Well, only two updates for you this week: my Accidental Spending Fast and the Hairlista Healthy Ends Challenge.

On the spending fast tip: the Hubby and I got through January pretty well. I wasn’t able to save as much as I would have liked because I made many unplanned charity donations in January. Alas, these things happen, but I was able to save more than I normally do. I easily lived off of $25 a week for miscellaneous purchases. The Hubby and I cooked regularly and we brought our lunch to work almost every day.

The biggest success? I haven’t bought one bottle of conditioner or one jar of moisturizer! Hair purchases for January? One container of yogurt. I’m pretty darned proud of myself.

In February, I’m continuing the fast. We’ve bumped up our spending money to $30 a week. Now that I’ve incorporated my charitable giving into my budget, I should be able to meet my savings goals for February.

Not spending would be easier if the Gap, Bath & Body Works and Sephora stopped emailing me coupons. Sigh.

On to the Hairlista Healthy Ends Challenge! I’m halfway through! I realized that I needed a good trim last weekend, so I cut about an inch of ends off. The fairy knots were killing me! I think a lot of them cropped up because I wasn’t sure of what I was doing with my hair for a while. I finally got into a routine only in the fall. So from May’s Major Trim until October 2009 was about five months of hair folly. Now that they are trimmed off and I’m all about the protective styling, I’ll have to see if there’s a difference in the number of knots.

I do have to update my regimen here and let you all know which products and methods I’m currently using — which is pretty different from what I was doing in September when I started this blog. On the wig front, I still like them for a change, but I like my own hair more. I may wear the wig the last two weeks of February to give my own hair a break. I think I may go back to the kinky twists in March.

Oh, I do have one last update: Haiti. Yep, I’m still talking about it ’cause the situation is still so serious. Continue supporting th epeople there and keeping them in your prayers. There are a lot of ignorant people (Google Paul Shirley if you want to read hateful rhetoric), including these so-called missionaries who were trying to kidnap Haitian children (see story here), getting in the mix now. I shake my head at the audacity of people.

Donate, donate, donate! I’m going to support Unicef to help the children. So, in honour of my Haitian brothers and sisters, this week’s dedication is Man in the Mirror — one of my favourite songs — by the late, great King of Pop, Michael Jackson.