RANDOM Hair Chat! (Fall 2013)

Heya, curlies! I have some random hair stuff to talk about. Brace yourselves for randomness! ;)

1. I have a new video up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPuetgbe5AA Well, I have another one that I posted yesterday, but this one is a quick vlog about my beauty supply run. My kids are in it! Woo hoo! I have 16 videos up now and 30 subscribers. Working on getting more, more, MORE! <3

2. My hair has suffered some breakage at the top of my head within the last two months, and I'm not sure how it has. I haven't worn any tight styles at all; I've been wearing braids, twists, braid outs, and twist outs. I think maybe the breakage might have come from those mini braids that I had... maybe having only gel in my hair for two weeks holding those braids together is what broke the top of my hair off, because that's the only place that I can see breakage. I don't know; it's so weird. >_<

3. I have a million and one different textures of hair! I say that because I don't know for sure how many I actually have. Here are about 2 or 3 examples of my hair fresh out of the shower. The back of my hair is really tight, like the kitchen area. I just find it interesting...

4. Little Riah's hair is still flourishing. She got taller this summer, so her hair isn't exactly to her waist anymore, but it's still healthy and growing. Recently, she had bantu knots with flat twists as a style combo and it looked amazing on her.

 

When the style got frizzy after about 5 days, I made a new style out of it. 

 

5. Mari's hair is rapidly growing and healthy. I've been doing little baby hairstyles on her, styles that I didn't know how to do when Riah was a baby. She's 15 months old now, and is such a great sport about getting her hair done. She actually sits still... as long as she has something to play with. There's a video on YouTube (which they won't let me embed here, ugh) where I did her hair and she barely moved.

 

 
 

6. My hair doesn't like a lot of protein! I think that I've been figured this out months ago when I did the hair strand porosity test, but I never took it seriously as far as like, deep conditioning. Surely my hair can withstand a weekly deep condition with mayo, right? Not! I have tried it three times already, and each time, my hair was extremely crunchy and dry, lacking serious moisture after air drying it. I hate the feeling that my hair has after using mayo in it. It feels okay right after washing it out, when my hair is still wet, but when it dries, no matter what I put in it afterwards, my hair feels like a bird's nest with Brillo on top. >_>
I'm seriously going to stick with deep conditioners that don't have protein in them, like my Shea Moisture Deep Treatment Masque. Might even use that for my next natural hair lightening treatment (see previous posts). Other than that, my hair is growing and feeling great. Official length check will come again next month. Stay tuned for that!

 

7. Jam still has his little rat tail! It's growing, and it's becoming less of a priority to keep it moisturized nowadays because I'm working on me and the girls' hair more, but I do spritz water on it every few days and some leave in moisturizer or my whipped shea butter mix, or both depending on dryness level. I wash it at least once a week, even though he keeps his fat head on the floor constantly. I am still doing his at home haircuts... Mama knows best! ;)
#savingmoney

So, that's my long, long random hair update! Hope you guys enjoyed. Check me out on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  Peace out! 

http://www.youtube.com/curlsofinnocence

~Epic Realist~

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~