Big Hair Days - How I Get to 3 Day Hair

So I've decided for the rest of the summer to wear my hair big, which has kept my routine pretty simple for the last couple of weeks. I was stuck in a styling rut after my wedding and since I was tired of buns and the weather has cooled down significantly, I decided to just let my hair "do what it does."

I've been washing my hair twice a week and using either conditioner or Eco-Styler gel as a leave-in, then I put my hair into 4-6 braids. Because I have so much hair, it's usually not dry by the morning so on Day 1, I have a shrunken curly look:

At night, I put my hair back in the 4-6 braids, sometimes with conditioner if I want some definition, and wake up and fluff in the morning so that Day 2 hair looks something like this:

By Day 3, my  hair is pretty stretched out and it's when my hair is at it's largest. Again, I'm braiding the night before then fluffing out my hair to get it as big as I feel like for the day:

Yesterday's Hair

Day 3 (or 4) is when I wash and condition and do the same thing all over again. I love how easy this is for me and I've been getting so many compliments at work from all types of people (I'm one of four black women at my job and the only natural). Of course I do get the "omg did you get a haircut" thing when my hair is wet and appears shorter, and after a while I did get annoyed. I finally decided to tell one of my co-workers who asked, that I have the ability to control the length of my hair using a Jedi Mind Trick - it at least made him laugh and now it's a running joke.