I have already began treating my hair as if it were fully natural by trying out hair styles I have seen done by

If you would like to recreate this protective hairstyle below is a step by step description of how I achieved it.

So for this Hair do we will need:

Step 1.

Part your hair into four sections, part the crown depending on how big you would like your bangs to be at the end.

Step 2.

Moisturise the two sections above the ears, if you need to keep your edges flat, this would be the best time to either apply your styling cream or hair Gel. Either roll the hair or do a flat twist and make sure to do a two strand twist/ roll until you reach the ends of the hair.

Step 3 & 4.

Moisturise the hair hair at the back and use your brush to make sure it looks neat. Then pin down the twists as shown. Depending on how long your hair is you might want to fold the twists to make them easier to work with.

Step 5

Roll and tuck the remaining hair into your twist and use some pins to secure the hair.

Step 6.

Pin down the sides to achieve the shape you want.

Step 7.

Moisturise your crown.

You can add a little styling cream at this point if you feel the need to. Again use your brush to make the hair neat then proceed to make a loose two strand twist.

Step 8 & 9.

Tuck your ends into the base of the twist. Depending on how long your hair is, you might want to fold the twist and pin it down. Use pins to secure the hair and to achieve the look you desire.

I am still looking for more hairstyles to try out and would love it if you ladies gave me more suggestions :)

May was the 4^th Month of the Gahl length retention challenge and I am already very excited to find out how much length I will have retained by August when the challenge ends. I have not trimmed my hair since the challenge started and I am quite proud of myself because I have only used heat once in those four months. And I have been religiously moisturising and sealing every other day and my hair is almost in a bun every single day.

I promised to update you ladies on my long term transition to natural hair so here goes the first update :)

The back and edges of my hair are currently 44 weeks post relaxer/texlax while the crown is exactly 20 weeks post. I do have a lot of new growth! 

I have been getting questions as to how I manage so much new growth without wearing protective styles such as braids or weaves. Well I have come to realise that my hair loves to be left alone and it does not like any kind of stress and manipulation whatsoever, Any time I did braids, twists or weaves in the past I always ended up with a small setback. This is why I decided to try and deal with my hair regardless of how much new growth I had. By sticking to this method I have been able to learn how to manage my own hair even with three different textures ( relaxed, texlaxed & Natural).

Managing different textures on one head can be challenging at first but it can be done, however you will need a great virtue which is patience. You will need to find out what works for your hair.

Here is what works for me.

So far the transition is going on well and I hope that it stays that way. If you have any tips on how to long-term transition to natural with less breakage, please do share. I need all the information I can get . And thanks to all our readers for all the support you have been giving us. We really appreciate you for taking your time to share our hair journies with us :)

It has been ten weeks since i got my last relaxer touch up. I do have at least an inch of new growth and this means that I have to be more careful with the way I handle my hair to avoid unnecessary hair breakage. Especially since i have three different textures to deal with. Here is how I washed my hair this time round.

I did a before shampoo treatment to my hair by applying a mixture of olive oil, coconut oil, safflower oil, wheat germ oil & castor oil to my hair and leaving it on for about three hours. 

Oil treatments really make my hair soft and conditioned. 

After this treatment I proceeded to shampoo my hair with the seba med everyday shampoo, which is a sulfate free shampoo and does not strip my hair too much.

Immediately after shampooing I deep conditioned my hair with a mixture of the Lustrasilk mango shea butter   & the organic root stimulator replenishing conditioner. The reason why I mixed the two conditioners together is to maintain a moisture and protein balance in my hair, too much or too little of either can lead to breakage. I applied a shower cap and let the hair conditioners sit in my hair for about one hour.

After rinsing off the conditioners and towel drying my hair a bit, I applied my Home made leave in conditioner/ moisturizer and sealed in the moisture with safflower oil, I also applied some syoss absolute oil which is a serum to my hair and even more on my ends to protect them even more. My hair was now very soft and ready for combing which I always do in small sections and with my wide tooth seamless comb  to avoid hair breakage. The last step I did was to apply a scarf to lay my edges down while air drying. After this whole process this is what my hair looked like.

 Thanks for reading!

 Joanne.