Shut yo mouth! Hair that made my jaw drop.

Long, healthy relaxed hair!

I was browsing hairlista.com tonight when a photo of Sunshyne's hair caught my eye.

Now, I've seen this photo many times before, but as I was reflecting on the current state of my ends, this photo seemed to smack me in the face with its perfection!

The fullness of Sunshyne's hair is amazing. Look at her ends! No thin "hemline", no straggling hairs, no see-through ends...and the shine, the body of that hair! 

Lord knows her hair journey could not have always been easy or enjoyable, but it's inspiring to see the results of Sunshyne's hair work and perseverance.

Sunshyne's thick, healthy, long, relaxed hair is an example of how I want my hair to become as I progress in my hair journey. Her hair gives me the motivation to push through the long washed days and patiently endure the breakage, shedding and setbacks with my end results in mind. 

Who's head of hair makes you say "wow!"?

~Hatter

Balancing Act

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Good Monday morning!

I admit that since university has been back in session I've been neglecting my blog!

Now I have to balance classes, study, exercise, hair care and blogging, and unfortunately, my blog has been suffering the effects.

This week will mark my 7th week post relaxer. Since my two strand twist style, I washed and conditioned my hair and let it air dry. My hair is a bit rough, and I'm still dealing with breakage that I first noticed about a month ago. Grrr

If that isn't irksome enough, my ends are looking ragged!! :'(  Right now I'm a bit annoyed with my hair and I'm trying to keep my styles as simple as possible to avoid having to manipulate my ends too much.

Curse thin ends!!


On a happier note, I've been going to the gym 2-3 times a week for the past 3 weeks! Yay!

Instead of doing heavy cardio, I'm weight training to build muscle and define my body overall (with my lower body in particular...if you know what I mean! ;)
Okay I'll just say it...I want a boooooty! LOL

I'm 5"3 and I currently weigh about 105 pounds...that's tiny in my eyes and I really do want to gain some weight. It'll be a slow, hard journey, but I'm determined to put in the work to shape the body I want.


My fitness inspiration for the day:

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I hope to have more posts up later this week, both fitness inspiration and hairspiration...especially hairspiration! I'm so bored with my hair right now.

What's the latest in your life? Have you also started a fitness journey?

Love,
~Hatter

2013 Hair Goals

2013 is here and its time to set some goals for the next 12 months ahead.

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Last year, my goals were to stretch my relaxers to no less than 8 weeks, and achieve Arm Pit Length by December. About 95% of the time I was able to stretch to 8 weeks, and I was grazing APL last month!

This year my overall goal is health: both for my body and hair.

My hair goals are:

1. Thicker Hair

When my hair was first relaxed, about 4 years ago, I had super thick, healthy hair. Now, years and countless relaxer services later, my hair is much thinner (but still healthy, thank God).
Thankfully, thin hair can be combated with....

Castor Oil

Yes, I'm going to try using castor oil at least 1x per week to thicken up my new growth so that *hopefully* I'll have thicker, fuller hair by the end of the year. To track my thickness I can compare pictures of my ponytail this month, to that in September, then in December to see is there was any significant progress.

     2.   Longer Hair:

Megan of ulovemegz.com She is my inspiration!

Bra Strap length maybe? It seems a looong way from APL. I hope that I can at least reach Below Shoulder Blade by the end of the year. In the picture below, the second blue line is about BSB and the third white line is BSL. I'm already excited about comparing this starting length picture with the one in December 2013!

I can achieve this goal through:

• Healthy Ends

Preventing split ends is a key to length retention. Strong, even ends are also more resistant to breakage and gives the hair a fuller, healthier appearance.

Protective styling is what jumps to mind when I think of preserving my ends. I've been very bored with buns so using youtube to find creative, easy protective styles is a must.

Dusting and trimming my hair when needed can also help. Now that I accomplished my first self trim I look forward to dusting my hair after every relaxer (or maybe every 6 weeks or so).

• Reducing breakage

Over last month or so I've noticed a number of both long and short broken strands in the bathroom sink after combing my hair. I'm a person who can get easily stressed over any noticeable hair loss, so this issue is of great importance to me. I can focus  on:

Proper protein/moisture balance by moisturizing, using the baggy method and perhaps deep conditioning more frequently. 

Drinking more water to hydrate from the inside-out. 

Buying seamless combs to reduce the stress on my hair. I was introduced to these through Jeni of justgrowalready.com. I plan to purchase some Hercules Sagemann combs from hotcombs.net. 

Those are all of my hair goals for now! I may add to this list later but for now I'm focusing on the two main goals of thickness and length.

I can't forget that Jesus is my inner strength and helper. I often fall short of my personal goals, so I shouldn't be wary of calling on His spirit to give me the strength, determination and perseverance I need to accomplish both my personal and hair-related goals.

Here is the link to posts by Nadege of relaxedhairhealth.blogspot.com that are great for motivation and tips for accomplishing goals. If you're like me and need an extra push, these posts should be of great help.


Good luck with your 2013 hair goals!

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

-Philippians 4:13

God bless.
~Hatter