Pouf!

What happens when you comb two day old double Dutch braids out? 
    

Graphics and general weirdness

It was a surprise that I had so much fun with the simple little pictures I did in paint some time ago: The leave in conditioner-murderers, the conditioners purchase and the time line over my length. Maybe I should find some sort of photo editing program so I can do more fun and silly things with my pictures?

Any suggestions?

For a very long time I’ve also had the idea of getting some business cards printed for the blog. Then whenever I encounter curiosity about my hair in real life, I could hand over a card with the address and go “Start with the Beginners guide to healthier hair”.

Heh.
It actually happens more often than you would think!
    

      
Usually I’ve been telling people search for “long hair care” which of course works better if your native language isn’t English. It’s funny though; even with all the information you can find, a lot of people haven’t even thought of that you can find a whole lot of knowledge about growing healthy hair online. I swear, 99% of the time people respond with “Oh, I didn’t know I could find that…” Maybe it’s a sign that there is so much junk out there online that people have stopped using the internet for real information?

Of course now that I have my blog and have collected a lot of information in it that I think could be useful to people no matter how well they take care of their hair already, I have a specific place to point them to.

But now it seems that my internet has started reading my mind, because everywhere I go online I swear I see ads for Vistaprint that makes business cards at a very nice price! Huh.

Should I be very, very scared? Are the terminators taking over the internet? Is my little HP laptop equipped with a brain scan chip?

Of course if I were to get some business cards printed there, I’m back at an old issue I have here on the blog: I really need a nice icon or logo!

I have been playing around with putting some of my pictures up as logo but never felt happy with them. Then I drew the girl with the laptop and even though it was a quick 10 minute thing and I took the picture of it with my phone, I still feel it’s the best logo/header yet. Of course it would be better if I somehow could incorporate a bell or a tower in it, but how?

    

   
If I order business cards, what information should be printed on them? Naturally the address, but what else? My email? Some sort of slogan? A description?

So, maybe I should spend a little more time on that tonight. Create a different and better version of the girl with the laptop and get the business cards ordered?

Wednesday the 2nd of October

I’ve been feeling pretty crappy since before the Halloween party and going out when I wasn’t feeling 100% definitely didn’t help. So I’ve been staying in and feeling sorry for myself a lot. The double Dutch braids stayed looking surprisingly good for days.

This is what they looked like yesterday before I washed:

Classic length double Dutch braids! 

Note the VO5 bottles in the tub, heh.

Braids with this level of messiness are really good for quick and efficient S&Ds

“Stuck in a rut”

It’s a complaint I hear on the hair circuit a lot. I have been there a couple of times myself too. But the truth is; it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

First of all, people should stop beating themselves up over feeling “stuck in a rut”. Naturally you can’t be 100% interested in something 100% of the time. If you could, that would cross over in crazy obsession. Not a healthy state of mind!

Second, there is a reason that “benign neglect” is preached so much. It’s simply the healthiest thing you can do for your hair!

Everything you do to your hair from the second it leaves the follicle will damage it: Combing, exposing it to sun, rubbing against your clothes and twisting it up in up do’s etc will do some damage to it. Of course we can combat some of the damage with hair treatments and protecting up dos, but the healthiest thing for hair is to not handle it more than absolutely necessary!

Do the washes to keep it from turning into a total grease-ball. Do the detangling necessary to keep it from getting matted. Do your up dos to keep it protected and out of harms way.

Other than that; stop beating yourself up for “having lost interest”. You haven’t, you are just practising benign neglect and there is nothing wrong with that!  Some of the most breath-taking heads of hair belongs to people who have the most “boring” and simple routines there are. Benign neglect simply works.

As long as you don’t fall for the temptation of thinking a cute, shorter cut will spark your interest in hair again, you are not doing anything that can cause regret later. If you feel the need for something new and exciting, try with fake bangs, a crazy coloured clip in or maybe take the creative urge out on your nails.

Leave it be and let your hair interest stay on the back burner for a while. Once it returns again, your hair will have grown, not been damaged while you ignored it and be ready to enjoy your renewed attention again.

Repeat after me: It’s not a rut, it’s a routine!

One thing I try to advertise is to make a habit out of your hair-handling and up dos. If it’s something you just “do” without having to think about it, the handling is much easier for you and less damaging for your hair.

Try to think of when you tie your shoelaces or eat a sandwich. If you just do it without thinking, there is no problem. But if you first start thinking about every step or analyse the motions you do, you end up unable to remember how you tie the knot or with tomatoes on the floor.

One of the steps towards making a habit out of handling and putting your hair up is to stick with a routine.

For example, since I’m dominant right handed I start detangling the left side first. When detangling the right side, I always feel like my right hand “gets in its own way”, so with the easier left side done I’m left to focus on the right. When I braid, I always start on the right side, which gets the right side done first so I can use my right hand to help on the left side if necessary.

Another thing I always try to advertise is to pick an up do and practise it until you can do it in your sleep so you can always get your hair up and look presentable even if your child is screaming, your hubby yelling you have to go now, the dog is barking, the doorbell is chiming and you hear something shattering and breaking somewhere in the background and it most definitely sounds expensive….

So if you ever find yourself in a “rut”:

• The first rule is: Do no harm.
• Second rule: Practise benign neglect and don’t feel guilty for it. Not even a little bit.
• Third rule: Decide on your routines and practise them until you no longer have to think about them. Pick an up do and keep practising. You will thank yourself for your work later.

Halloween party outfit

We weren’t entirely sure how dressy the party would be so I went for a fairly simple schoolgirl outfit. I was curious if hubby would approve or not but he definitely loved it, heh.

It put my hair in twin Dutch braids and it took me an astonishing 40 minutes to get them done! I managed to get the right braid done in an extremely weird mix of Dutch and French on the first try and I have absolutely no clue how I managed to butcher a Dutch braid like that!

I was a bit worried about unwanted attention to my hip+ length braids but it wasn’t bad. I encountered curiosity, but no unwanted attention, which was pretty cool considering we were out among drunk and happy people.