2016 HAIR CHRONICLES & HAIR GOALS FOR 2017

Hey guys!! Happy New Year!! 2016 was a good year but I hope 2017 will be our best year yet.

I decided to do this post a few weeks ago, when I was looking through some of my old pictures and I saw this picture of my hair from November 2015. 

For a while, I had been feeling like I wasn't retaining much length but seeing the picture confirmed it for me.

This was also in November 2015. Now, my hair is just close to my upper lip when I pull it :'(.

I basically want to talk about the styles I had my hair in in 2016, and what I think I did wrong. 

JANUARY 2016

I started off the year with goals of having healthy hair and retaining 5 inches of growth lol. I mostly had my hair in twists or braids when at home, and had it in a puff when I went out. 

FEBRUARY

These were my first braids for the year. I had them for about a month before I took them out.

MARCH 

I gave my hair a break for about a month and I put it in mini twists for about 2 of those weeks.

APRIL

In April, I did my 2nd braids of the year. I was feeling proud of myself for getting braids done every 2 months as opposed to every month like I used to. I really loved these purple braids. You can check out more pictures of them here. 

This was when I tried bantu knots. You can read all about that here.

MAY 

My 3rd braids of the year..

JUNE 

I decided to try something different from normal box braids and I gave crochet braids a shot. After a few days with them, I had to take them out because the woman that did them clearly didn't want me to have any hair left. 

Okay I'm exaggerating but it was really bad. If you haven't read about that experience, you can read about it here.

JULY & AUGUST

I got braids done twice in July & August.

SEPTEMBER

My first time doing Ghana weaving and actually liking it. I had this style for 2 weeks. I've been thinking of trying it again but it made my hair feel really dry.

OCTOBER & NOVEMBER 

In October my hair was in a wig and in November, it was back in braids. 

DECEMBER 

Crochet Braids

You can read about my 2nd attempt at crochet braids here.

My plan going into 2016 was to do braids less. I still got braids done 6 times but that isn't really much compared to how often I used to get braids done. 

So, What Did I Do Wrong? 

I think one thing that caused a lot of breakage for me was dry combing *covers face*. Everyone knows that you're not supposed to comb your hair dry. A lot of naturals don't even comb their hair  at all (which I tried to do at the beginning of the year).

Whenever my hair was out and I was going out, I had it in a puff and I would comb it out a bit without spritzing it because I didn't want it to shrink too much.

I also don't think I took my time to detangle my hair whenever I was taking out my braids.

The last thing I noticed after getting braids done was that the hair stylist was also trimming the ends of my natural hair. She first denied it when I asked her till I asked again.Then, she said she wanted it to be neat *sigh* (I don't know where I always find these people). At that point I was tired and told her to stop because I didn't care if it wasn't neat. 

Hair Goals for 2017

One of my goals is for my hair to first of all get to where it used to be a year ago. I also want to retain at least 4 inches of hair growth. 

I'm definitely going to take better care of my hair so I'll stop getting sad looking at old pictures of my hair. This means no combs, no styling of my hair when it's dry and being careful when detangling.

Wish me luck guys! I hope in December I won't come back and start lamenting again lol.

Have a wonderful year!!

How did you do hair-wise in 2016? Any hair goals for 2017?

Oyime :)