Monday Musings : Improving the Ambiance At Home

Happy Monday ladies. It feels like summer is coming to an end in Vancouver already, which is a nice change from the blistering temperatures at home. I’m loving it but I didn’t pack a lot of clothes for cooler weather so we may need to do some shopping. Horrors!!

Here a few things on my mind this week:

Pill Organizer

As I sat filling my weekly pill container last week, I recoiled at its appearance. Ok, that may be a tiny exaggeration but why is it so damn ugly? The older I get the larger my pill organizer becomes because, besides my medication, it holds my vitamins and mineral supplements. It either sits on my bedside table or is hidden in my top drawer…because it’s ugly. I touch that container several times a day to retrieve stuff so I want it to look better than it does. It may seem frivolous, and this is not a world problem, but with so many things out of our control these days, I’m looking to add joy to my daily activities and not offend my sense of style. A quick hunt online showed plenty more ugly ones and a few not-so-ugly.

 

Hair Masks

This past summer has not been a good one for my hair. After a long dry spell, I finally got out to see my stylist, who added some lowlights that I hated the color of.  (It’s hard being my hairstylist.) I knew it would be a very long time before I could see her again so I took matters into my own hands and tried to strip the color out. Not my best idea. I googled and googled until I came up with possibly the worst idea ever.

Mix equal parts of baking soda with dandruff shampoo and leave on for 20 minutes. Being the impatient person that I am, I figured if 20 minutes was good, then 45 would be even better. I was wrong. The color did lift but so did all the moisture in my hair. Fast forward and I’m embracing every hair mask I can get my hands on.

Up first, I popped into Sephora before leaving California and purchased this Ouai hair mask and a ton of samples! You need a magnifying glass to read the instructions on that back so I will repeat them for you here:

Apply to wet hair (mine was dry, because of the tiny letters!), run your fingers through your hair, and chill out for 5-10 minutes. My hair is so damaged, I think there was really only so much it could do, but it helped. My daughter absolutely loves the Ouai hair oil, which smells incredible – like fresh gardenia. She adds it to the ends of her hair, after blow-drying or straightening.

Back to the masks! Our Sephora gal also gave us this sample of the Briogeo which I’ll be using this week. Its part of the Sephora VIB birthday gift this year. It is free to join their beauty insider club and you can earn points for free products or get the birthday gift. 😉

Patio Refresh

As I mentioned earlier, during quarantine, my daughter and I have been reorganizing and redecorating her apartment as well as her patio. She has a fairly large outdoor living space, given how small the apartment is. It’s beautiful, but it does rain here most of the year. We’re brainstorming how to create more green space and an inviting view from inside the apartment for when it is cold and grey out.

A few ideas we had: astroturf to cover the cement, silk plants in the garden (because she faces North and also has a black thumb of death in the garden), an ivy wall to add some green, and some new patio lights on a timer.

I like to add patio lights and outdoor flameless candles to a patio for some extra ambiance. I prefer purchasing the kind that has a timer so you can set them to turn on every night at the same time or plug the lights into a timer.

When you come home from work or errands, it is so nice to have a bit of warmth when the day starts to fade. Stay tuned for some photos of our redecoration project!

What have you got planned for your week?