New Years Eve Do's

Little Bird's 4 knots and ponies - with curls to boot!
Little Bird asked me why I copy other peoples styles from their websites. . . well, I guess because they are so darn cute! I did use another site as an inspiration, I just discovered Piggies 'N Ponies and did a variation of her 3 knots and a pony.

I started with wet hair that I parted on a diagonal into four sections. Then in each of the sections, I divided it into two, made a knot on the front and then pulled that into a ponytail in the second section.

After it dried - I let it mostly air dry and then blow dried the last little bit, Little Bird actually let me curl her hair! She has VERY thick hair and I'm finding it hard to curl her hair with the flat iron, however, my new spiral curling iron worked great. I curled most of her hair under and spiral curled the top layer and the four pony tails.

The finished look was charming AND it stayed out of her face all night. We'll see what it looks like in the morning.

The Princess - our version of the "Curvy-Swirvy New Year's Updo"

I love that name! It was my first try and it turned out pretty good, not quite as awsome as THE MOM over at Babes in Hairland, but not bad for my first try. It'll be much better next time;-) Many thanks to my Hair Hero: The Mom at Babes in Hairland! She posted this style yesterday (you can see it here) and my princess loved it. My little one told me it goes really well with her fancy dress. I think she looks very grown up. This would really be a terrific flower girl do! At least the way THE MOM does it, like I said, my next time will be better.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day 2 Day Fancy Do

Christmas Eve: Super Fancy Do!

I didn't take pictures of all the steps but I will explain as best I can:

After washing her hair I put mouse in it. Honestly, I am still learning all my hair products and in a process of experimentation, but the mouse seemed to work well.

I divided the front of the hair that I wanted to be the hair headband and I clipped it out of the way. After I did the upside down french braid I worked on these - I will explain in better detail farther down.


I then had my princess lay face down on the bed with her head hanging over the side. You can see step by step directions of this at Its a Girl Thing blog here. Her hair was damp and I french braided it from the neck up to the crown of her head. My first try of this actually turned out better than this day - come to think of it, the upside down french braid might have been overkill - but I had an idea in my head. . .

Then I put an elastic around the end of the french braid right at the head and left all the hair hanging down. I clipped it out of the way so I could work on the hair headband.

First I made the side part and another part about an inch away. This is where I made the three little braids. We did this a few weeks ago and the princess LOVED it. She wore those braids for 3 days!

I put in gel and made sure her hair was wet as I combed in smooth over the sides of her head and behind her ears. I attached both sides just under her right ear with a small elastic. The braids and their elastics were in that little pony but that looked fine.

Next I worked on a partial flower bun. I used half of the hair in the ponytail on the top of her head and began making loops. I used the flat iron to smooth out the hair. My loops were exaggerated and very large. I was going for an over the top hairdo for this day. I will say that the flower bun didn't make it all the way until midnight, but it lasted most of the evening. I secured the loops with bobby pins. My little one has extremely long hair although not especially thick, so I reused some of the hair to make more loops and I left some of it to curl down the side.

We got to try out our new spiral curling iron - it worked really well!

I finished everything off by bobby pinning in some fun silver glittered Christmas decorations that I picket out to go with my little one's dress and I made the ribbon with some scrap ribbon that came off a bouquet of flowers I bought last week and another decoration I hot glued on.

All in all I had one happy little princess who felt like the belle of the ball!
Day 2: Fancy Do

On Christmas we were all exhausted from our night before. We didn't get home until after 1:00 a.m. and the last thing I wanted to do this day was spend a long time on another fancy do - so we recycled!

This picture was taken after our little one had already been running around the house with cousins for over an hour.

The do:

I redid the hair headband, wetting it down, recombing and fastening it with an elastic near her ear again.

Then I took out the upside down french braid and brushed it out. I took the top section and flat ironed it, it was really bumpy from the night before. You can't see our little one's poof - she'd already been running around with cousins for an hour by this time, but I back combed her hair into a poof and smoothed the freshly flat ironed hair over it. It was also weighed down by the large bow from the night before.
I did slightly more haphazard ringlets in her hair this evening and called it terrific!

Day 1 & 2 - If you use enough hairspray it works for both;-)

The picture above is from Day 1 and the bottom picture is from Day 2 after an hour running through the house with cousins. I LOVE this style. Also, my little bird has shoulder length hair - this is a fabulous style for short hair!

I did this style for my oldest when she was in a play earlier this month. I got the style from a favorite hair blog of mine: Girly Do's by Jenn, and you can see the step by step directions here.

I use four pony tails instead of the three shown in Jenn's blog and I section it off the night before and put it in curlers while it's still damp. This turned out much better than my first and second tries:

The ribbon is probably two yards long and I'm sure I used over 40 bobby pins. I didn't put the flowers in for Christmas. On Christmas I made the loops bigger - especially in the front, I liked how it looked much better.

See - practice makes perfect better!