**UPDATE** Quick Note About Camille Rose Naturals Honey Hydrate

 About 7 months or so ago, I kind of bashed on Camille Rose Naturals Honey Hydrate and had to backtrack. I mean, I was kind of brutal when I wrote reviews on sites like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. And here on the blog, I was mean, mean, mean.

Then...

I fell in love with the stuff. I had to do an update on the blog and all those reviews I posted. Honey Hydrate saved my hair from some serious self-inflicted damage. Not that my hair damaged itself but... well, you should know what I mean.

Anyway.

I wanted to do an update to share another wonderful way to use the product. I don't know why I thought of it, but I have been hydrating just my scalp and roots with Hydrate. Amazing.

I was trying to love my grays but...
time to cover those bad boys

Don't know why my ends
need trimming again

One thing I have found is that, even when my hair is not dried out, my scalp tends to be. Always. I use oils and other products but I think I have been one-siding the care of my hair. I have tended to worry about the ends more. I trim and moisturize and baby them. Meanwhile, my scalp has not been holding a lot of moisture. That gets worse as I get older.

What I have started doing is using some biotin oil on my scalp and using some Honey Hydrate as well.

I don't know yet how the biotin is working for health and growth so I'll have to come back to that. What I can tell already is that the Honey Hydrate is doing a great job of keeping my scalp super, well, hydrated. The roots of my hair are soft and I'm not seeing breakage there. 

I can't wait to keep up this routine for another month or two so I can see if it's helping as much as I think. When I did my twists the other night, my hair was easier to separate at the root. It was less tangled and fragile-feeling. After having the twists in for 3 days, they are not dried out at the tops and I love that they aren't staying bunched up at the root when I remove my sleep bonnet.

Been rocking these for 
a minute now!

So, yeah. As I have said in the past, Honey Hydrate can be a bit much for all-over use unless you are trying to heal some serious damage. It provides so much moisture that it discourages curl hold and definition. However, that deep moisture is just what my scalp and roots have been needing. Apparently.

I will, of course, be doing a follow-up post with some After photos that might show length retention.

Peace 

--Free

**Update of a REVIEW** Kikumasamune Sake Skin Lotion High Moisture (for the HAIR)

Originally post November 2018 here 

UPDATING and RE-POSTING

My brain got weird the other day and thought I just discovered how great this stuff is on natural hair. Turns out that I first got it for my hair way back in November of last year 2018. Wow. I went back on Amazon and updated the review to rant about using this on my hair. Anyway... I did start using this on my hair (again?) the other day and, wow. I can't even tell you how moisturizing and detangling it is. My hair is like a tangle of tumbleweed after I wash it. I have tried other products to help with the initial comb-out so that I can do my twists or whatever comes next. Keeping my hair damp with water while twisting is great but the water dries too quickly. The Kiku lotion keeps my hair moist much longer. I do use one of those special fine-mist sprayers (another product I love, love, love) to apply this.

 This not only softens my hair and makes combing it out easier, but when it dries, that funky product smell goes away and my hair is nice and soft. My twist-outs aren't as tight and crunchy. Win, win, and win.

So, yeah, go ahead and maybe see what this does for your hair and face...

The following is a copy/paste of the original review from November 2018

This is a copy/paste of the review from my Amazon Reviews blog.

Full Product Name & Link: 8 Kikumasamune Sake Skin Lotion High Moisture

SELLER REVIEW (3 stars)

PRO: Arrived quickly. Large size for the price.

CON: My first bottle came in one of those plasticized mailing envelopes. The bottle had gotten crushed or something so that the plastic over the pump was torn. The bottle leaked quite a bit as you can see from the pic on the right. Amazon did give me a refund so I was able to reorder.
NOTE: The bad packaging could be a fluke. I will see when the second bottle arrives.

PRODUCT REVIEW & PHOTOS (5 stars)

Why I ordered: My hair is finicky and starts to dry out as soon as the weather begins to cool. Age probably has something to do with this too. I heard about this product via a Reddit forum for black hair - even though the product is made for the face.

 I will just cut right to the chase and let you know that I LOVE this stuff.

Remember, the bottle had leaked into the mailer so when I opened it, I got the liquid all over my fingers. I knew that the leaking was caused by the bottle getting banged around in the mail so, being me, I wiped the liquid right onto my face. Waste not, my loves.

Let me tell you wot. Yes, "wot". This stuff is truly a game changer.

Once I applied this, I didn't need to use any other lotion, cream, moisturizer - nothing. My skin was magically and instantly hydrated.

The texture of this - we will just call it "lotion" from here on out - is almost that of most thin serums. Like water with just a touch of something. The appearance is just like cloudy water.

I couldn't identify the smell at first until I remembered the full name of the product and, yep, the smell is very much like Sake - which I have had - but I cannot describe that smell to you. It's not pleasant or unpleasant, in my opinion. The scent is mild in this product and fades as soon as it starts drying.

This is good stuff. If I could, I would give it ten stars. I am awaiting the delivery of some "Speedy Oil" that was mentioned by someone, but I have no plans to get any of the other Kikumasamune type items other than this lotion. And I do plan to stay stocked up on this!

I had to update this because I forgot to list the ingredients as shown on the Amazon product page:

Water, glycerin, butylene glycol, rice ferment filtrate (sake), glutamate, arginine, leucine, Ceramide 3, Ceramide 6 II, placenta extract, arbutin, Glycyrrhizic acid, soy protein, maltitol, methyl gluceth-10, peg-60 hydrogenated castor oil, hydroxyethyl cellulose, alkyl styrene/acrylic acid copolymer, citric acid, sodium citrate, phenoxyethanol, methylparaben, fragrance

Peace
--Free

NOTE: Since I got my first bottle, I noticed that the price went up almost a dollar. Maybe the popularity will affect the price???

This is a copy/paste of the original review/posting

**UPDATE** Intermittent Fasting Results

The intermittent fasting is still going well for me. Every time I do one of these updates, I seem to have found more resources that are helpful to me. I will include those links at the bottom of the post. First, though, it's time for the photos showing the most recent results against the March photos. And for today's pics, I will just cover up that hair since I was out of the shower and not groomed!









































(I have to start paying attention to which way I'm standing when I take these pics...)

Maybe for some folks, this doesn't seem like a lot of progress for a 4 month period but keep in mind that, because of my fatigue, I haven't been exercising. I do try to go outside and walk around the apartment building a couple times a day. That's about half a block.

My weight loss has been fluctuating but, taking the advice of some of my nurses, I am looking more at visible and no-scale results. If I go by how my clothing fits, I am on the right track. Also, my feet have not been hurting as badly.

I have switched up on the way I do my fasts. Some of the changes I have incorporated are fluctuating between fasting between 16, 18, and 20 hours each day. I haven't done another 24-hour fast since March but I don't feel the need to do one for a while. Things are, as I said, going well enough. The biggest part of my weight loss is not coming just from fasting but also from what I eat during the feeding hours.

This is what I try to keep on hand in the fridge and pantry:

• Lots of chicken breasts
• A little bit of ground beef
• Bacon
• Fresh spinach, Kale, Collards (used to get frozen until I got the food sealer)
• Sliced olives, chopped green chiles (mild), fresh tomato salsa\
• Onions and garlic (of course!)
• Coconut milk (mostly for Bulletproof coffees)
• Coconut oil (unrefined or soft for medium heat)
• Heavy whipping cream (mostly for Bulletproof - BPC - coffees)
• Full-fat shelf-stable milk (cos I don't use that often)
• Trail mix with nuts, and some dark chocolate (see note in next paragraph)
• MCT oil (after reading tons of reviews, I am using this brand) 
• EVOO
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Raw or (when I can afford it) Manuka honey
• Melons - honeydew, yellow, water, etc. - (whatever is on sale)
• Lots of unsalted butter, full-fat mayo
• Lots of filtered water
• Pellegrino Sparkling water when I can afford it
• Dark roast coffee - McDonald's brand for drinking it black & Cafe Bustelo for making BPC

As far as the trail mix, it can be expensive even at Walmart so I get one of the big $7 buckets, then buy walnuts and pecans when they are on sale. I will toss the sale nuts into the trail mix bucket to add to the mix. I keep this bucket in the freezer so that the raisins and cranberries don't clump. This is a nice snack along with the dark chocolate. For the dark chocolate, again I get whatever is on the cheap, On my last grocery run, Walmart had the bags of Dove dark chocolate pieces on sale. There are about 30 pieces to a bag so I stuck to just one!

I've been watching the YouTube channel 2 Fit Docs because one of them is a nutritionist and they both practice IF. The husband also practices full Keto and lost 53 pounds in 22 weeks. I also like checking in on the channel Dot2Trot because she has awesome recipes. I like doing a variation of her pizza casserole.

By the way, I am not practicing full Keto; I do keep an eye on my carb intake. Now, as I mentioned, here are some links that might be useful to you all who are trying to do this kind of eating plan.

• I might have posted this before, but it's a beginner's guide intermittent fasting
• If you want a crust with your pizza, a friend recommended this recipe to me
• If you need a Keto-friendly grocery shopping list, this one's a start
• This is a good recipe for quiche (sans crust!) 

By the way, there are some good phone/tablet apps for anyone dieting, fasting, or just trying to be healthier. I personally use Fat Secret, iFast, and Time Until. Those are all in the Play store for Android and I'm sure you can find them on iTunes.

Peace

--Free

**REVIEW UPDATE** Natural Lash Growth Enhancing Lash & Brow Serum

When I first tried Natural Lash to review it here, I was impressed by how easy it was to use. I had high hopes for improving my skimpy eyelashes and thinning eyebrows.

I promised to come back periodically and let you guys know how serum was working. I often forget to do that with some products, but... Wow. This is working so well at just Day 11* that I couldn't help but come back and do an update.

Not only is the length better, but the biggest results I'm seeing is with the thickness.

In this photo, I am wearing mascara, but not my fiber mascara which is made to add length and thickness. The reason I noticed the changes is because I did just throw on my regular mascara this morning for a quick run out to the mall. When I was putting the mascara on, I kept checking the bottle to see if I was using the right one.

Ignore the slight heat rash I have going on here...

I'm pretty excited about this because this product is working way above and beyond what I expected.
My lashes today (using the regular mascara) look like they did when I previously used my fiber extending mascara.

One other thing I wanted to update you on: when I said in the original post that the product was tinted a faint brown, I meant it. What I have noticed is that if you get it on your lashes, the second application will leave a fine coating. I first noticed this on my brows. To keep from having any noticeable flaking, I apply the product to my brows, then rub my finger across then to sort of massage it in. For my lashes, I'm just extra careful not to get any product on them, but adding mascara takes care of the problem.

For the results that I am seeing, I have to say that I am super-impressed. Plus, I still have so much product left. Keep in mind that I am doing 2 applications per day - on my lashes and brows.

So, there you have it. Of course, I will certainly be coming back for future updates.

Peace
--Free

* I started writing this post yesterday or the day before.

**UPDATE** Bailey Quarters

This is for "annie". An update of photos of Jan Smithers who played Bailey Quarters on WKRP. Apparently, lots of people love this woman. I hope she knows that. I did this post waaay back in '09 and it still gets hits all the time.

If looks tell a story, I think she must be
a sweetheart. What a natural beauty.

Bailey & Andy,
sitting in a tree...
I wished they had

I was going to search for more recent photos of Ms. Smithers, but when I read that she'd retired from acting, I decided to leave her to her privacy.

The original cast

Come to think of it, since it's the show we all liked, maybe we should leave the characters in our memories as they were.

Peace
--Free