Merry Christmas Everyone!

"The best Christmas of all is the presence of a
happy family all wrapped up with another."

Okay so I know that I'm a little late, but Merry Christmas Everyone! This year my family tried something new & headed up to Pennsylvania to spend time with family. This was the first time ever that I've spent Christmas away from home, and surprisingly, I enjoyed it! :)
We arrived in PA two days before Christmas. It was the first time that I had seen my cousins in about four years. The first day we spent catching up with each other and talking about how we've changed over the years. In addition, I got to play with my two younger cousins who had been babies the last time that I saw them. Then on Christmas day we came and spent the day with each other.
To be honest, at first I felt like I wouldn't have a good time. It was going to be strange spending time away from my family. I wouldn't be able to open my gifts on Christmas (okay so that sounds really childish). But surprisingly, I found that I learned a lot about those things that are important. We spent our time with our family. That night we played the game guesstures & taboo and laughed at my father and uncle who seem to speak their own language. For example, my dad and uncle were talking about the movie This Christmas. My dad said, "Oh that's the movie about the house?" and my uncle said, "Yeah that's it." Lol! Then we watched This Christmas, my absolute favorite Christmas movie. I had been waiting all year to see this movie, but it never actually came on tv. When we got to watch it I was so excited! I had literally been waiting all year for this. :)
And let's not forget about Christmas dinner: We ate turkey, mustard greens, arroz con gandules, pasteles, sweet potatoes, cranberry jelly, and cornbread. It was a true African American/Puerto Rican dinner....and it was truly delicious :)
Today is our last day in PA. My older cousin & I bonded over super mario on the wii. My younger cousins amused me by singing their favorite songs including Like a G6 and Bottoms Up. My cousins who are close in age to me and I watched for Colored Girls and the Dave Chappelle show. And what's a family gathering without a classic WebCam picture?

Merry Christmas Everyone

xoxo,

Jackie :)

All Na-tu-rallll!

Have you ever thought about going natural? Are you transitioning? Well, I have been natural for all of my life with the exception of two years (during which I had a failed attempt at a texturizer). I think natural hair is the thing to do, regardless of the fact that going natural has become a trend over the past year. We as black females should embrace our natural-ness & be happy with the hair that God gave us. What I like most about being natural is that there is so much room for versatility in the natural hair styles which you can wear. So anyway, just to give y'all a hint of the natural life, I've been photographing the different ways that I've styled my hair over the past two weeks! Enjoy!


Shower Fresh (Days 1-4): This is my completely natural, no heat hairstyle. As you can see I have a super duper curly texture of hair, but I also have sections of my hair which are straight, kinky, and somewhere in between. For the longest time I didn't know what to do with my hair to make it stay in the curly texture that it becomes after getting wet. However, over the past summer I had a hair epiphany & figured out what to do (lol). Every girl's hair texture is different, but here are my tips for wearing natural hair.

1. Don't waste your money on those expensive "natural hair care" products. You can use a lot of cheaper items & save a lot of money.
2. As a natural it's important to wash your hair using conditioner only. This "co-wash" is far less damaging that using shampoo (which contain ingredients like sulfate & paraben which dries out curly hair). I use garnier fructis conditioner. It smells great and it's cheap. Condition your hair and leave the conditioner in for three minutes. This helps to moisten your hair.
3. Rinse the conditioner out and recondition. This time leave the conditioner in. (Because I wet my hair a lot when it's natural I also sometimes use good ole Dove conditioner. Don't waste your money on an expensive conditioner because your hair will be wet a lot. Trust me it works!) Leaving the conditioner in your hair will keep the right amount of moisture in your hair.
4. While your the conditioner is still in your hair, add some detangler if you'd like (I use motions leave in conditioner spray & suave detangler for kids. The combination of the two make it easier to comb out any knots.) Put your hair under the stream of water and combing out knots will be a breeze.
5. Squeeze out the water from your hair and add a leave in conditioner for added moisture. I use motions cpr triple action leave in conditioner.
6. Wrap an old t-shirt around your hair and gentle squeeze several times to prevent excess water from leaking from your head (lol. Don't underestimate the amount of water that your hair can hold, especially when your hair thickens after going natural. I've had many a day where I had to run to the closest bathroom to squeeze out excess water from my hair).
7. While your hair is still damp add something to seal moisture into your hair. I prefer to use unrefined shea butter.
8. At night wear your hair in a loose high ponytail.
9. In the morning mix some conditioner, water and if you'd like a bit of olive oil into a spray bottle and mist your hair. The curls will come right back. However, because it is so dry in the winter, you may find that you have to completely wet your hair again to get the same curly effect (or in this case, splurge and spend some money on a natural hair care spritz to preserve your curls).

Like I said, because my hair is so curly and spongy, it tends to dread easily, so I only rock this hair style for several days.

Straight & Sultry (Days 5 & 6):
For these days I used a combination of Suave kids detangler (in the green bottle) and a leave in conditioner spray to detangle my curls. I blow dry my hair with a comb attachment and I then smooth castor oil from my roots to my ends and use a flat iron to straighten my hair. This style stays completely straight for about 8 hours. At night I braid my hair in sections (or make straight bantu knots) and wrap a silk scarf around them. In the morning I undo them and go over them with the flat iron. When I wrap my hair, I usually sweat out my roots by the morning, so these two methods work best. However, overuse of heat=hair damage, so this straight look lasts for a short period of time.


Curls Curls Curls (Days 7-11):
This is my quickest, easiest, most common due. I rub some palmer's growth treatment into my hair at night, before setting my hair in 15-20 large (pink) sponge rollers. I wrap a silk scarf over the rollers and sleep on them. In the morning when I take the rollers out all I do is pin my hair in whatever style I want and the curls fall into place. In this particular picture, I went over some of the curls with my curling iron to stretch them out. Notice how short my hair looks because of the tightness of the curls.

I hope you enjoy this & I hope my tips came in handy. For amazing natural hair care tips click on the KandeeLand link under my favorites to the left. She has amazing tips, blog posts & even videos on youtube!

xoxo

Jackie

Apologies...Do you forgive me?

First of all, I am soo soo soo soo sorry for not blogging in such a long time. The past three weeks consisted of me studying for finals and then coming home & doing absolutely nothing for an entire week (ahh freedom!). However, during my jail break, you probably noticed that I completely neglected my blog, including my thirty day picture challenge. Again, I am so sorry. I vow to restart my picture challenge so that I can complete it! But for the time being, let me catch you up on my life.
Let's go back a month ago to Thanksgiving. I spent the week in Delaware with my favorite cousins. It's a family tradition to head up to Delaware to spend time with my family. Because I'm now in college, we only had several days to spend with our family this year. But not a day was spent in vain. We had a yummy Thanksgiving dinner consisting of turkey, collards, sweet potatoes, salad, dinner rolls, macaroni, stuffing, and my favorite, cranberry sauce.
I actually watched the entire Macy's Thanksgiving Parade for the first time in many years (I have had bad past experiences with that parade). Kanye West's performance, as well as Keri Hilson's performance, was interesting. However, overall, I still felt that same bubbly feeling inside that I always felt when I watched the parade as a child.
The rest of our trip to Delaware was spent participating in some quality family time. We watched the Wizard of Oz and my four year old cousin made the comment that she didn't like the wicked witch of the west and, "Why is she green? She's not supposed to be green. She's supposed to be brown." Hahaha. Oh, the things that kids say :)
We said our good-byes and headed back home. I had one day to spend at home & then it was right back to school for study study studying. I had a portfolio to create for lit which consisted of seven edited essays which demonstrated my work over the semester. In addition, I had finals in pre-calc, interpersonal communications, and spanish 2002. It was a stressful and demanding two weeks. By the end of finals, I was sick of dining hall food, stress eating, the cold & my dorm in general. On top of all of that I became sick (gross!) But overall they ended up being farely successful. I made pretty good grades on the majority of my exams. I am now a first year sophomore and if things continue to head in the direction that they are going in now, by the fall 2011 semester, I will be a junior. Yet I am not completely satisfied. I've made a list of things to do in order to improve my grade [and hopefully these will help you as well].

1. Buh-bye Facebook: I'm going to temporarily delete my fb during the week (so that I can't receive any notifications, and thus have no need to use fb) and I'll use it only on the weekends.
2. Study Hall Here I Come: On Mondays and Fridays I have only one class, so I plan on spending my time after class in the study rooms in our student center.
3. More Structured Weekends: My weekends are going to be more structured. Now that there are no more football games, there should be less distractions. I will devote more time on the weekends to studying.

I am confident that my plan is going to pay off. As long as I adhere to my rules, everything should be fine :)
And now you are brought back up to speed :) Last week I spent my time relaxing, facebooking, and basically catching up on all of the things that I hadn't been able to do. In addition, I was dragged all over my hometown shopping for Christmas gifts. Now I am in a hotel in Pennsylvania waiting to visit my family. More updates will be coming soon!

lovelovelove

Jackie :)