Hair Rambles: Hair goals for next month

So I was reading my favorite hair blogger's website: www.justgrowalready.com [because we're both transitioning to texlaxed, even though she is much farther in her journey. Also, her hair looks absolutely perfect to me, you should look at her blog :D
She posted about how she successfully did all her hair goals for the month, and so I've decided to actually write mine down. I usually succeed, because my goals are pretty basic and simple, but I really want to have something written. That's also why I started documenting everything I do to my hair on this blog: so I will know what works and what doesn't.
My goals:
No heat: not even the 'once a month' heat I usually do--this is to prevent me from forgoing washes to keep straight hair. [I *can* moisturize my hair when it's flat ironed, though. It seems like most people can't??? It works perfectly fine for me, even with a liquid moisturizer, and my hair stays straight AND detangled.]
Cowash hair whenever necessary: Be that once a week, twice a week, or every other day. If my hair doesn't feel mositurised, I will cowash.
Learn what hair feelings mean: I want to learn exactly what every texture, every feeling of softness, fullness, etc feels from my hair. If my hair feels particularly poofy, what does that mean? etc etc. I want to be able to correct every problem as it happens so I don't have to worry.
Protein once a week: Unless it does any serious damage, I want to up my protein. I had a pretty good hair journey in the beginning where I used mostly ApHogee products, I thought it was because of the PH, but since I make my own products now, I know that's not necessarily it. So now, I'm upping the protien as much as possible. Eventually, I'm going to buy coconut milk and that will also be part of a home made treatment [right now, I use ORS Hair Mayo and / or ApHogee Keratin 2 minute Reconstructor].
Finish up one product: I'm trying to get rid of them, so I'm going to try and completely use at least one of these way-too-many products, at *least* so I can use the container for something else.
If I get black tea, I want to do a black tea rinse once a week, AND a honey prepoo once a week. I've been using less honey for two reasons: I'm almost out of what I bought 7 or so months ago, and because it lightens hair and I can tell. If I do the black tea, it should darken it, and I want that. Plus, I want to do henna treatments once a month or so in the future, and I'll want my hair to be extremely dark so I'll only have a slightly red glow [cassia doesn't last as long, and indigo is a separate treatment, I don't want to do two. I won't mind the red--I love black and red [fav colours!], I just want to minimize it]
Alright, there it is~ now, since I'm documenting everything I do, I just moisturized and sealed, so here is what I did since it was slightly different. My hair was still very soft and had movement, but it didn't feel moisturizer [I only used coconut oil on the wet hair, BAD decision because it's more of a moisturizer than a sealant, at least for me.] , so I did the LOC method.

Liquid: My water/aloe vera/ApHogee pro-vitamin leave in [that's in proportional order. I added the protein because my hair hasn't been holding on to moisture, and that's usually the reason].
Oil: Coconut! I'm thinking of mixing coconut and grape seed oils if this doesn't work.
Cream: raw shea butter. I was doing a mix of whipped shea and so much other stuff, but even that didn't work. This is the second most creamy thing I own. If it doesn't work, this method probably just isn't for my hair!
I've heard of people doing LCO, but the shea wouldn't let my oil get through. No way.

~~Healthy hair everyone!

Wash Day #1

Wash day: I'm protein DCing with ORS hair mayo for an hour and a half. I'm running out and I'm definitely going to miss this product! I use it once a month, but I think I used it at the end of last month, so this is a bit soon, but I'd rather listen to my hair than follow a schedule, yeah?  After this, I'm going to wash with ApHogee shampoo for damaged hair, then use the [useless for me, even though the name looks good, it clearly has ] Garnier Fructis Triple Nutrition conditioner for half my shower, then an ACV rinse for the other half. After that, I'm going to DC overnight with Silk Elements MegaSilk, with a little jojoba, aloe vera and grapeseed oil mixed in. When I get up, I'll wash it out with ACV, then apply my leave ins and set with curlformers. I'm also going to wash in sections and detangle my hair twice [when I applied protein-otherwise my hair gets matted and knotted], and then when I'm rinsing out the conditioner, or maybe when I use ACV. I get tons of slip from ACV so that makes the most sense. 

***

So I washed out the ORS HM after just one hour, I know, but I'm always paranoid about protein. Anyway, washing detangled-already hair in four sections went AWESOMELY! I cannot believe how amazing my hair was. I also lost a lot less hair in the shower, partially because of protein and partially because it was so soft and detangled that I didn't feel like overly-manipulating it. I love my hair wet so much that I've decided not to do curlformers so that I can wash it again in two days. I'm so horrible, but the urge keeps coming back and if I keep doing these high-manipulation styles, I'll lose too much hair. 

Wash: First, previously detangled was awesome. Second, four sections prevented anything from ever getting tangled. Because it already felt great, I didn't squeeze too much or pull too hard or anything. Third, ORS HM *always* makes my hair feel great when I'm washing it out. It's so wonderful I never want to wash it out. I didn't completely rinse, then I applied the shampoo onto the scalp and ran it down as it rinsed. The GF TN went as well as expected--it was soft and smelled good, but it didn't seem to do anything. It rinsed *really* easily and took all the residue with it. I used ACV immediately afterward, in each of the sections, but I got insanely dizzy and quickly poured the rest on the still-parted sections, then rinsed it and got out. I think some of it is still in my hair as I DC overnight, but it shouldn't be too bad--it'll just improve my PH level. I'm not going to reapply when I rinse out, because even though it gives me slip, my hair feels grainy when I wash it out. I'm probably doing something wrong / not diluting it enough.

I've decided to never completely wash out my [moisture] conditioner again; my hair loves it when I leave things in, so I'm just going to rinse until it feels like I won't have build up and no movement, but I'll stop before my hair feels stripped. I'm probably going to apply coconut and grape seed oil on the hair when it's 80% dry or so, but probably not anything else to avoid weighing the hair down.

***
I rinsed my hair out at 8:something this morning, slowly in sections, then used a very small amount of PM SS daily shampoo to get out any of the large amount of residue because I knew I was going to use PM SS conditioner. I did, and I detangled with it in, then *lightly* hit it with water. Then, I separated the four sections into three each and applied my Curlformers. If I had too big of a section of hair, I put it in a headband close to the scalp and put the curlformer around the rest. I think they might pull out my hair a bit, though, so I probably won't do this every wash day unless necessary. I put a little coconut oil to seal / moisturise for each section. I have three hours and about 20 minutes for my hair to dry before class. I *will* take the curlformers out before class, no matter what.

Pic of my hair with culrformers:

I finished drying at about 14:00, but I had to take the rollers out at 13:30, so parts of my hair weren't dry and frizzed. It was really soft for about three hours, and really smooth for a few more hours than that, and it's been quite shiny the entire time. I think I didn't seal the moisture in correctly, which is a real shame after all that conditioning. :( I thought something like this would happen, so I didn't do anything heat related so that I can co-wash and do whatever I think is necessary. I'm doing health over style every day until I get this down! I shall rock many a bun!

Pictures with my hair rambles!

I've been told that I need to add pictures several times now, so here you go! This is the picture from the very last time I'll ever get a relaxer, and probably one of the last times I'm ever going to get my hair done at a salon. Now that I've started taking care of my own hair with my home made products, I see absolutely no reason to let bad stylists cramp my style.

These were nice, the curls were a bit tight for my taste. Funnily enough, this is what my hair looks like when I use curlformers. What my stylist didn't tell me was that they accidentally texlaxed my hair. So now I'm transitioning to texlaxed instead of dealing with them. I was going to wait until I graduated, ho hum, now I have to find out how to replicate their texlax so mine will be even. SIGH. Anyway, I'm going to start with the ORS relaxer system. I was going to use Affirm but I make very little money with my three jobs, and I'm a college student, so a fourth is out of the question. :S

This next picture is from one of the days I washed, airdried in two buns, then did headband curls overnight. It turned out alright. I realised, though, that my hair is a lot longer than I thought. I could never tell since I'm always curling it so it doesn't dry out and get frizzy when I air dry.

I'm covering my face because I have Moroccan red clay on my face that is half dried and half wet; I looked like a broken doll. Figured no one wanted to see that :P. I haven't taken many pictures recently because my hair has been good so long I haven't thought "I need to take a picture of this!".

I added the LOC method to my nightly regimen, and I bought curlformers yesterday.

LOC: Holy crap, so I did the LOC method with the three comb method and when it finished drying my hair felt like someone had flat ironed it at a salon. [I say someone because I'm pretty bad at flat ironing my hair, and it wouldn't have felt this good.]  It had tons of movement [a gust of wind blew it so much I put on a hat!] and was so silky and smooth that it didn't irritate my neck or arms when it brushed against them, and my skin is sensitive. Very soft, indeed! Sad thing is, my hair was dry again by the end of the day. I think I might need to do it twice a day...how is my hair this thirsty? I can accidentally put too much coconut oil on and my hair will have *completely consumed it* by the next morning. I'll figure it out! It's a journey, after all. Actually, my hair seems to LOVE leaving in heavy things even though I'm [mostly] relaxed--I accidentally didn't rinse out my conditioner two washes ago and my hair had never been softer, and never for so long [it stayed soft until my next wash!]

Curlformers: I'm still getting the hang of them, I'm pretty sure I need to buy more [but I'm so poor :(], because I have to put MUCH more hair than I'm supposed to on any given section, and that makes it difficult. It goes perfectly fine when I put the correct [2 cm approx] on the rod. Sigh. #poorhairproblems. Either way, they turned out amazing this morning, I got many-a-complement. I can't smooth out my ng, but I got most of the texlaxed hair. I just don't have enough to really get them close to the scalp, my sections just have to be too big.

So, here are some more pictures from my hair journal--mostly from the end of last year.

Hair when I moisturised and sealed, then let it airdry in a ponytail: [Bad]

It gets rather dry when I do that, like I didn't moisturise and seal at all. The ponytail looks nice because it doesn't actually frizz up like when I do it on freshly washed hair.

My hair airdried in two buns, this is what it looks like when I take it out of the bun [You can see the newgrowth I had peaking out the top there, :D]:

My go-to overnight style Headband curls [will probably be replaced by curlformers]:

 My go-to 'didn't like the way this turned out, need a quick fix' hairstyle Pocahontas braids/twists, I used a foam roller on the bang:

Note: while these are all from different times, every time aside from the first is after I had done my own hair, washed and everything, not just styled off a salon visit. Red means it's something I need to stop, or to work on, or to fix. The texlax itself isn't bad, the fact that I didn't do it myself, so I'm going to need to work with making three textures of hair blend together and figure out if I want this hair to be a bit more 'laxed' or not. I think I want the middle-back section to be a bit straighter, because it's curlier than the rest, which is awkward, then I'll try to keep up the texlaxing on the rest of my hair. I need to figure out how to keep my hair moisturised for multiple days [I'm going to do it every other day anyway, now that I have curlformers. This is to minimize breakage, and to keep my ends protected by being curled up/in instead of vulnerable. The airdrying out thing was a bad decision. I wanted a thick ponytail, but I should have let it dry in a bun first, then combed it out, or something else. I like bungs more than ponytails now, anyway.
Well, there's a rambly update with pictures! Hope you enjoyed it!
Next DIY article will hopefully be about my hair wants, if I get them: I want black tea and coconut milk. I'm running out of the thing I was using as a protein leave in, and I'm going to eventually run out of protein DCs from my old PJ days, so I really want coconut milk. Black tea helps with shedding, and will make my hair colour go back to being the shade it started off as [very dark black, but the honey lightens it to a dark-brown], so I'll feel less bad about DCing with honey.
Feel free to leave a comment if there is anything you want to hear about, or if you have any question.

Hair and Skin Rambles: DIY

Skin DIY:
Added grape seed oil to my mask, gonna see how that works. Smells delicious [I <3 grapes].
Adding aloe vera to my lotion made it easier to smooth on, and it stops the itchiness like a bawse! Now if only I could make it smell like pomegranates...
Have an idea on improving my soap [and lotion]...not going to try yet, gotta run out first!
Face:
Mask:  1 tablespoon of Moroccan red clay, few drops grape seed oil, very few drops jojoba oil. Add water until paste.
Cleanser: Honey and lemon juice. Add salt/sugar to exfoliate if needed.
Toner: ACV
 Moisturiser: raw shea butter and tea tree oil [some water] [since I started putting the oil in the mask, I stopped adding grape seed oil / jojoba oil]
Body:
Lotion: Loads of raw shea butter, grape seed oil as needed to consistency, ditto with aloe vera, few drops of tea tree oil. Since I put this into a lotion bottle, I don't truly measure it. Not that it matters because your skin might need something else. I have horribly dry, insanely itchy skin [it never stops itching and only gets worse the longer I go without treating it with something strong. Used to be chemicals, is now aloe vera! :D]

Hair DIY:
I've found that honey and grape seed oil together gives me the same feeling of slip as the most amazing product I've ever put in my hair: Hair One, so I will officially be purchasing no more hair products! At least, that's the plan.
[That doesn't count heat-protectants, even through grape seed oil and jojoba are good for that [VERY high smoke points. Jojoba's is over 700°] I want something with smoothing properties. Though, I've heard aloe vera gel can do that, so I'll experiment whenever I decide to flat iron my hair again. Of course, that might not happen since I don't use heat that much and am too poor to buy things :(]
Also, honey, grape seed oil and coconut make like the perfect DC for me since coconut oil penetrates SO WELL, grape seed oil has the benefit of ceramides,  and honey is a very well moisturizing humectant. :3 Rinse with ACV [Apple Cider vinegar] for epic cuticle closure and cleansing of residual DC, then top it off with coconut and aloe vera as a leave in, then grape seed or jojoba as a combined sealent/serum, and I'm golden. Oh, and ACV is cleansing enough that you can use it instead of shampoo.
Now, I'm FORCING myself to use my store bought products just to get them used up!
Also, grape seed oil has slightly-less-effective but all of the same benefits as jojoba oil [aside from mimicking sebum], so I can substitute it when I eventually run of of jojoba. Grape seed oil is *much* less expensive, but I will get more jojoba whenever I have monies. Right now I'm conserving it as much as possible!
Favourite oil right now? Coconut oil! I know I didn't talk about it much, but I have extra virgin coconut oil and I use it *every day* as a moisturizer when I don't want to use water  [well, even when I do use water there is always coconut oil in it! :D] because it penetrates and gives me much more softness than any single other thing I've *ever* used as a daily moisturizer [including water when sealed with the same sealant(s)].
Favourite overall right now: raw honey, seriously, if something isn't [good] enough, usually adding honey will fix it. I like to say honey is like the duct tape of the skin and hair world! Only problem is that it lightens hair over time :(. I shall be using black tea rinses to combat that whenever I get the money for tea.
Newest ingredients acquired:
Aloe vera gel, grape seed oil and apple cider vinegar.