Extra! Extra! Shipping fees SUCK!
Posted by: urbansista on: February 9, 2010
Hi all! I’m working on a product review that, hopefully, will be posted tonight. Until then, I wanted to quickly tell you about what I found online. So, if you’ve been reading my blog, you would know that I hate, HATE paying shipping charges — especially when they are ridiculous. There is no reason why I should pay more than what the product actually costs in shipping fees. This is the reason why there are still a number of products that I would love to try but won’t because I will not pay exorbitant shipping fees.
A pet peeve of sorts.
Anyhoo, I was trolling around online and sadly thinking, I would love to try Dickey’s Hair Rules! But last time I checked either the shipping fees were ridiculous (I don’t know why — Canada isn’t THAT far) or they don’t ship to Canada (again, I don’t know why — Canada isn’t THAT far). Alas, I made up in my mind that I was not going to ever try Hair Rules… until I found them at Bath & Body Works! Yay!
I’m not saying that I will try it — my PJism is pretty nonexistent right now. What I have is working and I’m certainly not switching things up in the middle of winter. I’ll have to wait until summertime. The great thing about this product being available through Bath & Body Works is the shipping charges are minimal… well, maybe not minimal. Shipping and international handling fees are estimated at $19 on a $45 product…
Sigh.
It’s less expensive than going through CurlMart.
A word to companies: lower your shipping fees, dang it! There are millions of curlies outside of the States who want to try your products but are fearful of the shipping fees! C’mon folks! Make it easy for a kinky sister to find her go to product. Why won’t you let my curls be great?
Chupse.
I take back everything I just said. I still won’t be purchasing Hair Rules until I get back to NYC this summer. And even then, on bare principle, I may refrain from buying the product. Who wants to join me as I protest and chant: “Bring shipping fees down! Bring shipping fees down!”
Updates, updates, updates!
Posted by: urbansista on: February 5, 2010
Well, only two updates for you this week: my Accidental Spending Fast and the Hairlista Healthy Ends Challenge.
On the spending fast tip: the Hubby and I got through January pretty well. I wasn’t able to save as much as I would have liked because I made many unplanned charity donations in January. Alas, these things happen, but I was able to save more than I normally do. I easily lived off of $25 a week for miscellaneous purchases. The Hubby and I cooked regularly and we brought our lunch to work almost every day.
The biggest success? I haven’t bought one bottle of conditioner or one jar of moisturizer! Hair purchases for January? One container of yogurt. I’m pretty darned proud of myself.
In February, I’m continuing the fast. We’ve bumped up our spending money to $30 a week. Now that I’ve incorporated my charitable giving into my budget, I should be able to meet my savings goals for February.
Not spending would be easier if the Gap, Bath & Body Works and Sephora stopped emailing me coupons. Sigh.
On to the Hairlista Healthy Ends Challenge! I’m halfway through! I realized that I needed a good trim last weekend, so I cut about an inch of ends off. The fairy knots were killing me! I think a lot of them cropped up because I wasn’t sure of what I was doing with my hair for a while. I finally got into a routine only in the fall. So from May’s Major Trim until October 2009 was about five months of hair folly. Now that they are trimmed off and I’m all about the protective styling, I’ll have to see if there’s a difference in the number of knots.
I do have to update my regimen here and let you all know which products and methods I’m currently using – which is pretty different from what I was doing in September when I started this blog. On the wig front, I still like them for a change, but I like my own hair more. I may wear the wig the last two weeks of February to give my own hair a break. I think I may go back to the kinky twists in March.
Oh, I do have one last update: Haiti. Yep, I’m still talking about it ’cause the situation is still so serious. Continue supporting th epeople there and keeping them in your prayers. There are a lot of ignorant people (Google Paul Shirley if you want to read hateful rhetoric), including these so-called missionaries who were trying to kidnap Haitian children (see story here), getting in the mix now. I shake my head at the audacity of people.
Donate, donate, donate! I’m going to support Unicef to help the children. So, in honour of my Haitian brothers and sisters, this week’s dedication is Man in the Mirror – one of my favourite songs — by the late, great King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
DIY hair care: Yogurt cleanser
Posted by: urbansista on: February 2, 2010
Last week, I was fretting about my scalp going crazy from over-shampooing, especially with this dry winter weather. My skin, except for my face, is dry and I have tried a number of things to calm it and my scalp.
Alas, reader Moni left a comment about using a yogurt, bentonite clay and apple cider vinegar (ACV) mix to cleanse my scalp and hair. It would be a lot less harsh than shampoo, but it wouldn’t remove any silicones… and I can’t lie, I don’t run away from silicones.
Y’all should know by now that I don’t shy away from anything — unless I’m allergic to it. If I can wash it out, I’m up for trying it.
I did some research and saw that other people had used a similar concoction without any horrible side effects. Supposedly, I am to use organic, whole fat yogurt.
Let me tell you guys something, I don’t have the time or the patience to run around looking for particular types of yogurt. If I had saw this organic yogurt at my local grocery store, fine. I may have purchased it (if I’m honest, I would have purchased it if it was on sale). While I like the idea of organic items, I will eat them, not slather them on my head. It just seems wrong to me… Organic bananas and avocado on my head? Yeah, no. So, I bought the regular, ol’ fashioned yogurt (all they had at the time was low-fat) and came home.
I mixed that with a clay mask I bought this past fall and used once after I realized it was for dry skin (my face is so not dry) and some ACV. I didn’t really measure — I used what I thought would be enough yogurt to cover all of my hair and scalp, squirted some clay in and poured the ACV in until the mixture was runny enough to get through my hair, but thick enough not to run all over the place. I believe that Moni’s mixture is more clay than yogurt and ACV — I’ll try this again when I finally get my hands on some bentonite clay.
This mix did not smell good — not in the least. If I thought mayonnaise and honey were bad, they have nothing on yogurt and ACV.
I massaged it into my scalp and throughout my hair and left it in for about 15 minutes. I rinsed it out and conditioned with Organix Revitalizing Pomegranate Green Tea conditioner (this stuff smells GOOD!). When I started combing the conditioner through, I noticed that my hair was stronger — I wasn’t seeing as many hairs in the comb. As the wide tooth comb slid through, my hair was sliding through.
Yay!
I rinsed that and went to my Giovanni Direct Leave-in Weightless Moisture conditioner. Since writing my review, I’ve come across a bunch of comments from people hating GDL. REALLY!?! That stuff’s, like, holy grail for me now. I’m quivering, not knowing what I’m going to do because I’m just about to run out and all the places that carry Giovanni products don’t carry the leave-in. The biggest issue people had was that it had protein in it.
Who knew?
And this yogurt mix has protein in it.
Guess what? My hair loves some protein! I always thought that my hair was strong enough without it, but after seeing how strong it was with a protein treatment/cleanser, I’m on the protein bandwagon. The hair strengthening is a by-product of my scalp enjoying the moisturizing qualities of this yogurt mix.
Although I like it, I’m still going to have to shampoo — at least once a month. It’s a necessary evil, but this cleansing mix will definitely be in rotation, along with co-washing.
Be optimistic
Posted by: urbansista on: January 29, 2010
It’s been two weeks and some since the Haiti earthquake and slowly people are thinking about other things. Thankfully, people are still paying attention. Although there is still a lot of sadness and confusion concerning the situation, there is also rays of optimism.
Why?
Well, Haiti has gotten the short end of the stick for a long time. People — including myself — haven’t paid a lot of attention to the island nation and didn’t realize just how bad things were for the people. Dictators, unscrupulous politicians and more have run amok and left the people in the lurch. Hateful countries made Haiti pay for its insolence in a number of ways.
And in that hardship, Haitians lived, got an education, hoped and tried to create a better tomorrow — but you can’t have a better tomorrow of people today have their feet on your neck.
All those debts that Haiti has are feet on its neck. Read this.
So, now the people of the world know what’s going on and, while some countries are plotting how to divvy things up again, some countries and some people truly want to help (not save) Haiti. Maybe this time, we’ll get it right. (As an aside, CNN has a special coming up called Saving Haiti. I’m not Haitian and I don’t claim to speak for Haitian people, but I would be highly disgusted and pissed if someone, who hadn’t done right by me in the first place, now was planning to ’save’ me. Yuh gonna ’save’ me like how a butcher saves a pig? Yuh gonna ’save’ me after yuh done abuse me? We’re benevolent saviours all of a sudden? Whatever. Chupse.)
In honour of the hope of my Haitian brothers and sisters, here’s one of my all-time favourite songs Optimistic, by Sounds of Blackness
BTW, don’t forget to keep giving. I know that many people have given to Haiti’s earthquake relief, but we have to keep giving and help those who are in need. As someone said, this is a 911 call — it ain’t charity. Find out how you can help here.
Have a great Friday and a good weekend, y’all!
Doing the ‘do – Just because
Posted by: urbansista on: January 28, 2010
- In: Doing the 'do| hair
- 9 Comments
Just because my hair was looking particularly cute today and I don’t have a dang thing to do this cold January night, I’ve decided to post some pictures of my ‘do. You’ve seen this one before — I just added some hair jewellery. The same jewellery that I wore on Tuesday when I was trying to disguise my updo that was totally falling apart.
But, thankfully, it looks good today 
Check it out below…
Tomorrow, I’m thinking about doing a twist out (so much for keeping my hair in protective styles until April). On the weekend, I’m thinking of blowing it out and twisting on dry hair. It’ll show off some of the length and give me a different look. I’m hoping to keep that in for at least two weeks… we’ll see how my scalp acts 
Stay warm, folks! It’s extra cold outside.
Product review: Giovanni Direct Leave-in Conditioner, Weightless Moisture
Posted by: urbansista on: January 27, 2010
While I was in New York, I was able to get my hands on Giovanni Direct Leave-In Conditioner, Weightless Moisture. I had been searching for a good leave-in conditioner. I had been using Infusium 23 Frizzology and I HATED it.
Why?
It didn’t do anything. I would spray and spray and spray and still – the hair didn’t feel any different. Not any softer, not any stronger, not any fuller. It’s a very watery consistency and my normally dry hair just laughed at it.
(One of my friends of Chinese descent loves Infusium 23, but even she – with her super straight, super thick hair – needs something heavier in the winter. If she needs something heavier, I should have never bought Infusium because, obviously, it won’t work in my hair in any season.)
So when I was away, I was on a mission to find a really good leave-in conditioner that would really do something significant to my hair. I wanted to see a difference before I used it and after I had been using it for a while. When I saw the Giovanni leave-in at Target, I scooped it up. Here are the ingredients:
Aqua (purified water) with *rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) oil, *nettle (Uritica dioica) oil, *thyme (Thymus vulagris) oil, birch leaf (Butela alba) oil, *chamomile (Anthemis nobilus flower) oil, *clary (Salvia sclarea), *lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), *coltsfoot leaf (Tussilago farfara), *yarrow (Achillea millefolium) oil, *mallow (Malva sylvestris), *horsetail (Equistetum arvense) oil, *soybean protein (Glycine soja), cetyl alcohol (plant derived), tocopherol (vitamin E), trace minerals, citric acid (corn), sodium hydroxymethyglycinate, grapefruit seed (citrus derived).
For past six weeks, I’ve been using the Giovanni leave-in and it’s great!
I know understand the purpose of a leave-in conditioner. If I were to leave the leave-in and not use anything else in my hair, it would still be moisturized and soft to the touch. The leave-in is creamy, a medium consistency and slippery. I use a palm full and comb it through my hair with a wide tooth comb. I do like that it plays well with other products. I used the leave-in under Cantu Shea Butter Leave-in Conditioning Repair Cream, Carol’s Daughter’s Hair Milk and my super moisturizer and it’s been totally fine.
What sealed the deal for me? Last night, I co-washed my hair and I only enough leave-in for one more wash. I’m washing and styling on Saturday – last night was a desperation wash. Instead of using the last of my Giovanni leave-in, I decided to finish off my Kiss My Face Whenever Conditioner and used it as a leave it. I did that when I had my kinky twists put in in early December.
I used a palm full, slathered it through my hair and proceeded to comb yank the comb through my hair wondering, “where’s the slip?”
Slip isn’t slip until you know what real slip is. For real. My comb glide through with relative ease (I still tug every now and then because I lack enough patience to work through knots – I’m a work in progress) with Giovanni Direct Leave-in.
So, Infusium 23 out, Giovanni Direct Leave-in Conditioner, Weightless Moisture in.
Now, if someone can tell me where I can buy this in Toronto, I’d be very happy or else, I’m ordering two from well.ca.
When a good hair ‘do goes bad… – Part 2
Posted by: urbansista on: January 27, 2010
- In: Doing the 'do| hair
- 3 Comments
Good morning, y’all!
Yesterday, I was in a tizzy trying to figure out what the heck to do with my hair. I had rocked a cute twisted/flat twisted updo for about a week and the style had reached its limit. I was a hot, fuzzy mess. Some folks here and on Facebook thought I should untwist the entire thing and wear a twist out with a headband.
Great idea… in theory.
I hadn’t twisted my hair with the intention of wearing it out. I would have had all manner of textures on my head and I honestly don’t know if I would have been able to control them with a headband. Add to that, I was scared to try this style and have to go to work. If it was the weekend, I would have been willing, but not on a work day… not when I don’t know what the results will be.
Anyhoo, last night when I got home from the chiropractor, I got to work. I had planned to only wet my hair, but my scalp was looking a bit shady, so I decided to do a quick co-wash (so much for not manipulating my hair too regularly) with Herbal Essences Long Term Relationship (I’m still of two minds about LTR — it’s good, but it’s not as good as I thought it would be). I conditioned with Organix Vanilla Silk conditioner, and did two strand twists with Cantu Shea Butter Leave in Conditioning Repair Cream (I’m liking this product a lot).
I put the twists in corkscrews and went to bed after watching American Idol and Monday night’s The Bachelor (what is wrong with those chicks? I mean really? This is going to be the shortest Bachelor season yet, ’cause Jake is cutting women like no one’s business!).
This morning, I took down the corkscrews and my hair was still damp, but looking pretty good. (Sorry, no pics again — I tried taking one with my camera phone… FAIL! I look like a hotter mess than I did yesterday. I, readers, have some pride. So, no pictures for you! I’ll take a couple tonight and post them )
Hair saved! So, the moral to my tale is: know your hair! If a week is all you can get out of a style, don’t try to stretch it — unless you don’t mind looking like a mess on the street.
When a good hair ‘do goes bad…
Posted by: urbansista on: January 26, 2010
I wish I had a picture to show you.
Last week, I created a somewhat intricate style for myself. Well, it’s not that intricate, but it did take more time than normal. I have flat twists around my head and then twists that I corkscrew in the middle. Picture it, folks! It was really cute… until today.
On Saturday, when I went to a birthday party, a number of the ladies there commented on how nice my hair looked. That’s why I got greedy and said that I would stretch the style out until this week. I rocked my little updo on Sunday to a Black History Month kickoff event and I was WORKING it!
But I know my hair. It will be all happy-go-lucky until it decides that it wants something else then BAM! Hair starts looking like a hot mess.
The BAM! happened this morning. The hair is starting to look frizzy and a little limp. It’s really soft and the twists are opening up. Now, I shouldn’t complain too bitterly. My scalp is relatively happy and my hair is moisturized — these are big things especially in late January. I pinned it up as best I could and slapped on a gold chain band around it to jazz up the style. I don’ t know if I jazzed it up or if I’m just drawing attention to the sad condition of my hair.
Sigh.
I’m struggling, folks! I have no energy today to wash and style — I’d fall asleep part way through the twists — and I don’t want to wear my wig. I need help! I was thinking of wearing it as a twistout, but I have NO clue what it will look like, and that, my readers, would add even more trouble to my hair problems.
Any ideas on what I should do?
Going shampoo crazy!
Posted by: urbansista on: January 22, 2010
I think I was going a bit crazy with shampoo.
OK, so I have a rebellious scalp. When my hair was in the kinky twists, I shampooed every two weeks and my scalp was great. It was flake-free and happy. My twists have been out since mid-December and I’ve been playing around with some other protectiven styles and moisturizing and sealing my hair every day and washing my scalp with shampoo each week.
My hair was fine thanks to good conditioners, but my scalp was suffering: dry, tight, flaky and miserable — I wanted to cry. My scalp had returned to the days of coconut-laden shampoo misery. I had been doing so well!
So I decided to co-wash a couple of nights ago to add some more moisture to my scalp. I used Tresemmé Healthy Volume conditioner (I used a dang lot) and conditioned with Organix Soft & Silky Vanilla Silk conditioner (this stuff smells so yummy!). I used my Giovanni Direct leave-in and then moisturized with my super moisturizer.
(On a sidenote: when something works, stick with it. This moisturizing mix of butters including shea, mango and cocoa and oils is REALLY good for my hair — and it’s a lot cheaper to make the mix for my super dry hair than fiddle around with every product under the sun.)
I twisted up my hair and went to sleep hoping that I wouldn’t spend the night digging at my dry, brittle scalp. When I got up in the morning, the scalp was clean and flake-free! Whoo hoo! I didn’t want to get too excited because when the dry Canadian winter air hit my scalp, God only knew what I would be dealing with.
Eight hours later? Moist scalp! Yay!
What that means is: I was going crazy with the shampoo. While shampoo isn’t my enemy, I do have to use it sparingly — once a month or so. Any more often than that? Flaky city… which isn’t cute.
Haiti fundraisers in Toronto
Posted by: urbansista on: January 21, 2010
Hey folks,
A quick post letting you know of some events happening to support relief efforts in Haiti over the next few days:
All proceeds go to Unicef
L’Union Fait La Force – We See You Haiti (Thursday, January 28)
All proceeds go to the Red Cross International Fund earmarked for Haiti
Of course, tomorrow night, there will be a telethon on all major US networks starting at 8 pm. In Canada, a Canadian telethon will be on our major networks from 7 pm to 8 pm.
Keep supporting however you can.
