Catching up after being MIA

Well it seems like it's been forever since I posted . . . going back to work after #3 has been busy, busy, busy and, well, I guess we've been in rather a rut.  My littest - Bean, has just grown her hair long enough for pigtails - a move up from the waterspout! 

 My middle princess, rarely wants me to tug at her hair any longer.  Once and a while I make her sit still and do something - usually it's just a set of messy buns.  I love the ones in this picture because they were really coming out of the buns in such a cute way!  We put some cute alligator clips in and a bobby pin or two and let it go how it wanted.

  Now Little Bird - now called Sport is heading toward her teens at lightening speed and is becoming much more interested in her beauty routine!  She's practicing doing some of her own do's, but lets me play as well. 

 We've gotten pretty good at the front frech braid headband and try new modifications all the time.  This one was inspired by a tutorial I saw on pinterest. http://pinterest.com/pin/201958364509898007/

I tried this three bun do on me, and although my hair is as long as I think it's ever been, it's much thinner than pre-kids and doesn't look anything like this!  I didn't get pictures and I won't try it again unless I add a hairpiece.

This picture doesn't actually show how long my hair is - but I like it.  My hair is highlighted and the texture has changed so that I can actually wear it down and it says out of my face now - I don't know if it's the highlighting or the gray hair. . . either way - it's a nice bonus!

Well hopefully I'll be back to post soon.  I'd like to try some styles I've discovered on pinterest and show off some of my new hairpieces - I even made one myself!

See you soon!

Sunday Morning 'Dos

I'm feeling the pull to get back into hair blogging, even with the new baby AND the carpal tunnel - ouch! But last Sunday I did get in a little cuteness!

The Tiara

I borrowed this from a favorite website, Shaunell's Hair and it turned out great - not perfect, but lovely all the same. We even got a couple of days out of it, thanks to is being created with messy buns. I still don't have the hang of Shaunell's way of making stuffed buns, I still need lots of bobby pins, but it still looked lovely and my little princess was happy to show it off:

The Grecian: A Style for your "big" girls

Little Bird, my big girl, is in 5th grade now. She doesn't mind a french

braid and actually prefers a messy bun, but I really wanted a little variety that she wouldn't totally balk at. This was my solution. I created a simple headband followed by a messy bun.

Her hair is just long enough now to make the headband at the nape of the neck and the end tie into the big ponytail. Her hair is so incredibly thick that I find it challenging to secure it, but fortunately, there is a curl on the underside so we left a few tendrils hanging in semi ringlets. On school days I don't usually bother with bobby pins, they don't usually stay in her hair that well, but this morning I wanted to tame the messy bun some and about half of the pins stayed in the whole day. Still for a quick and easy style, I think it looks great on my big girl.

Daddy Daughter Dance

These pictures are from last May and I'm finally posting them:

Little Bird was actually very cooperative. We washed and dried her very thick hair, using a round brush to straighten it and put a curl at the end. It has natural curls on the underside and can be very unruly. After pulling it back into small ponytails we put some curls in using the spiral curing iron.

Princess wanted a fancy updo - of course! We pulled it back into a ponytail. Then we put most of it up into a flower bun. The remaining hair and ends from the flower bun were curled with the spiral curling iron. The tiara and flower were the finishing touches. The flower made it through the night, the tiara did not!

Just for kicks I thought I'd share our little Dancing Queen doing her thing! We've always said she dances to the tune of her own orchestra.

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!

Fancy Updo for a Special Occasion

We had time today and I wanted to see how my princess’s hair looked in an awesome style first seen on The Princess and her Hair blog that you can check out here. My little one has very long hair but it isn’t extremely thick – although closer to her scalp it is finally thickening - a good sign as she is six now. I decided that I’d do a few things different and being new at hair I’d need some practice making it look alright. I began by washing and conditioning her hair.

We only wash her hair about 2 times a week right now. Unless I’m doing something really special I don’t always put that much product in her hair and it doesn’t seem to need washing more often - especially as our house is so dry.

I made a pony tail in the middle of her head trying my best to leave an even ring of hair all the way around. I clipped it out of my way.

Then I put sections into pony tails. I didn’t do anything fancy here, just tried to make them pretty even all the way around her head. Her hair is pretty long so I kept wrapping the mini pony tails around her bun to keep them out of the way.

Then I split the ponies and made the twist braids. I wasn’t sure how far to braid so each of my twist braids ended up being different lengths.

They weren’t as tight as I’d like them, but I was able to fix that when I put them in the big ponytail. To hold them in the right positions, I bobby pinned them down until I had the elastic secured.

Then I took all of the ends of the twist braids and pulled them together and bobby pinned them out of the way.

Next I started making loops as I would in making a flower bun. I only worked on the top half of the flower. I looped each section of hair only once and left the rest of the hair to hang down.

Then I let the ends dry and curled them with a flat iron. I covered up the ends of the twist braids with a flower clip.
I caught her admiring herself in the mirror! Too cute!

Thursday Day #4 - I did it!

First let me begin by sharing with you that #1 I am new to the hair obsessed club and still learning from my "Hair Heroes" and #2 I am a working mom (who by the way is NOT a morning person!!!)

My Goal for the Week - How many days can I reuse/recycle the hairstyle ?!?!

Day #4

I reached my goal. I actually like Day #4's style on Princess better than Day #3.

Category: 4th Day ‘Do
Time: 8-12 minutes in the morning
Needed: braids from the nights before, brush, comb, hairspray, little clips & flower bobby pins (optional)

Last night I cut out all of the elastics out of the twist braids but I didn't brush out her hair. This morning I brushed out her hair. It gave her hair a lot of body. Our Princess doesn't have her sister's hair. It is much thinner and doesn't have the body her sister has. It does, however, hold a curl or wave pretty good and it is very long.

I did a french twist. It was a bit loose - I was running really late this morning so I wasn't able to spend the time I wanted on it. I twisted in down to the bottom, about where a middle part would be and then continued to twist the hair. Then I wrapped the piece around her head and bobby pinned it just past the top.

I repeated the french twist on the other side and wrapped the end around as well.


I used a few clear clips near the top - like I said I was running late and I couldn't find my bobby pin stash - they were next to my computer instead of in my bathroom! I did add some bobby pins and then embellished with a few of Little Bird's flower topped bobby pins that I had made to go with her fairy costume. I thought it looked soft and cute. It was a little lopsided. Hopefully the next time I try it I have more time, but overall it was a very cute style.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get to finish what I wanted to add to this post as well as yesterday. Good night!