the dry shampoo struggle

the first dry shampoo i ever tried was bumble and bumble spray for blondish hair, i loved it. i've had medium to long hair all my life and washing/drying it every day is not only bad for it, but a pain and a time suck. over the last 10 or so years i feel like i've tried them all. my favorite spray is elizabeth & james black nirvana, even 3rd day hair is acceptable. for powders, it's oscar blandi i fear is discountinued. with no blandi to order and areosole shipping not allowed, what did i manage to find in budapest?

bumble and bumble pret a powder is a good travel size and does nearly as good a job as the oscar blandi. i say nearly b/c it's a bit harder to get out of the bottle after a few shakes.

lee stafford was a co-worker reccomendation and is a close second to elizabeth and james. it's got good absorbsion for a spray, blends into my darker hair and doesn't have an offensive smell. the downside is the size of the can, it runs out pretty quickly.

batiste has a stronger smell. the original is fine but there's no 3rd day possibility here. the xxl volume is pretty sticky, like a hairspray with powder, which might be what you're looking for.

aussie miracle is pretty crap. the smell is the standard aussie smell which is a bit over powering. the powder also seems to separate from the spray, it needs a lot of shaking before each use.

garden of philosophy

i know i said i was doing a night run this past weekend, but life got in the way. specifically a co-workers going away dinner trumped a 7k for me, and it was totally worth it. instead of a 7k night run, i managed a 7k afternoon run to the foot of gellert hill and walked up to the garden of philosophy, something i've been wanting to do for months. totally worth it as well.

keeping pace

i've done some runs over the last 4 years, i've blogged about a few. they've been different lengths

disneyland half marathon

mom and dad explore europe - budapest update

the first thing i got asked when i told my friends and family i was spending the year in budapest was "when can i visit?" my parents have both been to europe but at different times. they've been planning a trip to selvacava, italy, where my dad's grandparents immigrated from, for as long as i can remember. they finally got to take that trip, bookended by weekends with me in budapest.

i have to say, budapest - italy - budapest was the right way to do this. they got to visit me and had something to do during the week while i worked. we managed to make it out to a few places i hadn't ventured yet.

my skin and europe aren't always friends

a quick note to say i'm sorry for the delay in posts. i had company in town 2 weekends in a row and we are about to start filming at work so, my free time has been extremely limited. i will have some great budapest updates next week tho, promise! now, on to the good stuff.

my skin has been a problem my whole life. i've had eczema since birth and still will scratch a random patch in my sleep so that it's very hard to fully heal. i've managed to keep it a bay for the most part with a water filter shower attachment and a strict seasonal rotation of aveeno products. guess what they don't have in budapest: aveeno!

coming to europe without my trusty aveeno wasn't entirely planned or unplanned. i stocked up on the travel size gold bond cremes and eucerine because i like to keep those in my purse as my hands get very dry. having not had a real flare up in a while, it didn't really occur to me to worry about my body lotion. i had already scoped out shops on google maps, i knew i'd be able to get my lush dream wash and butterballs locally. i figured finding body lotion would be the easy part, oops.

it never occurred to me that i wouldn't be able to find fragrance free body products here. the stores are jam packed heavily with perfumed body wash, lotions and balms, (and 20 kinds of femme wash) but fragrance free was hard to find. same with laundry detergent. my beau thinks this is a hold over from when they showered less so needed to smell artificially clean, who knows. after fruitless trips to every supermarket and drugstore chain in town, i settled on nivea cocoa body lotion. i've used it before sporadically and knew it wouldn't break me out. for the most part i was right.