Tuesday, March 13, 2012

At home banana-avocado hair mask. Beauty on a grad school budget :)

Something I came across recently is the idea of at-home hair masks.
I have dreadfully damaged hair due mostly in part to the massive amount of heat styling I do.
I can't help it, this curly/wavy sometimes flat-sometimes frizzy mess needs to be controlled.
I exert control via heat products and lots and lots of hair spray ;)
That being said, my hair is in dire need of some tender loving care.
A key factor in my hair not receiving the love it needs is because that love....cost $$ !
And this broke grad student doesn't have a whole lot of that.
So I'm drawn to the at-home idea of do-it-yourself hair lovin.
I looked for some hints online as to good products to use and came across a number of different choices.
I decided to go what was already in my kitchen.

Ingredients for at-home hair mask:
1 Banana
1 Avocado
1 Egg
2 Tbsp Olive Oil

Helpful hints:
  • Depending on your hair length, you may only need 1/2 banana and 1/2 avocado but I have longer hair, so I used the entire banana and avocado.
  • I found it helpful to use a banana and avocado that are pretty ripe..makes them much, much easier to mash.
  • So, if you have some sort of blender or food processor I would VERY MUCH recommend using this as the banana needs to be fairly liquified. I did not have these tools, however, so I just did my best to really mash the banana up as much as I could.  What tends to happen is you will be left with bits of banana in your hair after if it is not mashed up or blended well enough. Just a thought. I survived this though, with only a few bits to pick out later.

Steps:
  1. Mash banana (either very, very well by hand or in a processor or blender) until smooth (although, again if this is by hand..there is a limit to how smooth it will actually get)
  2.  Next mash the avocado in with the banana
  3.  Add in the egg, mix well
  4.  Add the olive oil
  5.  Apply to dry hair. Leave on for 20-30 min (I went the full time, my hair really needs it!) 
  6.  Rinse with cool water
  7. Shampoo with your regular shampoo, you may want to repeat to make sure you got everything out. 
Your hair will honestly look and feel and smell so amazing! I even got compliments on how good my hair looked the next day.

The only thing I did not take into account, was my mild allergic reaction I get to bananas. They make my throat itchy. It's never been enough to warrant a stoppage on consumption, just a tiny annoyance..but I enjoy them so I just endure it and it's never caused a major problem.
What resulted from this mask is that it made my skin incredibly itchy. Much like it does to my throat, but now it was my head and then when I rinsed my hair in the shower...my skin.
So, allergies are something to consider.
Although, it had such great results on my hair.. I would likely do this again and just endure the itch :) Pain is beauty, right?
The banana could easily be left out of this also and just the avocado, egg and olive oil would be really great for your hair (or leave out the avocado if they aren't in season where you live) I like in California so we're spoiled in that way that they're always around.

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