V Day at the G House

Hi all! Wow I haven't posted to you all in a while. I miss you guys! I very suddenly moved about a half mile away, but my apartment was extremely unprepared to be moved, so it was pretty hectic. It was a good move, we like the new place a lot, and we have a yard for the dog, which is super important!

Anyway, I spent several days prior to Valentine's day tightening G's locs and putting in her Valentine's day style. We also went with yarn. Ours was a variegated yarn, pink and red. I used this yarn a long time ago on a trip to Haiti, I gave her faux yarn ponytails. There was also some rainbow variegated braided into the pink that time.

When G saw Katie's style on V, with the pink yarn hanging down with all the beads, she wanted something similar. I was happy to oblige as I miss doing the crazy fun styles! I have not yet figured out a way to "weave" in the yarn to the locs and seamlessly transition all of it into ponytails. The last time I did the yarn fall...

I hid her bun of locs at the base of the ponytail, but it never quite looked exactly right....the locs are just too thick...the base of the ponytail is just unnaturally fat. So while I initially had visions of somehow figuring out how to morph the ends of all the locs into two ponytails, it didn't work. But I am GLAD it didn't, because what she ended up with, sort of Willow-Smith-Whip-My-Hair-esque knot/buns instead of ponytails, looks SO CUTE on her.

I used the long yarn twists with beads on the end which were going to be the faux ponytails as ties onto the buns so she could have some beads dangling to swing around. We only wore those on Sunday and Monday...now she just has the knots.

So here it is...

It was really very easy! All I did was box twists....9 locs per box (or a few more or less if some needed to be incorporated) and I plain-ole TIED the yarn onto two of the locs in the box before I started. I tied it in the center of the yarn so that two ends dangled down long. So I box twisted her whole head with one strand of yarn in each box. Tying the yarn on worked just fine and was so easy.

So then, I parted her hair for two ponytails (but intentionally crossed that front twist on the right over to the other side, as you can see in the middle photo). I gathered them all together, put in my elastic, cut all the extra long ends of yarn so that it was all about two inches longer than her actual hair....I braided the ponytails as best I could (they were not long enough to braid much, but the point was to make sure all the ends stayed together) and continued to braid that extra couple inches of yarn. Then I just tucked the ends of those braids under, and captured the yarn ends under the elastic on the bottom side of the ponytail. All I did after that was tie the beaded yarn twist ropes around it and let it hang!

If your child's ponytails are longer, you could probably braid or twist and then wrap the braid around maybe once or even twice into big knots. I think it looks just fabulous with all the pink twisted in there! The knots give a bit more mature look than ponytails.

I savored every minute of doing this style, and she got LOTS of compliments. I know, I know, it's OTT, but around here, her little girlfriends think its WAY cool.

Hope your Valentine's styles came out great! Share a photo with us on facebook!