Hallelujah and Amen!

Armed with an arsenal of never-tried-before products recommended by one of my fave bloggers, Moptopmaven, and a brand new hair dryer that promises to do everything but kiss the ground I walk on and a new flat iron, I was ready...I was excited...to straighten my hair!

First, however, I deep conditioned under the steamer with Huetiful's Hair Masque with Moringa Oil. 

I've never seen a product, other than what comes out of my own kitchen, with moringa oil so I was super excited when I got this in the mail after submitting an Amazon review of my steamer. This masque is okay and has an overwhelming peppermint smell, but it doesn't perform well enough for me to try again. Coincidentally, I had to use almost the entire jar for just one application so sadly, this product is not going to be a repeat.

After deep conditioning, and washing and conditioning my hair, I set about Moptopmaven's hair straightening regimen. Prior to blow drying, she recommends using Fermodyl 619, Sebastian Potion 9, Frederick Fekkai Glossing Cream and Aveda Brilliant Damage Control.

I'm not sure if my hair was supposed to feel any different with this product, but it purports to help hair retain  nearly 70 percent moisture. I didn't feel a difference, so I don't know if I'll ever need to use this again.

This runny, orange goopy stuff smells funny and felt a little sticky. As a leave-in, I will give this another try since it's so light. Otherwise, I probably would never use it again. It just wasn't what I thought it was going to be.

What more can I say, but AMAZZZIIINNNGGG! The smell of this olive oil-based cream is intoxicating and truly does smooth and silken the hair. I will definitely keep a tube of this on hand.

I really enjoyed this herbal floral-scented spray which serves as a heat and UV protectant. I think this will be sticking around for a while.

Now, down to the nitty gritty-blow drying time!!! The next step in the regimen is to apply Chi Silk Infusion.

I loved this too! It smells amazing and left my hair feeling rather sleek!

Confident I was on my way to creating silky, smooth straight locks I plugged in my new hair dryer, the Infiniti Hair Designer Pro by Conair, and got down to business. Thank God I got this at a bargain price because this hair dryer left my hair in such a mess I had to pull out my old hair dryer and round brush to finish the job!

The blow dryer from hell! This thing is supposed to detangle, straighten and dry the hair in one fell swoop. Yes it dried my hair, but I ended up with more single-strand knots on the bottom two inches of my hair than I've ever had in my life! This blow dryer also has four separate tension settings and coarse-haired girls are supposed to use tension four, but all it did was rip my hair. I backed it down to tension one. The ripping stopped, but detangle it did not! DO NOT BUY THIS!

My final step was flat ironing, but that didn't go well as the blow dryer didn't work out too well. I used a cheapie I grabbed around town to flat iron and I believe it'd work for my hair, but only with the proper blow drying technique. Needless to say, about halfway through blow drying, I had to pull out my old one and my round brush to finish the job.

Now, Moptopmaven's hair is super shiny and appears to have movement from using all of the hair products previously mentioned, but I had not a lick of shine. I have my own remedies for that, but to make my straight strands last as long as possible, I finished off with Aveda's Brilliant Anti-Humectant Pomade.

OMG, I love this little jar of herbal oil pomade! It smells amazing and  so light, you can't feel it on your hair! It seemed to do the trick overnight, but perhaps I should apply some everyday as my hair got a tad poofy today. I will definitely keep this in my arsenal and will probably use this to maintain twists that are kept in for more than a week.

Overall, I'm pleased with my results, but it took me just shy of five hours to complete this process from beginning to end. The only element I think I was missing was a straightening cream, so next spring, I will give this a go and try again. For now, though, I've applied so much heat to my hair and fought so many single-strand knots, I'm going to keep my hair in twists until spring to repair the damage I know I've done. Plus, my significant other and I prefer my wild bushy curls to my straight look. I also look closer to my age with straight hair, too. LOL.