Good morning! One of the things I love about this blog is the excuse to try new things and report back. I've done a lot of trying, but not as much reporting back as I had planned. Now, as we look ahead to the summer, we're approaching the two year anniversary of Once & Future Home. I wanted to take the opportunity to look back at some of the things we've tried and evaluated over those couple of years and check back in. First up, sugaring!

I first blogged about sugar waxing way back when we started this blog. I waxed on (heh) about how great it was. So, am I still doing it? Well, yeah! I had forgotten about it for awhile, to be honest, and made a few trips to the good ole' salon for some professional intervention in regards to my face. But it's pretty tough to carve out the time get one's face waxed. And also, it hurts. So I recently dug out my sugaring supplies and started anew, and I'm just as pumped about it as I was two summers ago. As I talked about then, sugaring is substantially less painful than traditional hot wax. It also takes me about 3 minutes from start to finish to do my upper lip and chin, and I can do it without securing childcare, so it's a win-win for me. That said, I only use the wax for those two facial areas, which are small and don't require much precision. I don't think I'd trust myself to do my brows. And I've tried larger areas like my legs and thought the mess outweighed the cost- and time-savings versus shaving.

I do have some updates. While I was using old shirts that I had cut up, I found that woven shirts like tee shirts didn't work as well, so when I ran out of my original muslin-like stash, I invested in these non-woven waxing strips. They're pretty cheap, and I cut them even smaller than they come, so they last a really long time. (If you click through and purchase these through Amazon, I get a small portion of the sales price -- but I wouldn't put them up here if I didn't endorse!)

Second, if you are doing a larger area, it's worth it to work in small batches of sugar, and reheat as necessary. When the wax is too cool, it won't work, but you also don't want to burn yourself, and it gets too hot if you try to heat too large a quantity. So start small, heat at 20 - 30 second intervals, and test on a sensitive place, like the back of your wrist, before smearing anywhere near your face!

So that's it - a short and sugary update on my facial hair. You're welcome! Did you try it then? Will you now? Are you a naturally hairless goddess or do you embrace your fuzz with pride? Check back in for more updates on the experiments I've subjected my poor family to, and thanks for reading!