Product Review | GVP Hair Reconstructor Compare to Joico K-PAK

Price: $5.79 ($5.19 with Sally's Card)

Place of Purchase: Sally's Beauty Supply

Ingredients: Water (Aqua) Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine Glycol Stearate Ceteth-2 Mineral Oil PEG-8 Distearate Hydrolyzed Human Hair Keratin (Triamine Complex), Laurdimonium Hydroxypropyl Hydrolyzed Human Hair Keratin (Cationic Triamine Complex), Sodium Chloride, Myristyl Myristate, Citric Acid, Fragrance (Parfum), Sorbic Acid, Cetyl Alcohol, Stearyl Alcohol, Carthamus Tinctorius (Safflower) Seed Oil, Hydrolyzed Yeast, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Methylparaben, Propylparaben

Promises: This moisture-rich product will bathe your tresses and nourish the scalp, leaving you with silk for hair. No other product can ressurrect your hair from the grave of damage and dry brittleness and give it new life free from frizz and breakage.

My Thoughts: I've had this product for quite a while and randomly rediscovered it one day while rummaging through my product stash. I've officially been using this hair reconstructor as my bi-monthly protein treatment for at least 6 months. What I like about this product is that it does not leave my hair feeling hard or like hay as many protein based conditioners can. However, my hair was never left feeling moisturized either (perhaps I'm expecting too much from my protein treatment!). Overall I enjoyed the product well enough until one day I read the ingredients and almost died when I saw that mineral oil was one of the top ingredients. I'm always disappointed when hair companies especially companies that make higher end products decide to use mineral oil as a key ingredient. I feel that if I'm going to pay a top dollar price ($20-$30) for a product then I expect the best ingredients. For me personally I know that my hair does not react well to mineral oil and could kick myself for not noticing this on the ingredient list sooner. On the bright side I've basically used up my bottle and do not plan to repurchase. If you are interested in learning more about mineral oil and why I dislike it so much you can check out my post here.

Totally Twisted (Part 2) | My Daily Braid Regimen

Alright ladies and gents! As promised here's part 2 of my Braid Series (Totally Twisted). In this video I discuss my daily routine, which includes the products that I use and much much more! I'm sorry the video quality isn't the best, but I recorded this video at night so I didn't have natural lighting to help me out. I hope you all find this video to be helpful! Until next time :)

Dear Hair....I Miss You!

So over the last few weeks I've been reading tons of wash day posts (which are my favorite types posts by the way!) and each time I read about someone's wash day it makes me miss the heck outta my hair! The oddest part about all of this is I decided to get a temporary long term protective style to give myself and my hair a break from each other and now of course I'm missing my hair like crazy. I'm seriously counting down the days until I take my Senegalese twist install down. I'm planning to remove my braid install on the weekend of November 16th and since my hair is thriving and moisturized I will stick with that plan. For now I'm living vicariously through every wash day post and lovingly feeling my super soft and moisturized new growth to help deal with my slight case of seperation anxiety. On another note the next part of my Braid regimen series (Totally Twisted Part 2) will be up this weekend. Stay tuned!

Totally Twisted (Part 1) | How To Prepare Your Hair For Braids

Hi guys! So this post was actually supposed to be up earlier today, but thanks to upload issues I'm just now getting the video up... *sigh* Anywho, as I promised in my previous post here is the first video of my Braid Regimen series! Part 1 of the series covers how to prepare your hair for braids or really any long term protective style. I hope y'all find this video to be helpful. Until next time :)

Winter Hair Plans & Blabber

So I'm currently missing my hair and my wash days even though the reason I decided to get a long term protective style is because I was tired of my hair and the wash day process...go figure!

Either way I've been slowly making winter hair plans which include what type of protective styles I want to rock (because as a girl from the South winters on the east coast are just brutal!) and new products that I am itching to try. So as most ladies on a healthy hair journey do I am slightly switching things up for my winter regimen because we all know that the cold can cause dry brittle hair if we're not careful. My regimen will hopefully be something like this:

• Prepoo with ceramide packed oils with heat for 10-15 minutes
• Shampoo with Shea Moisture Raw Shea Butter Moisture Rention Shampoo (Whew that's a long title!)
• DC with a moisturizing or protein based conditioner (I will alternate each week) with heat
• Sit under my bonnet dryer using the cool/low heat setting and proceed with Winter Protective style of choice

I'm planning to switch to washing my hair just once a week (hopefully that will work out, but who knows...I may end up throwing a midweek cowash in there after all). I'm also planning to try some exciting weekly protective styles for the winter (Goddess braids, high braided bun, etc). Stay tuned for more info on that because of course those styles will include a video tutorial and accompanying blog post. Lastly I'm dying to try some new products because as of lately I haven't been all that happy with my current products. Maybe it's just my product junkie bug that's hit me or maybe my hair needs a slight change. Either way a change is coming! Some of the products that I'm planning to try are as follows:

• Hemp Seed Oil (Jeni of JustGrowAlready & Ebony of Longing4Length) have been bragging about this ceramide packed oil for months! So of course I have to try this oil out!
• I've also been dying to try the Kenra Moisturizing Conditioner for quite some time so I think this may be the next addition to product stash.
• Lastly I'm also interested in trying some of the Aubrey Organics Conditoners (Particularly the GPB conditioner, which is protein based).

Basically I'm planning to have a fun, product filled, happy hair growing winter y'all!

The Weekly Blog: My Favorite Reads!

Saving Our Strands has been doing a Sunday Healthy Hairology Medley for quite some time now! Well they've decided to include others in on the fun, by allowing other bloggers to write posts about their favorite healthy hair related blog posts for the week! Here's my list of my top favorite reads for the week. I must warn you sometimes I will include blog posts that may be health or beauty related too! Enjoy :)

Hair Setback Series: Shed Dread- Divachyk of Relaxed Thairapy posted a wonderful post with the help of KLP from SOS about setbacks and how to deal with them. This particular post focues on post partum shedding. Although I do not have children yet I really enjoyed this post because I like many others have faced setbacks before and sometimes it feels like you're the only one that's ever gone through it!

Oil it Up: Grapeseed Oil- Abbi of Below The Waist posted a lovely write up about some of the benefits of grapeseed oil. As a product junkie who is all about healthy hair care I love reading about products that I may or may not own and how they can benefit my hair!

Most Helpful Weight Loss Tools-EbonyCPrincess of Longing4Length recently wrote an excellent post on tools that have helped her to lose weight. As someone who lost 30 lbs a little over a year ago I can honestly say that her list of helpful tools are some of the exact same things that I used to achieve my weight loss success!

Product Review: Shea Moisture Raw Shea Butter Moisture Retention Shampoo

Price: $7.99 (On sale). The normal price is $9.89 with a Beauty Club Card

Place of Purchase: Sally's Beauty Supply

Ingredients: Deionized Water , Decyl Glucoside (Sugar Beets) , African Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter) , Aloe Vera Leaf Juice , Argan Oil , Panthenol (Provitamin B5) , Rosemary Extract , Sea Kelp Extract , Vitamin E , Lonicera Caprifolium Flower Extract (Honeysuckle) , Lonicera Japonica Flower Extract (Japanese Honeysuckle)
Directions: Apply shampoo to wet hair and wash until scalp and hair are completely clean. Rinse thoroughly with warm water.

Promises: Shea Moisture Retention Shampoo cleans hair and repairs strands. Hydrates, smoothes and repairs strands, leaving hair manageably soft. A great shampoo for dry, damaged hair.

My Thoughts: I actually tried this product about a year ago and HATED it. I'm not sure what went wrong, but my hair felt dry and so I decided to give it away to my honey bunny's sister since she loved it. Fast forward a year later after hearing rave reviews on youtube and practically everywhere else I decided to give it another try. I still love my beloved Hair One, but I needed something that could give my scalp a deeper cleasning without stripping my hair. I'm so glad I decided to give this Shea Moisture Shampoo another chance. It leaves my scalp feeling squeaky clean, but also leaves my hair super soft and moisturized at the same time! Of course the fact that this product is sulfate and paraben free and contains some great natural ingredients only sweetens the deal. I've found the best way to apply this product is diluted with water in an applicator bottle. This allows me to focus solely on my scalp and also helps the product to last a bit longer. Overall this is a great product that I would recommend to anyone.

Totally Twisted | How I Wash My Senegalese Twists

Hi guys! It feels like it's been forever since I've posted on my blog and that's partially due to the fact that I am rocking a long term protective style right now. As I promised in my previous post I would have a 4 part video series about my braid/twist regimen. Since I decided to wash my twists for the first time today since getting them installed I thought I would do a quick post showing you what I did. Don't worry a video demonstration will be posted later! I used Sharday of The Awkward Stage's method to wash my twists.

After locating an old pair of stocking I placed them securely on my head with a head band. I then used my Shea Moisture Raw Shea Butter Moisture Retention shampoo (product review coming soon) diluted with warm water and applied it all over my scalp and gently massaged it in.

Next I rinsed my hair (with the stocking still on my head) in the sink with warm water. After that I applied my Trader Joe's Nourishing Spa Conditioner to the length of my braids by using a spray bottle. I diluted the conditioner with just enough water to make it easy to spritz onto my hair. I then sat under my conditioning cap for about 20 minutes and did a final rinse.

I carefully towel blotted my twists and then sat under my bonnet dryer using the cool setting for about 30 minutes to remove some of the excess water. So far I'm loving this stocking method because it made it easy for me to wash my braids without causing them to be frizzy. No dirty scalp here ladies! Here are my final results.