Natural Hair Goals for the New Year! 2015

Hiya, curly mamas! I want to do a post today about my hair goals for the upcoming year, and because I am a homeschooling SAHM and don't have a lot of free time at the moment, I will be as straightforward as possible. ;-)

My goals for this year are to:

1. Experiment with heat more. Since I am seasoned in my 'naturalness', I am no longer afraid of putting heat on my hair. Just not a lot, of course. Remember, everything in moderation... always.

2. Try a new color! Right now, the ends of my hair and my bangs are reddish, but I originally wanted a much lighter color than that. So, you might see me with a golden brown/blondish color soon. ;)

3. Reach full waist length! My hair right now is actually almost at waist length, the middle of my hair is. I've had a few setbacks, but my hair is still growing profusely. It won't be FULL waist length just yet unless I have some super growth next year or something, but I have about 6 inches left to grow before I can comfortably pull a section of my hair to my waist. :O

4. Go back to the basics and enjoy my hair! This year, I got a little caught up in some 'hair hype', like boycotting certain ingredients, but I'm at the point where if it works for me, I'm going to use it regardless of whether or not it has the 'curly girl' staple ingredients. Sue me, but I'm tired of being a little strict about my hair regimen. It's not going to kill me to use something with mineral oil in it.  >_>

My last relaxer was April 2009. I transitioned for two years, then chopped off my relaxed hair in March 2011. In March 2015 (also my birthday, yay!), I will have been fully natural for FOUR years! It's time to break out of the 'natural Nazi' box and enjoy my hair. After all, it is just hair. If it gets very damaged, I can always chop it off and grow it right back... and with all the knowledge that I've gained over the years, that shouldn't be too hard at all. ;-)

~Epic Realist~

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Lightening Hair...Completely NATURALLY! ~PART 2~

Hello, again, curlies! I have completed my first hair lightening technique with natural products! For details, see Part 1 of this post. http://curlsofinnocence.blogspot.com/2013/08/lightening-haircompletely-naturally.html
 I can't see any lightening yet, but I plan to do this every week or every other week until I see a change.                                              BEFORE rinsing
So I left that cinnamon mixture in my hair for about three hours, because I wanted to wash it out while my kids were down for nap. When I took the bag off my head, my hair was kind of reddish looking, but very soft & it smelled VERY good.

I began to wash the stuff out. It was super grainy! Cinnamon grains were all over my hands with every touch. I washed my hair leaning over the tub because I wanted to use my shower hose to really get the mayo and stuff out. The part of my hair that had already been dyed looked lighter with the treatment in it. Maybe that's how it'll look in a few treatments. ;)

It took forever to rinse this stuff. I didn't use any shampoo because I have read that when you do a deep conditioner with mayo, it's best not to shampoo just yet. Surprisingly, my hair never smells like rotten mayonnaise or sour eggs after washing it out. So I kept rinsing and rinsing and rinsing until my back hurt.

All of the mayo was out, but the cinnamon granules just kept coming out!

 Oh, well. I got up and softly squeezed the water out of my hair with a towel. More cinnamon invaded my fingers. Mad softness, indeed. I think the cinnamon and honey did a great job along with the mayo to condition my hair. Like I said, no color results yet, but not only will I wait until it completely dries to tell for sure, but it takes a couple of treatments like this to see color. I am so excited to try this again!
                                            
                                               AFTER rinsing

If I notice any other changes to my hair after doing this treatment, I shall let you guys know soon. I hope you enjoyed this review of a natural hair lightener... for us black folks. Peace out until later curlfriends!

~Epic Realist~ 

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Lightening Hair...Completely NATURALLY! ~PART 1~

Hiya, curly friends! I am so bored with my hair and do not have the funds to get another Shea Moisture dye to attempt to dye the ends of my hair again. So I decided to find a completely natural way to lighten my hair... without dyes.
I've heard of all kinds of things before, but some of them involved peroxide or bleach. I said, hell no, definitely not the bleach. Way too damaging from what I have heard. I searched YouTube, where there are tons of videos with women dying their hair with simply... cinnamon and honey. Cinnamon is the main ingredient; apparently, it has lightening properties, which is awesome. I have heard of this a few years back, but was always skeptical to try it because it takes more than two tries for your hair to begin getting lighter.
But anyway, I came across this website http://blackhairmedia.com/healthy-hair/3-natural-ways-to-lighten-hair-or-add-highlights-using-cinnamon/ and found recipes that have actually worked on dark hair. Not blonde, not auburn, but dark brown and black hair. It was a simple recipe. I had all the ingredients, so I said, why not? How hard can it be? The kids were watching their morning TV, so I gathered everything I needed and mixed it all up. For the deep conditioner, I used my homemade one: mayonnaise, honey, grapeseed oil, and EVOO. The amount of honey in the recipe was what I used for the entire process... the DC (deep conditioner) and the lightener recipe.
The mixture started out thick, but as I added the liquid type things, like the lemon juice, it got a bit watery. Couldn't help it. Blah. This is a pic before I dampened my hair to apply the mixture.

It smelled SOOOOOOOO good, I wanted to eat it! But I didn't. LOL! Although it's edible, I don't think that this concoction would taste as good as it smells. >_> 

I draped a towel around my neck and used my fingers to apply it all over my head. At first, I was going to only do my ends, but why not? I needed the deep condition, anyway. It was a dripping mess, though. :/ 

 So this is what my hair looked like as I was applying the stuff. It felt good in my hair, but the cinnamon made my hands all grainy and brownish. It was also a little cold because the lemon that I squeezed juice out of had been in the fridge. They say that cinnamon burns, and my head is burning a little right now, but it's not bad, not like I have a relaxer kind of burn. I used every drop of the mixture because I have a LOT of hair. Then I tied a plastic bag over it and threw my shower cap OVER the plastic bag for more heat penetration.

My ends were already lightened from the Shea Moisture hair color that I used in April. I am hoping that this works, but they say that you have to try it about 3 or 4 times for you to noticeably see results.

So I am going to leave it it for as long as I can... probably all day if possible. Not sure if I will be able to see results after one time, but I will come back and show you guys what my hair looks like after rinsing it out.

Peace out till lata! xD

~Epic Realist~