Last week’s interesting hair
April 13, 2010
Before
After
Before
After
One side
the other side (hair by Jonathan)
No food for you!
January 18, 2010
Loyal readers have noticed that it has been some time since this site has had any attention.
That is because Aura (the chick in charge) has been preoccupied with cooking. There have, in the past been food posts here, but lately most have gone to Facebook.
In an attempt to reclaim focus on the hair (and to remember to use the real camera, not just the one on the phone) the food posts have a new home. If you are interested, you can check out Biscuits & Bacon.
Love to see you there!
Tastings in July!
July 6, 2009
Here is the July calendar!
July 11, Noon – 3: Elysian Brewing Company with Kris from Click Wine Group
July 25, Noon – 3: Assorted Woodinville, Washington wines with Micheal from Cru Selections
Last week’s interesting hair
June 2, 2009
Hair by Jonathan
Dawn has a blog!
April 28, 2009
Check it out here! She is just getting started, so get yourself subscribed and you can keep up!
Last week’s interesting hair
April 7, 2009
a wedding party decended upon us
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
Haircut, Shampoo, and a Bottle of Wine?
March 9, 2009
Haircut, Shampoo, and a Bottle of Wine?
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Last week’s interesting hair
February 11, 2009
- Before
- After
- Before
- After
- During (forgot the Before!)
- After
- Before (she had a Keratin treatment 3 months ago)
- After
- Before
- After
- Hair by Dawn
Last week’s interesting hair
November 5, 2008
Hair by Carrie
Vote for us!
September 23, 2008
Hey, guess what? We got nominated for the Evening Magazine Best of Western Washington poll in the Hair color category!
Want to vote for us? Click here!
And tell your friends!
Gary Manuel is currently in the lead with 74% of the votes. Think we can catch up?
*UPDATE* As of 10:30 AM Wednesday, we are tied for 5th with a whopping 2% of the votes! Thanks kids. This is a very nice birthday gift for me. The whole salon appreciates it. 🙂
Aura’s Banana Bread
August 10, 2008
I watched the bananas getting spotted and decided, rather than sharing them with the dog, I would let them go a few more days and make banana bread. Veteran readers will notice that I have never posted a recipe in this category. We don’t often have sweets at home, so this is a rare treat. My banana bread is a variation of Cook’s Illustrated‘s: The Best Banana Bread.
2-3 bananas
1 stick butter
2 large eggs
1/3 cup sour cream (try Greek Yogurt for a bit of a different flavor)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon sea salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
Place bananas on a foil lined pan in a 400° oven for 10 minutes then remove and allow to cool. (Roasting the bananas brings out a caramelized sweetness that enriches the flavor of the bread.)
Turn oven down to 350°.
Melt a stick of butter and let it cool.
Butter and flour the bottom half of a loaf pan. (Today I forgot to flour it. I will let you know how that worked out. Doing only to the bottom of the pan is supposed to make the bread rise higher than if you had greased the whole pan.)
Roughly beat bananas in a stand mixer. (I suggest you peel them directly over the mixing bowl because there may be some liquid inside.)
Add eggs, vanilla and melted butter and mix until combined.
Add dry ingredients and stir (on lowest setting so as to not get flour all over the kitchen) until just combined. It will still look lumpy.
With spatula, scrape the sides of the mixing bowl and incorporate any residual flour. Pour into loaf pan and smooth the top with the spatula.
Bake on the lower middle rack for about 45-55 minutes. Done means it is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
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When you are in the salon, you may feel like you are in a different country where a different language is spoken. Hairdressers speak a language of color that may be unfamiliar to you if you have had no art training.
I found this amazing, in-depth article at Colour Lovers that explains the color wheel (the basis of all the work we do with hair color.)
Not only will this help you understand what we mean when we talk about your hair, it will help the next time you need to pick paint of fabric for your decorating needs.
The first color wheel has been attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, who in 1706 arranged red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet into a natural progression on a rotating disk. As the disk spins, the colors blur together so rapidly that the human eye sees white. From there the organization of color has taken many forms, from tables and charts, to triangles and and wheels the history.
The story behind my new avatar
March 24, 2008
I am lucky to know lots of creative, interesting people. Some of them actually make a living being creative (only a few make a living being interesting!) One of them is Stan Shaw. I met Stan a million years ago when I was a young hairdresser. He was buddies with my co-worker, Denny (who was in a local band called Running With Scissors…anyone know what happened to them?) Stan later married a friend of mine who is also creative and interesting.
When I had my mid-life crisis, they designed my tattoo.
A few weeks ago, Stan left a comment on the post about bacon vodka which led me to his website where I saw a cartoon that looked (I thought) a lot like me. (It is a female with glasses, funky colored hair, pointy chin and holding a PDA. You tell me.) It wasn’t supposed to be me. I didn’t commission it. But I have no problem with second hand art (it is more within my budget, anyway!)
So, without further ado, here is the new cartoon version of Aura Mae. I will be using it online and perhaps in print on occasion as the mood strikes. Mostly I was just tired of the head shot from the book that I had been using for the past couple of years. The upside of using a cartoon as your likeness? I can be eternally youthful and no one will give me crap about how old the photo is!
Small business vs. large
February 20, 2008
The salon industry has an advantage over many others. While places like Home Depot can enter a market and push mom and pop hardware stores out of business, salons are different. Many customers prefer the intimacy of a small salon to the hub-bub of a large salon. There will always be a market for both. So my advice to small salons is always the same. Don’t try to be like the big guy. Be yourself! Stand your ground. Create a space where your clients and your staff are happy. Remember what Cinderella said in the Rogers & Hammerstein musical. “In my own little corner, in my own little chair, I can be who ever I want to be.”
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.collegehumor.com posted with vodpod
Blowing my own horn – and blowing my mind!
January 15, 2008
Look over to the right to the little counter that shows how many visits Get Some Hairapy has gotten since I started in August 2007. Over 5000 visits in less than 5 months. It’s a bit overwhelming, but the attention whore in me isn’t complaining!
The little map to the right gets bigger if you click on it and it tells me that there are seven regions (all in the US) that have more than 100 visits each.
Head…getting…bigger…not…enough…oxygen…(Ooops! What is that other little box? Only 4 people are interested enough in what I say to subscribe? It must be my family!)
Aura’s ego returns to normal size…disaster averted.
Happy Tuesday!
Britney’s life is a wreck and you’re mad at Dr. Phil? Seriously?
January 10, 2008
We aren’t ashamed to tell you that sometimes the conversation in the salon turns to celebrity gossip.
We subscribe to a broad selection of magazines. Cooking, decorating, travel, fashion and trash. The trash is often the most read. I guess the salon is a safe place to read a gossip rag without the shame of you having to buy it.
So, the saga of Britney Spears. This train has wrecked more times than I thought a train could wreck. Most recently she has found herself in the hospital for a mental health observation and without rights to visit her kids. (Are we surprised by anything she does now?)
So, in walks the tough shrink. At the request of her family, he says, and wants to help. Now the family (and mental health professionals) have complained that the doctor with the TV show talked to reporters about her health. This surprises you?
Let me go out on a limb here and suggest that at this point, her health is more important than her privacy.
Of course she needs an intervention! The child has gone bat-shit crazy!
Someone has to help her and the people around her have not been able to do so. If it takes a little public embarrassment to get her some help, then so be it. She has done plenty to embarrass herself in the past few years.
How loudly does someone have to cry for help? Let’s hope she gets help while she can still afford it. Health care, mental or physical, isn’t cheap!
What did you get out of this book?
November 23, 2007
Shel Silverstein came up in conversation the other day when I discovered he wrote many of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s songs (not to mention the Johnny Cash classic: A Boy Named Sue.) A surprisingly heated discussion of The Giving Tree ensued.
Upon further research, I find we are not the only ones to debate this book! The Wikipedia article tells of a Giving Tree Symposium and quotes a professor of Religious Studies at Stanford. Check it out and let me know your opinion!
The ZAGG Advantage Full Body Shield Review
Published by October 30th, 2007 in Aura Mae, Screen Protectors and Reviews. 0 Comments
Let me start by saying I am a big fan of protection. I have purchased more than my share of cases for the devices I have had over the years. I end up liking them less and less because they make the device bigger and often (to my eye) less attractive. I had a silicone skin for my Trinity and it seemed to cheapen the feel and look of the phone, which means I didn’t use it, which means I ended up with a phone that got tattered and abused.
To prevent this from happening to my new toy, I ordered the skin before I ordered my Advantage. Much to my dismay, one of the products that ZAGG (invisibleSHIELD) makes is for the iPhone, and filling those orders put the company behind in their order processing. (Damn iPhone.) I had my Advantage a full two weeks before the skin arrived and despite using the OEM leather case religiously, I still ended up with a little chip in the case above the indicator lights. (I dotted the mark with Sharpie before installing the protector to minimize the cosmetic flaw.)
I have used the invisibleSHIELD screen protectors on many devices and have been very happy. The Advantage is the first item I have had for which they offered a Full Body Shield.
Let’s start with the name, because as much as I like the whole idea, I was very cranky to finish the installation and find that there are no pieces to cover the sides. I was really looking forward to having some protection around the charger slot because that’s where I feel like I am scraping the device. I was expecting full coverage. No dice.
OK. Now that I have my biggest gripe out of the way, let me walk you through the process.
The instructions are not device specific, so I didn’t know where to start. I decided to start with the screen, since I had done that before and figured I was competent enough to give it a go.
I sprayed my fingers, and both sides of the film as directed. It took a little finessing to get it lined up just so, but I was successful. Time to move on to the front, I figured, and here is where I had my first problem. Having only used screen protectors in the past, I was unprepared for the narrow bits that would go on as a picture frame on the metal around the screen. It would have been helpful to know that the film can stretch. I had a really tough time lining up the holes in the film with the holes in the Advantage. In fact, I was unable to make it line up. I had to cut out a tiny bit of film to make it work. (This is where “cranky” began to creep in.) The skin is for the X7500 and not the X7501, so already it has a hole for the front facing camera that doesn’t exist (that’s another gripe for another time!) I knew this going into it, so I had prepared myself for that, but wasn’t expecting to have to do surgery. This is also where I learned how tough the shield is. I couldn’t slice it with an Exacto knife and had to use scissors to cut it. I removed a smidge of the product so that it wouldn’t overlap. (I am a “picker” and an overlapping bit of film would be an invitation to pick.)
The big pieces all went on easily. The most difficult section was the edge with the battery cover. It was tough to get the opening lined up so that the hatch cover wouldn’t bump into the housing.
The kit comes with a squeegee which was helpful on the large bits, but I found a cloth to be more helpful in many places. It’s a bit of a balancing act to get enough moisture for the film to be movable and not so much that you feel like you are soaking the machine. (The instructions do suggest spraying the film, not the device.) There were a few occasions where I just couldn’t maneuver the film into the right spot, so I used a piece of packing tape to lift a corner, spray more fluid, and try again.
The instructions also suggest that you leave the device alone for 24 hours for all the residual bubbles to work their way out. Of course none of us are going to be able to do that with our primary communications device. To that end, I performed the installation on a day off, before dinner, so I could minimize any use of the phone for as long as possible.
I do like the look of the screen without a cover, but I am not willing to risk the wear on the screen without one. (I had a device once on which I played A LOT of solitaire and after a while, there was a visible wear pattern on the glass over the stack of cards and down to the seven rows!) I hated using the Advantage these two weeks with no screen protector, but I also didn’t want to install one of the OEM and have to remove it when the invisibleSHIELD came. (These are the thoughts that keep me up nights. Aren’t you glad you don’t live in my head?)
All in all, I am happy with the coverage. I can still pan easily in Internet Explorer (using SPB Pocket Plus) and the screen seems plenty responsive, so I don’t feel I have sacrificed much in the tactile department, and the VGA screen is still attractive through the film (in fact maybe better with the glare being cut.) I wish the directions were specific to each device, and I wish it covered the sides, but I am glad I have it. Now I’m hunting for a pouch-style holder with a belt clip to carry the phone (without the keyboard.) If you have any brilliant, solutions, fill me in!
The ZAGG (invisibleSHIELD) for the HTC Advantage (7500) is available directly from the manufacturer.
MSRP: $24.95
What I Like: The idea of not beating up my device with regular daily use.
What Needs Improvement: The directions should tell you where to start and to be careful not to stretch. Full Body Shield should mean full coverage.
This is good for my ego!
October 29, 2007
Get Some Hairapy, The Blog, is 12 weeks old and we just hit 1000 views! (That’s more than books I’ve sold!) Thanks to those who read intentionally and to those who stumble here.
Get Some Hairapy! 