Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Home Remedies for Graying Hair Want to get rid of your gray hair naturally? Try these home remedies for graying hair.


Not ready to be a silver fox? Sure, you can color your gray hair, but coloring your hair and maintaining the new shade can be time-consuming, expensive, and damaging to the hair itself. While you can’t stop nature from changing your hair color to gray, you can reverse the graying with some simple home remedies.
Hair grows gray naturally, so why not reverse it naturally as well?
First, you need to understand what turns your hair gray. There may be a variety of causes, such as stress, illness, heredity, vitamin and nutrient deficiency, or any combination thereof. But the key issue is a rapid decline in melanin, which gives pigmentation, or color, to the hair. When the melanin molecules separate from each other, the hair takes on a gray appearance. When the body’s production of melanin decreases, the hair turns gray. So to increase your body’s production of melanin you need to fortify yourself inside and out with these home remedies for graying hair.
  • Beef up the protein. Be sure to eat protein-rich foods such as lean meat, soy, whole grains, eggs, and cereals.
  • Be strong as iron. Each day, eat foods rich in iron, minerals, and vitamins A and B, such as green leafy vegetables, bananas, tomatoes, liver, yogurt, kidney beans, dried apricots, oysters, eggs, and sunflower seeds.
  • Take a pinch of salt. Iodine, most commonly found in table salt, is essential for the production of melanin. Add iodine-rich foods to your diet, such as bananas, carrots, and fish. Avoid other types of salts (such as sea salt and kosher salt, for example) and use ordinary iodized table salt instead.
  • Mellow out. Stress reduction is an easy home remedy for graying hair. Studies have shown that the link between psychological stress and gray hair is not folklore. Rest, exercise, meditate, and find other ways to relieve anxiety and stress.
  • Slather on the butter — on your head, that is. Cow’s milk butter massaged into hair roots helps prevent additional graying. Melt the butter so it is pliable, then spread into your hair and scalp twice a week. Rinse well.
  • If you live near a store that specializes in ethnic foods, ask the owner for Indian gooseberry. Cut the fruit into slices and soak overnight in water, then let dry. Set water aside and boil the dried fruit in coconut oil until the solid matter disintegrates. Rub the dusty paste on hair, then rinse with the coconut oil and water mixture.
  • Try amaranth if you can find it (your best bets are Indian food stores). The fresh juice of the leaves of this vegetable as well as the grain varieties help hair retain its natural color and prevent it from graying.
  • Add curry to your food and your hair. Eat lots of curry in condiments, sauces, or mixed with buttermilk. Boil curry leaves in coconut oil to form a hair tonic. Rub on hair to bring the color back to its original pigmentation.
  • Grate fresh ginger, mix with honey, and set aside in a jar. Eat one teaspoon of the mixture every day.
  • Mix one tablespoon of table salt (with iodine) into a cup of strong black tea (no milk). Massage into scalp and let sit for an hour before rinsing.
  • Make a paste of henna powder, yogurt, and fenugreek seeds (also known as methi seeds). Or use methi seed powder, coffee, basil juice, and mint juice. Apply to hair, let sit for three hours, then shampoo hair.
  • Try ribbed gourd, which is said to enrich hair roots and restore pigment to hair. Cut the gourd into pieces, let them dry, and then soak in coconut oil for three days. Boil until there is black residue in the pot, then massage oil mixture into scalp. Rinse and style as usual. 
 http://www.dailyglow.com/hair-care-tips/home-remedy-for-premature-graying-of-hair.html

Summer is on its way, great idea for dessert...


Refreshing Flower arrangement...


Monday, April 15, 2013


Here's a dozen of my favorite things never to apologize for:

1) Never apologize for acting on your instincts.
2) Never apologize for being passionate.
3) Never apologize for being smart.
4) Never apologize for demanding respect.
5) Never apologize for saying no.
6) Never apologize for not embracing someone else's agenda.
7) Never apologize for disagreeing.
8) Never apologize for your faith.
9) Never apologize for your own sense of creativity.
10) Never apologize for ordering dessert.
11) Never apologize for being funny.
12) Never apologize for living your truth.
Every one of us casts a shadow.
There hangs about us, a sort of a strange, indefinable something, which we call personal influence--that has its effect on every other life on which it falls. It goes with us wherever we go. It is not something we can have when we want to have it--and then lay aside when we will, as we lay aside a garment. It is something that always pours out from our lives . . . as light from a lamp, as heat from flame, as perfume from a flower.

The ministry of personal influence is something very wonderful. Without being conscious of it, we are always impressing others by this strange power that exudes from us. Others watch us--and their thinking and actions are modified by our influence."

"Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity." Ephesians 5:15-16

~J. R. Miller, "The Shadows We Cast"


Raku

Fazer raku é uma experiência que envolve os quatro elementos, terra, ar, fogo e água - todos contribuem para o resultado final.

Começa-se por modelar uma peça de barro poroso, cozendo-a a uma temperatura não muito elevada. Depois, aplica-se o vidrado na peça, e leva-se esta de novo ao forno, a uma temperatura de 800 a 1000 graus.

Atingida esta temperatura, as peças são retiradas ainda incandescentes do forno e colocadas numa atmosfera redutora - isto é, num ambiente com pouco oxigénio. Na prática, isto equivale a mergulhá-las numa substância orgânica como a serradura. É nesta altura que por vezes surge alguma chama; é necessário tapar rapidamente o recipiente da serradura, e deixa-se a peça ficar  durante alguns minutos. O fumo que vai escapando neste processo é um lençol espesso, quase viscoso, amarelado e muito tóxico.

Na terceira fase do processo, a peça é retirada da serradura e rapidamente mergulhada em água.

Quando a peça já está suficientemente arrefecida para podermos pegar-lhe, é retirada da água e esfregada de maneira a retirar a serradura carbonizada que ficou agarrada.


Todas estas acções permitem criar efeitos singulares: craquelês, brilhos e texturas especiais, e que - aí reside a magia - apenas em parte são controláveis. Não é possível fazer duas peças de raku iguais, já que não se consegue ter sempre exactamente as mesmas circunstâncias. A porosidade do barro, a quantidade de vidrado e a forma como este se aplica, a temperatura do forno, a madeira de que é feita a serradura, a temperatura da peça, o contacto maior ou menor da superfície da peça com a serradura, o tempo de imersão em água - um instante a mais ou a menos, e abrem-se mais uma rachas, o verde fica mais azul, o brilho fica mais ou menos intenso. As zonas da peça onde não foi colocado vidrado ficam totalmente pretas, o que permite criar contrastes muito interessantes com o vidrado branco, sobretudo quando há craquelê

Raku - glazing, firing, reduction and results


Vintage Voque Fashion









THE SERENITY PRAYER

GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY
TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE;
COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN;
AND WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.

LIVING ONE DAY AT A TIME;
ENJOYING ONE MOMENT AT A TIME;
ACCEPTING HARDSHIPS AS THE PATHWAY TO PEACE;
TAKING, AS HE DID, THIS SINFUL WORLD
AS IT IS, NOT AS I WOULD HAVE IT;
TRUSTING THAT HE WILL MAKE ALL THINGS RIGHT
IF I SURRENDER TO HIS WILL;
THAT I MAY BE REASONABLY HAPPY IN THIS LIFE
AND SUPREMELY HAPPY WITH HIM
FOREVER IN THE NEXT.
AMEN.

--REINHOLD NIEBUHR