Gettin Curly- Remington curler review

Have you ever been getting ready in a house without AC and little children running around craving attention and all of you need to be ready to head out the door within the hour? Is the diaper bag packed? Are the children dressed! Wait....have you had a bath recently? Is lunch in the crockpot? It will be 3pm before we return home. Breakfast has been made, check. Have I showered....yes yes that at least is done. Where is my Sunday school material? Read my bible, check. Now I better spruce up this mug before we greet the world:) Do we have electricity? Yes! Party dance! Ok, ironing done if necessary. Now...hair. It's 75-85 degrees in my house, do I want to stand under a blow dryer and hot iron for 15 minutes? Then I'll be so sweaty I pull it all up in a clip anyway! But,I'm would like to look nice. My quickly solution- hot rollers.

 

I know they aren't the most popular hair beautifying device but I admit I'm a big fan. I always grew up with them in my house. My mom probably still has the big white case of hot rollers. I used them all the time in high school. Well, for some reason after I left for college and got married I just never bought my own. You know how it is sometimes, we tend to put off spending loads of money on frivolities when we are on a tight budget and then I just forgot about them.

I got it into my head a couple years back that they were just what I needed to speed up my primping time overseas. I didn't want anything big and clunky because shipping is outlandish! So on Amazon I found these:

Remington ceramic compact curlers,12.95. You can see how compact they are in comparison to this 1oz tube of neosporin. Super easy and light to ship. They were a great Christmas gift I received. It is only a 10 piece model but I don't have thick hair so that works just great for me. If you have a full mane this may not do the job...But for me they have been great. I add my overseas adapter and plug it in. Go do one of the hundred chores that need to be done before leaving and come back 5-10 minutes later and they are ready for me. I take 3-4 minutes putting them in and again I'm able to multi-task. 5 minutes later and the job is done.

I love how it looks and it lasts all day! Another pro compared to traditional ironing. Now a note for those who are ready to rush out and buy curlers. You may need a little practice to break in the style you want. I have farely kinky hair so I only need about 5 minutes or its serious Shirley Temple. So beware curly heads! If you are more of the straight haired type you may need longer. I suggest using larger curlers on top for more voluminous curls and smaller ones on the bottom for the thicker longer parter of your hair. Give it a spray and you have an all day look. If you've never given it a try and you are short on time as I am numerous times give it a go! I think you'll be happy with the results.

 

 

 

 

 

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Decorating the Dryer

This is what we affectionate refer to as decorating the dryer:) Does anyone else live somewhere with no closets or laundry rooms? In the little country we live in, dryers are a very rare thing to see. Mostly you will see clothes hanging on flat roofs from clothes lines strung out and on balconies, windowsills and sometimes bushes. When we moved here I decided we needed a dryer for those 3-4 months of rain we receive every year. Luckily those times are within the time of the year we generally have electricity. Little did I know this expensive commodity would be half the size of States side dryers and pretty low heat BUT I was thrilled when I bought it.

For the first few years we owned it, it was in an extra room we didn't use. Without kids we had lots of space! However, after our first arrived we moved into a smaller space and had nowhere to hide our big appliance. Our washer was already in the bathroom, where would we put this big dryer? Solution, the only free corner was our daughters room. So that is when the idea of trying to blend the lovely dryer into the decor of the room. Luckily, the receiving blankets match the decor of the room. Fold and hang to fit! Voila!

I'm pretty sure this will not be in any famous magazines but it's how we roll in 3rd world countries:)

 

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Blog Swap!

Hello Fellow Bloggers,
I recently started "keeping house in the himals". It is a blog based on living in a third world country. I am aware "There is nothing new under the sun":) I'm sure you all already have blogs you like to check out regularly and some people just don't do blogs. We won't be getting too serious at "keeping house in the himals". You are sure welcome to come on over and check it out. It is made up of performances based product reviews for living in a third world countries and how we uniquely accomplish domestic challenges with limited resources. I am initiating a blog swap. I would love for everyone to come give us a look and for those of you with your own blogs please leave a hello and your blog name in the comment section. Look forward to seeing them all!

Pig, Apples & Bread

I'm so excited to finally get to the food posts! My dad once said that "Some people live to eat and some people eat to live". I must admit I am very happy to be in the first group! The #1 thing I wanted to blog about was food but as moms of little tykes will attest many times meal prep time can be the most stressful time of the day! So, though I was eager to write scrumptious posts most meals were thrown together amidst crying children and a tired mom:) But today I was finally able to accomplish my goal; Food pics!

On the menu tonight is Pork cubes (because that's what they sell here), applesauce and homemade stuffing.

My apples were pre-boiled unlike the recipe will instruct because I began by prepping baby food and decided to do it all at once. You can't beat doing two things at once. I'm including pics of the baby food and my all time favorite Baby Bullet. If you live overseas and don't have baby food at your disposal or you are feeling frugal and are wanting to make your own there is one item you MUST have; Baby Bullet blender. It is awesome. It not only will grind your rice, oats,etc. it also blends your food to a beautiful creamy smooth texture. For some strange reason I get a thrill out of seeing my beautifully smooth baby food sitting in baby bullet cups ready to go. The blender also includes 6 storage cups, a freezer 6 cup tray, a cookbook, spatula and a large food cup all for $59. I am on my second Baby Bullet. Not because they are a faulty product but because I have to use it on a transformer and they ware down products a lot faster. So I used it to death! It lasted till my daughter was 2. Below you will see boiled apples and frozen bananas that I blended and the little warrior prince waiting for them.

 

 

And time-out for munchies. Is there any ladies out there that get a whole meal made without leaving the kitchen or having the whole family in the kitchen with you:). If so please leave me your secret in the comment section. No, I don't really mind if my stress level isn't too high ( which that never happens of course!). So this is break #1.

And break #2 for the prepared Apple banana baby food.

It was mmmmmm yum. Especially the stuffing! I admit it tasted better then the quality of the pic:( Sorry!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Clinique Eye Liner Review

Clinique Brush On Cream Eyeliner review

Have you ever taken the time to put on all your make-up? Get everything looking just right. Only to realize 2-3 hours later you could barely tell you had applied any eyeliner at all! Grrrr... Us busy ladies don't have time to be reapplying make-up all day long! Why would we take the precious time we do have to apply something that wears off so quickly?!

Before I found this fantastic product the time expectancy of my applied eyeliner was a few hours at best! It often wore off in less time if I spent any time out in traffic on the back of my husbands motorcycle or driving my little blue scooter. We who live in hardy environments need hardy products to keep up with us!

Not only do I have to deal with environmental influences but from the day I started wearing make-up I have had the tendency to rub my eyes:( I remember my junior high days when I tried to sneak wearing make-up before my parents allowed me to. Well.....I'll tell you I was a pretty sad sneak! I came home from school looking like a raccoon from rubbing my eyes. It didn't take a detective to figure out my discretion. That put an end to that! I was back to clear mascara for a few more years. Also, for many months during the year I am plagued with allergies. Due to all of these contributing factors I was VERY excited to find this product a few years back!

I did an all day progression of pictures for you to see the greatness of this product!

 

 

 

 

While not the greatest view of me, I think you can see how well this product works!

I give it an A+ for third world living. It is a small container but last at least 6 mo. You can learn to apply it as thin or as thick as you like.

You can find it on their website here.

Brush-On Cream Liner | Clinique

 

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Saul's not so small sacrifice- The small things matter!

 

I have recently been reading in I Samuel. I haven't been able to get away from this story of Saul and his sacrifice. It has been really challenging me. I don't often post devotionals but as I have been mulling on this the Lord keeps pushing me to share what He has done in my heart. So here goes!

I Samuel 13:8-11

This passage is the story of Saul taking the place of the prophet and sacrificing.

In the above verses, if you did not already know the severity of the situation from hearing the story previously it would seem like a mundane paragraph. Samuel didn't come, the people were restless, Saul sacrificed; Plain and simple. In fact when I was reading it I skimmed through it so fast I didn't even realize what story it was until I got to the end. Rrrrrrr.......reverse and re-read. Although it didn't seem like a big action scene to me, I don't think it was small thing to Saul. Biblical procedures were very well known back then. I think he knew the position he was stepping into but he was panicking because his followers were straying.

Have you ever been in that position? You had things planned out. God had given you a path to start on. You were following Him and you thought you knew how the Lord would bring it all to pass. You thought because you were following God's plan in your life that things would always make sense. You thought your choices would always be clear. Then....one day things got confusing. All your plans and expectations fell to pieces in a matter of minutes crumbling around your feet. You stood confused and possibly feeling rejected wondering, "What do I do now?". I know God said follow this path....I know he hasn't told me to do anything differently but things don't make sense anymore. So you spent hours agonizing over your confusing situation and conniving what the best plan would be to get out of your present predicament. You came up with what seemed like the answer but you knew it was different from your last marching orders from above. This is when we land right where Saul was. Will we follow our own devices and solutions or will we stay faithful to the directions we've been given?

Many times we insert our own ideas into the problem solving of our life even though we know it doesn't match Gods plan He's given us. We think His plan isn't working right now. My solution makes sense to me and I'm sure He'll understand. When all God wants is us to stick with the plan and wait for Him to bring His will to fruition.

Here is where the Lord has really been working me over.

Often times we read stories like this and think, "big deal he made an offering". That's not a big deal. However, it's the small things in life that make the biggest difference. It's the small things we say to our children, the small things we say to our spouse, the one and two and three days we don't come to his word for guidance and to be fed. All these small things make up our lives. They seem insignificant to us. We think I'll do right when it really matters, but we won't. Many small moments of yelling at our children build a habit of anger and frustration. Many small snipes at our husband build a resentment, distrust and disrespectful attitude towards our husbands. Many days of ignoring the needs of fellow Christians because of selfish desires lead to a self-centered lonely Christian. Many days of disregarding our need for spiritual food and a relationship with the Lord leads to utter chaos and break down in every area of our lives. It truly is the small foxes that spoil every vine in our lives.

My Prayer:

Lord help me not to pass off small sins of anger, laziness, pride and selfishness that will build and bury me underneath its weight. Help me to have a sensitive heart that greaves at mistakes made but also embraces your long suffering forgiveness. Help me stand guard against the attitude that small things don't matter! Help me to build a life that glorifies you through many small good things built into something great.

 

 

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Flowers

FLOWERS, FLOWERS, FLOWERS

As we have moved into our new place I have been tweaking some decor choices. This new house has new beautiful hard wood flooring. Well at least they are now after MUCH TLC. You can see them below at my daughters birthday party. They are gorgeous but paired with my existing decor it's a lil dark. So....I've been contemplating how we can lighten things up a bit.

I went out grocery shopping a couple days ago and decided to stop in the household side of the store and see if I could find some nice white flowers. The Lord definitely shined down on me that day and I found some great artificial hydrangeas and another stem of white flowers that shall remain nameless (bc I know nothing about flowers!) I think they will definitely help in brightening up the space! So after multiple attempts at arranging and re-arranging I think I got it the way I want it! Though I could use some aid from my super talented SIL! But, sadly to say she is 2,000 miles away:( So, we will do the best we can!

One is on top of our kitchen hutch.

The other is on our shoe cabinet. The tiny suede shoes are not decor but total cuteness! Can anyone not get the squeaky mommy voice when we see adorable tiny shoes!

I'm very excited to have three new floral arrangements to brighten up the space! We are one step closer to completing our Living Room.

 

 

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Spray gel Product Review

Before moving overseas I only scrunched my hair every blue moon. After moving here where 6 mo of the year we have electricity only 2-4 hours a day of waking hours and the rest it is still off a few hours everyday I realized we need some "rustic beauty" hair options. I was most likely not going to use those precious moments of electricity blow drying and ironing my hair. It is more likely you'll find me baking, turning on the washing machine and running like crazy to get it all done before it is switched off for another 8 hours of pioneer living.

But I digress....back to hair. Before my daughter was born I could generally just brush my hair dry and it looked half way descent but post baby it was much more unruly!The beauty products here are pretty limited and I couldn't seem to find a gel that worked as well as what I had once used in the states. Garnier Fructis spray gel.

So when we visited the states a few months back I decided to stock up on my "go to" spray. I find it to be a great choice for my third world lifestyle. It holds curl well and is evenly distributed due to the spray nozzle. No stinky hands from gel or mouse! I can spritz and scrunch and I'm ready to go. That's a beauty routine that's fitting for our somewhat non-electricity life!

Here is me and my curly headed beauty. Her's are much more natural! So if your interested in a spray gel to use overseas for those "rustic" days with not many conveniences this is my recommendation. Feel free fellow ex-pat ladies to share what products you've found helpful to spruce up in lands of limited resources.

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Bundha

Bundha in the house! 
Bundha is the native word for closed and whenever any fraction of society is peeved about something the way their voice is heard is by participating in a "bundha". Which is where they close down business and transportation and protest. They can do this on as a small scale as a couple of blocks all the way to the whole country. They can turn violent if people try to "break the bundh" and drive vehicles or disturb their protests but for the most part people just take it as a day off, let people protest and rest in their homes. Both was seen in the country during the last two days.

The conflict that took place was generally outside the capital city where we live, that I know of anyways. The most exciting thing we saw was mostly naked little boys swimming in the huge puddles caused by the recent monsoon rains and the baby water buffalo snorkeling in another near by puddle:)

So we were under general lock down in the McTague house for two days. Things can get a lil hairy with two kiddos and two parents locked in a house together for 48 hours if some fun activities aren't created.

At the end of the second day, I can say we all survived with most of our sanity:) Here are some fun pics of our bundha adventures!

Day 1- Box Cars

We decided to make Savannah a car out of an old box. Her and her dad grabbed some colors and the sports car creations began. She requested a monster face and flames. To which my husband replied, "You are not a normal girl". She quite enjoyed her little automobile. She colored it, watched movies in it and eventually beat it to death! It was a short exciting life for the monster car.

Day 2- Mocha Caramel smoothies and Practicing our "MAD" golf skills.

We had some yummy mocha caramel smoothies....mmmmm My husband is a coffee addict to say the least. So any reason to add another cup to his day is welcome! We began this idea with my husband looking at me and saying, "Man, I could go for a Panera Mocha Smoothie!" Ok, all you other Panera addicts out there, shout Amen! For those who are not, ummm....why? Come on its amazing! Anyways, out came the coffee, chocolate syrup and ice. Then we remembered the leftover goodies from Cory's birthday. We still had coffee ice cream in the freezer and caramel in the fridge! Woo hoo throw it in! Well, this will not go down as my best diet day! Shhhhh
I'm extremely proud of his caramel!!! I made it from milk! Just Milk! Whole fresh milk after you add sugar and boil the beegebbees out of it turns to caramel! The only thing to make it better would be to have my Mom here to share. She is...shall we say slightly attached to caramel. I'm pretty sure she will be buried in a coffin filled with caramel with just her face popping out with a smile like Winnie the Pooh in a pot of honey! 

Later followed by some leisurely golf. We had a fun couple of days but we are all itching to be out among the living again! Feel free to share your stories of keeping the munchkins occupied while home bound. 

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Pre-School a Time

It's that time...Pre-School Time!

For the first time in my life I'm trying to organize and coordinate a k-3 program without any resources handed to me by a school. Our precocious and bouncy three year old is chomping at the bit to be a big girl and fill her mind with knowledge of shapes, colors, letters and songs:)

As you can see in the background we are still settling in from moving into our new home. We have moved twice in the last 2 months due to the 7.8 earthquake (and hundreds of aftershocks that followed) that recently crumbled our house and rocked our world. We first moved all of our belongings in stages to a friends house then the Lord blessed us with our new wonderful apartment. So in the midst of all this I began thinking....

"I've been teaching my daughter bits and pieces, but she is now 3 and I'm not sure what knowledge I should be imparting....???" ( FYI- I don't really think on this fancy speech:) It's more like, "ahhhh I'm in charge of my child's education!! Somebody rescue me:)"

So the research has begun. I have found some great resources on the ever favorite, PINTEREST! All hail Pinterest! My wheels have begun turning and I'm in the process of creating a program that is reasonable and attainable. I know, I know k-3 is for fun learning and she doesn't need to be able to do calculus yet but living in a world where English is not common place I know that 100% ( not counting Curious George and Thomas the train) of her exposure and teaching will come from me and I NEED A PLAN! Not counting trying to slip the native language in where I can...Lord Help:)

I have got out my trusty notebook and began cataloging all the children's books we have that will coordinate with the thoughts I'm trying to teach her. We have some great resources thanks to my good friend Lisa Files! Only thing on my wish list right now is some more Franklin books. My daughter sure enjoys them and they have lots of great teaching concepts. I found a great website that offers free curriculum and weekly planner.

ABC Jesus Loves Me

It's been a great resource I plan on using. It had a very scheduled plan covering numbers, letters, textile writing, shapes, motor skills, bible knowledge and the website also has character lessons I'm very interested in using. This next link has some great themed worksheets to correspond with the school year.

20+ FREE Learning Packs for Preschool and Kindergarten

Well that's the end of my researching at this point. Now to begin organizing, printing and researching some more. Props too all the moms who have done this before me!! This job is not for the faint of heart. Feel free to leave any helpful comments for our schooling journey.

 

 

 

 

 

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