Megs No Heat Summer Challenge!

Last year I posted on my Instagram about the results I got from the No Heat Summer Challenge and I've had so many people ask me about it since I thought I'd write up a post for all you Challengers!

My hair from about Jr. High to mid College was the WORST! It was always short because it was always damaged and breaking. I would try to grow it out but by the time it was barely passed my shoulders my mom would give me the firm but loving "your hair looks like dead straw and it's time to cut it" talk. It wasn't until college that I started taking care of my hair enough to grow it out. And by "taking care of my hair" I mean, I died it brown instead of platinum blonde, started "deep conditioning" (aka, leaving Pro V in my hair overnight) and didn't rip it in and out of messy buns all day. The result I got was the mid back length that I wanted but it was still thin, dry and ratty at the ends.

(High School Hair - Please excuse the chubby face and posture...)

Fast forward 6 years, 5 moves, 2 kids, 2 states, 1 dog and 1 husband later...

I'm back to blonde, it's the longest it's ever been but it's still dry, stringy and dead at the bottom.

My two beautiful best friends make me crazy! They are the kind of women that have the long, amazing, shiny, straight hair that grows grows like a weed! They never style, never color, never straighten and they look gorgeous every day!!  I, on the other hand, come in with the thick, frizzy, wavy hair that HAS to be styled every-single-day and cut every 3 months or I look like big foot! One night I asked them both, "what do you guys do to your hair to get it SO healthy!?" to which one of them replied "well, I'd say the biggest thing I do is, while I'm in the shower, I put my conditioner in and then I just leave it in while I shave and do everything else..." to which I replied with a dumfounded look and my mouth wide open! I have been doing that for 15 years! It LITERALLY says to do that on every shampoo bottle!! I have been doing that since I could read and wash my own hair!?! WHY is their hair SO healthy!! I have been buying product after product for years, asking all my stylist friends for advice and trying all the Pins Pinterest has to offer! They don't even care about hair care! They just wash it and let it air dry everyday!!

Then it hit me ....

------ they NEVER put heat in it!!-----

They curl their hair every once in a while for church or a date but other than that, they just air dry everyday! This was my exact thought following that discovery: "Yeah, but my hair air dries like a Star Trek cast member because it's too damaged... but maybe my hair is damaged BECAUSE I never air dry!!" I figured, maybe the more I air dry, the more healthy my hair will get and the better it will start to air dry!

I remembered reading a blog post years ago about a girl who did, what she called, the No Heat Summer Challenge (and I cannot for the life of me find that post again!). Basically she just didn't put heat in her hair AT ALL for 3 months, I blew right passed it because I could NEVER air dry my hair and go out in public. I remembered what I could from her post and decided I was going to do it! 

I did it for 4 months and I had AMAZING results you guys!!!  I am about to reach my year mark of going 90% of my days with no-heat and it's been awesome! Now, when I do style my hair, I can go to bed with it wet, wake up and it takes me 2 minutes to straighten! It's thick all the way to the ends AND SO SOFT!!! It's so healthy, when I run a straightner through it (again, for like, 2 minutes) it'll stay that straight for DAYS!!

Here are the rules!

1- Absolutely no blow drying! NONE! zip! zero! If you're gonna cheat, don't start with the blow dryer!! It's horrible for your hair!

2- Obviously no curling irons or straighteners either.

3- You may only do your hair with heat for special occasions like weddings, dates, and occasionally church. (The grocery store is NOT a special occasion!)

4- NO pony tails! ... YUP! you heard me! Hair elastics are so damaging to your hair! Resist the urge! Don't pull it up! If you HAVE to pull it up, do a loose, straight pony tail. No messy buns and ESPECIALLY no wet hair pony tails!! Your hair is at it's weakest when it's wet, so you don't want to make it suffer in a tight bun when it's at it's weakest.

5- Endure to the end!! I promise, it'll be worth it! 

Here are the steps!

Step 1- Take a "before pic" of your hair! 

Step 2 - Make a note of how long your hair is but don't stop measuring at the very end of your hair! end where the damage gets really bad! My biggest improvement I saw is my hair is now thick all the way to my ends and that counts as growth! My hair grew 5 inches total in 4 months but the overall length of it only got 3 inches longer (if that makes sense?) Meaning it filled in 2 inches of thickness at the ends too!

Step 3- Stay Strong! Don't give up!

There were days when I wanted to give up and just style my hair! I got so sick of my husband coming home to Beaker from The Muppets everyday. I got so tired of trying to find ways to do my hair even to go to Walmart! 

I promise it will be worth it! 

After a month or two your hair will start to air dry naturally and with out all the damage, it will dry smoothly. I did the Challenge for 4 months and I've kept doing it for almost a year now! The craziest thing is I actually prefer my hair air dried now over curling or straightening! It feels so soft and natural when it's air dried and I can feel the damage in my hair the minute I put heat in it! 

The best part is, now when I do straighten it, I air dry it 90% of the way, blow dry for about 2 minutes, touch up the top with my straightner and it's done!! 3 years ago it would take me 40 minutes to blow dry and straighten all of my hair!! I ALWAYS get comments on my hair when I straighten it now because it's so tick and long! 

Other hair-care tips

Tip 1- Over the years I've found two game changing hair products! They have both completely changed my hair and I tell everyone about them! 

(Keep in mind, I have thick, wavy, dry hair! If you have thin, fine hair these products may not work as well for you!) (Tip 2 - understand your own hairs needs!)

When I get out of the shower I towel dry my hair, flip my head forward and apply the It's A 10 leave in conditioner to my ends, then I do the same thing with the Moroccan Oil! Do it, it'll change your life! You can buy them both on Amazon and both bottles will last me around a year! 

Tip 3- Don't brush your hair when it's soaking wet, remember, thats when it's weakest!

Digital Scrapbooking

Okay todays post again ventures off from the trip last summer. I feel like blogging that trip is always such a time consuming thing it keeps me from posting about other things! I've neglected my blog because I feel like if I blog it HAS to be about the trip and i'm tired of passing up other posts because of the wall that is my trip.
so heres my step forward in not being held back anymore!

Today I wanted to post about my new favorite passed time!! 

I honestly could go on and on for HOURS about how amazing digital scrapbooking is! There are so many benefits to doing it digitally I have a NEVER ending list!! If any of you are thinking about switching to digital KEEP READING! 

I will sway you...

So lets start with the number one and most obvious reason

.NO MESS.

Say you have 35 minutes of free time and think "hmmm... I wanna scrapbook!" 

You can go 2 ways from there, 

"Well, I only have 35 minutes and thats not enough time to get out my table and my bins and barrels and buckets and drawers of supplies... never mind, I probably don't have time"

OR

"YAHOO I've got 35 minutes! I'll just go sit at my desk, open up my files and get crackin'!"

No more glue, no more scissors, no more ribbons, no more scraps, no more mess!

Reason #2

You can literally do and make ANYTHING you want! I don't know about you but I HATED cutting out circles on paper! Now it takes me 2 seconds to make a perfect circle! The arrow shapes on this page below took me under 5 minutes to pick out the papers, cut them all into the shape and place them! 

Try doing that with paper!! Not easy. 

 Reason #3

You can MAKE your own supplies!

I made this princess castle in 10 minutes with stuff I already had!

No need to buy expensive specific kits anymore!

On this Drive in Movie page I made EVERYTHING except the red star paper, the lips paper and the ribbons!

Reason #4

If you have a favorite paper that you LOVE and spent 80 cents on (if you're like me) your VERY particular about how it gets used! You want it on the perfect page and you get really stingy about using it! With digital paper you can use it 100 TIMES! It will never get used up! Same thing goes for objects, if you look closely at my page I use the same leaf EVERY time I use a leaf! I just put it differently each time. I use the same flowers, same frames, same ribbons! It's awesome!

 Reason #5

If you ever wanted to put objects into a scrapbook like fabric flowers, leafs, buttons, tickets, brochures, napkins, string, etc. it will make your pages thick and heavy and your book won't lay flat and it will warp every other page as it gets heavier. With digital EVERYTHING is flat! You can put ANYTHING on a page and it will never make it heavier or thicker!

 #6

Digital gives you cool affects that you could NEVER get with normal paper scrapping. Like the bubbles on my Bath Time page! HOW FUN! (P.s I made that tub and banner myself)

Reason #7 

If you're like me, you have TERRIBLE handwriting!

When I was little I remember making a big cute page and then RUINING it with my handwriting. 

Thats when I started making me sister write on all my pages for me instead 

(THANKS NAT!)

Now, I'll add a journal page and write an entire story in one of my favorite hand written fonts and it's perfect every time!  On this page I wrote about getting my first 3rd degree sunburn, not fun.

 Oh, and lets not forget if you spell something wrong in marker! Your entire page is a goner!

Reason #8 Multiple copies!

Baby Books! 

I'm going to make one for ALL of my kids to keep!

I'm sure you did or do too!

But hey :( I want a copy too.....

With digital it's easy! JUST PRINT 2 COPIES! Print 4 and give one to Grandma and Grandpa!

 Lets say your house catches on fire! 

DON'T GO GRAB YOUR 200 LBS OF FAT HEAVY SCRAPBOOKS! Run to the office, grab your hard drive with all the digital pages and GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! You can reprint the book later!

Reason # 9

You're looking at this page thinking,

woah! I didn't know Southern Utah University made scrapbook kits!

.they don't.

 I got that logo off the internet, used it as a stencil and cut it out with scrapbook paper!

Making your own custom kits for Schools, Teams, etc. is easy!

Lets say your kid wants an underwater ninja themed birthday party!? 

I'm pretty sure they don't make a kit for that...

MAKE YOUR OWN!

#10 Damage

I was looking through my paper scrapbook I made when I was around 13 the other day. 

My mom LET ME take the ONLY copies I have of me when I was little, cut them up into crooked, lopsided ovals and then cover them with cheesy terrible STICKERS!! 

Those are MY ONLY COPIES!! 

They are damaged FOREVER! 

I was really frustrated thinking about how I was going to get this ugly yellow thought bubble sticker that says "cheeeese" off my face...

No more printing your ONLY copy of your pictures and RUINING THEM! 

Evies ultrasounds for example, her first ultrasound pictures were only printed out for me, I didn't get them digitally!

I would NEVER want to cut those up, glue all over them and put them in a book!

Instead I scanned them in, kept the originals in her folder and scrapped the copies.

No damage!

Reason #11

Pages like this (below) would be SO HEAVY with glue, sticky dots, tape and whatever else all you paper scrapper use. Glue goes bad people!! It doesn't last forever! While I was looking at my old scrapbook I noticed half my pages had lost elements due to glue drying up! You never have to deal with that when it's digital! 

#12

Creative freedom!

I can take a paper and make it ANY color I want! 

This striped paper on this page used to be 3 different colors! I liked how it was grungy though so I turned all the stripes navy blue to match my page better!

Also, I made those snowboarders.

I made the word "Snowboarding".

Those frames are metal and would never last with glue or tape,
there is some awesome chain link fence in the background, AND
Try glueing a tree branch from a blue spruce into YOUR scrapbook!

Also, this page has stitching all around the border! CUTE! I was always envious of the girls who took the time to not only pull out their scrapbook stuff but ALSO pulled out their SEWING stuff!
Now it's just drop and drag and you've got stitching!

#13

You get cool stuff in Scrapbook kits

Like the Ipod headphones in this page! 

Aren't those awesome!

Also, You can do REAL frames not just cheesy paper ones.

Reason #14 
One Pic Pages

Have a random snapshot you love SO MUCH but you don't want to waste 15$ worth of scrapbook supllies just for ONE picture on a page?! DON'T WORRY! That page will cost you 15 cents to print! 

.do it and enjoy the guilt free feeling.

Reason #15

Resizing and cropping.

When you print pictures you have 4x6, 5x7, 8x10 and thats pretty much your sizes... 

From there you have to cut off and crop in as much as you can to make a layout work!

Thats sad! Don't cut up your composition!

You can make a picture the full 12x12 or you can make it 2x2!

It don't matter!

Reason #16

I lied, I'm adding a 16th reason! 

This is a Photography conference I go to every year and this year I wanted to put my name tag on the page. 

First off, how THICK would it be to put that in a paper scrapbook!? 

The metal hook and the lanyard?! 

NO WAY! 

AND

That whole tag would have taken up half my page! 

no thank you.

I took a picture of it on a white background, cut out the background, added a drop shadow and now I can make it ANY size I want with out it taking up my entire page! 

Anyway, thats my LONG rant on why you should digital scrapbook! I hope you all are convinced :) I actually taught a Digital Scrap class out here in Denver and LOVED it! I would want to do it again! It's fun to teach what I love! 

.Advice.

Write EVERYTHING down while you kids are young!

 I'm making Evie 12 pages in her baby book, one for each month of her first year, 

each month I made a list on my Ipad of every milestone we hit with her and the date.

What she was doing,

what she learned

favorite noises to make

when she crawled, when she walked,

favorite toys, etc.

Now i'm working on a page called 

"the top 15 things I never thought I'd have to say"

I've written down all the crazy things Evie has gotten into trouble for.

"Evangeline! No! We don't lick the heater vents hunny!"

.can't wait.

Joy in the Journey Peeps!

xo. Meg

Turkey!

I'm SO SORRY for being so far behind on our trip this summer! I still have like, 6 countries to do! Today is all about our day in Turkey! Ephesus mostly. We've actually been here before and we LOVE it! The ruins are amazing!  Our first stop of the day was to this little village called Sirince, it was amazingly beautiful. It was full of all of the locals shops and everything was hand made and incredibly detailed.

I had fun taking shots of the little Turkish women, this one is consoling her cat after Evie scared the death out of it lol

Thus, our first lesson in not touching stray animals in foreign countries...

Natalie and I bought these GORGEOUS hand painted plates in this little shop just before we left.
I wish I had a picture of them they are beautiful!

After Sirince we went to an old turkish Mosque 

Women need to cover their heads and we only had one scarf lol

This is the cute little man who showed us around the Mosque :)

Afterward he took us outside to his little shop and drew all of our names in Turkish for us

He was so nice we just loved him!

The place we love most in Turkey is Ephesus. It's this city of ancient ruins with an amazing library! We went there last time we were in Turkey so this time we decided to also hit up the Ephesus Museum, it's full of all the artifacts that they've found around the ruins! 

Evie was a little bit of a handful with all of this ancient stuff to climb all over! 

Luckily we found a ramp and she did that for the rest of the time :)

After a while she and Jared were going crazy so we headed off for the rest of our day

 The place where The Virgin Mary was thought to have lived is in Turkey and it's a really beautiful sacred place. It's all the way up on top of a mountain so we had to take a little drive. 

It's okay though because the locals along the way never disappoint lol

 The middle picture is outside of Mary's house. There are no cameras allowed inside but once you get out you can go light candles in the garden and then pass the prayer wall. This is my favorite part. 

People write their prayers on little pieces of paper or tissue and stuff it into this wall in hopes that they will be answered. It's AMAZING how much is stuffed into this wall!

We drove all the way down the mountain again toward the ruins at Ephesus!

We of course stopped for some legit turkish lunch first.

Middle Picture: this is the Arena that the Apostle Paul (I believe, correct me if i'm wrong) preached in,

 it's the arena thats in the picture section of your scriptures

after you pass the arena you walk further to the ruins and 

this

is the first thing you see when you round the corner...

The Library of Celsus

 It's the most beautifully detailed ruin I've even seen! It's so overwhelming because you start out so close to it and you can't take it all in at once!

Once you back up further into the city you can see it all

 My mom always researches each country for months before we go on these trips so she always knows all the answers to any questions we randomly throw out! 

Example

Me: "Man, I wonder how many people lived in this city!?" 

Mom: "well this was a seaside city so it was actually one of the most populated cities of it's time, during the war between turks and the greeks the only place to get resources was from the ocean so the turks moved here after their leader Amid Heduish died in 160 BC"

(That was a bunch of bologna I made up but you get the point)

Here's my mom (putting off heat stroke) and reading to us about the Library of Celsus from her book she's been reading all year :)

(and jared being a teenage boy)

dad always taking pictures :)

I very much love that about my dad. He documents EVERYTHING and I definitely get that from him.

Evangeline passed out thankfully

When we were here a few years ago my brother Ryan took a picture just like the one of Jared below. Since Ryan couldn't be with us on this trip (he's on a Mission in Cambodia) Jared decided to honor is memory by doing the same pose on a broken column

Then we decided to all be ancient gods ha ha ha

I love my dads pose! Not sure who he's supposed to be portraying but he's a good participant!

GO DAD!

After that my mom got heat stroke so we had to sit in the shade and cool her down. 

After she was better we had to BOOK it back to the ship! 

We (as usual) were the LAST ones back on the ship. 

Like they pulled in the gang plank as soon as my dad stepped off it and we got in trouble lol.

.oops.

To cool off from our long day we hit the pool and then had formal night!

Where Evie later became addicted to Pina Colada's lol

My hubby is so handsome...
if I do say so myself :)


Okay thats Turkey!
Next up

JERUSALEM!

Here are the links to my countries I've already blogged if you are just joining us ;)
Iceland
London
Athens 
Patmos

Christmas // New Years // Bieber Fever // Surgery

So i'm so sorry for the utter neglect my blog has had over the last 6 months! I update it MAYBE once a month ( if that ) and I'm only 3 days in to our month long trip we took this summer! ( My next post on  that will be about Ephaisis Turkey so stay tuned! I know it's almost february but I SERIOUSLY need to catch up on Christmas, New Years and my birthday! This post is going to be the definition of picture overload too! Like, crazy amounts of pictures folks! And I'll appologize now, it will be the ugliest post you've ever seen too ha ha ha. I have 15 minutes to post this post and then we are leaving for our date night (aka, go wonder through the mall for a few hours and play in the princess castle at the Disney Store). So i'm putting a Blue Ginger filter on ALL my photos or I am just uploading them from my iPhone. Sorry guys, my blog is seriously suffering!

We'll start with Christmas...

Christmas this year was TOTALLY different for us because we live so far away now! It made it that much more fun to come home though! ... oh wait, no the extra 5 hours in the car this year was a NIGHTMARE! 

Evie had a HORRIBLE stomach flu and was throwing up every hour on the hour the night before! 

Luckily she only threw up 3 times on the 10 hour ride home, but to top it off it was a BLIZZARD for most of the drive! We had to go SO SLOW which didn't help the situation at all.

And worse, Evie and I drove back to Utah with my Brother-in-Law Joe
(B had finals for another week so we bummed a ride with Joe early)

So my POOR SISTERS CAR

.bless her heart.

Is completely full of throw up smell and old milk.

(If you know my sister you know how strong her sense of smell is and how OCD she can be)

(those aren't bad traits to have nat and I love you for them!! xo :)

To make it worse, I, 

like an idiot

filled up Evies camelback water bottle with Sprite to make her stomach feel better...

have you ever put Sprite in a leak proof water bottle?.... 

I don't recommend it...

as soon as I opened the lid Sprite SHOT out of it at 100 MPH!

Hitting the ceiling of the car and then spraying out in EVERY DIRECTION!!

So.... we were a smelly, nasty, sticky mess by the time we got to Utah...

.kill me.

My poor brother in law...

MOVING ON!

The reason we had to go to utah early with Joe was so I could get surgery on my ankle! The funniest thing happened while I was at the hospital! I was signing in for my surgery and when I told the lady behind the desk what my name was she looked up at me and said "OH MY GOSH! I FOLLOW YOUR BLOG!" ha ha ha that has NEVER happened to me! A total stranger new all about me! She was so cute! We talked about my trip this summer and how fun Evie is! It was so cool! It's nice to know people read my blog but it's even nicer to know that total strangers can read my blog and find enough joy in my journey to follow it! 

Evie came with me and was NOT happy about Nurses coming in left and right and messing with her Mamma! My mom finally had to just take her home, it was so sad :(

So after that my next week or 2 pretty much looked like this

FINALLY Brandon got to Utah and Evie was STILL sick so his next few days were like this...

not that i'm sure he much minded :)

Finally Christmas came around and Evie and I were feeling a little better. Evie was still super grumpy and not really herself and I was still heavily medicated and on crutches ha ha ha

 Evie opening her wagon!

 Evie ADORES Uncle Jared! She just smothers him with love it's so cute :)

Evie was the best "present hander-outter" you've ever seen

She unloaded that tree faster than we could keep up! and of course, she couldn't read so any present went to anyone she felt like (mostly dad)

I made Jared some artwork for his room, I was KIIINDA worried he'd be like "ugh.. cool... art?..." but he seemed pretty excited about it luckily!

Usually for breakfast on Christmas Day we end up filling up on Christmas sugar cookies all morning and then just wait around till lunch to really eat something and this year we decided our stomachs couldn't handle that kind of breakfast anymore ha ha ha

So Nat & Joe treated us all to a yummy Crepe breakfast

I seriously hope this is a new Christmas tradition for us now.

 Then Grandma and Grandpa came over for a visit and TO TALK TO UNCLE ELDER ANDERSON!!

 Elder Anderson is serving out his last few months in the Phenom Phen Cambodia mission!

He'll be home April 12th!
Evie has never even MET Uncle Ryan so we are SO EXCITED for him to come home!!

Evie was REALLY excited lol

So... My sister and I came home for Christmas to a 13 year old brother who had a  "rat tail" coming off the back of his head...

It's like where you grow the very back of your hair in one spot really long?...

he insisted it was cool...

we insisted it was not...

We threatened him the entire week that we were gonna cut it off in his sleep ha ha ha

Well, while we were talking to Ryan he noticed Jareds disgusting hair cut and commented on it!

"dude whats going on with the back of your hair?!"

Since Ryan is Jareds IDOL we asked Ryan if he thought we should cut it off?

Ryan said yes defiantly!

So we pinned Jared down 

and cut that disgusting thing off!

Thank goodness!

The next morning we took of for our Christmas in St. George with Brandon's family
(no throwing up this time)

The highlight of this trip was this girl right here

this is my baby sister Dani

(I love my sister-in-laws like my own sisters!)

This amazing girl has been called to serve in the Barcelona Spain Mission!!!

She leaves in May so we decided to go through the temple with her while we were home for Christmas.

The temple was awesome as always, it was awesome but I hated it too lol

Brandon made me wear my crutches (even though I was 2 days away from when the doctor said I didn't have to anymore) and the entire time EVERYONE was making a fuss over me! I had to take the stinkin' elevator, everyone kept asking me if I was okay, I couldn't get up and participate with my family like I usually love to and I HATE being the center of attention!!

 especially on someone else's day... 

But all around it was a great night. 

I'm really so proud of her :)

Now we just have to keep the boys off her till May and THATS gonna be the hard part!

After we spent a few days down in STG Brandon took me and Evie to Richfield where my parent's met us.

Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you!

So Backup...

I've had 4 or 5 bone grafts up in my mouth and they've all failed so I got another one in March and we found out while I was home in SLC that that surgery failed as well and I'd have to stay in Utah for 2 MORE WEEKS to get surgery AGAIN and try to save my implant. 

Fast forward...

So B dropped us off at my Grandpa's house and took off to Colorado and Evie and I headed back up to SLC for another few weeks and another few surgeries. 

We did do some fun things though

We hit up the Aquarium, Evie LOOOOOOOVES the Aquarium!

aaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnd!

I got to go to the 

JUSTIN BIEBER CONCERT!!!

It was AWESOME

My dad is an Orthodontist so to get more business in he got the VIP Suite at the concert and had fun giveaways and prizes at his office! New patients who started braces got a ticket and others had to win theirs! It was literally, Me, My parents, 4 other adults and 30 screaming girls! It was SO FUN!!

the suite was HUGE and there was SO MUCH FOOD!!

 such a blast!

 After that I had my surgery, got way swollen and never really left the house again ha ha ha

to end my million mile long post i'll leave you with some of the texts if fired off when I was under anesthesia lol 

read them.

.you won't be sorry.

ha ha ha ha

Happy New Year!

xo