Local Business Series: Emma Rose Hair Care

Hey Ty! Thank you for allowing us to get to know more about your hair services and Emma Rose hair products.

Please start by introducing yourself.

Thanks so much for having me. I am Ty a mother of two wonderful boys, Z and Ky. Professionally, I’m a licensed hairstylist at Beauty Me Hair Salon located in Hillside IL. I am also the owner of Emma Rose Hair Care products.

Awesome, What do you love about being a hair stylist?

I love making my clients look wonderful which helps  them feel amazing both inside and out.

I’ve sat in your client seat and you did just that for me. Tell us about some of the services you specialize in?

I specialize in braiding techniques and healthy hair care. I also do weaves and natural styles.

That’s great! I’m excited to learn more about your hair products. Can you tell us a little about them? 

So we have 11 products in the Emma Rosé Haircare Line. All the products provide moisture, strength and shine. Great for all textures of hair, with allowing and providing great maintenance for hair. Also Vegan- friendly

That’s great! What would you say makes your salon experience different from other stylist?

My client experience is top notch to say the very least. My goal is to make each client look and feel like a celebrity.

I love that! I also love that you are big on Hair care. Can you share some tips on how you help your clients maintain healthy hair and tips we can do at home?

Hair maintenance is the key. It’s important to use the proper products for your hair type. I also like to implement strategies such as using shirt like material instead of towels when drying hair. Wide tooth combs are amazing for detangling. You should also try to wear protective hair styles that don’t require tension. Making sure to oil/ moisturizer hair when having braid styles. Maintaining a Healthy lifestyle is also important because what we eat or drink can interfere with the growth of our hair. Also, DO NOT forget to wear a satin head wrap/ bonnet or sleep on a satin pillow case, to also protect the hair.

Thanks so much those are amazing tips! What advice would you give a new stylist looking to start a career in hair care. 

My advice would be to enter into the hair industry with an open mind. Use fear to motivate you to the next level. Be willing to learn, and try new techniques. It’s also important to explore different opportunities and go above and beyond average.
That’s great advice. Before you go you gotta give us a Lookclusive, What can we expect from Ty the stylist this year?

Right now you can take advantage of our March Madness promotion that offers 30% off of braids and styles. This Spring you can expect an exciting pop up shop!

Awesome Thank you so much!  Tell everyone how they can find and schedule services with you?

You all can find me on Instagram @tytatehair or Facebook: Ty Tate. To book an appointment visit our website https://square.site/book/HQRKNV8G5FRJ7/beauty-me-hair-salon-hillside-il

To purchase Emma Rose hair products contact us by phone 1-872-888-9873

Miss our adventures in Tombstone Provincial Park (Yukon), Dawson City (Yukon), Kluane National Park, or backcountry hiking? Not see my escapade on the side of the mountain? Check out parts 1-5 of the Klondike road trip at the links!

If you’ve never gone backcountry camping before, you’re in good company. I didn’t have my first “haul all your gear 13 miles up a mountain” camping experience until last year, and let me tell ya, it is hard. But it’s also addicting. The physical endurance coupled with the serenity of the nature around you is a pretty exhilarating experience. And if you’re gonna do it, why not do it in the Yukon?

Feeling cute, might delete later. IDK

Just because we got out of a hair-rising situation on the side of Observation Mountain didn’t mean we were home free. We still had a night of camping and 22km of hiking ahead of us before we were back in civilization. We had decided to swtich up our trip itinerary and take the ferry from Haines, Alaska (not to be confused with Haine’s Junction, Yukon) to Skagway. Haines, Alaska was at least a three-hour drive from Haine’s Junction, where our car was parked, which meant we had to leave for our return hike before the sun had even come up. As quietly as possible, we used our headlamps the next morning to pack up our tent and set out for the 22km hike back to the parking lot. Even though we had gotten plenty of sleep (except for at 2am when I woke up and stupidly started thinking about Jason Voorhees), we were still bone-tired and bruised from the previous two days’ hikes, and the first few kilometers uphill were just a slog. Once clear of that we had a relatively easy hike out, and the weather was much more pleasant than our hike in. There was, however, a lot more standing water and the water in the creeks we crossed had risen to as high as my butt. How I didn’t lose my balance in the freezing rushing water and just wipe out in the creeks is nothing short of a miracle.

By the time we reached our car, 6 hours and 59 minutes later, we had nothing left to give. With boots totally caked in mud and bodies covered in bruises and scrapes, we collapsed in the front seats of our rental car. Like some kind of miracle machine, the little Coleman cooler we got at Walmart had kept our Gatorades almost ice cold while we were gone, a mercy granted to us after a long three days of pretty grueling hiking. We downed those things like we were Tom Hanks catching rain in Castaway and also inhaled a bag of Cheetos like it was our job…and then inhaled some Combos…and Doritos…and Dr. Pepper, pretty much undoing all the physical labor from the three previous days.

Haines, Alaska

Our fellow campers had told us that the route from Haine’s Junction to Haines, Alaska was one of the most scenic in the world, and they sure as hell weren’t lying. We were getting spoiled by all the spectacular views on this road trip, and the drive through the Yukon, parts of British Columbia, and then finally Alaska, was easily top five all-time. There weren’t a lot of trees at first but what the first part of the drive lacked in trees, it made up for in glaciers. Fall hadn’t quite shown up yet in BC, so everything was still a lush green and we didn’t see a single soul on the road. Once we crossed the border into Alaska, however, we had inlet water to our right and rock face (and plenty of rock slide warning signs) to our left. As we drove, the number of people fishing on the inlet water seemed to skyrocket, no surprise given how many die-hard fishers make the pilgrimage to Alaska. At one point in the drive, we stopped to use the bathroom at a roadside restaurant whose parking lot was filled with tractor trailers hauling boats. I walked in and it was like in the movies where everyone stops and turns to look at you. At least a record didn’t screech to a stop, and the hard core rap that was playing (which in retrospect seems wildly out of place for the wilderness surroundings) kept on rolling. It was a moment so awkward that I debated addressing the crowd. Kinda like the time we were at dinner outside in Minnesota and I looked down to see a frog on my thigh. Startled, I pushed my chair back to jump up, forgetting that I was seated behind a step. I fell completely backwards, and when I jumped up to look at my stunned fellow diners, I yelled out, “I’m okay! I hate animals!” because I couldn’t get out the word ‘amphibians’. But in the case of the gangster rap fisher people of Alaska, I kept quiet.

As we got closer to Haines, we drove through an eagle sanctuary and saw six bald eagles just standing on a dried river bed. It was surreal and seemed like the most American thing since I dove off the Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown.We spent the night in Haines, a very small town on a peninsula in the Chilkoot Inlet. Most of the restaurants and shops had already transitioned to off-season hours so our dining choices were limited to bar food, pub food, food from a bar, or food from a pub. After all that hiking, there was nothing else we’d rather have eaten, and we gorged on anything fried we could find at the waterfront Harbor Bar & Restaurant. After dinner, we grabbed a beer at the Fogcutter Bar, the definition of a “locals’ place”. In short, the Fogcutter was everything we’d hoped it would be. Not only did it have a ton of kitschy stuff on the walls and ceiling (there was a Molson Ice sled hanging over us) and its own merch, including a t-shirt of a moose playing pool which I now regret not purchasing, everyone knew each other by name. El got a spruce tip beer, and when he asked who brewed it, the bartender replied, “Paul. His bar is down the street.” Even though it was technically a brewery (Haines Brewery), to the people who lived there it was just “Paul’s bar.”

Delicious cup o’ joe in the Bear Den Cafe

Our ferry to Skagway was at 9:30 the next morning, so we got up early and grabbed breakfast at the Bear Den Cafe, a quintessential greasy spoon decorated with Loony Toons wallpaper, moose antlers, weavings, and random odds and ends like an Alf lunchbox. I loved it because it was the type of place where you get your own drip coffee and use one of the mugs from the random collection they’d assembled. They’re famous for their “bear-ritos” and, still famished from our hikes, I went with the ‘Big Grizz’, a cholesterol sky-rocketing beast stuffed with grilled steak, onions, hashbrowns, and cheese and smothered in delicious sausage gravy. The food and coffee were both indescribably delicous, and when we were home I even ordered a bag of the coffee online. The owner was an old hunter grandpa type, and since we were the only ones there he opened the adjoining gift shop early so we could get a magnet. I picked up a Haines magnet with a photo of a grizzly in the river, and El made a comment that we hadn’t seen a grizzly yet. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but El’s been really into bears since our Banff trip, sending me photos of them on Instagram and reading up on the different species, so he had been pretty disappointed not to have seen one on this trip. Surprised, the owner matter-of-factly told us to go up to Chilkoot Lake, and that if we saw “people stopped on the road and looking at something”, they were looking at a bear. He was so sure that we’d see a mama bear and her two cubs that we couldn’t resist heading in that direction.

Apparently this was the “wrong” kind of bear because it wasn’t a grizzly.

The drive to the lake was itself entertaining because of the countless seagulls, Alaskan loons, and even a brown eagle having a grand ol’ time on the inlet water. Shortly after we started driving we saw some people standing on a bridge and decided to park our car. Sure enough, like the diner owner said, they were looking at a juvenile black bear sniffing its way through the riverside grass. Adding to the scene was a bald eagle perched on a rock not more than twenty feet from the bear. The bear was pretty far away and tough to see, but the fact that we were able to watch one in the wild was enough for me. As we walked back to the car, I excitedly said to El, “Yay! You finally got to see your bear!” to which he somewhat disappointledly shrugged, “Yeah, but it wasn’t a grizzly.” I said to him, “We’ll keep driving, but you might need to take what you can get, my friend.”

We drove on a few more minutes, and the road narrowed to where two cars couldn’t pass each other without one of them going into the river. Despite this, there were cars parked and people out with cameras. When we saw what they were looking at, El pulled our car over so fast that you’d think he was trying to set a world record. Across the river, not more than 400 feet from us, was a full-grown grizzly sow and her two “cubs” (they were f**king BIG) pawing through the water, fishing. We had an unobstructed view from the safety of our car and watched the bears as they stood on rocks and swiped at the fish around them. They were successful more than once, and it was surreal to see them carry a salmon in their mouths to the riverbank and feast. Even though all three of them were attempting to catch fish, it was obvious they were working together with the way they were navigating the rushing water. We must have taken a hundred pictures, but nothing could fully capture the feeling of seeing grizzly bears in the wild. We could have stayed there for hours, but we had a ferry to Skagway to catch, so we eventually tore ourselves away from the river and made our way to the terminal.

We still had plenty of vacation left, but somehow the road trip felt complete. It felt like we had accomplished something, and it was hard not to see the hand of fate at work: If we hadn’t eaten breakfast at the Bear Den, we wouldn’t have seen the gift shop. If we weren’t the only ones there, the owner probably wouldn’t have opened up the shop early for us. If I hadn’t picked up a grizzly magnet, El wouldn’t have mentioned that we hadn’t seen a grizzly. And if he hadn’t mentioned that, the owner wouldn’t have told us exactly where we could find some. Every decision that morning led to that moment: the moment Elliot finally got to see his bears…

Up next: Claim jumpin’ in Skagway

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We underestimated Mom. Maybe I shouldn’t speak for my siblings, but I don’t think any of the four of us expected her to be so resilient in the face of the one-two punch of being widowed and locked down by the coronavirus.

Mom, 92, lost her husband of nearly 72 years just before Christmas. They had moved into an assisted living residence only four months before. On top of grief, she had to contend with adjusting to new surroundings and a less independent and less private lifestyle.

Just three days before Dad died unexpectedly, Mom had told me that she prayed that she would go first. In their old age, they were never apart. He was her caregiver, sorting her medication into the pill box, driving her to medical appointments, and hovering at her elbow to waylay falls. I silently agreed with Mom: Dad would be better able to cope alone.

Now I’m not so sure.

After Dad was gone, Mom teared up when talking about him but didn’t give in to self-pity by huddling in her apartment from morning until night. She went to the community rooms for all three meals a day, live performances, crafts activities, and a daily rosary. Every conversation I had with a sibling included one or the other of us commenting, “Mom’s doing better than I expected.”

Then the coronavirus hit. The first measures Mom’s residence took to protect its elderly residents were closing the dining room and canceling group activities. Meals were delivered to apartments.

My brother Rick, who lives nearby, thought that he would be able to continue to visit Mom, but just as he arrived two weeks ago, the entrance doors were locked.

We held on to one ray of hope when the activities director said that praying the rosary would continue in a common room because only Mom and a couple of others attended, allowing them to sit far apart. Last Monday, the director announced that it was the last day for the rosary. Corporate headquarters dictated that residents should not be with one another, even six feet apart.

So now Mom is in solitary confinement, as are residents of senior communities around the country. We understand — people their age are the most vulnerable to the virus — but worry about the toll isolation will take on Mom.

Once again, however, we’ve been impressed that she’s rolled with the punches. Her biggest complaint is that breakfast is delivered late. She’s cheerful on the telephone, her only means of social contact. The advice about keeping in touch with secluded loved ones via FaceTime or Skype and the like is off base for families with nonagenarians, who are least likely to use the internet. Like four out of five people her age, Mom doesn’t have a cellphone or a computer.

My sister Nancy offered her hunch about why Mom is coping well: “Mom follows rules.” I’ve often thought to myself, “That’s not always good,” when Mom boasted that doctors compliment her for following their orders. Now I’m glad she’s not rebellious.

I used to chide her for worrying about us, and now the roles are reversed. Worried that she feels lonely, I asked a couple of relatives to telephone her. Worried that she feels guilty about missing church, I found a Catholic TV station with a daily mass and rosary. Worried that she feels bored, I remind her of the activity books on her bottom bookshelf. I ask whether she’s been using the coloring books I luckily brought on my last visit. She finally said to me in exasperation, “Marianne, I can’t do everything you want me to do. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”

That strong spirit could change if one of us contracts the virus and she can’t see her sick child or grandchild. For the time being, Mom’s fortitude has blunted my worry.

I don’t want to minimize the very real danger of isolation for our oldest citizens. A stiff upper lip isn’t going to cut it for everyone. But even very elderly people can be surprising. I don’t know whether Mom has changed or I didn’t give her enough credit for toughness before.

If my 92-year-old, recently widowed mother can get through this crisis alone, I want to hope that most of her generation can as well.

*****

SOME REASONS FOR GRATITUDE DURING THE PANDEMIC

• Friends checking in and checking up. I even heard from a friend in the UK with whom I typically exchange only Christmas messages.

• Zoom, the video conferencing service that allowed me to video chat with my siblings and their families, and my book group to meet virtually.

• My South Loop neighbors who are putting on a lightshow and singalong from their windows and balconies every evening at 8.

• Geoffrey Baer’s tours of Chicago, available on the WTTW website. They give Chicagoans ideas of places to explore once we’re released from hibernation.

• Sunday evening’s start of Call the Midwife’s new season on PBS, keeping up our spirits with its perfect blend of seriousness and uplift.

*****

ANTI-TRUMP QUOTATIONS: 107TH IN AN ONGOING SERIES

“This is not about your ratings, Mr. President! This is not a reality TV show. For countless Americans this is our reality.”

— Valerie Jarrett, former adviser to former President Barack Obama, about Trump’s boasting about the ratings of his coronavirus briefings

One hundred thousand, say experts, will die.

A number Trump’s briefings do seem to belie.

He wanted to knock down

Extending the lockdown,

And yesterday crowed that his ratings were high.

Although the Illinois Stay At Home order went into effect just a bit over one week ago this is my third update on what the coronavirus pandemic is doing to the Chicago real estate market. Many of us were hunkered down before the order went into effect – either out of common sense or because employees were told to work from home where possible. So I’ve been looking for signs of what is going on for 3 weeks now.

Let’s start with some of the hard facts from the Chicago Association of Realtors, comparing the most recent week available (ending March 21) to the corresponding week one year ago. Keep in mind that normally at this time of year activity would be picking up. Timing could not be worse.

Let’s start with single family homes:

• New listings were down 33% from last year to only 330
• Contracts written were down 22% to 245
• Available inventory was down 10% to 2816 units

As for condos and townhomes:

• New listings were down 34% to 565
• Contracts written were down 33% to 314
• But available inventory was essentially unchanged from last year at 5057 units

So it looks like people are starting to hesitate from taking new actions but – for the time being at least – homes already on the market are staying there. Early next week I’ll be doing my normal monthly update instead of a weekly update and we’ll be able to see the impact of this mess on the entire month of March.

One aspect of the pandemic we have not explored is how many deals are falling apart. I suspect we’ll get a much better sense of that with next week’s monthly update when we look at pending home sales. I’m expecting we’ll see a significant decline in that number which will not be good. Marc Cervantes, one of our favorite attorneys, posted this video with his observations from the past week and mentions how 8 of his 11 scheduled closings got cancelled at the last minute in one week. If this is being repeated throughout the industry it’s not good at all.

This may explain why real estate related stocks are still in the toilet. In the last week there hasn’t been much change in the already depressed prices of the publicly traded firms.

Real Estate Searches Seem To Be Almost Normal

I checked in on the Google Trends data again and was actually surprised to see no apparent impact on people looking for a realtor. It could be that potential home buyers and sellers still want the opinion of a realtor right now – perhaps more than ever. However, there does seem to be some evidence of a drop off in searches for homes for sale in Chicago. The searches in the most recent week appear to be at the low end of the range, though there is a lot of variation in the data.

Mortgage Rates Are All Over The Map

Take a look at the mortgage rate graph below from NerdWallet. It’s totally crazy with wild gyrations from one day to the next. I’ve heard about extensive liquidity problems in the mortgage backed securities market so I assume that’s the effect that we are seeing here. This is certainly not helping the market, though you would think that once rates settle down – and I assume at a lower level – we will see a boost in demand for homes financed at cheap rates. However, as Marc Cervantes mentioned in his video above, jumbo loans are now very difficult, if not impossible, to get which could hit the higher end of the market pretty hard.

Mortgage rates are still fluctuating wildly from day to day

#RealEstate #ChicagoRealEstate #Coronavirus

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

This week was the first week we weren’t able to go into the studio to record the Consumer Guide Car Stuff Podcast. So, we used a nifty app called CleanFeed to help with sound quality. I think it mostly worked.

We started out discussing the cool things the Detroit Three are doing to help with the Covid-19 relief effort. As someone who has a family member “on the front lines” as a paramedic, I appreciate what they’re doing to get more safety equipment and ventilators out to more entities as quickly as possible.

Then we switched gears to discuss a #cardujour I had a few weeks ago: The Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro. This is a unique vehicle in its segment with an upright stance and a body-on-frame construction. But the truck has experienced a resurgence, and it’s novelty is a big part of the reason why.

Lastly, we spent a significant portion of the show talking to our guest Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions, to talk about the long-range effects Covid-19 will have on the automotive industry. 

While I will continue to post the podcast to my blog each week, you can subscribe to the Consumer Guide Car Stuff Podcast on any podcast subscription service or visit the Buzzsprout link. New episodes are usually posted on Friday, and then the show itself airs on WCPT 820 AM on Sundays from 1 to 2 p.m.

Be sure to let us know if you have questions or if there are any topics you’d like us to cover on future podcasts.

You can follow us on social at:

• Jill: @jillciminillo (instagram/twitter)
• Tom: @car_guy_tom (twitter)
• Damon: @DBell72333786 (twitter)
• Consumer Guide Automotive: @cgautomotive (twitter/facebook)
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