aloe vera juice

9 Months

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Well it’s time for another update already, 9 months to be exact today. Movin’ on up!!

Not a whole lot of change from month 8 though the back is still puffy & frizzy on the ends, it has calmed down a wee bit and slimmed down some. It’s also taking quite a bit longer to dry after washing or a really good spritzing. Not a problem though…just gotta wash it earlier in the day than I used to earlier in the journey. I’m more in love with my hair than I was before not that I did not love it before, it’s just I’m so amazed by it. Oh, yesterday an older gentleman coming out of the thrift store was walking toward me as I was approaching the store. He called out to me to get my attention and said “I just wanted to tell you that you are very attractive”. Now you know that made a sista feel real good and coming from an older person (as he looked to be around the same age or older than DH who is 17 yrs older than I) who are generally are not too keen on locs. They was blowing & swanging (y’all know there is a difference between swinging & swanging) in the wind as I walked about. lol

Oh I forgot to add that I’ve reduced the amount of baking soda that I use in my shampoo mix from 1 tbs to 1 tsp. Since I don’t use any product in my hair other than a few drops of peppermint, lavender and cedarwood essential oils in my water spritz I don’t have the need to clarify, just clean my hair. I’m also substituting the water part of the mix with aloe vera juice. I mentioned this in the last post.

DH & I attended his 2nd cousin’s wedding & reception today so here are some pics of how I’m wore my locs. I double two strand twisted the front, french rolled the lower portion in the back and then adorned that portion with some decorative pins. I did that ’cause I want my puff to sit up high but those lower locs have condensed the most and are too short to go into the puff. Y’all I had to put in a million and one pins (well that’s a bit of an exaggeration…it was more like 9 pins but still) just for that little portion. The puff portion is held up by another hair tie I made, and was rolled with large rollers to give some lift to the puff since my hair seems to want to lie kinda flat in that back middle area. It was humid today and ended up raining so the puff dropped a bit so I think if I do it again in the future, I’ll use smaller rollers and smaller sections of hair. Plus the smaller ones should be easier to sleep on I hope. The two strand twisted portion held up well probably because I did 4 locs per section ,2 strand twisting 2 locs and then 2 strand twisting those together.

The top that I was wearing, y’all a thrift store find at $5.00 and the black skirt $.50! Who says you can’t look fly on the cheap!!

Aloe Vera Gel/Juice, Peppermint and Cedarwood Essential Oils

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Ok I had this bottle of Aloe Vera Gel that I bought 2 years ago when I first went natural that was about to expire in July in this year. I was using this in the shealoe mixture consisting of shea butter, coconut oil and of course the aloe vera gel. Well now that I’m locking I did not want to risk using that mix in my locs though I still use it as a face and body moisturizer. Anyway, there was oh probably 1/4 left in the bottle that I did not want to go to waste and for those of you that have seen my You Tube videos know I don’t like to waste anything, especially hard earned dollars. So I thought I’d pour the rest of the aloe vera gel in my shampoo mixture since it was almost empty. I then added a bit more Dr. Bronner’s, peppermint & cedarwood essential oils. Wow, you talk about even softer locs after they’ve dried than before for me! Now part of that may also be because it has been raining here at least once a day for the past 3 weeks therefore the humidity in the air has been minimum 70%. But the sheen has been kicked up a notch, even the locs in the back that are doing their thing. I’ve also oiled my scalp only with coconut oil and a couple drops of cedarwood and peppermint EOs each.

Motowngirl has info on a few essential oils so that’s where I got the idea to try the cedarwood and peppermint oils. On another website (click here) mentioned that peppermint oil was for dry hair & helps promote growth. As far as the peppermint I can understand growth but I would not have thought is was for dry hair. However it really does make sense in that the mint family of plants thrive in drier growing conditions. Dry conditions… dry hair, maybe there is a connection. The other reason for trying this combination of essential oils is that I’ve had issues with high blood pressure in the past, so I thought it might be a good idea to look for an alternative. So to clarify (no pun intended), I am no longer using rosemary or sage essential oils in my shampoo mix or spritz.

Aloe Vera, I’ve found in my research is strengthening for the hair, soothing for the scalp, aids in hair growth and has amino acids. One lady on the LongHairForum says uses it as a strengthener since it has protein in it, using it like Aphogee I would assume. I’m gonna try it that way, since that will be a whole lot easier to deal with than henna.

If you use the aromatherapy kind of essential oils that are for external use only, which is probably what you’re getting at the health food store and use them a lot check out this site the http://www.thecatalog.com. I ordered the EOs that I’m using at quite a bit of savings than if I purchased the same ones at the health food store. I was very pleased with how the order arrived.

I got the big bottle of lavender, peppermint & eucalyptus oils and quite a few other oils since I like to make air fresheners out of these in addition to using them for my hair and future concoctions. Here’s an example of the savings. The lavender EO was $47.19 for a 16oz bottle with sales tax (which they did charge for my state by the way at 10 %) is $51.91 and with shipping (if you ordered less than $75.00), grand total $56.91. That means that each ounce, which is the size of the bottles that you purchase at the health food store or GNC is $ 3.56. I don’t know about y’all but where I live even at GNC, I paid $8.79 for that 1 oz bottle. Buy 16 of those and you’ve paid (sit down b4 you read any further ’cause you may have already done this) $140.64 sales tax included. Which is better $56.91 or $140.64 especially if you are purchasing/using the same product/thing whatever on a regular basis?! This is an illustration/reason to have liquid savings aside from your emergency savings to take advantage of things like this and how we unconsciously dribble away our money. But that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Disclaimer: All of the products mentioned in this post have been purchased by me. I have no affiliation with the manufacturer or distributor of the product nor am I being paid to review the product. The opinions set forth in this post are solely my personal opinion.