Hair length check

So I decided to start doing length checks because I can never tell when my hair grows and the best way is by photo! hooray!.Anywho, this is my hair, a flat ironed hot mess about to be washed so that explains why is looks...well a mess lol. My biggest problem with my hair is the fact that the bottom part of my hair hair grows faster so my hair is an uneven mess of unevenness. I figured I should cut it but it would just grow out longer than the rest and cutting it would be a waste.

So here we go the first of my length checks. I'm not really looking for length on my natural journey I just want the middle part of my hair to grow out because right now it is so not cool, so I will be patient.

Oh and uh

Look at that crazy cloud! this is right outside my apartment. About two days ago it rained completely sunny out and I caught this pic right before it did.

Ahhh the last of the summer rain. It's already feeling like Fall, I love Fall but I hate Winter, wish I could skip over it!.

Negativity and Natural hair.

Good hair.

That term is a term that I think is completely ignorant.

Growing up all my life I have heard that term good hair. I honesty wish I could say that I grew up in a household where the term"good hair" wasn't used. My mother who was half Native American had hair like chili from TLC, Anada Lewis or Amerie...yes Amerie the most haha.

 Anyway, my mom never told me I had bad hair, in fact I never even heard her mutter the words good hair or bad hair. I don't think she believed there was such a thing. Growing up my hair was always relaxed by my aunt, my mother was quite sick and couldn't really do my hair so my aunt took care of it.

Fast forward to the present. I hear comments from my grandmother who I live with btw that I have bad hair. Just the other day she was telling me about her great grandmother and how she was light skinned but she had hair like mine, she didn't have... "good hair".

I know that people just say when you hear things like that you should just brush it off but when it is your own family it's kinda to brush off what they say. Whether we like it or not what they say we really take to heart since they are the people closest to us.

It hurt me only a little when that was said, because believe me that isn't the first time I've heard it. Does it make me ashamed of my natural hair? Does it make me regret going natural? does it make me want to go back to relaxed? the answer to all of those is a big no. In fact when I hear it I get irritated but then it just fuels my fire to continue on NOT relaxing my hair. It just baffles me that Black people can sit up here and say things like this. It's like you have Black people hair do you think your hair is ugly? do you think God made a mistake when he made our hair? there is not such thing as good hair in that way. Good hair is healthy hair. I wish this term would be destroyed, I hope that future generations can forget the term and never use it. It's so negative and ignorant it's ridiculous that people still believe it. My advice for any of you who have family members, friends or even coworkers that make you feel bad about your hair. Say screw you. The best way to keep up your journey is to look at other women with natural hair and be inspired by them. It's one of the best ways to keep yourself going. 

Natural hair is beautiful hair.

My Routine?

My hair

I wish I could say I have a set routine...I did once:).

So my current regimen is

Once a week or once every two weeks I wash my hair with Aussire moist shampoo or Organix Vanilla silk or Shea Butter Shampoo.

I then condition with Aussie moist conditioner or Herbal Essences Hello Hydration.

Since I don't have a deep conditioner at the moment I just use my reg conditioner as a deep conditioner. Lately I have been leaving my conditioner in overnight. Since I usually wash my hair late at night Leaving it in  helps when you are too tired to wash it out.

Soooooo I put the conditioner in, or should I say load up on it? detangle section by section with a wide tooth comb and then use ouchless binders to put my hair in ponytails...or curly puffs lol. I then ,whether I leave it in overnight or just a half hour I rinse with cold water and then throw in either some infusium23 repairologie or Oyin whipped pudding and Oyin burnt sugar pomade on the edges slap on a headband as you can see in the pic and I'm good to go.

My routine always changes and I'm trying to set one and stick to one because I had one a while ago which I stuck too so yeah...

OYIN!

So I decided to so a small review on some products I recently purchased. So for about a month now I have been wanting to try Oyin Handmade products. I decided to purchase some from Curlmart.com since I heard that actually ordering from their website can be a pain in the behind. So I went on curlmart.com like two months ago just wanting to try the Oyin Burnt Sugar pomade and they were sold out and continued to be sold out for weeks. Annoying right?


So I went online again just out of nowhere there it was right there looking at me. Sweetly asking me "Buy me" and of course I gave in, might as well waiting a whole month and a half. So along with the burnt sugar I got the Whipped pudding. So happy very happy I was and it only took a little more than a week and BAM! here. HAPPINESS.

review

The Burnt sugar pomade

So I guess I 'l start off first by saying I haven't really gotten a chance to use these products all that well yet so I guess my review isn't all that accurate lol and my opinion could change as I continue using them so I'll just do a short little...what's the word?......I don't know I can't think right now lol. I'll give my opinion now on them and if I feel any different about them in the future I let you know :)

So this product smells DELICIOUSNESSESSSS

It kinda smells like maple brown sugar oatmeal and a vanilla candle...haha

It's very moisturizing and works well for smoothing down those darn edges. I am very pleased as of right now and hope to use more of it to get the full advantages of what this stuff can do. It comes in an 8oz I believe for $10 and at first I thought it would be too small but it's a perfect size. You will have plenty even if you are a heavy handed lady like myself.

Next

Oyin Whipped pudding

Sorry for such the bad pics I don't have a camera at the moment so I've been using the camera on my phone!!

Anyway the whipped pudding is AWESOMENESSSS. For some reason I expected this product to be brown because i heard it smelled like chocolate cake lol but no,no it is a creamy white. It smells a lot like a chocolate mousse and palmers cocoa butter.

Right when I stepped out of the shower after washing  my hair I dried a little and then ran this product through and didn't even have to use a lot. The next day my hair was soft and my curls were defined! now take note I have just started dealing with my hair being fulling natural I still however flat iron because my natural hair isn't ready to my liking yet lol. So I have yet to try out a whole bunch of styles on my hair. I have only tried a twist out which came out alright, but using the whipped pudding all I did was run it through and the next day my curls were defined and stretched out more than usual. Not a WHOLE LOT stretched but enough to make me go wow?.... My hair felt really really moisturized which makes me happy because I have thick hair that soaks up any kind of moisture like nobodies business and I didn't feel the need to add anything else to my hair.Yay for me.

So I have to say I'm with happy with  Oyin the products smell great and they don't disappoint. I would definitely purchase again and again..and again:).

Why I went Natural. My story. Beware it's a long one.

So I wouldn't say I went natural, I just decided to not relax my hair for a couple of months and those months became a year and then 4 months later me picking up the scissors and cutting off the the last remains of relaxed hair.

My backstory.
My first relaxer was when I was three years old. According to family members my hair was too thick to deal with so I "had" to get a relaxer. So seeing my natural hair was quite the discovery. I continued getting relaxers for the next couple of years I hated them but is it was kind of imbedded into my brain that as soon as you feel new growth it was time to relax. My aunt always did my hair and my constant routine was every couple of months was perm time. I would honestly dread the days of getting a perm because the process always took forever.

Routine
Get out the grease rub it all around my ears and hairline so I won't get burned. Having a nasty grease substance rubbed around my head makes me cringe.
Get a brush and apply the perm to each section of my hair. Which was a pain when you started to burn
After burring for 10000 years wash it out
Then conditioner
The shampoo my super sore and burnt scalp
Then condition again
Leave on for 10 min
Wash out then towel dry my hair
Grease scalp while damp then blow dry
than apply some kind of moisturize
Then straighten with a curling iron

The whole process took about 4-5 hours and as a little kid that kind of stuff can drive you crazy and just think  that was from 3 yrs of age to 19.


So finally as I got older I started doing my own perms, the brand I used was motions. Finally I started applying the perm with my hands instead of using a brush since it took up too much time. Somehow when I stared doing my own perms I felt like my permed never turned out right, so I eventually went and got it done a couple of times by a professional but she was a scissor happy psycho so I stopped and resorted back to doing it myself.

When I was a junior in high school I bought my first flat iron, some 40 dollar iron from Sallys

The Damage
Boy oh boy I was not a smart cookie. I didn't know how to is the flat iron right and I was way too impatient to actually take time to do it right so I basically would flip my hair upside down and just run through it until it was straight. Without using any heat protectant(after years of using grease which I hated it I swore it off and used nothing). I eventually broke my hair off. For years I wore ponytails and suffered ponytail damage and still continued getting perms damaging the living daylights out of my hair. Eventually my hair continued breaking in the middle and got shorter and shorter.

The Dark ages. Educating myself
When I turned 19 my hair seem to get worse and worse.  My hair because crinkly, matted and completely uneven. My hair in the back where it was shorter was fried and matted to my head, as you can imagine that took a huge chunk out of my self esteem. I got super depressed not knowing what to do until late night I was on youtube and stumbled across a video of this girl flat ironing her hair, then I came across a video of an Asian girl talking about her hair products. As I watched her she said something that stuck out to me. She said, "It's essential to start taking care of your hair" and that was it I knew right then and there If I want my hair to look good I need to take care of it. Why it took me so long to understand this IDK. SIMPLY TAKE CARE OF IT.

That night I went on Folica.com invested in a 100 flat iron and about a 5 heat protectants and deep conditioners and a pair of shears I went and got the "Rihanna wannabe cut". That was it I was on my path to healthy hair. I still however relaxed my hair but I started deep conditioning and being more aware of what I was doing

Vow to stop relaxing

My "Rihanna wannabe cut" didn't exactly get rid of all my damage the whole cut was pretty awful, I looked like Halle Berry in the movie Boomerrang or Becky from Roseanne when she cut her hair. One night on Jan 26 of 2009 as I rubbed relaxer in my hair I looked at myself and said why am I putting the perm on hair that is still weak and broken off I was so annoyed that, that was it. My last perm I vowed not to get a perm for at least 5 months and just focus on taking care of my hair and growing it out.

Now

That 5 months turned into a year of not relaxing and researching what Transitioning  from relaxed to Natural meant. I decided to make the at least 5 months permanent. In april of 2010 I cut off the remaining bits of my relaxed hair. Visiting the site Curlynikki.com helps me out so much I visit it almost everyday.

Although my hair is still growing out and it isn't at my desired length I could not be happier with the choice I made. My natural curls are wonderful and I fully embrace them. I feel so much more empowered and aware of my hair it could punch a small child...not really lol, but yeah ,I am proud of myself that I stuck with it for this long. I just hope that if you want to transition you do it. Don't let anyone stop you or discourage you. Embrace your naturalness. It's pretty fierce.

My first Post. What my blog will be about if you can't read the Title.

So here I am doing a blog. Why am I even writing something that no one will ever read? well my friend if you are a "cool" person like muah you tend to google...or BING! random things and occasionally you will stumbled across a strangers Blog and sometimes that Blog will catch your attention and you'll be like"Hey that was interesting". So maybe I can be you're random roaming and stumbling across a Blog person:). I won't get my hopes up though let's be real there are like 19138948 numbers of blogs out there and chances are I will never get viewed.

Anyway enough with my 80% of the time negative outlook on life, I decided to make a blog about Natural hair, I already have another  blog about my life but I'm just not that interesting to keep writing about what I'm doing every 5 seconds. I doubt you care because I don't even care.

SO!...back to what I should have been talking about in the first place. I decided to make a blog about natural hair because I myself am finally natural after a year and...3/4 months of a very long transition. I will tell you about how I decided to go natural, what products I use, and perhaps some fun pictures! we all love pictures I know I do!. So I'm hoping that one day when you do...IF you do stumble across my blog I will give you some help or some inspiration about going or staying natural and hopefully answer some questions that you may have. I will be completely honest I am no expert and I can only speak from my own experiences and will give the best advice and information I can. Alright kids!, alright then lets get started.

Now bear with me I don't exactly have a camera right now all I have is a cellphone and I don't have billions of picture of my hair because I'm not one of those people that keep a hair journal I wish I was but yeah...I'm, not:).