Twist Update, Hair Washing Experiment, and A NEW 'Do!

Hold on to your seats everyone this post is full of a bunch of this, that and the other thing!  I hope you can follow me!

First up:  A few pics of some or the variations we did with V's twist style.  The twists did start getting raggedy looking sooner than I would have liked, but after we threw them up in some ponytails and pigtails they looked plenty good enough to keep for another week or two!

I already showed you this, but the pic up above is of the twists with just a few added barrettes.  The next thing we did was pull everything back into a single ponytail.  Simple. Cute. Summerish.

You can kind of tell in those pictures that V was sporting her twisty bangs on the left side of her forehead again, I don't know why, but the way her hair is growing it just works well to only do the bangs on that one side and I think it is cute!  Anyway, when I switched her hair to pigtails those bangs were looking kinda frumpy and I had already redone them once.  Instead of redoing them again, I just did a twist out, and then cornrowed the little twistes together.  It was super fast, required no comb and looked great!  I didn't even add beads or anything to the end I just grabbed a small barrette and clipped it back.

This is one of those styles that I think looked cuter in person than in the pictures!  I also tried to put the twists into 3 sections, but it just didn't look right.

Next Topic:  We still have another week before the kids go back to school here in Michigan.  So even though it was time to take these twists out I didn't want to do V's back to school hair style just yet.  Since her hair was in these smallish twists and I knew we would be washing it again in a week I decided this was the PERFECT time to try out a new hair washing technique!

I have been reading for a long time about ways that you can wash hair in sections, but I never really looked into it.  More recently it has been popping up for me here and there while exploring the internet and I started to think that maybe there was an easier way than my old method!  If you have ever watched my "Our Hair Routine" video you know that I follow this process:  1) remove current style  2) detangle hair one section at a time and put each section into a big twist before moving on to the next section  3) take out large twists and wash hair  4) separate hair into 4 large sections and detangle again 5) begin new style.  This takes a LONG time!  I have tried to skip steps before but her hair ended up so tangled that it took me just as long to clean up my mess!  I think I have realized that I was skipping the wrong steps!

I believe it was on Happy Girl Hair that I recently read of this quick method:  1) wash hair while still in current style  2) take out style  3) detangle hair  4) begin new style.  That sounded much faster!  But I believe there are two important elements that need to be in place to use this method.  1} The hair should be in a style that allows for a lot of access to the scalp when washing, for instance, the small twists that V just had.  2}  Because I tend to keep styles in for about 4 weeks at a time I wouldn't want to use this method after 4 weeks of no washing followed by another 4 weeks of no washing.  In this case, yes, her twists had been in for 4 weeks, but I knew I would be washing her hair again in a week, so I figured it was ok if we didn't get as deep of a clean this time around.  If you are someone who does hair on a weekly basis than this method could be great for you!  I just wouldn't do it week after week because you can't be sure you are getting the hair and scalp as thoroughly clean this way.

Well, it worked for us and saved us a bunch of time.  I finally bought that new SHOWER HEAD that Steph insisted I needed and she was right!  I was able to get a super good rinsing of V's twists with the new hand held sprayer!  And when I went to take out the twists and detangle her hair it felt clean to me!  I have been experimenting with a few other washing techniques lately in addition to this one, but I will have to share those at another time.

And Last but not Least:  We needed a good temporary style to get V through the next week, so I decided to do some quick, big, fat cornrows into a ponytail.  There are 7 cornrows total plus the one across her forehead.  It took me just over an hour to do, and that is really fast in my book!  This was also the perfect style to finally try out our homemade Big Giant Ponies that we cut off of our old worn out ballies!  And they worked GREAT!

Since I hadn't cut up all my ballies I still had some matching ones left to secure around the ponytail!  Doesn't it look great?!  They are very noisy and V has been enjoying them a lot!

Well, that is it for today!  I am looking forward to next weekend when I steal that adorable pigtail style I showed you from one of our readers!  Can't wait to show you the finished look!  And I am SO ready for my kids to go back to school!

How about you?  Did your kids already go back?  Did you do a fun new style to commemorate the event?

Katie