Pantene/Silicone RANT!! + Facial Hair Woes

I'm so angry right now. It may not come through in my calm, pleasant-looking typed words, but I'm ready to cuss and spit! I posted yesterday about my Pantene fiasco. Well, I baggyed my twist bun overnight like usual, and it looked fine...until I stepped outside. I live in Maryland, so the weather here is iffy at best. Yesterday was a pleasant 55 degrees, and today is dreary and grey and wet all round. Blech. Now normally, my hair is fine in the humidity and rain. The section that was covered with the Darcy's Botanicals leave in looks shiny and isn't frizzing up much. But the rest of my hair?! It looks dusty and dry like the Sahara, feels matted and hard and crunchy, and is just an all around NASTY MESS. Uggh! I'm ashamed to be a natural today. That's how bad it is. I mean, just look at it:

Can you shudder with me? Please? This frizz is ridiculous. The one twist I did with my DB looks BOMB; it's shiny and frizz free. I did have gel on it, rinse it, and then added some Pantene, but still. I'm hot. Silicones didn't used to treat my hair like this. Neither has Pantene; I've used the Pantene Curly Moisture Renewal conditioner multiple times before, and my hair looked fine before. My hair has NEVER looked this dry! Not even after I BCed! And definitely not after baggying. I'm just disgusted. I will be CG for life if this is how my hair is going to react to silicones now #ain'tnobodygottimeforthat. Here's the one twist that actually looked presentable. It's the bottom one...

On top of all of that, my scalp is itching like crazy in the spots that I have Pantene in! I'm like da heck is this? Mayhaps I just developed an allergy to it or something. Either way, I'm upset. Way more than I was yesterday. Ugh.

To compare that frizzy mess in the front with what my hair usually looks like, look at this little back section (that refuses to go into twists, mind you) that I detangled and left DB in, sealed with grapeseed oil, and added some gel. This is after being rubbed around on my coat collar and being out in the same amount of rain as the rest of my hair. Just lookit. It looks a little cray, but I'll pin it up...eventually...

Anywho, in other news...the amount of men with burgeoning beards lately is just sinful. Here's a bit of a Shakespearean-esque prose I wrote about it while on campus today:

*le sigh*
O, men of the College of Montgomery! O, O, O! 
Why dost thou insist on insulting the good people by permitting those evil wires to sprout from thine chin? 
Verily, I say unto thee, you do disgrace the eyes of even the most virtuous of women in thy presence. 
Be gone, whiskers from the bowels of Hades! Be gone!

Yes, I am a little on the crazy side. I get it from my Nana's side of the family :-D

Semester's End + Swap Haul + New Regimen

Ciao, bellas!

This semester has been craaaazy beyond belief. Finals week is quickly approaching (*gulps*), and I have so many things to read and study beforehand. I'm trying to get all As this semester, so I really need to slam into the books as hard as I can. Ooh, kind of random: The best thing about this semester has been the Bible study that some other believers started on the Germantown campus. It's really nice to go there and fellowship and talk about God's Word and pray with other Christians after a long day of being surrounded by insanity and profanity. It's so refreshing for my spirit, and I always leave feeling energised.

I don't know if I ever told y'all, but on the CN forums, I purchased some products from another curly, Breezie24, on the swap boards. Here's what I purchased from her:

Carol's Daughter Healthy Hair Butter
Carol's Daugher Tui Moisturising Leave-In Conditioner
Oyin Handmade Juices & Berries
Darcy's Botanicals Vanilla Delight Leave-In Conditioner
Curls Curl Creme Brulee
Taliah Wajid The Great Detangler

All for $43, which is pretty good, considering the lines I purchased. First off, Breezie was great to work with; everything came taped down, in great condition, and quickly. It was a pleasure ordering from her, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat :-) Second, why the heck didn't anybody tell me how NASTY that CD butter smelled?! I almost vomited when I sniffed it! My sister, who usually likes fragrances that I don't like, wrinkled her nose at it. And my brother, who is just crazy, said that it smelled like our baby cousin's diapers o_O I haven't used it and don't plan to. I just need to figure out something to do with it other than throw it out. Ugh. More on the other products in my stash post :D

I've figured something out about myself: I cannot, for the life of me, stick to one set regimen for months at a time. My techniques (styling, detangling and whatnot), yes, but products? Forget about it! I'll use something for 3 weeks, and then I move on to something else because I get bored. I like the idea of having one regimen with one way of doing things, but I can never actually do it. There are so many ways to do things, different ways to use the same product, and ways to mix things up (literally) that I never get around to sticking to anything. I'm not ashamed of it, but it's just something interesting that I've noticed about myself. At any rate, I washed my hair today. Here's what I did:

1. DCed hair last night in 4 sections (Suave Naturals Tropical Coconut + Nubian Heritage EVOO & Moringa Repair & Extend Treatment Masque + honey + EVOO + EVCO + GSO + VO5 Pomegranate & Grapeseed Extract Strengthening Conditioner).

2. Cleansed scalp with my creamy chamomile conditioning cleanser (I added about 3/4-1 tbsp of my sulphate poo; it increased the cleansing power x 10, but it was still conditioning, and it didn't foam up like shampoo).

3. Conditioned hair with TRESemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture Conditioner (the old formula; it smells like nail polish remover, and I HATE it! I need to stop by Weis and get the new formula kind).

4. Detangled one section with Darcy's Botanicals Vanilla Delight Leave-In Conditioner; tried adding gel, rinsed, and added Pantene Curly Moisture Renewal Conditioner instead; sealed with GSO.

5. Finished rest of hair with Pantene Curly, sealed with GSO, and put hair into 8 big twists, and pulled them back into a little bun.

So, contrary to my palm test, the DB doesn't mix well with my HG gel :-( I was so disappointed. It balled the conditioner up in my hair, so I quickly used the remaining portions of my cleanser to wash it out. And, let me say, that the Pantene Curly was another FAIL. I haven't been doing CG for very long, and still, my hair is just rejecting any and all silicones. I'm so sad *sniffles* I didn't feel like doing my hair during the week, so into 8 chunky twists it went, and I was able to snatch them all up into a little bun thing. No maintenance during the week, at least! This will probably be my finals style, too lol.


OAN: Forgive the image-less state of my blog. My phone is acting a fool and won't send the pics; my camera is void of both batteries and a memory card. Foo. I shall provide images, shortly, though, my fellow curlies! I know how boring this must be without images...

Vintage Posts from the CN Forums - Part 3

17-08-2012
Hair Regimen Update
I finally started my mini twists today! My hair looked so shiny and defined after taking out the twists this morning, I considered doing a twist out. But, I need this protective style, so I stuck to my plan.
Whoever said that Naptural85 makes mini twists look easy was right! I watched her mini twists tutorial at least 5 times before I started to make sure I did everything correctly. But I didn't have a wide tooth comb (my sister lost both of them -_-) or flaxseed gel. And my hair wasn't as strechted as hers is in the video, so my twists look kind of weird. I did make even rows, though! But my parts are strange, and the sides of the twists end up uneven, so I trimmed a few ends (first time scissors have touched non-SSKs since my BC!) to make them match up. And even though I'm twisting tight enough on most of them, the twists look nothing like hers. Maybe I'm making them too small or too big? Ugh. It's a good thing I decided to do practice twists this week. I doubt these twists will last more than 3 weeks, but I'll try again and do it better the next time. Ooh! I'll write which products I used for this (including my pre-installation) below:

Pre-installation:
Pompeian Grapeseed Oil (pre-poo)
TRESemme Climate Control Shampoo (poo)
VO5 Moisture Milks Strawberries & Cream with Soy Milk Protein/Herbal Escapes Anti-Oxidant Rich Pomegrante & Grapeseed (conditioner)
TRESemme Vitamin H & Silk Protein Smooth & Silky/Vitamin E Moisture Rich, Pompeian Grapeseed Oil (DC)
ACV:H2O (2:1 ratio; scalp clarifier)
Spectrum USDA Certified Organic Expeller-Pressed Coconut Oil (leave in)


Installation:
Fresh Elements Captivatin' Color conditioner (leave in, detangler)
Fantasia IC Polisher Gel (hold)
Fantasia Olive Moisturizing Shine Serum (moisture)

I don't like the Fantasia serum much, but the gel left my hair so dry that I had to do something. But I noticed that the twists without the serum are holding up much better than the ones with it. Hmm. Guess I'll leave the serum out.



18-08-2012
Randomness: I started listening to some Kpop on my iTunes account, and it didn't click in my mind that the song was in Korean until the song ended. I thought it was in English! *shakes head* This has happened to me a few other times too, and it's so bizarre. I don't know Korean! I've got a weird brain.

Mi pelo
I went to a birthday party today, so I pulled the back section of my hair into a puff, and pinned the front sections back. I've kind of got a little pompadour thingy going on in the front. It'll hopefully make my hair stretch a bit more; I was so sick of it curling while I tried to twist yesterday! I may or may not work on my twists more tonight; I need to sleep and get up for church tomorrow morning.



19-08-2012
I ended up not doing any more mini twists last night, but I did some today after church. The going is VERY slow; I'm just finishing up the section on the left side of my head! But I'm trying to make sure I do them right. As painstakingly as I'm doing these twists though, most of them don't look right. Even if I take 5 minutes to tightly twist, they start to unravel the second I let them go *frustrated sigh* And I keep catching little stray hairs in the twists, end up twisting them in, and then have a painful time trying to pin the twists back because they're attached to 1 or 2 thin hairs at the front of my head. 
Also, I wasn't liking the way the Fresh Elements conditioner was working with the Fantasia gel. It's like my hair was too moisturised and slippery (darned dimethicone!  ) and it messed up the twists. 

Soo, I got the money from my babysitting paycheck (money!! Finally!) and hit Target today after church. I spent more than 20 minutes bouncing between the Salon Hair Care aisle (cried over the prices there), the "normal" hair care stuff (lamented over the sodium hydroxide and drying alcohols), and the Ethnic Hair Care aisle (boohooed over the prices and tiny sizes of bottles, and looked skeptically at the "all natural" ingredients). I looked at Shea Moisture, Jane Carter, Cantu, Motions, Creme of Nature, Nubian Heritage (side note: Raven, you were totally right about the Nubian Heritage heat line! I didn't expect to see such high amounts of keratin in the shampoo and conditioner [usually when products claim to have protein, it's 10th on the list and won't do much]! Not to mention the label color was gorgeous  I'll have to try that sometime!), Mixed Chicks, Curls, Curly Qs, Hair Rules, Fekkai, Rusk....on and on and on. I wanted to cry! All I was looking for was a leave in that had shea butter in it (I would use Shea Moisture's Curl Enhancing Smoothie, but it has ammonium salts in it. As little as is in there and as much as that drying effect is likely "cancelled out" by the super moisturising ingredients, I'm not a huge fan of salts in my leave ins) but that wasn't out of my price range. Every "ethnic" product claimed to be natural, but when I checked the ingredients label, all I saw was sulfates, silicones, alcohols (fatty or otherwise), and everything I could find in a bottle of Aussie Moist -_- But, thanks be to God, I finally found something!! It's from the Nubian Heritage line, and I really like it so far! It is *trumpets blare*

EVOO & Moringa Repair & Extend Detangling Leave-In Conditioner with Quinoa, Fennel & Henna

I didn't expect too good of a detangling job but this product has surprised me. I can easily finger detangle a handful of damp hair with a nickel sized amount of this conditioner. There's lots of EVOO, shea butter, coconut oil, mango butter and avocado oil in this! I love it. It's the first "mostly natural" product that has ingredients that I like and works well for my hair. It was only an 8 oz bottle for $11.99 (), but I think it'll last me for a while because much isn't needed for detangling. And, I tried this on my hair while putting in more twists, and it worked like a dream! It's cooperating with the gel much better than Fresh Elements. I'm very happy with this product so far 

I bought another conditioner, too! It's a relatively new line from Herbal Essences. It's called: Honey, I'm Strong and it's supposed to be strengthening. I know that honey is a humectant, but I don't understand how it strengthens. Moisture = Strength? Not in the curly world, at least. I bought it just to try it out (it was on sale! 23.7 oz for only $4.99!), and I LOVE the smell. That's no small feat, seeing as how I detest the smell of most of Herbal Essences' conditioners. It does have sodium hydroxide in it, which, again, I don't like having in my leave ins. So I'll use it as a rinse out. I'm excited to see how it works!

Anywho, I'm still very frustrated with this whole mini twists situation. I'm not giving up yet; I want to try it at least 1 more time before throwing in the towel and calling it quits (I really don't want to try it again, but I'm determined to finish at least this set of twists). But, if it doesn't work out, I can always go back to regular 2 strand twists. Those are plumper (you can include more hair), easier, quicker to do, and my hair suffers no breakage from putting those in. I'll probably twist for 2-3+ hours tomorrow, and update on how that goes.

Any experienced mini twisters here? What do you do to make twisting easier? How do you know that you're twisting the right amount of hair?

FINALLY - An Update!

Ay! I have been so terrible about posting on here. I started doing a blog on CurlyNikki, but I think that I'll move my blog back here again. I'd like to have something separate from my other online stuff. And I feel like I can be a bit more in my element here. On CN, I felt like I was writing just to get other people to read it (not many did because I guess I just don't have that magic blogger touch *shrugs*). Here, I can blog to just blog. So here will I stay! :-)

Well, SO much has happened since I last wrote! I'm in my first full-time semester of college, my hair has grown, I had my 13 month nappyversary (more about that later), I've gained weight (*sobs*), I'm starting a YT channel and I've gone silicone free until the spring or summer! So let's start from the beginning:

 College

The last I wrote, I was trying to make a decision on which college to attend. UMBC gave me a mid-tier scholarship ($10,000 per year) for their humanities program, plus I won another $5,000 per year from my dad's job. But, that still left a great deal to pay, and my parents would've had to take out loans. I have a 100% no-loan policy, so I chose to stay home for 2 more years and be in the honors program in my CC (I've been taking classes there since the 11th grade). 15 credits per semester are paid for, so I just pay for books and whatnot. I wasn't sure how I'd like it, but I love it! The classes are very demanding, but it's enjoyable. I was afraid of not knowing anybody, but I have 24 friends that I grow closer to every time I see them. We hang out outside of classes, have parties, picnics, etc.  I think I actually might have a social life now lmbo. Oooh! I'm a bit of a nerd, so I want to tell you which classes I'm in this semester:

World Literature II Honors

World History II Honors

World Music Honors

Introduction to Philosophy Honors

Intermediate Spanish II Honors

General Psychology

Dance Aerobics

First Year Seminar

...a total of 15 credits. The four classes at the top are actually an interdisciplinary set of courses, so those are actually just 6 credits for the semester...I'll explain later lol. I'm already signed up for next semester, and then I'll be taking:

World Literature II Honors

World History II Honors

World Music Honors

Introduction to Philosophy Honors

Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology Honors

Principles of Biology I

Elementary Korean I

...16 credits next semester. I'm pumped! I especially can't wait to start Korean. I'm a fan of Kpop, and I just got into Korean dramas (I'm currently going through The Iron Empress on Hulu). Plus, I was thinking of teaching ESL/ESOL there someday, so I thought it was worth a try. I'm so nervous! I've never had to take a 101 language class before. But I've ordered some Korean audio things from the library (Pimsleur materials), and I found a YT channel that has videos to help with pronunciation, and a website to help with the written segment. Random fact: Korean is considered an Altaic language, and not Asiatic, like Mandarin (Chinese). I always wondered why Korean didn't have that same metallic sound as Chinese lol.

Hair

Yes, it has grown! I'm now a bit past collar bone length (CBL) stretched. I'm so happy! Keeping my hair in twists a lot has helped with length retention, methinks. I've had to trim a few ends because they looked straight, but it ended up being nothing.

13 Month Nappyversary

This one is going to be hard to explain. Bear with me. Earlier this year, in May to be exact, my grandmother (Nana) was hospitalised at Holy Cross. We found out what she had known for months but not mentioned: she had ovarian cancer. She was in there for a month, her life in the balance. After 4 long weeks, she was allowed to go to the Rehabilitation Center, but she fell into poor health yet again (this time at the hands of the doctors), and was readmitted to the hospital. She was never able to come back home. It was so difficult for me during that time. School was finishing up, I was dealing with graduation, and because of classes, I couldn't visit her very often. She passed away on 10 June 2012. I was devastated. It was one of the most difficult summers of my life. But this year, on my nappyversary date (3 September), I realised something - my Nana's birthday is 3 October. I BCed exactly 1 month before her birthday! So, in remembrance of her, I celebrate every 13 months that I've been natural instead of every 12.

Weight

Needless to say, my ambitions for losing weight were lost. I started out well, but due to the circumstances over the summer, I just got further and further away from healthy eating. I'm now at my heaviest - 230 pounds :-( But I won't give up! I'm going to Asheville in the summer, and I will NOT be buying a plus sized swim suit, nor will I be embarrassed to show my legs! I'm reading Dr. Fuhrman's book called Eat to Live, and it looks doable. So I'll be trying that starting in January methinks.

YouTube

Yes, you read it correctly, chicas! I'm going to be starting my very own YT channel! I want it to be good quality, though, so I need to purchase a camcorder, learn how to use an editing program, etc. And I want it to either be in Spanish or English with Spanish subtitles. It won't be ready until the summer, probably, though. I want to focus entirely on school and exercise next semester.

Silicone Free?! O_O

Yuppers...I've crossed over to the other side! Lmbo. After my silicone serum obsession of the summer, I was eager to see how my cones would do during the autumn. And somehow...they sucked. Like badly. Like, my hair looked like the Sahara desert bad. I wanted to cry. Soo, thanks to some encouragement from the wonderful ladies on CurlyNikki, I've been exploring some silicone free options. And, to my surprise, my hair is loving it! I'm floored. I didn't know that no 'cones could be so wonderful! So, now my plan is to use 'cone-free products in the autumn and winter and early spring (September-April), and then use regular silicone products in the spring and summer (May-August). Here's my current regimen:

• Prepoo/DC overnight with VO5 Silky Experiences Shea Cashmere Conditioner cocktailed with honey, EVOO, EVCO, and GSO (I'm going to start using the honey and oils with 2 overripe pureed avocados instead, because I want to find another conditioner for DCs that doesn't have isopropyl alcohol in it and is a bit thicker).
• Cleanse scalp with Paula's Choice All Over Hair & Body Shampoo.
• Condition hair and scalp with Spa Haus Salon Conditioner (I actually found this at the dollar store lol. I really like it; a review will be coming soon! :-) ).
• Detangle with TRESemme Naturals Nourishing Moisture Conditioner.
• Twist hair with Shea Moisture Curl & Style Milk or Curly Q's Red Velvet Moisturising Curl Cream; seal with my EVOO/GSO mix.

I've been doing this for about 2 weeks now, and my hair looks great! I'll be keeping this up until May hits! :-D

That's about all for this update, bellas! I'll be posting almost everything that I posted on my CN blog on here over the next few days. 

Ciao!