Hair

I am blessed. I have a head full of thick, healthy, strong hair. It is wavy by nature and a dark, chocolate brown with weird lighter brown highlights (Oh, and some gray mixed in but I don't like to talk about that..). Its the kind of hair that people are always commenting on. How much of it there is and how pretty and blah blah blah. Heres the thing. Its hot and its impossible to style. Its long and thick but that is not as good a thing as people might think. Kind of like being tall. Don't ever tell a girl over 5' 11' you wish you were as tall as her. You really don't. Really. Thats a rant for another day though. This is about my hair. Shut up, I'm awesome.

I have been on the eternal search for the perfect hair cut/ style/ length since I hit puberty. Too long and it hurts my neck and back. Too short and it gets out of control puffy. I can't win.

I will say though, that are a lot of options with this much hair. I can wear it up easily, which I do quite often. Ask anyone that has known me very long at all and they will probably tell you they can't remember seeing me with my hair down in the last year or so. I wear it up that much. So you can imagine my excitement when I won a gift certificate this week to a store on Etsy that sells pretty hair type accessories.  I was so excited. I needed some grown up type stuff to put in my hair. So, I picked out my pretties and met her to pick them up this morning. These hair pretties are even more gorgeous in person than they were on Etsy. I got these and a couple others but  I especially love the peacock headband (which I am fairly sure is made for little kids but its mine and you can't have it!). You can't really tell but the circle part of the end of the feathers is a gorgeous sparkly, beaded thing that makes my heart happy. You should all go check out the shop if you have little girls or are a girl. No really. Bella Tu Designs.

Anyway, I also, rarely dry my hair out and wear it straightened. I don't do this often though because it literally takes over two hours to dry and straighten my hair and lets face it, I don't have time to do that with the boys running around causing chaos in the house. Don't tell me I should get up early and do it either because that just isn't going to happen. Plus, there is the added snafu that when I wear it down like that, its hot. So, I end up sweating all out of control and pulling it back into a ponytail anyway. Two hours wasted and I'm a sweaty mess. Yeah, no.


This week though, I came across a tutorial that boasted gorgeous curls in 5 minutes. I was skeptical. I watched the video from YouTube though and it looked super easy. The kind of idiot proof type thing I can usually manage. So, of course I immediately pinned it to Pinterest and decided I would try it with my still- damp- from- the- morning's- shower- hair. So, I did the twisty thing and slept on it like I was supposed to (watch the video people!) and when I woke up early, I took it cautiously pulled the rubber band from my hair and eased my eyes open.

(See that errant grey hair? GAH! Stop looking!)

Not bad for 5 minute hair, huh? It really is pretty gorgeous. There are a couple of things I would do differently, like do it in two layers because my hair is so thick it really was hard to wrap around in smaller strands. I also sprayed the heck out of it with hair spray before and after taking it down but I probably should have just put some hair gel of some sort in before letting air dry to the point I did. Still, though, I was happy with the results and that says a lot.

I plan to make an appointment at the Aveda institute here in the ATL soon to get a few thousand pounds of hair chopped off but I intend on keeping the curly trick and my new pretties close at hand as part of my mama makeover.


What are some of your favorite hair tips and tricks? Anything you want to share with the class? Or me? Please?