First Hair Length Check

Hey All!

It’s been six months since my semi-big chop. On a previous post I uploaded pics of my hair chopping.  I’ve never been really concerned about cutting my hair because it always seems to grow back rather quickly. However, I had never considered doing a length check to measure its growth.

I must disclose that I did take Biotin for about three weeks. Biotin also known as Vitamin H is taken to promote healthy hair and nail growth. After being on the supplement I noticed my face started breaking out. Yikes! I hadn’t had that much acne as a teenager! So I immediately cut out the Biotin and a new make-up primer I’d recently purchased. I did further research on some natural hair care forums where other (not many) naturals also noticed major breakouts after starting Biotin. Boo...

Anyway…to be honest, I don’t think the Biotin had any effect on the rate of my hair growth.  Not sure if I had taken it long enough to make a difference. 

Back to the length check J. Check out the pics below. The first pic is from April 2012 when I had the semi-big chop done. The second pic is a wash-n-go from early June 2012. And the last pic is from October 8, 2012 after being freshly washed and conditioned. 

Wow! Would ya look at that growth after six months! And look at that shrinkage! Shrinkage doesn't bother me like it does others. But that's a post for another time...maybe

My plan is to do another length check in three months. The next time I post pics I’ll add measurements of my hair in inches.

Until Next Time,

Gaye Suzette

My Day At The Curly Hair Expo!

Hey All! The Curly Hair Expo last Saturday in Richmond, VA was AWESOME! I had such a great time. Getting up early and driving down from Philly was well worth it. The ultimate bonus of this trip, I was able to catch up with my girls as we all experienced our first natural hair show.

As soon as I entered the convention center I was bombarded with sistah after sistah with curls! Some were big, loose and bouncy. Some were springy and full of coils for days. And others were tight and kinky, giving that perfect to die for afro shape. The one thing they all had in common was that they were all natural and God designed. It was like being in a state of euphoria for that space and time.

Now here’s where I got a little off track. After being in awe over the sights of magnificent curls I developed tunnel vision! I went straight to the vendors and all their goodies. I had every intention of taking lots of pics…but that did not happen. Instead, I automatically went into shopping and spending mode! LOL

The vendor tables I stopped by were super friendly and seem to be experts on the products they were selling. One vendor however, guaranteed her product to work in 30 days, split ends NEVER need to be cut off, and that if you used her product you would not have to get rid of split ends. Hmmm…through all my research and talking to numerous hairstylist, I was always under the impression that split ends will continue to split up the hair shaft, thus causing breakage.

I did sit in one of the workshops given by Jessica McGuinty of Jessie Curl www.jessicurl.com. And she did touch on the importance of getting your ends trimmed and how nothing will remedy split ends except cutting them off. The importance of keeping curly hair super moisturized was emphasized.

One of the highlights of the show for me was talking with the representative at the Curlz booth.  You see I’ve been faithfully using the curl crẻme brule for weeks now and I just had to let the rep know how much I loved the product. She was so nice and spent lots of time talking to me about my hair and suggesting other products I might want to try.  A major plus were the samples of curl gel-les’c! Can’t wait to try it! When you get a minute take a look at their website at www.curlz.biz.

Another highlight was meeting the sistah who owns and design for Haus of Swag. Check her out at: www.hausofswag.com. She was amazingly sweet! I so enjoyed her telling me about days in design school in New York and how she started her own business. Just love, love, love my African American Wonder Woman t-shirt she designed!  I’m gonna rock it at my sister-in-law’s annual birthday cookout this weekend.

I Love My Hair Earrings!

I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t find any hair accessories/jewelry L. But I did get cool t-shirts for me and my oldest daughter, awesome wood earrings for myself and my youngest daughter, and wonderful body butter by Tree Naturals - www.treenaturals.com.

 

Lastly, I emailed Ms. Kelly telling her I so thoroughly enjoyed the Curly Hair Expo and was definitely looking forward to attending future shows!

Until Next Time,

Gaye Suzette

Hitting the road to the Curly Hair Expo!

I’m super excited to be going to my first natural hair show on July 28, 2012 in Richmond, VA! I won’t be going alone, my niece Marquita, will be hitting the road with me. (I’ll have Marquita blog at a later date on how I gently persuaded her to take the Sistah Curl Journey with me…he-he J.)

 I’ve been natural for five years, but decided to take the curly journey back in late April. I googled and you tubed just about every and anything related to natural black hair. Actually now that I think of it, my search began with keying in: Curly Afros. You see I wanted big, beautiful, curly bushy hair for the summer. J Lucky for me about a month later I came across Keenya Kelly’s Return of the Curls website. I was super ecstatic to learn Ms. Kelly was presenting a Curly Hair Expo!

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Ms. Kelly. And sistahs… she was soooo cool and just as excited about my plans for attending the expo.  I could tell she was busy from the hustle and the bustle in the background. Nevertheless, she chatted with me and answered all my questions.

By nature I love to learn. So, I am looking forward to learning a wealth of information on natural hair. I’m eager to attend the various workshops, buy goodies from the vendors…”Shhh, don’t tell the hubby,” check out the fashion show, and just have a good ‘ole time meeting up with friends who will be attending the expo.

After the show I’ll come back and blog about my experience at my first natural hair show.

Until Next Time,

Gaye Suzette

Second Chop

Hey All,

This post was supposed to go out weeks ago. Unfortunately, I lost the love of my life, my precious mother, on June 14, 2012. I’m dedicating this post to her. She’s given me so much in life, including my thick and beautiful mane of hair.

I’m back to reveal my second chop. Joanne cut about another two inches off to give me the desired look I was going for. Our goal was to get rid of as many of the remaining straight ends as possible. I would say about 95% of them are done away with…Yaaaaaay!!!

I didn’t have time to go through each step of my new routine. Life is a little crazy right about now. (I’ll come back at a later date to show you my daily routine.) I did away with using the Cantu curling cream. In its place I’m using an all natural-vegan conditioner, Desert Essence in Shea Butter, available at Whole Foods. The conditioner is enhancing my natural curls just as good, perhaps better, than the Cantu curling cream.

Below are pics of my hair after showering and hours after it’s dried. It usually takes a good 3 – 4 hours for my hair to dry because it’s so thick. Deciding to start this journey in the spring has worked out really well for me since I live in the northeast area of the country. The temperature is usually around the low to mid 60s in the mornings and go up to the high 70s to 80s.

                              

For the first time in my life I have wash and go hair! J And the best part of this journey, when it’s raining outside I have no worries of my hair frizzing up after I’ve spent a couple of hours blow drying and straightening it.

Thanks for checking out Sistah Curl Journey! Don’t forget, I’ll be back later to give you a step by step play of how I get my curly look. And please, tell your mother you love her!

Gaye Suzette

Let the curling begin!

In my last post I described the different textures of my hair.  See in the pics below my hair is zigzag in the front and on the sides and curly in the back. Because of these textures, I was pretty certain my hair wouldn’t have a problem on this journey.

After reading the Curly Girl: Handbook, I decided to take the tips I thought would apply to my hair type and use them. However, the most important fundamental foundation I will use from this book is hydrating my hair. And to do this, I needed to get a really good shampoo & conditioner that didn’t have harmful chemicals in them like parabens, sulfates, silicones, glycol or petroleum–based products. These chemicals strip the hair of natural oils and coat the hair so that water and moisturizers do not penetrate the hair cuticle. This will lead to the hair being dehydrated, brittle and dull. To bring out your natural curls the hair MUST be well hydrated…that’s where the conditioning comes in.

A lot of folks with natural curls co-wash their hair with conditioner. I’m sorry, but I’m not there yet. I feel like I still need to shampoo my hair. It is okay to shampoo, you just can’t use one with all of that junk in it that’s harsh on the hair. I went to Whole Foods and bought Desert Essence Coconut Shampoo and Conditioner. Can I just say, “My hair LOVED this stuff!” These products are vegen with no harmful chemicals and the ingredients are certified organic. Here’s the link to the website so you can check it out. https://www.desertessence.com/hair-care.

What a minute…I’m getting ahead of myself. J Before purchasing the Desert Essence I washed, conditioned and used Cantu Curling Cream with Shea Butter. It worked really well. But do you see the straggly ends of my hair? The ends are damaged from flat ironing my hair. The heat has burned the elasticity out! Now, if I want to do this and do it right, I had to make a decision to say bye-bye to those awful, lifeless ends!

Joanne, my hairstylist, chopped off about a good three inches before washing and putting the conditioner in. This is no lie, my hair especially in the back, immediately curled up once it began to soak up the conditioner. There still were some straggly ends on the top and sides. We decided to see how the hair would do and not take the hair any shorter. Can I just tell you these ends are driving me crazy!

I’m so not afraid of getting rid of hair. I’ve always been the type of woman who would rather have shorter, good looking hair, than to have long, jacked up hair. It drives me crazy to see women with long hair and their ends are split all the way up the hair shaft! Cut that mess off! It will grow back if you love it right! :)

I called Joanne up and told her, “These ends are driving me bananas! I want them off!”

Stay tuned for the 2^nd Chopping and here’s my daily routine.

Night Routine

Rinse hair with tepid water and liberally apply conditioner. (I’m sorry…I should have taken pics of this!) After hair is thoroughly saturated, put on a plastic shower cap. **I tie a scarf over the shower cap to keep in place while I sleep.

Morning Routine

Rinse conditioner out after showering. Slightly dry hair with an old t-shirt, paper towels or micro-fiber towel. Hair still should have a little drip to it. DON’T comb or brush curls out. Apply Cantu curling cream in sections from root to tip. As the cream is being applied the hair should be scrunched. Next scrunch in a styling gel to give curls definition and hold. Be sure to use an alcohol and silicone free gel. Remember you don’t want any product drying the hair out or coating it.**I made my own styling gel using aloe vera gel (the kind you eat and have to refrigerate) mixed with pure essential lavender oil.  Hair is styled with fingers and then you’re ready to go!



This is how I styled my hair this morning. The front is still too long so I pulled it back. Notice the straight ends on top and on the sides? Going to say, "bye-bye" to those this evening. :)



The Journey Begins!

Welcome Sistah Girl to Sistah Curl Journey!

August will be five years since I've started the natural journey. Honestly, I had never been a fan of natural hair until I met one of my nurse practitioner students, named Kiya. Kiya wore her hair in the cutest, tiniest locs. We would talk about the pros of natural hair (because Kiya would never admit to there being any cons – LOL! I love you Kiya!)

Several months after meeting Kiya (who became a very good and what I consider a lifelong sistah-friend) I read an article in Essence magazine about the negative effects of relaxing your hair. One of them was thinning hair. This really caught my attention because my mother all her life had a head full of thick and long beautiful tresses. Somewhere around the age of 60 her hair began to thin. At 74 my mom's hair is silver, beautiful, and still long, but much thinner. And my grandmother’s hair began thinning around the same age.

Do you get where I’m going with this? Thinning hair for me is genetic! It’s in my DNA! I was blessed to inherit my mom’s thick gorgeous hair. No way was I going to allow it to become prematurely thin. The next time I saw Kiya, I made a bold proclamation. “Guess what? I’m going natural!” Of course, my dear friend was a bit skeptical. And she should have been. I was in my late 30’s and had been relaxing my hair since I was 14. She didn’t think I could do it. So I gave her this challenge, “If I go a year without relaxing you have to take me out to dinner, and if I breakdown and go back to my old ways, I owe you dinner.” It was on!

I must admit, the transition for me wasn’t all that difficult. I went to my hairstylist weekly to get my hair washed, conditioned, blow dried and curled. I also maintained my schedule of getting my ends trimmed every 6-8 weeks.

I’m happy to say I never looked back on getting my hair relaxed, Kiya lost the bet, and I am loving my natural hair. Since I’ve been natural I’ve blown dry my hair straight, two-strand twisted and wore braid-out styles.

The one thing I noticed about my natural hair is that I have three different curl patterns. The nape is curled very tight, the crown and back curled a lot looser and the top and sides are wavy in a zig-zag pattern. I love how my hair looks when I braid it wet and then take them out, giving me a very wavy-curl look. So I began to wonder if there was a way I could bring my curls out with definition so I can forgo the braiding while it’s wet routine.

I went on you tube and did a search for curly hair. I came across this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvzJsTZ1bJQ&feature=fvst. It talks about the CG – Curly Girl Method. The video suggest reading Curly Girl: The Handbook by Lorraine Massey and Michele Bender. I downloaded the book on my NookColor. And guess what? There’s a chapter dedicated to African American hair! I read the entire book in 2 days. 

After reading the book I decided to take the curly girl journey! This blog will follow my journey. I hope you take the journey with me!

Gaye Suzette



2 month before going natural. It was a hot, humid day!

 
 

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Natural hair in braid-out

 


Natural hair in flat & two-strand twist

 

Natural hair in blow dry & curl