Review: Mixed Chicks Leave-In Conditioner

Ladies, it's time again to talk about products for curly hair. As we all know, I'm on the hunt for super-awesome products. I don't need my products to come in fancy packaging, and I prefer they don't cost an arm and a leg. With the economy the way it is, who can afford ridiculously overpriced hair products? Not me. Hello, Mixed Chicks Leave-In Conditioner...

The lovely owners of Mixed Chicks, were kind enough to send me their products to test out and review for you ladies. Today we're going to focus our attention on the Leave-In Condition, which can be misleading. This is a leave-in and styling product in one, because aren't we all sick of layering product after product everytime we style our curls?

The Mixed Chicks Leave-In is a hybrid, and I certainly love multi-tasking products, as they save time and money. It's meant to be used as soon as your finished cleansing and conditioning your curls, in fact, the wetter your hair is the better. More water in your hair means the product gets distributed more evenly and more easily. This product has a nice amount of slip, and gives me really great clumps. I applied it to my soaking wet hair, raked through and then scrunched. Then I used my Curls Like Us Curl Cloth, to scrunch out excess water. Anytime I use the Mixed Chicks, I let my hair air dry, and it leaves me with shiny, bouncy wurls and curls. Once my hair is completely dry, I use Argan Oil to seal the ends of my hair, and I am left with an awesome hair day.

 I will note that the Mixed Chicks Leave-In, isn't CG, as it contains Amodimethicone, but I'm modified CG, so for me it works just fine. I tend to rotate products, partially because I have so many, and I just like variety. I get bored easily, what can I say. The only constant in my hair routine are No-Poo, One Condition, and Set it Free.

You can get more product info, read other reviews, and purchase Mixed Chicks here.

Have you tried the line? Did you like it?

News Year's Eve...How's My Hair?

Just thought I'd do a quick update, it's 9 o'clock my time, on New Year'e Eve, and I'm sitting here with a head full of Henna. I thought that I'd wait and do it this weekend. That didn't happen, I tend to be extremely impatient, when I want something, I want it now. So, here I am with a green paste sitting in my hair, waiting to wash it out. I am still super excited to see what color it turns out, unfortunately for impatient me, it takes up to 5 days for oxidation to be done.

So here's my mix:

• 100g Henna For African American Hair from Mehandi -I bought this one because it has a finer sift, and is supposed to be easier to rinse out. It also has a better dye content, so hopefully my hair will be RED!!
• Lemon Juice
• Small Amount of Water

Once I mixed it up, I covered the bowl in Saran Wrap, and sat it in a sink of warm water, to speed up dye release. Once I had dye release, which only took maybe 2 hours, I added 2 tbsp of conditioner, to counteract the dryness of the lemon juice. I also added a few drops of lavender essential oil to help with the smell. Frankly, the smell wasn't bad at all, it smells like what it is: a dried out, ground up plant. Then I applied it, and I'm a little nervous about whether I got all my hair covered. The mixture is pretty thick, and it's not nearly as easy to work with as box color. However, if I didn't get it all covered I can always do a touch up tomorrow.

Sometime within the next few days I'll update with pictures. I'm planning on taking one everyday, for 5 days, while the color oxidizes.

Happy New Year!!

Updates and feedback...

Hello ladies, hopefully you're having a great New Year's Eve! Frankly, I'm sitting in my dining room in my pajamas. Not very exciting, however, I'm a Mom, and I lead a relatively boring life, of which I won't bore you with the details. I am so excited about the coming year, and hopefully the many, many possibilities it will bring.

Let's get this post going, you may have noticed that I have added a Tweet this button, and a Share button. I want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to share anything you find useful on here. I've decided to stop trying to revamp the look, and to simply focus on sharing information with you, and making everything as easy to use as possible. In the coming month, I'll be adding more things to the design to make it more user-friendly. So stay tuned!

I got my Henna from Mehandi today, and I am so excited!! As soon as I get it done, I'll share pictures, and go more into detail about Henna, the coloring process, and anything else I think may be useful for you.

Now I need something from you......I need some feedback about what you ladies enjoy reading and would like to see me do more of. I am completely open to constructive criticism, so please feel free to tell me what you think. I do this for myself, but I absolutely appreciate every one of you that read How's My Hair? and I want you to keep coming back for more. Without someone to read what I'm writing, it's pointless to put a pen to paper, so to speak.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Review: L.A. Looks Sport Hold Gel

What curly girl doesn't try almost anything they can get their hands on? I am constantly on the look out for new products, new techniques, and almost anything that may work for my curls. I've been reading all over the boards at Naturally Curly, about L.A. Looks Sport Hold Gel.

L.A. Looks Sport Hold Gel is readily available at almost any drugstore. It's also super cheap, I think I paid $2.50 for my bottle at Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, and I got the really big bottle. It seems like everytime I go to Wal-Mart, I bring something beauty-related home.

So I have a few things that I require in a gel: hold, no flakes, pleasant smell, non-drying, no silicones, no alcohol, and no mineral oil. Since I no longer shampoo my hair, making sure that I'm not using silicones or anything that isn't water-soluble is very important. L.A. Looks Sport Hold Gel meets all my criteria, so let's get on with the review.

I went about my normal hair routine: cleanse with No-Poo, condition with One Condition and I use a small mixture of One Condition and B'Leave-In as my leave-in. I then scrunch out excess water using an old t-shirt or Curls Like Us Curl Cloth. Then instead of using ArcAngell, I scrunched in L.A. Looks Sport Hold Gel. I could tell immediately, by the way it felt going into my hair, that it was indeed a hard hold gel. They just feel different, they don't have the same slip as a regular or light hold gel. In my experience, most hard hold gels also seem to dry faster, alcohol or none. Maybe this is what allows them to really set the hairstyle?

So, after I'd scrunched to my hearts desire, and used the Curls Like Us Curl Cloth to help set my curls, I diffused. Using my diffuser is the ultimate test for any hair product that I use, if it won't hold my curls in place while I diffuse, it probably won't hold them in place for the rest of my day. After all, I have a 4 year old little boy who likes to wrestle, and play crazy. Guess what, L.A. Looks Sport Hold Gel passed. After diffusing my curls, they looked awesome, super hard, but awesome. So I used a little MirrorCurls to SOTC, and my hair looked great. It's shiny, bouncy, and I think it would stay in place if a tornado happens to tough down.

Have you used L.A. Looks Sport Hold Gel? Did you like it? Any other awesome gels you think I should try?

Coloring my hair with henna......A new journey

I've been reading everything that I could find, literally, about coloring your hair with Henna. I'm not talking about the crap you can buy at Sally's, that comes in a variety of colors. Real henna is only red, there are no other options. Real Henna is great for your hair, it thickens the individual hair strands, conditions, and gives amazing shine. The stuff sold at Sally's, that's trying to call itself Henna, is a mix of Henna, and potentially dangerous chemicals. It is actually worse for your hair that plain hair dye.




Henna is really intriguing to me for numerous reasons, the most obvious being that it is good for your hair. I've been coloring my hair, with box hair color and pro color, for more than a decade. It has left my hair in less than optimal condition, and I'm sick of using it. Now that I'm wearing my hair curly, I want to take care of it more than ever. I can't go back to blonde, and have healthy hair, as I would have to bleach it again. My other favorite color, for my hair, is red. I am very fair-skinned, and red hair looks great on my skintone. Unfortunately, with red hair out of a box, it will fade quickly and look like crap.



Henna is the ultimate, permanent hair dye. It works completely different than regular box color. Box color works by stripping your hair of color, and then depositing color. The process leaves the hair cuticle rougher, and the color is easily faded. Henna is a plant, and it works by depositing color into the hair cuticle. Once the color is deposited, it is nearly, if not completely impossible to remove. Once Henna has been put on hair, it essentially has to be cut off in order to be removed. For someone like me, who changes their hair color almost as often as my clothes, this can be a drawback. However, I want healthy hair, and I think I'm ready to commit to one, atleast for quite some time.



Henna can be used to dye hair brown and a few other colors, when mixed with other plant dyes. Henna itself is only red, but there are other dyes that can be mixed with Henna to get brown and black hair. Indigo and cassia will both alter the color of Henna, however, the hair will still have some sort of red to it. Henna can be used pretty much as often as you want, although with each application the color will deepen or darken.



I am so excited about using Henna to color my hair, and I will update several times throughout the process. Henna takes several days to oxidize, until it's finished oxidizing you won't know what your final color will be. I will also talk more about Henna and your hair, because there is so much to learn before making a decision about it.



Have any of you ladies used Henna? Did you like it?

The lies continue with EDM...

Hi gals! Awhile back I told everyone that I was boycotting Everyday Minerals, and I mentioned it again a few days ago, I think. Well I was browsing Megs Makeup this morning and noticed more grumblings about EDM.

The initial problem that I had with EDM was they blatantly lied to customers. They told everyone that when the website changed, they would keep certain kits available. The website changed, and they announced that in fact, they would not keep the kits. I'm not even sure if EDM announced it, or if everyone just noticed that the kit wasn't available on the new site. When people started complaining in the EDM forum, they were unexpectedly kicked off, and their profiles were deleted. As soon as I realized what was going on, I decided that I would not support, or purchase products, from a company who obviously cares so little about the people who happily spread the word about them. EDM made no attempts to right the situation, and for some reason, so many ladies were willing to overlook it, I suppose because they liked the product.

Then, on Megs Makeup today, I noticed others were complaining about a new issue with EDM. Apparently, they changed the formula for some of their products, and never mentioned it, and didn't update the ingredients. This caused some customers to have severe reactions to the products. From what I read, when this was brought to EDM's attention they got defensive, and sent out nasty e-mails to concerned customers. I'm not sure if they've publicly admitted to changing formulations, or if it went out in e-mails, or what, but their practices seem to be becoming more and more selfish and potentially dangerous to consumers.

I don't know if, or how the formulation change, may have affected the quality of their products. I haven't purchased anything from them in quite awhile. I can say that the products that I still have from months ago, were quality products. That was never my complaint, however, it may be others complaints now.

EDM was made popular strictly through word-of-mouth, of happy customers like myself. Then they seem to have stopped caring about those customers. What does that say about what kind of company they're running?

Have you had similar experiences with EDM? Please feel free to leave comments, as I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this.

Am I strange?

I know there's more and more talk about being natural, and looking natural. However, almost anytime I sit down to do my makeup, I go all out. For me, there's no such thing as "daytime" or "nightime" looks, there are only looks. I do smokey eyes in the day, and nude eyes at night, depending on my mood. I pretty much ignore all the rules, because after all rules were meant to be broken.

My makeup on any given day, is an expression of me. Whether it be my mood, the weather, something I saw in a magazine or on t.v., something inspires me, and I run with it. Part of the great thing about being a woman is makeup: we can be one person one day, and someone totally different the next. I know this sometimes bothers the opposite sex, but I embrace it. Am I the only one?

Review: Pur Minerals 4-in-1 Pressed Mineral Makeup Foundation With SPF 15

Hello dolls! So today, we're back to makeup. Recently, I was given the opportunity to try Pur Minerals  4-in-1 Pressed Mineral Makeup Foundation With SPF 15. I am an avid mineral makeup junkie, so the thought of a 4-in-1 was super intriguing.

I love to be able to have flawless makeup, and if I can save time that's even better. Women these days, are super busy, we want it all, we want to be a Mom, a wife, have a career, and look fabulous. Unfortunately, for most of us, there simply isn't enough time in the day for everything. So inevitably, something has to be cut back, and usually its the least important thing, which for most of us, hopefully, is looking fabulous. Don't get me wrong, looking fabulous is great, but I'd much rather spend time with my family and focus on my writing, then spend all day tweaking my appearance.

Pur Minerals 4-in-1 Pressed Mineral Makeup Foundation With SPF 15 is a foundation, concealer, powder, and spf all in one smartly packaged product. It's $25 for an 8g compact, with foundation on one side, and a mirror and sponge on the other. The beauty of the product is that it can applied dry for a more natural and sheer coverage, or you can dampen the sponge, and apply it wet, for more coverage. It's also a pressed mineral foundation, so you can completely avoid the messiness that can come along with traditional mineral makeup.

The Pur Minerals Foundation was easy-to-use, had a nice glowy finish, and surprisingly was light enough for my pale skintone. That's one thing that I have trouble with, finding foundations that are both light enough for me, and have the right undertone. Most foundations that are super light have more of a pink undertone, I however, have a yellow undertone. The Pur Minerals foundation matched my skin beautifully.

So the bottom line is, I liked the foundation, and would recommend it. I might even have to get more, since we all know I've boycotted EDM.

Have you tried Pur Minerals Foundation? Did you like it?

Holiday hair tips from the creator of Curls

Holiday hair tips from the creator of Curls

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Going Curly Girl, what does it mean, and how does it work.........

Hello ladies, I know I've been talking and talking, well, blogging and blogging, about hair lately, sorry to disappoint but I'm talking about hair again today. I go through phases, one week I'm obsessed with skincare, then haircare, then makeup. Stick around, I'm sure I'll get sick of hair and move on soon enough, just not yet.

Today were focusing on "Curly Girl", the method of caring for curly hair that Lorraine Massey invented I suppose, and addressed in her book, by the same name. If you check out Naturally Curly, there's tons of info, for anything I don't cover here, or maybe you have more questions about.

There are basically some main points to being Curly Girl, or CG as it's often referred to.

• Say no to sulfates!!  Sulfates, which are essentially in all shampoo are horrible for curly hair, frankly their bad for any hair, but especially curly, dry, or damaged hair. Sulfates strip hair of it's natural moisture, and cause damage. They cause frizz, scalp problems, and a slew of other things. You don't need shampoo to cleanse your hair, which I have address in several other posts. Conditioner, the right conditioner, can be used, very successfully, to cleanse your hair and scalp.
• Say no to silicone!! Silicones work by coating your hair, which prevents your hair from absorbing moisture and anything else that's good for it. Silicones may give you the illusion of great hair for a short amount of time, but they require sulfates in order to be removed. If you've eliminated sulfates, then you muct eliminate silicones. Silicone is found in a variety, in fact most hair products. Pretty much any ingredient that ends in -xane, -cone-, -conol, is a silicone and should be avoided.
• Treat your hair with TLC!! Your hair is a delicate thing, no matter how strong you think it is. It should be treated with care. Only detangle hair when it is soaking wet with conditioner. Never dry brush your hair, it causes breakage and a ridiculous amount of frizz. Make sure your hair is always properly moisturized. Curly hair is dry hair, and it needs to be moisturized to thrive.

Confession of a product junkie.........I'm in love

Hello gals, sorry it's been so long. I have a confession today.......I'm a DevaCurl junkie. I absolutely love the entire line, and I may never turn back. The entire line smells divine, works beautifully, and makes my hair happy. DevaCurl is all I've been using for awhile now......that's right I said it, I'm monogamous. From the first time I opened a bottle of No-Poo I knew Deva was "The One".

I adore the entire line, and if you're curly, like myself, and haven't tried the line, then run out a pick some up. While I realize that what works for my hair won't necessarily work for everyone, it's worth trying. The DevaCurl line is the #1 hair care line for curlies in the U.S. for a reason.

The products are so moisturizing. If you aren't like me, and you like to keep things simple, then you can literally just use 3 products: No-Poo, One Condition, and AnGEL. However, I am a total product junkie, and I thoroughly enjoy mixing it up with my hair routine. I use almost the entire line, and I can honestly say, I love them all. I don't really use everything as directed, but I do use everything. The only Deva product that I've yet to get my hands on is the DevaFuser, and you can bet after Christmas is over, I'll be picking that beauty up too.

The reason I'm even telling you ladies this, is because I typically am a polygamist with products. I don't expect to get everything I need or want from one brand or line. Just because I adore Frederic Fekkai Glossing Cream, doesn't mean I need or want the shampoo and condish to match, right? Wrong, well wrong with Deva products anyway. I could go on and on about DevaCurl all day, literally. I need some Deva friends to share the excitement, love, and relief at finally finding something that works for me, with. Any takers?

Spotlight on curly hair: Amourai Organique

Spotlight on curly hair: Amourai Organique

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Spotlight on Curly Hair

Spotlight on Curly Hair

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Spotlight on curly hair: Curls Products

Spotlight on curly hair: Curls Products

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Protein, Deep Treatments, and ACV, my weekly routine...

Hi gals, so I thought I would share with you how I care for my hair on a weekly basis. Obviously, I co-wash everyday with DevaCurl, Suave Conditioner, or Wen. And every 2 or 3 days I use regular conditioner, I only do it this often, because I don't want to overcondition my hair, and if I use DevaCurl No Poo or Wen, my hair feels plenty moisturized. The days I co-wash with Suave I always use a conditioner after, because it doesn't moisturize enough.

I do weekly protein treatments because I have fine, highly porous hair. My hair would be slighly porous if I didn't color it, but coloring it on a monthly basis has really done a number on my hair. Protein treatments fill in the surface "holes" in your hair, and make it stronger. Protein treatments help with breakage, dullness and body. I use Eufora Urgent Repair Replenishing Treatment, which has several types of protein in it. I really like it, and my hair looks great after I use it. The downside to protein treatments is they can make your hair feel dry, so you should always follow a protein treatment with a Deep Treatment.

I use DevaCurl Heaven In Hair, which I love, love, love. It makes my hair so freakin soft and bouncy. I usually leave the protein treatment on my hair for 30 minutes or so, and then follow it with an hour or so of Heaven In Hair. I always do these two on weekends, because frankly it's the only time that I have enough time to sit around with stuff in my hair for an hour and a half.

Also, about once a week I do an ACV rinse. ACV is Apple Cider Vinegar, which can be picked up at virtually any grocery store. I mix 2 tbsp ACV with 2 cups of water. I then co-wash with No Poo, pour the ACV rinse on my hair and put a conditioner on top of that. I leave it in my hair for the remainder of my shower, and once I'm done my hair is awesome. ACV helps remove any product build-up, it seals the hair follicle which in turn makes your hair shinier, and it gives your hair body. ACV can be very drying to hair, so always follow it with conditioner.

Well, that's my weekly hair routine, what's yours?

Spotlight on curly hair: MopTop Unruly Haircare

Spotlight on curly hair: MopTop Unruly Haircare

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