Hair Care Organization.
I know that there are some people out there, who THRIVE on organization. The container store is the epitome of excitement for them and they can’t watch hoarders. Kudos to them. I wish I had that kind of love for it.
For me, organization is a chore. A hard one at that. A friend once pointed out to me “You like to have everything you own in view.” I’ve come to realize this is true. But when you have to work at being organized, this is totally not a good thing. Stuff just ends up in piles.
Same with my hair supplies. I would love for it to be out on my bathroom counter, but there isn’t enough room. To top it all off, I rarely do my hair at the bathroom counter. I am usually in front of my computer or plunked down in front of the television watching Toddlers and Tiaras something informative.
Clips, headbands, flowers, butters, gels, etc, it is a lot to keep track of. How do you do it? Me? I throw everything into a medium sized tote that has a lid. It makes sense to me because it is big enough to hold all of my stuff, but small enough that I can drag it where I need it. If I was going for super organized, I would band my clips together, get a smaller container for my flowers and headbands to place within the container, but…I’m not that organized. I take something out and I throw something in. It works for me!
So what do you do to keep organized?
Where have you been!?
Hey guys!
So if you haven’t noticed, I’ve been gone for about a week. No entries, nothing. I’ve been posting periodically on Facebook and on Twitter but that is about it. Explanation? Well, my summer semester ended. It was the one before we go back to school for fall semester. I have about two weeks (only one at the time of writing this) before I jump back into school. Not to mention I have been kicking up the internship/job looking into high gear.
I decided to take a little break and use what little time I have to chill, and just.. be. Ever since the spring semester life has been so frantic for me. There are always deadlines and assignments due. Not to mention the housework and job hunting.
I am back though, and I am here. I have a review planned for this week as well. Here is to a new semester and a new lease on life!
Cheers!
Question of the day: What have you been up to? Are you super busy and overwhelmed?
Hair styling attempt
Anyone that truly knows me in real life, knows that I should generally leave hair styling to the professionals. If it ain’t simple, it ain’t me. I am very creative, but when it comes to my hair sometimes, I. JUST. CAN’T. WIN.
But damn it all if I was going to let this stop me! No! I was going to give it a go!
I started by watching this video:
She is amazing with hair.
I figured “Hey! I know how to flat twist! I know how to two strand twist. Simple pimple right!?”
Um. No.
First off, my hair is not as long nor as thick as hers. So while her style was all thick and gorgeous, mine was thin.. and you could see parts of my scalp, making me look like I had bald spots. No bueno. The second thing I had issues with were these:
Yeah.. the bobby pins. They were awful. Whose hair is that thing going to hold!? They all came like that. Loose and just, not good. In my defense, I did not know this when I purchased them. Scunci just had two bundles of bobby pins in the package. They had a rubber band around each bundle, so you couldn’t tell that these things were simply useless pieces of metal .
*sigh*
But I persevered. These are the results:
Yeah.. not the greatest.
Things that I have learned from this:
- I’m going to have to learn how to adjust hair styles to my hair. The flat twists on the side needed to be bigger and there needs to be a smaller amount of them.
- I NEED BETTER BOBBY PINS
- I need to figure out how to get my hair sleeker.
- I need to figure out how to part better (I was parting the best that I could, and then my hand cramped up and I was like, forget this.)
- More than likely, it could have been better if my hair was stretched beforehand. So maybe I will band it next time, because I will be trying this again!
You live, you learn.
Tell me about your hair mishaps! Have you tried a hair style you saw somewhere and just completely missed the mark?
Fros on the 4th/Checking in
I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July. In case you did not know, it was also afro day. We didn’t do anything fancy at all. I packed up a picnic dinner and the plan was to go to White River State Park to watch the fireworks. Well, we got down to White River, and parking was blocked off, So we drove a little further, and went to the zoo. The zoo was a good place to see the fireworks, as long as you were in the right spot. We were seated behind the glasshouse, so we only saw half of them. Plus, it took us longer to get out of the zoo than it did to actually see the fireworks! Next year we need a better plan.
Mmm, ice cream!
As far as my hair goes, it is not feeling all crunchy and dry like it was before the henna treatment. I am seriously slacking though. I need to do a conditioning treatment and detangle my mop. What about you? Have you been slacking with the hair care? Lately, if I have anywhere to go I just spray on my Free Your Mane Reviving spray and fluff a bit and go. I will bite the bullet here soon and detangle and whatnot. I’ve been slacking in all areas since last week for some reason. I need to get back to everything.
Hope you guys have a great rest of the week!
Hair on a trip.
Most people when they travel take one of two modes of transportation; car or plane. While gas prices are steadily going down (at least in my part of the world), they are still pretty high, making an extended car trip possibly as expensive as a plane ticket.
Our solution? The train. You win some and you lose some with the train. The last time we were on, I had a massive headache due to the fact that there were really stinky hippies. Our train last time also was like 5 hours late due to the fact that there was a mudslide in the Pacific Northwest. AKA: Nowhere near where we were, and nowhere near where we were going. Every little thing just went wrong that trip.
We are currently on a train. It is actually going rather well this time, and this leaves me optimistic. We’ve had no issues, except for a rather annoying squeaky voiced child that “loves everyone!”
The last time I was on a train, it was winter time, and my hair was in two strand twists stuffed under a scarf, stuffed under a knitted cap. The knitted cap is no longer an option in the mid west summer (the idea of it in this heat makes me gag a bit). Also, in the interest of not looking like the crazy ass ghetto black lady, I do not have a scarf on my hair. The result? I still look like the crazy ass ghetto black lady.. My hair is just out and looking a wee bit wild. I wanted to learn how to French braid my hair before this excursion, and that just didn’t happen. On long trips how do you protect your hair without looking crazy as hell? There are enough crazies on this trip (Mullet anyone?) I don’t need to add to the atmosphere.
Please don’t mess with me in the morning.
It takes me a while to rally in the mornings, I’ll admit it. This morning was no exception. I should back up a bit though. Last night, and pretty much all day yesterday, I had pain in my left eyelid. I had a feeling a stye was coming through. I immediately canceled that thought, because I haven’t had a style since I was a freshmen in high school. Yeah…
I woke up this morning (at 7:50, about an hour earlier than I normally do) with more pain when I blinked. My husband was telling me goodbye when I asked him to look at my eye.
“Yeah, you got a stye coming it, and it is pretty swollen.”
Great.
Since I was up, I figured I would hop in the shower and get ready for my day, which I did. But I am still pretty groggy. I throw on a maxi dress and run to the drug store. I had a script I needed to pick up.
It’s early, I’m not quite all there. I know I look slightly crazy. I shuffle into the pharmacy when behind me I hear:
“Hey ‘lil mama, what it do?”
I am no one’s mother, little or otherwise, and I turn around to look at the guy. If it is possible to look crazier than I look right now he does it. Cut off shorts, dirty shirt, raggedy braids in his hair. I give him the evil (stye) eye, and move on. As I am walking I notice a mirror and noticed that my dress is sort of tucked under my strapless bra. So, I am looking crazy as hell, have a stye, and it is early as hell, and you are trying to holler at me!? DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY STANDARDS!?
Oh well, at least my hair looks decent.
Glasses are on because I don’t want you to see my stye. Plus, I do have on clothes, It is a strapless maxi dress from Old Navy last season.
Product Review- Kyah Alexandria Shampoo & Shower Bar.
One of my natural hair idols is Chary Jay. She has a channel on YouTube that I subscribe to. She did a product review on several things on Kyah Alexandria’s line, but this bar stuck out the most to me. She said something along the lines of “it made my hair feel like it had lotion in it.” I am always looking for a product (shampoo especially) to put moisture back into my hair, so I scooped this up along with a leave in conditioner (to be reviewed at a later date).
The packaging.
What the packaging says: Kyah Alexandria Shampoo & Shower Bar- Coconut Paradise with Shea butter for all hair types. Full size All Natural.
Ingredients: Glycerin, Di (deionized) water, Coconut Oil, Sorbitol, Sodium Palmitate, Sodium Stearate, Soybean Oil, Almond Oil, Safflower Oil, Jojoba Oil, Aloe Vera Gel, Shea Butter, Coconut Milk, Vitamin E, Olive Oil, Honey, Tea Tree Oil, Fragrance.
When I watched the initial review of this product, Chary Jay was able to break the bar with her hands. When I received mine in the mail, there was a note in there, stating that because it is getting hotter out, they have added an additional ingredient (jojoba oil I think) to make it more solid, so that it does not melt in the mail. So I had to use scissors to cut a piece off.
It' wasn’t difficult at all.
The Smell: I really enjoyed the smell of this product. You get the coconut smell, which isn’t overpowering at all, and then you get a sweet floral undertone. I held out the chunk I had cut off for my husband to sniff and to get his opinion on it. His response? “It smells sort of like a coconut candy.” The smell was really pleasing
Initial Tryout: I scrubbed my hair with the product, it doesn’t create a massive lather, and that is okay for me. I washed my hair and rinsed it out and paused for a moment before dumping conditioner on my hair. I felt my hair. It felt incredibly moisturized. It does feel like there is some sort of lotion on your hair. it is amazing. I love it.
Further Testing: With further testing I realized that it is easier to slice the bar using the scissors with a knife like motion instead of sawing. Also, while my hair luxuriates in the feel of this shampoo, the shampoo combined with conditioner, combined with the rest of my product line up equates product buildup rather quickly. I can use it about 2 or three times before I need to reach for a clarifying shampoo.
Bottom Line: I really liked how this shampoo made my hair feel. It was soft and manageable. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this product line feels!
Where you can purchase: http://mynaturalcare.com/index.html
Accepting yourself completely
We made it to Friday! Yay!
If you are on Facebook, you would have seen that I posted a couple of photos of my hair.
This being one of them. It is my webcam on my computer, that is why it is kind of craptacular. Anyway, I was headed to the Glee concert last night and trying to do something with my hair. Normally (as in EVERY DAY) I put in a headband and a flower. Sometimes I make a poof, but still have the flower as well. In this photo I have on the flower, but no headband.
As I was figuring out my hair last night, I realized that I always feel kind of stupid without my headband and flower. I feel like everyone is looking at me. This caused me to wonder: am I being ashamed of my hair?
I didn’t want that.
I slowly took the flower out my hair, and fluffed up my twists. I looked really good. One thing I might do in the future is add gel to my twists when they are twisted up. Some of the instantly spread out. and it looked uber cute with them twisted up like that.
See? Totally cute. Except I have that Johnson forehead, that should be a fivehead. *snort*
Oh, and Glee was so much fun! I am really really loud and screamed my head off.. as a result, I got a barf bag from a cheerio. LOL. At one point it got really quiet in the place and I screamed out “I LOVE YOU PUCK!” He could so hear it.
To the two girls that I met in like while I was getting popcorn and you were getting Beer. YOU ARE AMAZING! I hope you live in Indianapolis and we can meet up sometime and drink and drool over Puck! LOL.
I am out and about!
Hello From Wisconsin!
Welcome Wednesday- Big Chop Edition!
So, you have finally decide to do it. You have decided to cut off your relaxed ends. You have decided to big chop!
It can be a scary time. You're losing hair.. in some cases a lot of it. No worries though. If you follow some guidelines, a good experience can be had. Watch this video by Sunshinelovespeace!
Espionage Cosmetics
