Hair Candy

My hair is in for a treat this weekend.

Here's what I'll do:

1. On friday night I wil massage my scalp with my special hair oil blend consisting of coconut oil, cayenne pepper oil, amla oil, MN and essential oils.

2. I will do a hot oil treatment on my hair with another blend of castor oil, amla oil, coconut oil and conditioner. I still have to determine which conditioner I will use. Cover my hair with saran wrap and leave it overnight.

3. In the morning I will apply Casia to my hair. It says henna on the box, but I believe it's really casia mixed with other herbs because it stains gray hair golden. No orange stain. My hair comes out sooooo soft with this. Wrap my hair again with saran wrap and do some house chores for the next four hours. I'll prepare the henna (casia) the day before with hot tea, honey and again amla oil.

4. I'll then do a cow or shampoo/conditioner mix if my hair needs it to get out all the oil.

5. Then deepcondition for 30 minutes with ORS Replenishing Pack.

6. Style my hair:

- rollerset: use setting lotion, moisturizer.

- Blow out the roots

- Doobie wrap

- Enjoy the softness and sheen on my heathy strands.

Starting Length

I just wanted to post a picture of my starting length.

My goal right now is to make bra strap length. My ultimate goal is mid back length.

I should have reached bra strap length a long time ago, but I had a few trims along the way. I've been at my current length for almost a year! I guess I have to take better care of my ends. I used to wear my hair down every day and I payed the price for is. Now I wear a bun daily and I will keep it that way until I've reached my goal.

Another thing that might have contributed to the setbacks is relaxing too often, every 5 - 6 weeks. I did that because I had a problem dealing with the new growth. I am 4a/b and my new growth is no joke. Henna helps with relaxing the texture of the new growth. Conditioner only washes have helped a lot, though I don't have the time to do them every day.

My MN Mix

So I have been using Miconazole Nitrate as a growth aid for about 3 weeks now for the second time. The first time I wasn't consistant, though it gave me good growth.

During the first weeks I got terrible headaches. I must say, that i used it straight out of the tube. I then mixed it with some stuff and came up with a recipe that doesn't cause any headaches.

Here' s the recipe:

1 tube of Miconazole Nitrate Cream (30g-the brand I use is pictured above)

about 30g of Organic Root stimulator Olive Moisturizer (in the bottle)

15 ml water.

I mix this up and apply it every night before bed and massage it in. The growth I get is more than I'm used to. I hope this will help me achieve my mbl goal sooner.

The only downside is that I can't enjoy my freshly relaxed hair very long, but I guess I'll just have to sacrifice on thing for the other.

Miconazole Nitrate

Cayenne and Coconut Oil

The first growth concoction I ever made was Cayenne oil. I dried the hot red peppers in the sun and infused them in either olive oil or coconut oil. I used to apply it daily, but my hair got very oily. As to the growth, I got a little more than my normal growth. I will incorporate this again in my regimen and use it once a week as a pre poo. I like the tingling sensation it gives. I even mixed it in the pass with my deep condintioner and sat with it under a warm dryer which made the tingling more intense.

Finaly Found Amla Oil

I finaly found some amla oil. I couldn't find Dabur Amla Oil anywhere. But when I went for groceries last night, a nice indian lady showed me their amla shampoo. She was eager to let me in on the benefits of their Amla shampoo. She even let me touch her hair and feel how soft it is. Well, maybe I'll try the shampoo some other time, but for now I will have to try the amla oil first. The brand they have is Marhaba. I bought the one with coconut oil. I'll use it this weekend as a hot oil treatment. Hopefully I will reap the benefits that other ladies claim when using it.

Experimenting with Stretching

Yes, I said experimenting because I haven't been succesful yet. I wont say my hair hates stretching, but I will have to find ways to cope with all the new growth for sure since I'm using growth aids. I wear a bun to work these days. My kind of protective styling. In the past I wore my hair down every day, but I've seen the benefits of bunning: retaining more length. The problem is, my buns don't look verry neat with all the puffiness and new growth sticking out. Right now I'm 2 weeks post. I usually retouch at 6 weeks post. I'll try and stretch for 8 weeks and hopefully add another week along the way. I'll Cowash as much as I can during that time and try to moisturize and baby my ends properly. But if the breaking and shedding is too much I will definately grab a box of relaxer.

Regimen to reach MBL.

As said before I have a few inches to go to make BSL.
These are the steps i will take to make MBL in 6 months.

1. Grease my scalp with my MN Mix. The mix contains 30g Miconazole Nitrate Cream, about the same amount of ORS Olive Oil Moisturizer and 15 ml water. I put that in a bottle and apply it every night. I have used this mix for almost two weeks now, after my last relaxer and the new growth looks like 4 weeks post relaxer. I also see a lot of 'new hair' growing.

2. COW midweek with Suave milk and honey , Suave tropical coconut or VO5 strawberies and cream.

3. On Saturdays I'll either deep condition with Motions CPR or do a Casia or Henna Treatment followed by ORS Replenishing Pak. I'll do HOT's on friday night with amla oil and apply my own concoction of coconut oil and cayenne overnight.

4. Moisturize twice a day with ORS Olive Oil Moisturizer.

5. No trims, until I reach my goal.

That's it. I try to keep it as simple as possible. Hope I retain all the length that I get during these 6 months.

I'll take some start pictures and post them soon.

Journey to Mid Back Length

This is the start of my journey to MBL.
I've been into hair since 2003. And I've jumped on many bandwagons. However, I came to the conclusion that keeping a simple routine (K.I.S.S.) is the most effective way for me to reach my goals. My current hair length is armpit length (APL). My goal is to reach MBL by November 1, 2009, that's 6 months from now. So let the journey begin.