying her hair. It was almost grown out, but the ends were so, so, so orange. I asked her if she would dye her hair for my wedding and she graciously agreed to. She came across a website that she found on Oprah’s site called, eSalon.com. It is a site that customizes hair color based on a series of questions about your hair. It takes everything into consideration and gives you their recommendation. You have the option to choose a different color if you want though. We figured we’d try it out. She chose Dark Brown – Matte Ash. I think they added a special something to help with the brassiness, since we mentioned that was a problem. I didn’t take a picture of the packaging and products inside because I wasn’t sure if I would blog about it or not. I’ll take pictures of everything when we her next batch ships in 3 weeks. I also forgot to take pictures of her hair after it was done. Not being a very thorough blogger, now am I? I’ll get a picture up tomorrow. We ended up adding some highlights to it with L’Oreal’s Crème Gloss Color because it turned out waaaaaay darker than we’d intended. I took pictures of the highlighting process. I’d never done highlights, so I was just guessing how to do it. I basically just did hair painting or Balayage. I just spaced them out in small increments and they look really, really natural and they lightened up her hair and made it not look so Elvis black. Here are some pictures of the highlighting process. There really isn’t much at all to it. Her hair doesn’t appear to be Elvis or Kris Kardashian black in the picture because of the flash, but it is in real life.  

Rachel Knows... Sweet Lips! D.I.Y. Lip Exfoliator.

I'm in a weird frame of mind right now. I still don't have any definitive answers about my thyroid. I just know I feel worse as the days pass. I think it is more mental than anything, but I just want this thyroid ripped out if I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. That’s all I’ll mention about all of that, right this moment, until I find out something 100% and when I make a decision about whether to have surgery or not. Now onto the superficial side of life!

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I have very dry skin. This includes my lips. I was skimming Pinterest about a year ago and found an easy, natural way to get smooth lips. I did this after I first saw the pin for about 2 weeks straight every night and my lips had never been in better shape. I don’t remember why I stopped, but I haven’t done it in a while. I figured I’d get back in the habit and show you guys how easy it is!

Rachel Knows... Who stole my toothbrush?!

I've had a blog post planned since the day after my pore strips blog. I've been meaning to make a new blog post about what I had planned, but there are two things that have been holding me back 1. I can't find my tiny, Spongebob Squarepants toothbrush that I need to finish the blog post and 2. I have been having issues with my thyroid that have been consuming me and my time. So whenever I find out what is going on with my thyroid and when I get a replacement baby toothbrush I will have my next blog post up and ready. It is all about smooth, sweet (literally) lips and how quick, cheaply and easily you can have them. Bye bye, lip flakies! See you soon!