Challenging Myself!!

I have completed my personal 2 year Protective Style Challenge!! I can't believe it has been 2 years!! I have to say that this does excite me quite a bit.

I have completed quite a few challenges when it comes to my hair. In addition to the protective style challeng,e I have also completed my No Heat challenge for 2013, and an almost consistent Vitamin Challenge.

My length goals I am not going to claim just yet simply because I will be cutting my hair once I finally take down my current style. When I do so, I plan to do a 2 step hardcore protein treatment and wear my own hair for a week or 2, then weave it back up.

I am also challenging myself to record edit and upload a new video every other day for the next 2 weeks! I plan on doing holiday themed makeup and other videos.

I am doing this because I have not been as consistent with my channel and my blog and I keep coming and going. By challenging myself to put out a video so often I hope it will induce the want to continue to do so and this will all become a habit. I want to continue to grow my channel significantly. I also plan on removing my older videos and remaking them in much better quality.

So far I'm doing well. The first couple came out a little late but I am staying on track as far as the videos. The blog not so much lol

This post should have been up a few days ago, but I'm going to back date it so it can run consecutively with the other posts I need to put up.

Hair Diary *30* - 2 months worth of updates & 6 month QHP update

So I havent updated my hair in quite a while so I am going to go ahead and do it all in one post for the past month or so. I tried to post this last week, but was having trouble exporting my video for upload. I was finally able to get it done last night!!

For Halloween I colored the ends of my hair red. It looked awesome and everyone loved it. Now I am the girl who washes her hair every single day in the morning. Whether it is my natural hair or a weave, I have to put some water in it.

The problem with that is the red was:
A) Getting everywhere! All over my bathroom and clothes whenever my hair was still wet
B) Fading really fast. I have been trying to wash my hair with cool water but some days I have to use hot and that makes it fade even faster. At the moment there is just a slight hint of red on the ends. I think the color might have lasted for about 2 weeks before it actually turned pink and faded completely. Maybe even less.

I shampooed my hair a few times because my scalp felt icky. I ran the shampoo through the weave cap and hair as well. I hate when my scalp gets like that underneath.
Its my biggest pet peeve ever.

The problem with shampooing my hair is my braids got super frizzy and its not really good in my opinion to shampoo braids. I prefer washing loose hair. That way I feel like the hair is getting completely clean instead of partially.

A few weeks after redoing my braids in Oct. they were already really loose. I ended up wearing those particular braids for about a month and a half before taking them down the weekend before last.

This time instead of re-braiding my hair down like before, I put them into singles so that I could better get to my scalp and be able to deep condition my hair without getting too much tangling like I would with french braids.

To secure the hair down to mine I sewed a track of thread in an L shape on either side of my part and sewed the edge of my hair down on top of that. At this point I feel like this is one of the better application methods because it feels really secure and is nice and flat. Also, it hasnt slipped at all yet either. I secured the rest of it down with bobby pins and it looks great.

I kind of feel like I might have been breaking my hair off over the last few times I have been taking down and rebraiding my hair. My ends really needed to be trimmed. So this time I was extra careful with how I combed out and detangled my hair.

I didn't get any breakage this time. The Lekair's conditioner also helped as well. It has been a few months since I ran out of my last jar and no other conditioner has been able to make my hair feel the same as the Lekair's. I was really happy to have found it again, I have to say.

My hair has definitely grown a lot since I first put this hair in. I can't believe it has been 6 months already and I can't wait to be able to take it out and wear my hair. I don't think I will be doing that until next summer though.

I really want to give myself a really good haircut soon as well. I need for my ends to be nice and even. I will be doing that sometime next year.

I am going to order some new hair next month for my next style. I am definitely going to go shorter this time and I can't wait. I am not sure who I am going to order my hair from next but I do have 2 companies in mind.

Hair Diary *29*

I took my hair down and redid my braids last week. I am still amazed at the fact that the QHP hair is still behaving the same as it did when I first got it. That is actually pretty amazing to me.

This time I braided my hair down in much smaller braids and instead of sewing the hair down I pinned it down really well. I got rid of the anchor braid which actually makes the hair lay much flatter than it did before.

After a week or so wearing the hair pinned down I got sick of it. The pins actually pulled at the part a lot, which ended up being really painful. So I opted to sew it down like I was doing before and it is much better.

I made a simple scalp oil that I have been applying every 1-2 days to my scalp. It contains nothing but coconut oil and msm powder. So far so good. It definitely helps with the dry scalp.

I still have my sulfur powder and oil from before, but I really cant use it on my scalp with this hair in. I tried it before and it really bothered me with the smell. It was like it got stronger as time went by. No one wants to have funky hair. So I stopped using it. The smell actually still lingers even though I have washed my hair several times since the last time I used it.

So yea when I took my hair out I did a quick length check and I am back to APL or at least grazing it. I will probably be doing a good trim when I take my hair down as well as a protein treatment.

I was playing with my hair while it was out and I noticed it is still pretty uneven. So that is something else I am going to have to work on as my hair grows out. I am just going to be doing random small trims every now and then until it all gets to the way I want it to be.

I actually think I am at a good length to go back into the baggy ponytails without any breakage. Its weird that the baggy ponytail worked so well for me in the past but when I tried it again it was kind of a disaster. I think the hair needs to all be past a certain length for it to really be successful.

That will be a project I will be experimenting with in the future.

Right now I am just going to continue to baby my hair and keep it in protective styles until I make it to my goals. I really want to get it all back to its original thickness. I dont know if that would even be possible but it would be amazing if it was.

I have no clue when I will be changing up my hair. Maybe sometime after the holidays. This is the longest I have ever worn a single hairstyle in my entire life. Funny thing about it is I am not getting tired of it!! 5 months going strong and will probably make it to 6 or 7.

Yay for awesome quality hair!!

Thinking Out Loud Thursday *30*

In my Life
 
So I am kind of dating again. Its been a while. Meh..

Ive met a lot of guys in my life who have been interested in me and the past few years my standards have risen greatly. Every single time I have ever settled for a man I have always been disappointed, so if he doesnt meet them, there is no reason for me to waste my time. Hence, the reason I am still single.

Obviously no one man is going to meet all of your standards. But at the same time I feel like if I am at a certain level he needs to meet or surpass that level.

This particular guy meets some of my standards, however a few of the most important ones he does not even come close. Problem is that I actually do kinda like him personality wise. He is not the kind of guy I typically go for, but he is a cutie and I love his hair.

He has good values and the things he says he wants coincide with the things that I want as well. But the things that he is lacking are making me have second thoughts. The attraction is there and that is the most important thing imo or else it will never go anywhere.

At this point I feel like it is time for me to just have a little fun and not worry so much about my rules. I dont expect for anything serious to come out of this at this point. Right now I am just going to ride the wave and see where it takes me.


In the News



I am absolutely sick of the news right now. Between all the children coming to school and killing their teachers and the government shutdown to the healthcare website. Seriously??? How the hell do the fuck up a website that bad?? They need to stop pointing the blame and get the shit together!

And the kids....

I cant even deal with the fact that kids are able to get their hands on a gun let alone bring it to school and kill their teachers. Its not safe out here anymore for anyone and what exactly are we going to do about it. What exactly can we do about it?

How do we change things so that our children know and learn that it is not ok to take anothers life, let alone their own. What are the parents doing wrong? What is the school doing wrong?

What has this world come to??

Thinking Out Loud Thursday *29*

Since Dexter and Breaking Bad are officially over I have started watching Dexter again from the very beginning. Good thing Showtime is smart enough to know that people want to see it all and have all the episodes On Demand.

I just finished the first season and it is so different than the Dexter I am used to. I completely missed out on this. The end if the first season was insane. I cant believe that Rudy was his biological brother, who was a serial killer and Dexter had to kill him!!!

Its weird I really wanted him to get away. I didn't want Dexter to be the one to kill him. Even though he deserved it...

Aside from Dexter I am so happy to have Homeland back as well as Scandal and soon The Walking Dead. Those are my fave shows at the moment.

I have been keeping up with all those shows as much as I can. The other shows I have been into I have been catching On Demand when I have time.

In other news, I keep kinda forgetting to take my vits and breaking out because of it. I have bumps all along my chin and by my ears. So annoying... I really need to work on getting rid of my acne again. ughh

My hair is still holding up pretty well. No change there. I do really need to do a take down and redo sometime soon. Maybe over the weekend I will have time.

I had a few things planned video wise for this month. But sadly my schedule is really horrible. I hate not having time for anything, so I'm going to just keep complaining about it.

I had a really bad panic attack the other day. It pretty much came out of nowhere, which is weird because I haven't had one in years.

Been pretty stressed out as of late. I need to take a few days to just relax and unwind. But unfortunately that's not going to happen any time soon. Meh... oh well