First Video Blog (Vlog) Ever

Hey!

I recorded this on Tuesday night and it took some time to upload it because the internet sucks at my school. That's not the only reason its just going up. I'm so freaked out about doing this post lol. I hate being on camera (and I'm a journalism major, go figure!). So that means that I watched this video about ten times before actually posting it.

I hope you guys like it, lets not be too harsh :)

Feedback would be nice too. If you think I should do more like this then let me know. If yes, then I will do some posts as videos but I'll still rely heavily on written posts. If not, please tell me to quit while I'm ahead hahaha.

Thanks guys for your continued support


Aly

Quick Post: Hot Oil Treatment- Fail

My University had its Fall Convocation on Thursday, Nov. 15 (*proud annual Dean's list maker right here* lol) and I did a hot coconut oil treatment on my hair last Wednesday night in the hopes of waking up to wash it and having a "cute day" for Thursday. 

That did not work out :/

The hot water decided to be absent that morning leaving me with the option of washing my necessaries (TMI?) and squeezing the excess coconut oil from my hair into a towel. I went to the convocation and accepted my award with my hair in a bun. 

Guess who felt like a grease ball.

The up-side, I guess, would be that I had the coconut oil on my hair for a super long time. 

After the event, I ended up just doing a shampoo wash with the Shea Moisture shampoo and conditioned my hair with Herbal Essences Hello Hydration conditioner. I then left it to airdry.

Thanks for reading,

Aly

Update & why I've been gone.

Hey guys,

Its been since May that I last did a blog post. I have missed it, but I had to take the time-out to focus on other goals in my life, which I'll explain at the end of this post. But first, here is an update on my hair.

I have been doing my regular deep conditions, oil treatments and general hair care stuff. I just wasn't going hardcore on my hair like before, with growth aids and all that. I now use Herbal Essennce's Hello Hydration for my shampooing and co-washing needs, but I have experimented with the Shea Moisture line (which I like). I also still use the ORS Replenishing conditioner for my deep conditions, and the ORS moisturizer when I wear my hair straight. That doesn't happen very often, so I use a mixture of water, apple cider vinegar and any natural oil and then seal it with a oil at night. I airdry every time, so braid-outs and bantu knot-outs are my friends.

I have been on a holistic healthy life style lately so I mostly use natural products on my hair and skin. So I don't use the Hot Six Oil anymore, not because its not good but because I use coconut oil, olive oil, castor oil, shea butter etc. instead. I've been getting a lot of questions about that oil.

Also, sadly, I still don't know how to lessen my split ends. lol So this winter I'm going in on protective styling.

Okay here are the pics of my hair:

I thought a red rinse would show in the sunlight (waste of $$$)

This was before my relaxer (relaxer day-Oct 20th)

braid out

Old braidout bun

protective style (no sock/bun filler)

After my relaxer (first one done completely by myself)

Loved my hair this day!

this was last  Monday, back to no heat styles

Absence Explanation

You don't have to care about this, since its not hair related but I wanted to share this with you guys.

Okay, so as I said I'm trying to be all holistic. So I put more focus on my body. The goal was to lose weight for summer, but that proved to be much harder than expected. For a minute I thought I had hypothyroidism because the weight just wasn't going anywhere. Long story short, I upped the ante by not eating meat anymore (its been a month), increasing exercise and lifting weights, and being positive overall. Its still not really a difference to me as far as reducing my size is concerned but according to the scale I lost 18lbs since about September-ish (if I count from me being super serious). I actually attempted to lose the excess all of July straight till now. But as I said, I think I got extremely serious after mid/late September, after not seing the progress I wanted.

I have 27 more lbs to lose, give or take. I'm not so much concerned about the numbers as I am about how I look. 

So here are my before and 'during' pictures:

Before:  About May/June when I just got back to Jamaica for summer vacation.

During: I think this is the end of September (girl in picture: my trini friend/roomie)

 

(peep my hair length by her boob woop!)

[girl in picture: St. Kitts homie lol]

Thanks for not unsubscribing guys! Even if it just meant that you didn't notice that I wasn't posting lol I'm glad you're still here.

Aly

My Scalp

Hello!

I recently visited my dermatologist about my skin issues. She is very expensive but she's good at her job. she said that I have eczema and it actually is on my scalp as well. Having eczema was not really a surprise because it was present on my body for as long as I knew myself. What I didn't know was that it was also in the scalp.

So the itching I had been experiencing all along was not just from your regular old dry scalp problems. I had been using certain oils that have been working for other hair bloggers (Jeni has some good scalp blogs here), but for me, those remedies were only covering up the underlying issue.

She went ahead and prescribed Ketaconozale tablets which is a drug used to treat various kinds of fungal infections including dandruff, and Triamcinolone, which is a cream that I apply to my face and scalp. She also mentioned that the cream aided hair growth so yaay for that bit of hope :). I'm can't be sure if its working yet, its only been six days since I started the treatment, so no feedback yet.  

As far as my hair goes, I am just twitching like the creamy crack addict that I am. I really want to relax my hair. It has only been 8 weeks, but because I started using my castor oil/cayenne pepper mixture in my second week post relaxer, my new growth just started appearing rapidly by the third week and my new growth never appears till like the 4th/5th week. That's good news for me but its a pain to detangle and my roots have been so dry since I've been in the hot Jamaican weather.  

I guess we'll see how long I go for.

Thanks for reading and for your continued support. I'll definitely give an update about my scalp again.

Aly

Instyler: Almost Like

Hello! This is my first time blogging from my phone. I actually like its convenience.

So I had brought the Instyler rotating iron for my mom because she has been going crazy for this gadget for as long as it's been out.

She, of course, loves it, especially since it's purple. I had always been skeptical of it because I thought it would be harmful to have a brush going though the hair multiple times alongside multiple spins of the hot barrel of the instrument.

They say it's less damaging to the hair than a regular flat iron. I don't know how to verify that.

So I tried it and it worked well on my frizzy airdried hair. I ended up just pin curling my hair but then I just put my hair in a bun because I didn't like how poofy my hair was. All the new growth seemed to come out to play.

I think it does it's job somewhat and I like how smooth my hair was after using the iron.

I, however, have an issue with this product and that is how long one has to keep the iron on the hair. It's almost like your doing 20 passes in one complete pass, if you know what I mean. Another thing is that the roots are difficult to get to and the process if very time consuming.

With a flat iron you can spend less time doing your hair and getting the roots isn't a task.

I'm not sure if I will over time completely like it.

Do you have any thoughts on the Instyler rotating iron? If yes please leave a comment.

Thanks for reading,

Aly

Two Awards!

Hello!

 I received two awards, one recently and the other since February. I had so much on my plate then so I saved it till I was free, which is now.


These awards are from blutifulblaqhair.blogspot.com and wishfullengths.blogspot.com, thank you ladies for thinking of my blog for these awards! :)

Both awards have basically the same rules so I'll just do it combined so that you don't have to read 14 things about me lol.

Here we go:

7 Random things about me

1. I am not sure what I want to do with my life. surprise surprise! lol I am 22 and a senior in college (fall 2012) and I am not sure what direction to take. I think I'm pretty good at what I do (Mass Com/Journalism) but I have no set career. which leads to number 2.

2.I'm a hippie at heart! I don't want to be tied down to one dream or career, so I have many leads on where I want to be but no definite path. I change my "style" regularly, I don't know yet what country I want to live in and I think you get the point.

3. I am in love with my boyfriend of 4 years (well July makes 4 yrs). Relationship life is usually left behind when I enter hair land but I plan to be his misses soon, so y'all can know that lol.

4. I am a bit of an overachiever which sometimes clashes with my hippie heart. I want to be the best and that means that a B on my transcript makes me cry.

5. I am a soca junkie! Soca/calypso is music from the other islands (Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, St. Kitts & Nevis, etc.) but Jamaicans aren't really avid soca fans. I believe that Kes' song "Coming Over" (the second verse is definitely speaking about me haha) I used to only like dancehall and reggae (Jamaican music) but I listen to soca now just as much.

7. I love peppery food. I didn't like it when I was younger, but now I put pepper on everything it can be put on.

6. I think I have hair-orexia lol thats my word for the inability to see my hair for how long it really is. In my mind my hair is short and thin.

Thanks for reading, and I tag everyone who is reading this and haven't done the tag yet!

Aly.

School Is Out..Hair is In baby!!

So as you probably guessed from the title, I am officially on summer break!! yaayy!!

This means I'm in Jamaica!!

I wanted to stock up on hair products before I left NY but I couldn't because of the weight restrictions.

I still wanted to tell you about the products I've been loving lately.

I am in love with Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine Intensely Smooth Leave-In Conditioning Cream, Fantasia Hair Polisher Daily Hair Treatment and my new Annie comb.

Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine Intensely Smooth Leave-In Conditioning Cream

I used this when I was in New York (it was still cold) and I have been putting it to use while in Jamaica (its extremely hot). I am completely nuts for this leave-in. I even use it as a moisturizer and its great. I have frizzy hair when I air dry, but this seems to solve the problems, and it smells great!












Fantasia Hair Polisher Daily Hair Treatment

I don't even know if I should be using this serum to seal my hair after moisturizing, but I do. It contributes to the smoothness immensely and the comb glides through smoothly. Plus it has a nice scent and it leaves your hair shiny.




















Annie Jumbo Comb

This comb is so bomb, I don't know why I was still using my other wid-toothed comb. Little to no hair comes out. This may also be attributed to my slowed down shedding and breakage since the ending of the semester. Maybe I was just stressed but I love the comb.










Do you guys like these products?

Thank you for sticking out the semester with me :)

Aly

Giving my hair some Lovin'

So I finally got serious with my hair after weeks of saying I'm gonna get back on the "hair growth and retention" road.

Last week I did an egg and olive oil overnight treatment. I put lime juice on my scalp to ease the dry and itchy scalp issues I've been having. I kept this on my hair for the night and half of the next day.

I didn't do a  moisturizing deep condition because I was lazy, so I thought my hair would be hard. It definitely wasn't, I know my hair loves protein so no real surprise there that I didn't need the moisture treatment.

So I just added my leave-in and left it to air dry.

I then clipped like a half inch off my hair, it took loads of courage to do this but my splits were crazy. They had to go.

So now I'm split end free and my hair is strong. yaay!!


This week I decided to go back to my crazy growth aids. I went back to the cayenne pepper & castor oil mix.

 I massaged that onto my scalp and then sprayed water on the hair itself and coated it with olive oil. I put a plastic cap and a winter beanie on my head and am now going to sleep. 

Thank God for Good Friday, its a well deserved rest and meditation day.

So, after resting, I'll co-wash and then deep condition my hair. I really want to do a flexi-rod set but I'm afraid it won't come out right.

Well we'll see how it goes.

Thanks so much for reading,

Aly