Author: Crabby Housewife

Lori is a full-time housewife and writer, living in the Midwest with her husband of 35 years - they have two grown daughters and two precious granddaughters. Lori has a house full of pets and her house is never quite perfect. She's also the author of small town stories, which you can learn more about on her website https://lorisoard.com.

How to Make the Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs – How Long to Hard Boil an Egg

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How to Make the Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs – How Long to Hard Boil an Egg

How long do you cook a hard-boiled egg? 12 minutes is the simple answer, but the process is a lot more involved. It sounds like an easy thing to make, a hard-boiled egg, but knowing how long to hard boil an egg can be challenging. If your eggs are rubbery, runny in the middle, or hard to peel, then you can use these tips that will help you boil the perfect hard-boiled egg.

As a mom, I have cooked untold numbers of hard-boiled eggs over the years. The best way to learn how to cook the perfect egg is trial and error. However, hopefully I can help you cook a hard boiled egg easily with these tips.

Tip # 1: How Long to Cook a Hard Boiled Egg

As I mentioned before, there is a lot more to cooking the perfect hard boiled egg than just throwing an egg in a pot of water and boiling it.

  • Place your eggs in the bottom of a sauce pan. You don’t want the eggs too crowded and a single layer works best. If you need to boil more eggs, invest in a larger pot or cook them in batches for the best results.
  • Cover the eggs with tap water (just tap temperature is best).
  • Place the pot of eggs covered in water on your stove top and set the burner to high heat. Bring the pot to a hard boil.
  • Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to a small pot or 1 teaspoon to a large one. This will make the eggs easier to peel. I don’t know why, just do it because mom says.
  • Once you’ve added the salt, turn the burner off but leave the pot on that hot burner. If you own a convection stovetop, put it on the lowest heat possible.
  • Leave there for 12 minutes. You can leave them a bit longer if you are cooking or preparing other things. I’ve left them on the burner for up to 18 minutes with no problem.

Tip # 2: How to Cool the Hard-Boiled Eggs

It is just as important how you cool the eggs as how you cook them. Once the time is up, drain off the hot water and run cold water over the eggs. Drain, add more cold water. Now, add about 10-12 ice cubes (double if using a large pot) and let sit for five minutes. This will cool the eggs so you can peel them. If the ice cubes melt and you aren’t quite ready to peel, add a few more ice cubes, but don’t wait too long to peel the eggs.

Tip # 3: When to Peel Boiled Eggs

I get the best results when I peel them as soon as they have cooled. If you let them sit too long, the shells tend to stick to the egg and create an ugly, pitted surface instead of a smooth, pretty hard-boiled egg. If you are making deviled eggs, for example, then this is important. If you’re just cutting the eggs up to put them in a salad, then it might not matter.

See? Hard-boiled eggs really are pretty simple to make once you know how long to boil the eggs and how to go about cooling and peeling them.

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Coloring Your Own Gray Hair at Home

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Coloring Your Own Gray Hair at Home

Coloring Your Own Gray Hair at Home

For years, I paid a stylist to color my hair at $90 a pop plus $30 for trims. I always hated the way my hair looked. Even though I told my stylist over and over that my hair seemed orange, she never fixed it. I would see photos and my hair was clearly orange-tinged. One day, I went in and asked for a specific cut (even had a photo) and asked for some white-blonde highlights. I walked out with a layered cut (I never do layers other than long ones) and caramel-orange highlights.

That was the day I decided I’d had it. I knew I could do at least that well with a box kit. Thus began some experiments that I’m going to share and hopefully you can learn from.

Store Bought Kits to Color Your Hair

I started with a kit I bought from Walmart. I went with an ash color because I knew that ash would tone down how orange my hair looked. I did take the time to study the color wheels and how stylists balance color. This made me understand that my stylist really didn’t understand this balancing act, not even a little. This is why my hair was always orange, even when I told her it had a tendency to go orange.

In a nutshell:

  • If your hair is orange, you need to add purple to tone it down or an ash color or toner.
  • If your hair is green, you don’t have enough red in it.

As you lighten your hair, you strip out pigments. So, if I wanted highlights that were blonde, I’d have to lose all the red from my hair through several stages. It is not easy to highlight hair at home if your hair is dark and I really don’t recommend it for a beginner as you might fry your hair. However, you can start with a 20 volume toner and some powdered bleach or one of the kits at the store, which is the same thing. You just might have a hard time getting away from it being orangey at first.

The light ash brown I put on my hair did tone down the orange, but it was a flat color and I still wasn’t thrilled with it. I realized that the color I loved on celebrities and friends was not made up of one color. I started to really study their hair and what it looked like and I realized there were layers of different colors, highlights and lowlights that gave them that look.

What Hair Color to Buy from Sally’s Beauty Supply

I then headed to Sally’s, because I knew it would be cheaper to buy several different colors. I was lost. There are so many colors and there are some that are specifically for gray hair (these are amazing and make your hair soft and shiny). I knew I wanted a light ash brown base, blonde highlights and medium golden brown lowlights. So, I chose a light ash brown, a medium golden brown, some highlighting powder and 20 volume toner.

I put on the brown base first. Then, I mixed the bleach and put it on with a toothbrush where I wanted it. My hair takes forever to lighten, so I knew I’d have to leave it on the maximum, 90 minutes. I left it on an hour and then went in and added the golden brown lowlights where I wanted those. 30 minutes later I rinsed it all out and conditioned.

The result? While not perfect, it was 100 times better than what I’d paid my stylist $90 for and it was not orange. There was a slight red tone to my lowlights as I’d chosen golden brown, but they were a pretty slightly auburn type color. I got many compliments.

Other Things to Do to Camouflage Gray Hair

One of the biggest problems I’ve had is that my gray hair is actually snow white. However, I suspect it doesn’t matter what shade your gray is. You likely still want to cover it. If you’re like me, your hair grows fast. So you might color it and a week later gray is peaking through. No one wants to overprocess their hair. There are some things you can do to camouflage it.

  • Touch up just the roots. This only works well if your hair is all one color.
  • Create baby lights. This is something I’ve recently started to do and I love this look so much. I put a chocolate brown at the top, which is about a shade or so darker than my natural color. I then go down about two to three inches and twist sections and bleach them. The look is subtle but adds a lot of pretty lights to my hair, especially when I let the waves go natural. When the gray starts to come in, I just touch up that part at the top or even from the top down about two inches. I don’t have to do the ends, which are often the most fragile. It is a quick touchup.
  • Some people use touch up pens. I’ve not tried these. They are a temporary fix.
  • There are some rinses you can use to add color to your hair, but they aren’t great at covering gray.

These are just a few ideas. You have to find the color that matches your own skin tone and that you love. The ladies who work at Sally’s always help me out and are usually right about the colors to choose and how to fix problems. For example, my blonde kept going orangey or straw yellow. I could never get it where I wanted until a gal at Sally told me to bleach it and then do a lightest ash blonde toner over it at the end. Wow! No more orange. Such an easy fix and makes my hair look BETTER than when I had the salon do it.

Whatever method you choose, it is an ongoing effort to keep gray hair covered. You can do it and you’ll look breathtakingly beautiful.

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What Covers Gray Hair Best?

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What Covers Gray Hair Best?

If there is one thing having kids will get you, it is gray hair. If you are looking for the best hair color to cover gray hair, let me tell you I have tried a lot of different types and brands. What covers gray hair best? It depends on how much of your hair is gray and what color you’d like to get to.

Best Hair Color to Cover Some Gray Hair

If you are just starting to see some gray strands mixed through the rest of your hair, you can easily hide this gray with highlights. If your hair is dark, try some warm caramel hair color highlights. If your hair is light brown or lighter, you should add some honey blonde highlights. the lighter your gray, the lighter your highlights should be to camouflage them. The key is to not go so light that you have to constantly have your highlights redone to hide regrowth. Ideally, your highlights will blend and so will your gray hair, so that the gray hair is covered up.

Color Resistant Gray Hair

If your hair is more than 50% gray and is resistant to color, things get a little trickier. First, you will want to invest a bit more in the color you use. Sally’s Beauty has some amazing dyes specifically made for gray hair and they cover very well and the cover lasts. I also add a gray additive that comes in a little single use packet. If you can’t find them, ask the workers. They are by the red-out, etc.

Also, you will want to choose a color that is a bit lighter than you natural color. This helps make the gray less apparent. The darker you go, the more the gray will show through.

If You Must Have Dark Hair, but You Also Have Gray

I had gone quite a bit lighter to cover the gray. My hair had lightened up to a dark blonde with highlights. However, my natural color is between a medium and light brown. I was really tired of the lighter color as I feel it makes me look washed out and I missed my dark hair. I came up with a solution that worked well for me at this point where my 20-year-old daughter has given me a gazillion gray hairs coming in.

I did baby lights. It is like a very subtle balayage effect. This allowed me to go darker on top and shade down to a bit lighter at the bottom. This also allows me to touch up new growth just at the roots without having to redo all of my highlights every couple of weeks (damaging to the hair).

Salons charge a fortune to do baby lights. I actually stumbled across a very simple technique, which I will share in a video with you the next time I dye my hair. Until then, may your grays stay covered and your hair stay beautiful.

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Too Strict Parenting

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Too Strict Parenting

I’ve over wondered if I’m guilty of too strict parenting. Now that my girls are grown (20 and 23), I look back on their childhoods and I realize I spent way too much time worrying what other people thought, making sure my kids weren’t “bothering” anyone else, and tending to the rules.

When you’re in the middle of raising your children, it seems like that magic number 18 is so far away. People tell you that it goes by in the blink of an eye, but you don’t think it really does. You have however many more years to raise your child. However, it is true that suddenly your child is graduating from high school and you wonder where all the time went.

Signs of Too Strict Parenting

If you are a strict dad or strict mom with strict rules for your children, your children may suffer from this. Some signs you might be too strict:

  • You are constantly correcting your children.
  • They miss out on opportunities because you’re worried about them being out of your eyesight.
  • About 90 times a day you say, “Don’t,” “Stop,” or “Seriously?”
  • Your children clam up when you talk to them or ignore you completely.

The honest truth is that if you are a strict parent you probably realize that you are. You can tell by the other parents around you that you stand out a bit and are a bit more uptight than they are.

Harsh Parenting Effects

One thing I’ve figured out now that my girls are grown is that I’m a nag. I have nagged my kids about anything and everything. Now, that nagging came from good intentions. I wanted my children to excel in life, to be happy, healthy, have good careers and be good people. However, because I nagged them all the time, they got to where they tuned me out and didn’t listen to me about anything.

How to Combat Overly Strict Parenting

I saw the movie War Room and it fired me up. I realized what was lacking in my life as a Christian woman and that was the amount of time I was (or rather wasn’t) spending in prayer. So, for the last year, I have been in daily prayer over my children. I pray for them nearly ever day and sometimes for an hour or more. Sometimes God will lay one daughter on my heart more than the other, so I’ll spend the majority of time praying for that one. Sometimes something has occurred and thus I pray more for that one. Other times, I spend equal time on my girls in prayer.

As I began this new task of being a prayer warrior for my children, I came to a realization. There is one goal for me as a parent. That is that I want my family to wind up together forever in eternity one day. Everything else is fleeting.

While I’m still not perfect about the nagging, because there are things I worry about, it does help. There are many small things that I don’t say anything about these days. I ask myself:

  • Is this such an important issue to me that I need to say something?
  • Is what they are doing taking them away from the end goal – of winding up all together in eternity after this life?
  • Where is their relationship with God?

Those are some powerful questions, but if you can start applying this at least some of the time to your interactions with your children, I believe they will be more likely to listen when it is something important. If your children are still young, then you obviously have to also think about their safety, the morals you are instilling, and basic teaching concepts for life. The older your children are, the easier it is to take a step back and focus on correcting in the areas that are most important to you.

To end, take heart if you’ve been a strict parent. If you didn’t care so much, you wouldn’t bother. However, it is never too late to change and improve your parenting style, so if you feel you are a little too strict, start asking the tough questions about just what is most important to you as a parent and what your end goal is with your child. Once you have the answer to that, the rest should become clearer.

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