After doing some "research" I have decided to use braids to grow out my hair. Braids will allow me to experience length until my own natural hair is long enough. I found a technique on Youtube that works well with my hair because of the length. The video below shows the method that I used. The video is by Jacenta1. Basically you split your own hair and twist each piece around the synthetic hair to the right. Then you twist the two pieces in the opposite direction.
I did my braids on March 3, 2012 and that stayed in a week. I used one bag of hair. I did not take pictures. I took them down and washed my hair and redid the braids on March 11, 2012. I did not have time to curl the ends Sunday so I just wore it up in a bun on Sunday and Monday. Monday night I curled some pieces in the back and the front. Today I curled the remaining pieces. I used rod rollers and boiling water to curl the ends. A curling iron did not work, it only melted the hair. I worked really hard to be sure that the twists were not too tight and that I used a decent amount of hair in each twist to prevent damage to my own hair.
Here is the end result.