Summer

Well considering I haven't posted since winter, I'd say I've left things a little too long! What can I say, sometimes life just gets in the way...

A lot can happen in 6 months though. I'll do my best to catch you up on the goings-on.

The financial situation I was hinting at for ages has now changed. This is the reason I was giving up my hair dye amid a strict budget - I have moved out of home! The breathing space that this move has granted me is phenomenal. Independence at last!

The hair saga has calmed down... shortly after moving out I bought a packet of vegan hair dye from a health food store in a shade that I hoped was as close to my natural hair colour as possible (I think I must've looked pretty funny squatted up in front of a tiny mirror holding the hair swatch up to my ever-lengthening roots to match the two). A few small stains on the carpet later (that I hoped the landlord wouldn't notice) and voila - my hair was brown again! That was about 4 or 5 months ago now, and the semi-permanent colour has definitely faded. My hair is now looking pretty good, although there is a slight colour difference between my natural hair growing out and the left over colour from the tinting that went on a while ago. I like to think it's a subtle and oh-so effortless nod to the balayage trend that's sweeping the fashion world.

I'm happy to say that I no longer sit on a couch made from animal skin - the good thing about living in your own place is that we could start from scratch and say NO to animal products.
But by far the number one biggest improvement in our vegan lifestyle since moving out of home? We are the proud owners of our very own full size fridge/freezer, which we keep stocked full of delicious food, none of which has in it even the slightest hint of animals. Aaaah life is good. We plan our meals each week, and I'm still building up a repertoire, so I have to search through the many many vegan cookbooks that we own for meal ideas - poor me! Then every night I come home from uni and get to work in the ktichen. And it. Feels. Good. No more disgusting imitation mee goreng! No more pasta with store-bought sauce. We eat real, fresh, healthy food. And we are loving it.
In all honesty, our food habits need some improvement. I need to get into the habit of eating breakfast every day, something I've struggled with since I finished high school. Plus we really need to force ourselves to shop at the farmers' markets every week instead of the local small supermarket, so we know exactly where our food is coming from. But we are getting there, and it feels so wonderful to finally be able to practice what I preach in the diet department.

Financially, my health has taken much more of a priority too. I'm a regular at the chiropractor now, and in a month or so, I'll be making my first appointment with the naturopath whose office is just across the road. My wisdom teeth are finally being removed in April, after 4 years or so of problems and pain. I've laid my hands on a meditation CD by Sara from The Space In Between over in Melbourne ( and just quietly, I really want to treat myself to one of her theta healing sessions... the fact that I'd be forced to have a short trip over to Melbourne to do so is just a problem I'll have to deal with!) and I've got my eyes peeled for a beautiful cushion or rug that can create a sacred space for me to meditate in every time I sit down. I've also got some bare-bones plans for an August trip to Samudra for a yoga retreat which I am beyond excited about and which I can use to establish a yoga routine for me at home every day. I'm on the lookout for cheap Pilates classes nearby and I'd also like to take up Tai Chi this year but what with the yoga and Pilates too, we'll see how much I can squeeze in! I'm also waiting to bring my beautiful bike over from home so that I can ride her around in the mornings, and the evenings... hell, anytime I want!
In 2011 I was regularly attending counselling sessions with a fabulous woman. Changes to the laws by the Federal government meant that even with referrals to a mental health worker (counsellor, psychologist, psychiatrist or otherwise) the number of annual visits allowed under Medicare had been slashed from 18 to 10. This meant I had to abruptly end my visits at the end of 2011, and I never quite seemed to get around to rescheduling in 2012. Well this is a brand new year, and I'm looking forward to booking in with this woman as well as trying some couple work and even some hypnotherapy!

And then there's the usual stuff on the cards: full-time uni, part-time work as well as getting my hands nice and dirty with plenty of full-on wedding planning! So I'm sure that latter will feature heavily in the blog over the next year and a bit.

Well I think that about sums things up for now. Until next time!

An easy choice

When people ask me if going vegan was difficult:

I love Kristen Wiig so couldn't resist sharing this :)

Reblogged from we-are-all-earthlings

Strawberry season

Hi!

This is just a quick post to give an update on the hair-colour-change saga. I know right, what an interesting life I lead!

Well, to begin with I was in the salon for four and a half hours. I used to think 2, 2 and a half when I was a white blonde was a long time! To tell you the truth though, it certainly didn't feel like 4.5 hours - how time flies when you're having fun! I've had shorter shifts at work that felt eternities longer than that morning did. Anyway, the day before I'd tried to remove as much of the colour as I could using a technique I found on an online hair colouring forum (the inernet, hey?) Apparently it worked for some of the users with permanent colour but even with my semi-permanent, nothing budged. So at the hairdresser's my hair was bleached, bleached and then bleached again. Eventually I was looking in the mirror at a... well, an odd-looking person to say the least. I had mousy brown roots, fluoro yellow mid-lengths and fluoro orange ends. My hair was high-vis! Then red hair dye was applied to the lightest yellow parts and a semi-permanent was put over all of it. I had no idea what colour they were putting on at the end: the bits left around my hairline started to tinge brown over time so I thought I was in for a light brown? But I didn't want to get my hopes up that I'd no longer be fluoro so I waited...
As my hair was dried it looked quite a bit like my natural colour, but I stepped outside of the salon and BAM! Dark strawberry blonde? A browny-ginger? It's an odd colour so I'm not quite sure how to describe it. I was really self-conscious about it at first as there's a slight ginger element to it but I decided that noone but me knows that this isn't what I'd planned for, so I went out into the world trying to rock my new hair colour. And I've had compliments! The only downside is that I was warned by my hairdresser that the semi wont last long so I'm checking in the mirror every day for any signs of that ghastly orange resurfacing. Fingers crossed it stays hidden for a while!
The day was topped off though by my 'poverty': I couldn't pay for the appointment after all that! Extremely embarrassed, I slunk off home to borrow money off my partner, and put it through the next day. Dearie me!

So, now the question is... do I go back again in a month or so and do it all over again in an attempt to go blonde? Or, seeing as I'm pretty close at the moment, do I just gun for my natural colour from here? Time will tell...

Little April showers

Yes, I know it's May, but only just! With winter approaching, it's starting to get a bit nippy around the house at night. I've been wearing cheap slippers nabbed from an overnight stay at a hotel a few months back, but my partner's tootsies have been suffering since the demise of his old, worn, much-loved uggboots. So we went out to a few cheap department stores to try and find animal-friendly versions. (Since the brand name Ugg was developed, I'm pretty sure noone can officially call them uggboots anymore. One store we went to were calling them 'men's slippers' even though they had small, loafer shaped slippers in the next aisle, and these ones clearly came up above the ankle in a boot style. Anyway...) No luck in one store as the upper was real leather, but a cheaper shop was our friend - fully synthetic uggboots and for a tenth of the price! My partner has even remarked that his feet get too hot in them, if that could be a bad thing. Winter, here we come!

Talking about uggboots has made me think about all the things I own that aren't vegan. Not just the soaps and the hairsprays, but my sheepskin car seat covers. My duck down quilt. My pure wool blanket. My woollen beanies and scarves and gloves and jumpers. The woollen squares I started knitting last year to make a baby blanket. My silk skirts. All the books I own that are printed with animal-based inks. It's overwhelming. To be honest, though, I have no intention of throwing any of these items away, and will only search for vegan replacements if or when they wear themselves out. I know this would disgust some vegans out there but in my eyes, the damage has already been done. From a financial standpoint alone, I can't afford to give all these things to op-shops and start from scratch. As long as I don't buy any new leather, silk, feather items, then I'm not causing any harm. And if I contributed to the animal's suffering by buying these items made from their body parts, the least I can do is get a bloody good run out of them right? Surely waste would be an even bigger problem?
I guess there are a lot of things in the world of veganism that rely upon individual choice. I heard a story from a friend of mine of a vegan she knew that wouldn't eat anything from a restaurant if the plate it was served on was washed with other dishes that had had meat on them. Now, I personally find that to be a bit extreme, but I'm sure that person didn't and I'm sure many others wouldn't.  It's a bit weird to think that I lead a lifestyle many people would think of as extreme, yet there are probably so many out there who think I'm copping out or that I'm not doing enough. I know my partner for example, threw away a lot of the items he owned that weren't vegan as he just couldn't stomach using them anymore. I, on the other hand, still wear patent high heels and use Maybelline mascara...

What else...

I wasn't able to catch you up completely in my last post, so what other developments can I fill you in on?
I began the search for vegan makeup. (Let me tell you, as someone who usually gets a kick out of buying beauty products, it is a major hassle trying to replace them all with vegan versions. One step at at time...) Online blogs and forums led me to a few, but the easiest to access was Nude by Nature mineral makeup. I eyed off their product range, worked out what I wanted and sent off an email asking for a list of ingredients. I was pleasantly surprised with their quick and informative response, but disappointed to see that their primer, lipgloss and mascara all contained animal products. Their stuff is a tad hefty in terms of price, so I waited until I well and truly exhausted my current powder supply and had enough money to buy the Mineral Cover (foundation) and Finishing Veil (powder). Their blush was vegan too but it only came in one shade - a dark brown-toned pink - and it didn't suit me at all, so I refrained. I've been using the foundation and powder ever since. At first it took me a bit of getting used to, after 9 years of applying liquid foundation. It was strange to slowly build up cover, to know how to get an even coverage and know when I had enough or not enough on. I'm not blown away, but I'm not disappointed either. I look a touch paler than I did wearing my old liquid foundation, and my oily shine still breaks through the makeup after a number of hours but I haven't downgraded and my products are cruelty-free, so I'm happy!
I'm still on the lookout for vegan lipstick, blush, mascara and eyeliner so it'll be a while until my makeup bag is completely animal-friendly.

My partner and I were walking through a local street arts festival the other day and we came across a little vegan stall. We scored a whole heap of free stickers (who doesn't love free stickers?), my partner scored a new vegan shirt, and we both scored a potential new group of friends! Well, maybe. Turns out, the tiny vegan community in our town meets up every so often to hang out, eat vegan food, chat and maybe watch a DVD or listen to a guest speaker. Considering we are the only vegans that we know, it sounds like a great place for us to find new networks. We've both joined the online community, so now it's just a matter of mustering up the courage to go along to one of these gatherings. Thank the lord for my partner I say, as I'm so shy that I can guarantee I wouldn't go if I were on my own! Fingers crossed we meet some nice, like-minded people there - wait, who am I kidding, they're vegans! Of course they'll be nice and like-minded! So I guess fingers crossed there's some future friends there. It'll also be a refreshing change to have real vegans to talk to. I tend to shy away from mentioning much about anything vegan in real life for fear of people interpreting my musings as judgemental, evangelical or snobbish. It'd be good to be able to talk openly about anything and everything vegan.

Resurfacing

Hello!

It has been way too long since I last posted but the university semester really ramped up and I fell behind on my posts.
A lot has happened since the end of February, it's just a matter of remembering it all!

My hair colour change has been scheduled for tomorrow. I'm still going down the path of going blonde, then natural. My hair has some red in it so as of tomorrow I'll be a ginger (and not the pretty kind) but hopefully that won't last too long. I've managed to source vegan hair dye, as well as vegan hair bleaching kits. The bleach is a little harder to get unfortunately as the online store doesn't ship internationally. If I do manage to work out a practical way of getting it sent over then I may be able to stay blonde for longer than a few months, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I've been using the Oil Cleansing Method for a few weeks solid now. If I'm perfectly honest, I can't say I've noticed a huge difference in my skin. It still gets oily, I still have pimples... actually, I have noticed more pronounced blackheads on my chin over the last few weeks now that I think about it. I'll keep plugging on though, as it's certainly saving me money. And if it's not making my skin worse, then that alone is worth the effort!

The Fertility Awareness Method is still under construction. By that I mean that I'm still trying to work out my body before I can rely on it as a concrete method of contraception. Despite having no active baby-prevention strategies underway at the moment, I'm really enjoying the knowledge I'm gaining about my body. At the doctor's the other day, after I told him I was no longer on the pill (and wasn't interested in any type of hormonal contraception) he reminded me to check for pregnancy if I stopped having my period. I confidently told him that I'd know if I were pregnant a long time before I noticed my period was late, something I definitely wouldn't have been able to say before.
   I've been off the pill for a few months now and there have been definite changes. I've lost weight, seemingly all from my bust (boo!), my periods are more painful than they were on the pill and my cycles are taking a while to settle into a natural rhythm. My last cycle lasted for 49 days, my longest ever! I have no idea what was going on for those 7 weeks but hopefully it's my body getting all the weirdness out of its system and I can start to rely on some patterns. My poor partner's patience is wearing quite thin, I can tell you!

In terms of food, we've been trying out a few new concoctions recently. I've tried a new vegan cheese recipe which is very nice and so so easy to make. Also, after my Krispy Kreme dream in my last post I decided to check once and for all. I was disappointed (not surprised) and amused to see that according to the official website, in terms of animal products, Krispy Kreme doughnuts only contain eggs, butter, milk, yoghurt and whey! A local imitator, Dreamy Donuts also came up negative on the vegan-friendly search. So I set about making my own. It took me a few different recipes and some constructive criticism from my partner before I found the one. The good part is that it takes so long to fry the bloody things that it's an occasional treat, and also much cheaper than store-bought versions.
    I'm a real junk-food addict, and giving up a lot of my vices in the process of becoming vegan has been really difficult. Even now, after about 8 or 9 months, I still crave potato chips. It takes all of my willpower not to buy them in the supermarket, even knowing that they aren't vegan. I've never managed to find anything that satisfies that craving. Maybe I never will. I realise these are totally first-world problems, but I do live in the first world!

I think that's about all I have time for right now, but that's definitely not all I have to say, so I'll be back later with more updates. I'll do my best not to leave it two months until the next time I post!

Online!

The internet issue has been resolved (at least for now... my modem's a bit temperamental). So this is just a quick post to say hello and give some updates.

After talking it over with my partner, I have decided to go blonde for the few months before money gets quite tight. I'm sure there will be an intermediate orange stage but I'm willing to pull it off. In a way I don't think the ginger will be quite as bad as the weird colours that seem to come out when hair is tinted. Then it's up to me to source some vegan hair dye for the move back to my natural colour. It's quite exciting actually. I really miss being blonde (honestly, they do have more fun) and it'll only be for a few months so I'll have to enjoy it while it lasts. That plus there are many people in my life who have never known me with my natural hair colour. Hmmm, interesting.

I had a dream the other night that I was about to break my 'vegan vows' and eat Krispy Kremes. All I needed was the go ahead from my partner and I would have launched right into them! This is actually quite far from the normal patten of my dreams where I wake up sweating after a nightmare in which I've unknowingly consumed meat or cheese. Ahh it's quite funny to see how veganism really does penetrate your whole life - even your subconscious!

Off to bed for me now. I need to make getting a decent stretch of sleep every night a bit of a habit... 40 hour weeks of class time and poor sleep are starting to wear me down I think.

Happy dreaming!