Hey, curly mamas! Today, I will be demonstrating how I did a very simple protective style in Symari's hair. It was simple because I had just washed and conditioned her hair, and also detangled it while styling. I'm all about my simplicity these days. My hands are very full right now. All the time. lol
I hope that you guys know how to flat twist because you can do so many cute styles doing so. It's the best alternative to cornbraiding, if you'd rather not learn how to do that. I love flat twisting. So much quicker and there's also 2 ways of going about it.
I hope that you guys enjoy the video and think of your own creative ways to do long term styles for your kids. Follow us on Instagramfor DAILY posts on hair, health, & homeschooling! :)
Hiya guys! I don't have time to update this blog much anymore, but I will still try to do so. I have been recording a bunch of videos lately and also doing other projects in my life. The kids keep me occupied 24-7.
Anyway, I have gotten a kind of new regimen with my hair. I now dry detangle instead of wetting my hair first!
I was doing this as an experiment in the weeks prior to me sticking to it, but now it works so much better for me. So it's back to the basics of using coconut oil in my hair to detangle. It's been working sooo well.
I am still doing the Baka Beautiful NaturalLaxer review. One more week for the last application and then editing time!
My hair color has been working so well! It's not as dry as it was when I first bleached it, only because I started integrating my shea butter back into my routine. Silly me; I should have been doing that. But I've been forgetting, using leave ins without using shea butter on top to seal. That's what has been saving my hair all these years anyway! #backtobasics
So I am still loving this color on me. :)
I've been shedding a little more than usual the last few months, and I think it's because of the normal winter shedding a lot of women get around the winter time. It's annoying, but it's actually getting better every day. Woo hoo! Also, I am making sure that my iron isn't low, because that can cause shedding as well.
I will be back soon with more updates! Stay tuned to YouTube for videos. :D
Heya, curlies! I have had a lot of changes to my hair and my kid's hair recently, but the one thing that remains the same is the pre-pooing part. I still pre-poo our hair with coconut oil. No matter the hair type, a lot of people swear by coconut oil for pre-pooing and detangling. Ya'll know I can't leave the stuff in my hair... don't need protein overload! lol
I even use coconut oil on my 3 month old's hair after his baths! It's all he needs right now. He has a natural mohawk. O_O
Recently, I tried something new with Syriah's hair, though. I have seen other vloggers do this and I have yet to try it on mine. I used coconut oil AND conditioner to pre-poo her hair! And this time, I put a plastic bag on to really moisturize it. Felt so good and moist when I washed her hair afterwards. The detangling process wasn't hard, either because I had previously finger detangled.
As you can see in the video, I used a VO5 conditioner. I have used this in the past and it has never failed me. It's cheap and it works! Plus, it has no silicones, and although naturals SWEAR by silicone usage for slip, I don't like to use them a lot. Eventually, my hair ends up feeling horribly coated.
That's also my reason for not co-washing with conditioner that is not meant for washing lol! I do, however, LOVE the As I Am Coconut Cowash. I am still using the same one from my CurlMart haul from a few months ago, only because I have been either washing with my trusty Shea Moisture raw shea butter shampoo or my Dr. Woods liquid black soap, which is WONDERFUL as a shampoo and a conditioner combined!
We've been re-purchasing it for about 4 months now.
Other new changes that I've made, I've cut a few inches off my hair about 3 weeks ago! Watch this video to find out why.
Because of budget changes, I've had to cut back on a few things. So we are currently using the Cantu repair cream leave in. It's okay. It's cheap and it works, but I have to be careful. Overuse of that stuff will cause my hair to feel coated as it has done in the past. But for now, it works.
Even though I cut a good chunk off of my hair, it doesn't seem like I cut much off. My hair is still longer than I expected it to be after cutting. But my hair does grow really fast (without vitamins), so yay for that! Plus, my 'holy grail' oil always helps with growth and I still use that religiously.
So, that's my update for today. I will try to come back and post more often. I have been slacking on that because of me doing more YouTube videos now. Video editing is soooo fun, but it can be time consuming! I'm trying to get to where I can do three videos a week with ease... yeah. Not easy with four kids.
But I do homeschooling videos now as well, so I record that, too. Beauty & brains for the win! xD
Peace out till later, folks! Join the website so you won't miss out on updates. SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube channel for more vids, and thanks for reading! ;)
I love using coconut oil as a pre-poo for my hair, but mostly during the warmer months. In the colder months, I usually pre-poo with EVOO because it's such a heavy oil for the winter dryness.
Right now, Syriah's hair takes coconut oil better than mine. I think that it's because my hair cannot take lots of protein, so if I constantly use coconut oil as I had been using previously, my hair will be more dry and brittle. So right now, coconut oil is mostly used as a pre-poo for both my daughter's hair instead of mine.
I also like using coconut oil on my face in the morning after I've washed my face. It's silky smooth, smells good, and not heavy at all. It's part of my facial routine. ;-)
Here is Syriah's hair with coconut oil in it. I have these pics in the previous post, I believe. This is on damp, finger de-tangled hair.
Love the shine and the extra softness that it gives when I wash it out of her hair. It's amazing. Sometimes, I don't even need to use my Herbal Essences conditioner because the oil is so soothing that it's VERY easy to manipulate the hair. The last picture is the end result.
So, that's pretty much how I use my coconut oil during these cold months. Hope you guys enjoyed this post! Follow me on Facebook for everyday tips and updates. Peace out!
Hola, guys! Last week, I got a new shampoo. Yes, I actually got something other than Shea Moisture. I didn't have the money to spend on getting their black soap shampoo, and I desperately needed something to clean my scalp raw because I hadn't done that in... over a year. -__-
I initially wanted to use apple cider vinegar for that, but I couldn't find any to save my life. So, instead of breaking the bank, I got something cheap from Dollar Tree. I haven't used any VO5 products in years, and I mean since I was a teenager. I got a shampoo and a cheap conditioner to go along with it. I didn't care. Hey, it was a dollar and it had sulfates. I just needed something to make my scalp and hair squeaky clean.
It worked, all right. My hair was smelling good, and it squeaked like mad. It felt so weird because I hadn't used a sulfate shampoo in over two years now, and my hair felt completely stripped. But that's how it needed to feel. I read a lot of hair advice still, and products can get built up on your scalp and hair and nothing but sulfates will be able to remove them. I've known this for a long time, but I was never serious about implementing it.
So now I finally have something. My hair was as dry as ever afterwards, though! LOL! I was laughing and freaking out at the same time. I used both of them, and when I came out of the shower, I immediately threw some of my SM Deep Treatment Masque in my hair as a leave in and put castor oil on top of each section and de-tangled with my paddle brush. Then I braided them up.
I have been experimenting with the LCO (liquid, cream, oil) method rather than the LOC (liquid, oil, cream) method. Some people say that the LCO works better for them. I'm beginning to think that my hair likes the LCO method better as well, because with the oil on top, it really penetrates my hair better than it being put on before the cream. Still playing around with it so I can know for sure.
My hair still wasn't as soft as it used to be when I took the braids out two days later, so I did a deep condition with SM Anti Breakage Masque... for about six hours. Loved the results. My hair was back to normal softness and fluffiness. Panic attack was over. Haha!
I've decided that I'm going to use this shampoo once a month only just to clarify my hair from crap. It's an addition to my hair regimen. My hair is in a good place right now, and I'm super happy with it. Growing a lot, no more major shedding, very minimal breakage and split ends, no heat usage, no comb usage (except parting and wash day) protective styling, soft, fluffy, and... being grabbed by my almost one year old daughter. :-) My hair nowadays reminds me of Naptural85's hair. She's one of my favorite hair bloggers. Yay for hair health!
Here's some recent pics of my hair in a braid out. Yesterday was my anniversary, and that's the pic of me in the blue shirt. <3
Last night, I just came across this for the first time on YouTube. Tyra Banks was talking about 'good hair' on her show. Apparently, this episode aired years ago, but I'm just now seeing it.
Don't laugh at me. I don't really watch TV.
It's a five-part show, so there are four other videos with this. She was talking about hair around the time when Chris Rock created that documentary called "Good Hair" (which I need to watch again, by the way). It was an interesting Tyra episode... very informative, inspiring, and sad at the same time.
How many of you have little girls who have gone to school and gotten teased for their hair? Perhaps their hair isn't long enough, or straight enough, or evenshort enough. There was one little girl on the show who was teased because she was black and her hair was too long. Really!? Since when are you ridiculed for having long hair? Oh, I know. Because the other girls in her class are ridiculously jealous of her. Poor thing. She has what most people want and yet she gets handfuls of her hair pulled out at school.
Kids are just so mean.
But what's even more sad is that you can't blame the kids. It's not their faults. It's the parents. However your child acts in school or behind closed doors is a product of what you created. If you are telling your little girl that her hair is ugly and nappy, then she will grow up with low self esteem, tease and bully other girls who have long, straight hair, and when she's old enough, perm her hair relentlessly and burn it all out. A lot of women don't realize that because they've grown up and their mothers possibly did the same thing to them, they are damaging their own daughters as well.
One woman on the show had even started to perm her 3-year old daughter's hair. Three!? Ouch! That's how old my daughter is. I wouldn't even dream of putting such a harsh chemical in her hair, especially at that age. Her hair is still growing in delicately!
I feel sorry for these poor little girls. Their mothers have already taught them that there is such a thing as 'good hair' and 'bad hair', and that if you have 'bad hair', you won't get anywhere in life. That's the negative perception that we all have about our hair. Society will not accept us with our knots and coils. There was an author of a particular book about black hair on the show, talking about why we all have this perception and where it came from. She said that it went all the way back to slavery, when the slave masters had sex with a black woman to get a mixed child, and that child was light skinned with long, wavy hair. That child got opportunities in life that a regular, all black slave child never had. That light skinned child often got a greater chance at life... better food, shelter, clothes, and education. So we've automatically been brainwashed into thinking that if we are lighter and look as much as possible like a white person, we're good. We're on top of the world and we can get the same jobs as a white person. We can fling our hair like a white person. We can be rich like a white person... if only we had good hair.
It's just so sad that a lot of us still have that mentality. It's simply ignorance that we've grown into. We're portraying it to our youth and don't realize it. We have to do better with raising our young girls. I applaud the mothers who have gone natural and allowed their daughters to go natural as well. We should be embracing our culture. I don't mean do anything stupid... run a muck with afros, screaming 'Black Power', bring back the Black Panther party, protest in the streets or anything like that. Just give our youth better self esteem, and that there is no such thing as 'good' or 'bad' hair. If you have some hair at all, you're good. Ask yourself... would you rather be bald instead of having the kinks in your head, and not have the opportunity to wear a wig or a weave over it? I'd rather have something than nothing! Why do you think cancer patients have it so hard in the hair department?
Yes, taking care of our hair is difficult. It is. But that is where we educate ourselves on how to take care of what we were born with so that it becomes easier. This is where some mothers are just plain lazy. Instead of perming the kid's hair, they could braid it or do something less harmful that takes the same amount of time as perming it does. There are so many things to do to a child's hair so that it won't take long to quickly fix in the morning, or even at night. Doing those home perming kits takes about, what... 30 minutes or more for the whole process? In that amount of time, you could have detangled and done a protective style! Oh, and let's not forget the blow drying and the dreaded flat ironing process... that's too much for a little kid to go through. Some mothers are just lazy and lack the knowledge on how to properly care for the child's hair, so they make it as easy as possible... for them, not the child.
This is yet another reason why I am homeschooling my kids, because if either one of my daughters ever come home crying with a chunk of their hair cut off because some jealous brat got trigger-happy with scissors that day, or my son comes home with his rat tail gone, I'm going to go a-wall on somebody's parents.
So parents... let's get our acts together... for the sake of causing more harm to our kids.
(steps off soapbox)
The time for the mini twists has come to an end! I tried to go for another week, but Syriah had fun at her granny's house for two days and she came back looking like a ragamuffin! I already knew that it would happen, so I prepared for a long time of taking down the twists... a dreaded process.
Come to find out that I didn't have to dread it, and it didn't even take long at all. It took me 10 minutes to safely take down 70 mini twists. I was baffled. That was it? It was easy, too. I just put some coconut oil in her hair, which is something I do before I ever wash her hair anyway. I started from the top of the twist and used my fingers to pry it apart. Easy. It didn't even get tangled. Her hair feels silky and ready to be washed, and the twist out came out fluffy and cute enough to wear outside, if we had somewhere to go today. She's proud to whip it back and forth.
I introduced her to the Willow Smith 'Whip My Hair' song and now she loves it. Go figure. I have my own personal feelings about what that song and that music video is really about, but I'm not going to deprive my kids of music where the lyrics aren't harming them. Since I love hair, why not? LOL!
So, I will be doing these twists again at some point. I don't think I'd want to try mini braids. Braids are waaaaay harder to deal with, and they take longer. I know because I grew up with mini braids. I had so much hair that my mother didn't know what to do with it sometimes, and this is way before the natural hair revolution. I wore mini braids a lot during middle school and high school because I wasn't allowed to get a perm until I was 15. It took forever to take down the braids I had, and my hair is so thick that there were probably about 200 or more of those suckers on my head. Syriah's hair is a medium thickness, which means that it's not as thick as mine is, but I still do not want to attempt mini braids any time soon, if ever. I'm quite sure that it'll take me more than 2 hours to do all that.
Therefore, I'm sticking to mini twists unless I have a change of heart, or unless I have about 5 to 6 hours to devote to doing her hair AND to making sure that they last for more than 2 weeks. If I ever do that, wish meh luck because I'm gonna' need it! Hahaha! -O____O-
So, I finally tried mini twists on Syriah's hair. I washed her hair and used only my shea butter mixture on her wet hair, detangled, parted with my fingers, and began to do the tiniest twists I'd ever done. It was kind of fun. It took 2 hours, which is less than what I thought it would have taken.
I did pretty well, and I'm hoping that this lasts about 3 weeks. This is a very effective protective style, and if you have time, it's good to do if you don't feel like doing your daughter's hair every day or every other day. I love seeing her flip the twists back and forth!
I've been wrapping it every time she lays down for bed or to take a nap, and it's going quite well so far. Like the picture says, let's see how long this lasts!
