Post that contain minimal running, but sometimes other forms of exercise sneak in.
As a curly haired gal, I have a complicated relationship with my hair and hairdressers.
Add in a mother who made out my hair was as legendary as Samson’s, so should never be cut, divide it by a lifetime of working in food service with hats as part of the uniform, then multiply by kids and the ever present threat of headlice, and you get a woman who has eventually grown WAY past any flying fucks about the latest styles and ways to wear your hair.
Continue reading →I know, what a dramatic title, especially for a post that’s essentially going to be about me planning to get up early.
I used to work food retail, it mostly involved getting up at stupid times like 5am to walk to work, and bake bread or pastries. Ok, so there was a little more to it than that, like talking to people, inventories, and counting cash. But there was an awful lot of early mornings.
I did them, I got up and went to work. These days, I struggle, I hate getting up at 7:30am. It’s a giant struggle to resist rolling over and ignoring the world. Fortunately my kids don’t let me, and we manage to get to school on time. Mostly.
It makes me quake in my boots, the thought that I might have to start getting up EARLY. But there’s just so much I want to get done, and it seems like I’m going to have to start getting up early to do it.
Allegedly there are many benefits to getting up early, and it’s not just because there’s more time to drink coffee.
I’ve read a tonne of tips on how to turn myself into a “morning person” and how to make it easier to get up early, I’m not sure I can do it.
Anyone have any tips for getting up early?!
Lush Kitchen is quite a new part of Lush. They make small batches of classic Lush products, something that used to be called Retro, but they also make exclusive products, or advance order products, again all in small batches.They also do regular G+ hangouts where the Compounders (the guys & gals making the products) & the Inventors (the people who come up with the products) talk about the ingredients they use, or where they source the ingredients, or inspirations behind the products.
Avowash made on 5th August 2014 by Peter
I love the ballistic Lush make called Avobath, it’s bright green, full of avocado, lemongrass oil and bergamot. Add them all together it’s brilliant. It’s great & citrusy for the summer & then also has really big powerful scent for the winter, specially if you’re full of cold, plus it’s got loads of avocado that’s super for the skin.
This smells nothing like it.
I know, should have read the ingredients better, and I’d have know it was packed with pine oil, but there’s a little bit of panic when you see you’ve only got 30 min to complete your order once you’ve put a Lush Kitchen product in your basket, so I didn’t.
Initial disappointment over, it’s nice. The pine in this is quite strong, it smelt quite antiseptic, or bathroom-cleanerish when I unwrapped it, but once it’s wet & on the go it’s quite nice. It’s probably going to get used more as a hand soap than a soap I take into the shower. (It’s going to take something very impressive to take the mighty Sandstone off the number one spot!)
Avowash is £4.25 per 100g and is only available through Lush Kitchen.
Percup made 8th August 2014 by Peter
This is what incited me to place the order. A massage bar made with coffee. There hasn’t been a coffee product in Lush since Vanilla in the Mist, a really great soap that made you smell like a vanilla latte. But Percup is not a soap.
It’s a massage bar. It’s a beautiful chunk of fair Trade Organic Cocoa Butter & Fair Trade Shea Butter blended with some gorgeous ingredients. The massage bars melt surprisingly quickly in your hands, even my perpetually cold hands, and you can use it for massage (and they do in Lush Spas) or, as I did with this, use it after the shower (or bath) as a really great body lotion.
As well as the shea & cocoa, Percup has organic jojoba oil and extra virgin coconut oil. All of those by themselves are great for skin, wrapped up together with the coffee beans, vetiver oil and fair trade vanilla, it’s freaking UHMAZING!
It’s a real sweet & warm scent, like the smell of your local coffee shop in the morning when they’re still baking the pastries, and steaming the milk for lattes while you’re sat at the bar with a perfect espresso. Even 8 hours after I’ve covered myself in it, I still want to lick my own arm. Unfortunately, Percup isn’t edible.
Sometimes, allegedly, products that start in Lush Kitchen will then end up in the stores. I hope so, because I think I need this in my life all the time!
Percup is £6.50 and only available through LushKitchen
If I’ve tempted you with these products, then be quick! The menu at Lush Kitchen changes frequently, and they might not make these again. Postage is about £4, so this package cost me just under £15.
Anyone tried something from Lush Kitchen? What are your favorite Lush Products?
Ah, week two.
Kate is Nickie’s partner in crime for #vlogchallenge. She is blogging queen over at I am Wit Wit Woo and the topic was a beauty (or fashion) Vlog!
So I sulked a bit, and then realized that I go to the effort of Hennaing (is that right?) my hair on a semi regular basis, and that’s a beauty thing. Isn’t it? Yeah.
I’ve been doing this for quite a few years now, and to me it’s quite an easy process, but I’ve been surprised from some of the Twitter / YouTube comments that it seems laborious to others? How easy is it to commercially dye your hair these days?
Anyway, here’s my Vlog, have a look and let me know if it seems like extra effort to go to!
I must admit I’m loving the Vlog Challenge, and although I’m unlikely to head down to London any time sooN, I quite enjoyed Tinuke Circusmum‘s Tips for getting around London!
The next #VlogChallenge is tomorrow & set by Nickie, so keep an eye on iamtypecast.com for the next topic!
I realise that I have it written over there in the little discription of my blog, yet I’ve never really mentioned things I’ve knitted.
So here are the last thing I knitted…
Hevs, aka Heather Smith, is an amazing illustrator who I have the pleasure being friends with & spent many Monday mornings opening up Lush Preston with.
Back in December Heather posted this beautiful drawing to her Tumblr.
And I thought “SOCKS! I can do that, no problem, 2 weeks is an easy deadline!” I bought a bamboo / cotton blend yarn & cast on.
I finished & gave the socks to Heather at the end of June. Yeah.
Visit Heather’s beautiful Tumblr over at http://lightfeets.tumblr.com/
or her instagram page over at http://instagram.com/_hevs (where I’ve stolen copied the photo of the socks on feet from as I failed to do that before I gave them over and made my son sing a pathetic Happy Birthday to her)
I possibly made some notes of how I knit them, leave me a comment if you’re curious about how they were made & I may attempt to write up an actual pattern.
There, knitting, now for the coffee.
No seriously, look at my face, I’ve made a Vlog.
Firstly let Nickie explain what’s going on
Then you can watch my fabulous vlog!
Then you can laugh at my face in the outtakes…
and then subscribe to the RunforTheQuiet YouTube Chanel, so you never miss my face again!
Up until a little while ago I worked for Lush. It was great, I love Lush & working for the company was great fun, but, like Star Trek: TNG said, “All good Things…” and all that jazz.
The only reason I mention this is because I felt really weird working for Lush and then coming home & blogging about it too, I know some staff do, and that’s fine, but it was weird to me so I didn’t. But now I don’t, so I can go on & on & on & on about Lush all the time! Mwhahahaha!
Anyway, lets get to the point.
Last Friday I went down to Liverpool Lush, why did I shlep 44km, when there’s one in the town I live in? Well, because up above the Liverpool store is a Lush Spa.
When you get to Liverpool you’d never notice anything different, it’s just a really busy, big Lush store (the biggest in the world, or it was when I left the company, it could have changed by now.) Now I’d booked my treatment over the phone earlier in the week, and bought a voucher at Preston Lush, so all I had to do was rock up at the right time and give the gent at the till the magic ticket & wait for the Lush Therapist to come say “hello” and lead you upstairs to the Spa.
Lush doesn’t do things like other companies, and the same applies to their Spas. It’s almost an Un Spa, upstairs at Liverpool (and AFAIK all the Spas) is like visiting your Great Aunts house. That eccentric aunt who has a tonne of weird books, furniture older than you, and also 16 types of tea for every possible mood or occasion, and would be mortified if you asked for milk in any of them, but would happily add a little gin if it was after 11am. Flying ducks on the wall, flowers in jugs, that style of thing. The 8th incarnation of The Doctor would have loved it, if he’d gotten more screen time, and Lush did product placement.
I’d booked in for a treatment called The Sound Bath.
A powerful, 60-minute meditative treatment that helps you listen deep within. Primarily focused on the head, this treatment takes you on a journey into sound – and yourself.
I’ll confess when I first picked this, I just wanted an hour to (almost) myself and pampering without having to take any clothes off. I’m not a touchy feely kinda gal, there’s another Lush Spa treatment called The Spell that’s mostly a foot treatment, but has a great head rub in the middle, I fancied 60 minutes of that.
The Sound Bath is a little more than a head rub. It’s like a lot of Lush products, aiming to be something quite normal, but ending up almost as if it’s been designed by an Jim Henson Alien who’s only had John Crichton explain the concept to them.
The aim of The Sound Bath is to relax you to a point where your head, and all the chitter chatter in it, is just quiet, and, if you want, you can listen to the voice within. So what you get is a hot stone facial, a fabulous head rub, mixed with Tibetan singing bowls and Ohm Tuning Forks, with a couple of Ear Candles thrown in too, and cold stone facial at the end to bring you back to the real world.
It doesn’t sound like it should work. The more I write it down the worse it seems. Did I mention that it has bird song mixed into the sound track? See, bonkers. But, like Fish Fingers & Custard, there’s some kind of mad genius at work here, and everything just works.
After the hot stone facial has gotten you really settled and you’ve started to relax, the therapist uses the tuning forks on points of your forehead, the sound literally washes through you and you’re falling deeper down the rabbit hole, by the time the therapist asks you to turn onto one side and starts the ear candle part of the treatment you’re practically on autopilot.
At the end of it all, I left feeling completely zen, but strangely also quite supercharged like “no power in the ‘verse” could stop me.”
Eventually I had to return to the real world, but on the way out I had a quick nip around the shop for some treats.
Firstly, the Inhale Exhale ballistic, this is a limited edition ballistic, and I want to go back and buy about 10!
It’s scented with two different fragrances, Inhale & Exhale, coincidentally the same two scents in the incense used to scent the room for The Sound Bath. One side fizzes quicker than the other, so when it’s popped into the bath you get wafts of one scent, to start, and then part two changes the scent, and eventually the blend together to make The Breath of God scent.
The other treat was a generous sample of Ocean Salt Face & Body Cleanser. I’ve tried Ocean Salt before, but the peeps in the Lush Labs have worked up a self preserving formula, doing away with the need to add in an artificial preservative. It smells much fruitier than the preserved version, and when I was chatting with Emma, the Liverpool Lush’s Trainee Manager, she explained one of the tweaks in the new formula is the addition of Mango Butter.
This is also a good point to mention that the Ocean Salt sample is the only part of my trip I got for free, and also that this is the only photo I’ve taken myself! Thanks to Melissa on the Lush Liverpool’s facebook for letting me use the other 3 pictures.
So anyone else tried The Sound Bath? Or any of the other treatments?
Anyone interested in hearing about the self preserving versions of some of Lush’s classic products?
Today I got some news about a a course I’d applied for at work. I wasn’t successful & was devastated, I really wanted onto this training course. I was given some feed back about why I wasn’t selected, and I think it will take a few days to digest, and sulk, before I take it seriously, instead of personally.
So my run was full of replaying the interview, and things I thought I’d done well & also how it was the end of the world that I didn’t get onto the course.
But at least I ran.
Day 20 of Juneathon was another late run, not actually getting my running kit on until after 9pm.
It was a really great run. Music, Zombie chases, and a run that silenced my head. It wasn’t a fast run, or a long run, but after an evening writing cover letters & CVs for some amazing things at work, it was enough to stop my brain buzzing and thinking and waiting for an instant reply.
4km round a route with some lovely long flat straight roads, perfect for switching on some Zombies Run & praying I’m quick enough to avoid getting eaten. Awesome.
I do have one small confession. I have only washed my running tights once this Juneathon. I’m stinky.
Today’s Juneathon effort was another class. This one an hour long & with weights. I was all set to take photos of the little area you set up at the start of the class, with a step & all the stuff you add on & take off for different sections, but GymPact was being bloody stupid & I spent more time fiddling with my iPhone, and just didn’t have a chance before the class started.
It’s only the 2nd time I’ve done Body Pump, and last time I ached for 3 days afterwards.
It’s crushing. I’m certainly not going to be picking anything of the high shelves at work tomorrow. It just confirms I have no upper body strength.
I’m also 2 out of 2 for writing my food diary. I’m good at starting, but rubbish at doing it for more than a few days, but here’s to a Juneathon streak. I use My Fitness Pal, (runforthequiet if you want to find me & see all the junk I consume.)
Ok, my arms are going to drop off, so that’s enough typing, what’s shall I have for tea?