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Curly Twist Out On Relaxed Hair

Hey!

This week I attempted my first twist out. It turned out pretty good. The only fault I had was that I didn't know to sleep with it and get the same results as the first day.

That, actually, is my problem with most of my braid outs, bantu knot outs and the likes. With braid outs  I just re-braid every night, or put it in a top knot. The latter usually indicates the end of that braid out's existence.


For this twist out I used satin rollers, the Shea Moisture Coconut & Hibiscus Curl Enhancing Smoothie, the Mane 'n Tail Detangler and jojoba oil.

I didn't have enough of the satin rollers so I doubled a few of the twists.

<---NEXT DAY--->

(sorry, this one isn't that clear)

I think it came out great without the use of the Ecostyler Gel.

Thanks for stopping by.

Aly :)

Beginners Guide to a Hair Journey

Hello world,


Writing this post sort of feels like a prodigal son type of return. I was away from my blog for months.

*Quick explanation*

Truth is, I'm not that good at splitting my energy...I mean, I don't know how to put equal parts energy into personal projects. First it was my weight loss efforts, now its just life issues. Horrible I know. In my absence, I graduated from college and got a job in my field *yaay* but with that came stress I didn't know how to manage.


Hair Talk:

I got a request from a friend who reads my blog to do a beginners guide to a hair journey post. So below are detailed explanations for certain terms and practices.

• PRE POO--> In my regimen, I do a pre poo before I shampoo my hair. A pre poo is as the term indicates, a pre treatment before shampooing. Some people use natural oils (coconut oil/olive oil), some  people use deep conditioners, some make up their own concoctions. Some people, pre poo, then shampoo, then condition, then deep condition. Personally, I combine my pre poo time with my deep conditioning time. This is out of sheer laziness and in effort to decrease wash day hours. I do not do this step on co wash day.

• CO WASH--> Co washing is washing your hair with just conditioner, no shampooing. I co wash my hair every other week. In the beginning of my hair journey, I co washed every week. That meant my hair would be washed twice a week, a co wash mid week and a shampoo wash at the end of the week. I was doing hardcore time with my hair in the beginning. Not anymore, now, I co wash this week, next week I shampoo. I don't pre poo/deep condition my hair on co wash days because I leave the conditioner on my hair for about 15 minutes before my shower. I don't really consider it a deep conditioning thing to do that.

• MOISTURIZING and SEALING--> this involves using a hair moisturizer on your hair, concentrating on the ends, and sealing it with an oil of your choice. My favorite moisturizers are the ORS Olive Oil Moisturizing Hair Lotion, and the Neutrogena Triple Moisture Silk touch leave in. The oils I use the most are extra virgin coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil. The frequency of which you practice this depends on your own hair. Sometimes, I need to moisturize my hair every single day, sometimes my hair feels like it can manage going without moisture addition for a day. To moisturize and seal, I think its best to part the hair down the middle, work with one side at a time and create smaller sections in the halves of your hair and deal with them separately, especially when stretching relaxers.

• STRETCHING--> This is when you don't relax your hair for a extended period of time, other than the box recommended time. The relaxer box says 6-8 weeks, I stretch my relaxers typically 10-12 weeks or up to when I just cannot deal with the two textures anymore. Stretching the relaxers allows your hair to gain a degree of new growth that helps  you to avoid overlapping and over processing your hair. It is advised that you don't put relaxer on already relaxed hair as this breaks down that part of the hair too much and causes thin ends and breakage. 

• HEAT PASS--> It is best to limit the amount of direct heat that you apply to your hair. Heat passes are times that people allow themselves to blow dry/flat iron/use a curling iron on their hair. Some people do twice a month, I do once every three months with heat protectant. Lets just say I'm extra pre-cautious lol. *People in the hair world don't consider overhead dryers as direct heat.*

• SEARCH AND DESTROY--> This is when you painstakingly go through every bit of hair and find the split ends and get rid of them individually, instead of cutting other hairs along with the splits.

• PROTECTIVE STYLES- these are styles that help you to keep your hair ends from breaking, they help to keep manipulation at a minimum and help with overall retention. These include, but are not limited to, wigs, buns/top knots, braids, individual twists, hair pieces/ponytail extensions and cornrows/canerows.

GENERAL TIPS:

• For relaxer day: 

Use castor oil, another thick oil or conditioner on the ends of your hair before relaxing. Why? it helps to prevent overlapping and over processing.

Try not to keep the relaxer on your hair/scalp for too long. This is damaging and actually harmful; these chemicals are no joke.

Do a protein treatment no less than a week before your relaxer day. It strengthens the hair shaft and prepares it for the chemicals of the relaxer.

After relaxing do another protein treatment to rebuild the hair. ***I'm not sure if this is for everybody, but it works for me***

• For heat usage:

Allow yourself a number of heat passes that you are comfortable with. This means don't kill your hair progress with heat damage.

Use a heat protectant.

• For general hair growth:

Be kind to your hair. Don't rake a comb through it, comb from the ends, up. 

Give yourself scalp massages for at least two minutes. It feels good and helps with blood circulation.

I hope this was a good compilation of tips and explanations. If I missed any other tips, please leave them in the comments section. Thanks!

Aly

First Video Blog (Vlog) Ever

Hey!

I recorded this on Tuesday night and it took some time to upload it because the internet sucks at my school. That's not the only reason its just going up. I'm so freaked out about doing this post lol. I hate being on camera (and I'm a journalism major, go figure!). So that means that I watched this video about ten times before actually posting it.

I hope you guys like it, lets not be too harsh :)

Feedback would be nice too. If you think I should do more like this then let me know. If yes, then I will do some posts as videos but I'll still rely heavily on written posts. If not, please tell me to quit while I'm ahead hahaha.

Thanks guys for your continued support


Aly

Quick Post: Hot Oil Treatment- Fail

My University had its Fall Convocation on Thursday, Nov. 15 (*proud annual Dean's list maker right here* lol) and I did a hot coconut oil treatment on my hair last Wednesday night in the hopes of waking up to wash it and having a "cute day" for Thursday. 

That did not work out :/

The hot water decided to be absent that morning leaving me with the option of washing my necessaries (TMI?) and squeezing the excess coconut oil from my hair into a towel. I went to the convocation and accepted my award with my hair in a bun. 

Guess who felt like a grease ball.

The up-side, I guess, would be that I had the coconut oil on my hair for a super long time. 

After the event, I ended up just doing a shampoo wash with the Shea Moisture shampoo and conditioned my hair with Herbal Essences Hello Hydration conditioner. I then left it to airdry.

Thanks for reading,

Aly

Update & why I've been gone.

Hey guys,

Its been since May that I last did a blog post. I have missed it, but I had to take the time-out to focus on other goals in my life, which I'll explain at the end of this post. But first, here is an update on my hair.

I have been doing my regular deep conditions, oil treatments and general hair care stuff. I just wasn't going hardcore on my hair like before, with growth aids and all that. I now use Herbal Essennce's Hello Hydration for my shampooing and co-washing needs, but I have experimented with the Shea Moisture line (which I like). I also still use the ORS Replenishing conditioner for my deep conditions, and the ORS moisturizer when I wear my hair straight. That doesn't happen very often, so I use a mixture of water, apple cider vinegar and any natural oil and then seal it with a oil at night. I airdry every time, so braid-outs and bantu knot-outs are my friends.

I have been on a holistic healthy life style lately so I mostly use natural products on my hair and skin. So I don't use the Hot Six Oil anymore, not because its not good but because I use coconut oil, olive oil, castor oil, shea butter etc. instead. I've been getting a lot of questions about that oil.

Also, sadly, I still don't know how to lessen my split ends. lol So this winter I'm going in on protective styling.

Okay here are the pics of my hair:

I thought a red rinse would show in the sunlight (waste of $$$)

This was before my relaxer (relaxer day-Oct 20th)

braid out

Old braidout bun

protective style (no sock/bun filler)

After my relaxer (first one done completely by myself)

Loved my hair this day!

this was last  Monday, back to no heat styles

Absence Explanation

You don't have to care about this, since its not hair related but I wanted to share this with you guys.

Okay, so as I said I'm trying to be all holistic. So I put more focus on my body. The goal was to lose weight for summer, but that proved to be much harder than expected. For a minute I thought I had hypothyroidism because the weight just wasn't going anywhere. Long story short, I upped the ante by not eating meat anymore (its been a month), increasing exercise and lifting weights, and being positive overall. Its still not really a difference to me as far as reducing my size is concerned but according to the scale I lost 18lbs since about September-ish (if I count from me being super serious). I actually attempted to lose the excess all of July straight till now. But as I said, I think I got extremely serious after mid/late September, after not seing the progress I wanted.

I have 27 more lbs to lose, give or take. I'm not so much concerned about the numbers as I am about how I look. 

So here are my before and 'during' pictures:

Before:  About May/June when I just got back to Jamaica for summer vacation.

During: I think this is the end of September (girl in picture: my trini friend/roomie)

 

(peep my hair length by her boob woop!)

[girl in picture: St. Kitts homie lol]

Thanks for not unsubscribing guys! Even if it just meant that you didn't notice that I wasn't posting lol I'm glad you're still here.

Aly

My Scalp

Hello!

I recently visited my dermatologist about my skin issues. She is very expensive but she's good at her job. she said that I have eczema and it actually is on my scalp as well. Having eczema was not really a surprise because it was present on my body for as long as I knew myself. What I didn't know was that it was also in the scalp.

So the itching I had been experiencing all along was not just from your regular old dry scalp problems. I had been using certain oils that have been working for other hair bloggers (Jeni has some good scalp blogs here), but for me, those remedies were only covering up the underlying issue.

She went ahead and prescribed Ketaconozale tablets which is a drug used to treat various kinds of fungal infections including dandruff, and Triamcinolone, which is a cream that I apply to my face and scalp. She also mentioned that the cream aided hair growth so yaay for that bit of hope :). I'm can't be sure if its working yet, its only been six days since I started the treatment, so no feedback yet.  

As far as my hair goes, I am just twitching like the creamy crack addict that I am. I really want to relax my hair. It has only been 8 weeks, but because I started using my castor oil/cayenne pepper mixture in my second week post relaxer, my new growth just started appearing rapidly by the third week and my new growth never appears till like the 4th/5th week. That's good news for me but its a pain to detangle and my roots have been so dry since I've been in the hot Jamaican weather.  

I guess we'll see how long I go for.

Thanks for reading and for your continued support. I'll definitely give an update about my scalp again.

Aly

Instyler: Almost Like

Hello! This is my first time blogging from my phone. I actually like its convenience.

So I had brought the Instyler rotating iron for my mom because she has been going crazy for this gadget for as long as it's been out.

She, of course, loves it, especially since it's purple. I had always been skeptical of it because I thought it would be harmful to have a brush going though the hair multiple times alongside multiple spins of the hot barrel of the instrument.

They say it's less damaging to the hair than a regular flat iron. I don't know how to verify that.

So I tried it and it worked well on my frizzy airdried hair. I ended up just pin curling my hair but then I just put my hair in a bun because I didn't like how poofy my hair was. All the new growth seemed to come out to play.

I think it does it's job somewhat and I like how smooth my hair was after using the iron.

I, however, have an issue with this product and that is how long one has to keep the iron on the hair. It's almost like your doing 20 passes in one complete pass, if you know what I mean. Another thing is that the roots are difficult to get to and the process if very time consuming.

With a flat iron you can spend less time doing your hair and getting the roots isn't a task.

I'm not sure if I will over time completely like it.

Do you have any thoughts on the Instyler rotating iron? If yes please leave a comment.

Thanks for reading,

Aly