eSalon

Here's my latest product review. I saw an ad somewhere for eSalon. Custom salon-grade color you mail order. It's the happy medium between spending a ton at a salon for hair color and using cheap grocery store color.

I'm cheap when it comes to salons, so I end up doing over-the-counter color which is hit and miss, especially with color choices. I was excited, and a bit nervous to try this.

You go online, answer some questions about your hair and desired color, upload a photo and they ship you your product.

Here is my hair prior to coloring. Roots with some gray. (thanks Rick for photo bomb)

 

Here is a (sideways) pic of what came. They sent two colors, one for my roots and one for the rest of my hair. I also ordered a maintenance product from them to use after I regularly shampoo to help hold the color.

It's all really cute with my name on every label.

Here's their explanation of the two colors they sent.

The instructions were easy. It came with a brush (you could also order a bowl), two pairs of gloves, and detailed instructions. I didn't use the brush as it also came in bottles that were easy to use (like the grocery store color.) This is the finished color.

I think the color turned out great. I was disappointed with how dry my hair felt.

PRO: This was definitely a higher quality color than the over-the-counter brands. I could tell by how cleanly it washed out. With grocery store stuff I feel like my head is bleeding color for several washes. It was easier to apply than buying from Sally Beauty Supply (I've done that couple of times and used a brush a bowl). The cost is about $30, which is much cheaper than the salon. I'm debating about their maintenance plan. You give them a credit card and tell them how often you color, then they ship you the color on schedule and charge you $20.

CON: As I mentioned, I felt it dried my hair. Usually after coloring, my hair feels really soft. I'm hoping this is remedied by buying a good deep conditioner for colored hair (just order some from Amazon). I like to play around with color. Most people who know me know that I'm rarely the same color twice. They did a good job of matching my prior color, but I would like to be a little blonder-red for the summer. I'm not sure how specific of a color I can get with this service. I'll email them in a few weeks, then decide if I'm sticking with them or not.

Overall, I recommend if you have a standard color. Seems like a good deal and hassle free to be on their scheduled shipment plan.

Weekend Update - Easter

It was a little iffy having Easter in March. We've had far too many freezing cold Easter Egg hunts in April, but the weather cooperated and it was a lovely, warm, sunny weekend.

I had Friday off of work and Rick and I took care of a bunch of errands in the morning, then went to see The Host (review in sidebar). Friday night Rick had work to do, so I went shopping with my sister. It was lovely, even considering I resisted buying the world's cutest Easter dress. (I have not-buyers remorse.)

Saturday we had lunch and an Easter Egg hunt at my mom's house. Here are all the kiddos with loaded down baskets of candy.

After, Rick and I went for a bike ride. The first of the season. We drove to Thanksgiving Point and did a loop out to Redwood Road. It was a bit windy, but it wasn't as hard as I was anticipating. We only did about 16 miles, but it was decent workout and felt great to be out on the bikes.

Easter Sunday started with church. It was an excellent Sacrament meeting and a perfect way to start the holiday. After church, Rick's nieces and nephew from BYU came for dinner.  We broke out the china. I'm sad to say this may be the first time we've used it since getting married.

After dinner we decorated sugar cookies. Rick was looking at the cookies cutters and thought it was so cute we had a turtle. I had no idea what he was talking about. Pictured below - same cookie cutter, two perspectives.

 It was a lovely weekend. Not a lot of down time, but a lot of fun.

The Gymbox

I've found a fun new way to work out. As you may recall, last year for my birthday I got a Tour de France workout bike. I felt like I could get a pretty good workout just putting in my ipod and spinning. It does get tedious after a while, so I wanted to see if I could find a spinning class on Netflix just to mix things up once in a while.

I searched all of Netflix and our other Roku channels with no luck. Then I found The Gymbox channel. It came with a 15 day free trial. I'm about 10 days in, and I love it.

I believe you can get it as an app on your ipad or tablet and also sign up to stream from a computer. As I mentioned, I signed up for the Roku channel. It's $10 a month, which is the cost of gym membership, but the beauty of this is that you aren't subject to class schedules. I can have a great spinning class anytime I want.

They have classes in: spinning, step aerobics, pilates, power yoga, treadmill, kickboxing, core, strength training, stretching, beginning workouts, and boot camp.

Every category has a variety of classes and teachers to choose from with varying intensity and length. I've mainly chosen beginning cycling classes, which just means they are 30 minutes instead of an hour. They still are killer workouts. I would guess my workout intensity has doubled from just riding on my own. New workouts are added every week so you never get bored with doing the same workout over and over like you would with a video.

My only complaint is that I wish you could save workouts you like. I haven't disliked any of the cycling classes, but I would like to find and save my favorite stretching and core classes. It does save each workout you do in a Recent Workout section, but I would like a way to remember which were my favorites. (Update: Rick informed me that the Recent Workout section is new workouts, not recently viewed workouts-bummer.) I did a cadence workout on my bike last week that I would like to do once a week, but had no way of marking it. Each workout has a star rating (1-5), but I couldn't figure out how to rate it myself. My Roku box is old, so maybe it's available on an upgraded model. I also wish they had better descriptions of each workout as you scroll through them. Right now, I have to click on each workout to get a one phrase description of the class before I hit play.
 
Click here for a link to their website.  You have to search for "The Gymbox" as just "Gymbox" brings up an actual studio.

They totally should be paying me for this. :)

My gymbox membership coupled with No Treat March (killing me this year), I've lost 5 lbs in 3 weeks. I'm also feeling great and motivated to work out. This may partially be due to the recent nice weather and the anticipation of having enough light to start biking to work again.

Awards Season

Last year (or was it the year before) I posted my fav dresses from all the awards shows. While I've enjoyed the red carpets this year, it just hasn't captured me like before. Here are my top choices from the Oscars this weekend.

Love the sparkles!

She always looks perfect.

Could she be any cuter. My fav was when Ryan Seacrest asked her about her dress she said that she picked it because it was "sparkly and fluffy". That's the down-to-earth red carpet I'm looking for.

The weird thing on the belt was a little much, but I love the top and bottom of this dress.

 

Worst dress (and hair) for sure. Does she not have any friends that would tell her not to go out like this?

 

The whole night seemed a little bizarre to me. I used to see it as a fun night to ohh and ahh over Hollywood glamor. This year seemed more of a train wreck. I actually liked the host and the tribute to music in film, but the stars and the 'scene' were very disappointing. It felt more like an episode of the Kardashians. Tacky people, horrible plastic surgery (what happened to Catherine Zeta Jones - most naturally beautiful woman ever and now looks nothing like herself), and a bunch of intoxicated presenters. It seemed more like America's opportunity to mock Hollywood rather than admire it. Maybe I'm just getting old.

The speeches just get worse every year. Nobody is spontaneous or has anything interesting to say. It's just about getting through a list of people to thank before the music starts to play to tell you you're out of time. Yawn!

Family Night Fun

Monday night for us is pizza and movie night (sometimes pizza and game night depending on how much homework needs to be done). Rick's done this with the boys since they were little. I admit, it makes Monday night dinner easy. This last year, we've added a fun twist to the evening.

Last summer we were driving by Pirate O's and they advertised stocking over 50 kinds of root beer. How could we resist. We decided we needed to find the best one. We started by doing a taste test every Monday night. Isaac kept the running tally, but it became pretty complicated as we each have different tastes. Every week we'd have to buy everyone's top flavor then add a new flavor to test it against. Sometimes one of the favorites would be temporarily out of stock. Now we just pick two new flavors each week and have a blind taste test. We have learned each others tastes and can pretty accurately guess who will like what. It's fun.

I've been saving one bottle cap from each flavor....

and made fridge magnets.