Alice's Smile

     In just two days, we will have officially been a family for a month. This is our Alice. We adopted her from the SPCA Animal Rescue. Alice has been through at least 3 names, but I think (and hope) Alice is her favorite.


    Believe me, I can gush about this dog ALL day, but she has come with her own baggage of course.  She's scared of people, and more so, men. When we were visiting her at the shelter, she took a while to come up to the fence to sniff me, and she coward from my husband. She isn't properly socialized with other dogs. We've only given her a chance in a controlled safe environment, to meet other dogs, and the results were mixed (something we're working on).  When we first brought her home, she seemed to adjust quickly...or we thought she had.

    Alice tends to be unsure, (likely were her issues come from I would guess), but she seemed comfortable with us, right off the bat. Early this week, the trainer we've seen a couple times (Bev, she's been super helpful and has put my mind at ease a handful of times), pointed out how much better she was than the last time she'd seen her. This had me take notice of other things. She's catching onto our morning routine. She knows when mom is putting on her shoes in the morning, we're going out, and if I'm taking too long, she lets me know. She's also not pulling like she used to on her leash, and the elevator isn't a terrifying thing anymore.

    Today's progress on our walk, was VERY noticeable... there was little to no pulling, but we noticed, she's not so terrified of people. We actually stopped to talk to people on the walk and she DIDN'T freak out. This was panic mode before, desperately trying to find a way out.  We also encountered a handful of other dogs on our walk. In the past she'd freak out,  I'd try and get her to keep moving, and that was a task and a half. Today, we kept moving and kept telling her to come, we needed to repeat it, and pull a little on the leash, but again, vast improvement!

    BUT, the one thing that has me thinking, she's really starting to feel like she's home? She's smiling. Sounds small, but this warms my heart every time I see that smile, and yes it's the one on the top of this post. I'd been posting pictures of Alice for a month. She looks unsure, or serious in basically of them, because these are the faces we saw. Now, she smiles. That may sound like such a small thing to some, and we'd seen a random smile from time to time, but we're seeing lots of smiles lately, and i love it.

     We still have work to do, but I'm celebrating these victories, with pride.

Why I changed to natural skin care

     Every year, without fail, my skin has a FREAK OUT! It's usually when we see a major drop in the temperature and it can take a WHILE to come back from. The freak out usually consists of acne, while my skin dries out, and my eczema going crazy.

     Last year I was bound and determined to overcome it. I can't tell you how many walls I hit a dead end. After googling skin care routine after skin care routine, I found some one who posted advice on how to find my OWN routine, instead of everyone else's. She was also very enthusiastic about natural skin care.

    Something I didn't ever really think of, nor did I know a lot about it. So I started doing research, and getting myself more info than I could absorb or need. So I picked a more natural route, and slowly, I finally started to see an improvement, and was able to maintain a complexion, I could live with.

     Well like I said, that was last year. I have learned more about natural options in the year, but found myself limited. I like trying new things, and really didn't think I could if I stuck strictly to natural products (which by the way is completely untrue). So I started to go back toward conventional, and my skin was okay...for a while. We've recently seen the temperature drop, and my skin had it's freak out!

     So I decided to do what I love to do, and learn more about natural skin care, and makeup. I kind of love finding blogs about natural beauty, and learning what people use for different things. I find unlike typical beauty products, people talk about ingredients, and what specific ones do for you. It kind of makes it easier to understand really...yes I just said I find natural cosmetics easier.  Not always FINDING them, but that's a topic I'll likely touch on on another post.

     I've been back to my natural skin care, for 2 days, and I'm already quite happy with the results...I'm shaking my head wondering why I felt the need to fix something that wasn't broken. But I'm back on track, and amped about it :)