G Gets Her Curl On!

From porcupine.....

To flower girl!

It's G's first wedding gig, and she was SO excited. It was a small one, but she took her flower girl and ringbearer duties seriously. We decided for this occasion we needed CURLS! This is the first time we have curled all her hair using the Soft Spikes. Putting them in was incredibly easy. You might remember Katie's review of Soft Spikes, and her video. I didn't want to take hours to put them in so I put about 4 to 6 locs in each spike. I knew that they would result in a big shrinkage in hair length, so I figured we would want the curls large so we'd get some of the length back. We put them all in during one movie, and I finished the several leftover after she went to bed.

We spritzed each set of locs with Taliah Waajid's Mist Bodifier with some high quality extra virgin olive oil added, before rolling them, so they'd be rolled damp. She had no trouble at all going to sleep with these in. They really are soft! We kept them in for most of the morning, just to make SURE the dampness was dry. Then when we took them out, those suckers were CURLY!

When G initially felt them with her hands she was thrilled. When she saw how short her hair now was in the mirror, she was not so thrilled! She decided she looked like a boy. Not exactly the feeling I wanted her to have for her first wedding experience! It took me awhile to get the style just right, and I think I adjusted and re-did so much that I pulled some of the curls out a bit too much, but in order to get some length back we ended up more with the wavy and tousled look. I also had an IDEA of how I was actually going to style it, but I manipulated it a couple ways before I settled on something. Initially I was going to do an updo in the back, like a french twist, and leave the curls all spilling around the top, but she didn't want that, she wanted length. So once I undid the updo, that had stretched some of the curl out. She wound up happy with the end result though. We utilized the sparkly headbands I bought, and a couple of glittery hairpins. I knew I had to stop messing with it or we'd lose more boing in those curls!

I had just finished tightening her locs the night before, and since I swept some of her locs up to put in the circular crystal pins you can see on top, it caused some of her parts to show. I think the flash made it more noticeable than it really was.

All in all, she was adored at the wedding and everyone loved her dress and her hair. I have to give a shout out to this seller on Amazon.com for the dress, because we looked at about 6 stores to find just a simple but dressy lavender or light blue dress to use (this was a simple wedding as you can see from the bride's dress above) and could find NOTHING. Pastels are not in right now and we couldn't even find anything in a dressy style. This dress was very simple, was not too satiny, just polyester, but for the price, I was very pleased. It fit perfectly. The edges were not turned under to be finished, as you can see when you zoom in on the photo at Amazon, but for basically a single-occasion dress, for getting the exact right color, degree of dressiness, and flair, I couldn't have been happier.

So, the Soft Spikes worked GREAT to curl her locs. I think once her locs are longer and curling them won't result in them being "boy-length" then we could just curl, finger comb them out, and go. We highly recommend the Soft Spikes!

Peace out!

A G Style Worth Posting About :)

SHE LIVES! Hi everyone. Yes it has been awhile. It's just been so crazy and I have been doing not much with G's hair other than some kind of 'tails or just leaving it down (ahhhhh the ease of locs!). She was also was way overdue for tightening and it just seemed to take me forever to get them all done this time.

All the second grade classes at G's school had a little performance last week, the theme was "It's a Bug's Life," and all the songs were, you guessed it, bug or garden related. So, how could I pass up that opportunity to use the Snapaholics butterfly beads with flower snaps on the ends?! I couldn't! I didn't!

It's always a dilemma for me to hang especially large hole beads on her locs, because I feel like I should twist or braid the locs in order to make them thicker to fit into the large hole. I wasn't sure what I was gong to do until I started cornrowing the locs at the front....the thing now is that the locs are fairly thick once you cornrow a bunch of them, and though I could cram the beads on there, they won't "hang" well, they would be too stiff. So once I cornrowed all the front, I just started fooling around with what I was going to do with the resulting braids, and I really liked the result, especially how long it makes her locs look....stretched out! Here it is:

So all I did, since I had six cornrows, with a part in the middle, is to braid the braids together that I got from doing the six cornrows. There was just enough to do one or two stitches of braid, then I gathered it together, barely, and I put four butterfly beads on a plain elastic (check back here for how to do this). Then I just randomly installed beads and snaps on some of her locs, tried to spread them out evenly. The beads are SO bright, which went along with her crazy green shirt, and she was all ready to perform at school!

I've done lots of beaded styles over the years but honestly against the black hair I still ADORE the bright rainbow look :)

 

How the Girls Move

Hello everyone! Wow have things been nuts for me lately. I am on a committee at church that is responsible for social service work for the kids, PLUS the church kid's worship service decided to raise money for Haiti this year so I have been kind of heading that up. It's really rewarding though, you can read our blog about it....we have raised $3346 so far, and we have till the end of June to maybe even get to $4000! If you want to donate a buck or two while you are there, click on the red heart in the sidebar! :)

So annnyyyyway, over at the Yahoo Adoption Hair and Skin Care Group, we were talking about relaxers and texturizers, a subject that gets brought up now and then. Some folks do, some don't,  some are considering, some get talked out of it, some want to know the difference between the two, and what it all means for our kids' hair. As usual, I chime in with "hey, locs are a great alternative to relaxing if the issue is a child who hates having hair combed, or if you are a family constantly in a time crunch, or just want a more free type of hairstyle." That is more or less my usual spiel. I love G's locs and I LOVE LOVE that I never had to relax her hair but yet we still have such an easier time with her hair, and it's much more flexible and less time-consuming. And no combing, of course!

So we were at the dog park today kicking around the soccer ball, and I grabbed my iPhone and took a quick video of her being silly with me, just so you can see how locs move and behave, in case you are considering them. Hers are more or less microlocs, I'd say the fattest one she has is still smaller than the diameter of a pencil. She has had them for almost 3 years, and I installed and maintain them myself. I took this video today because her locs are just flyin' free, she has nothing in them at all. This is just "her girls" being themselves.

And yeah, we roughhouse a lot! She thinks it's hysterical when instead of playing "clean" I just grab her arm and spin her out of the way or bump her to the ground in order to get the ball. :) She's fun!

Oh and we had a great laugh later when I pointed out that I said something dumb....."Hey, there's no kicking in soccer!" She got major mileage out of that one....

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!

Sidewinders This Past Holiday!

Hello everyone! I thought I would share with you all what we did with G's hair over the holiday and into 2011. I had a lot of fun with the versatility of the Sidewinders this year.

I flat twisted her bangs way over to the side (three rows) and did a mix of Sidewinder Christmas colors plus clear. Then on the opposite side I made two sections of twists and put more Sidewinders on, but these I included in a big ponytail. Her chosen outfit this year was just red and white, which of course was my cue to find the glitziest green hair ribbon I could...which I did (she still has green sparkles in her hair!)

Then, a few days later, we went to our first Kwanzaa celebration with our African Drum and Dance Group, and I swapped out the clear Sidewinders for some black (Kwanzaa colors are black, green, and red).

Next, on Dec. 30, we met up with all our cousins and aunts and uncles on my Dad's side of the family in San Francisco. G chose her soft pink pullover, and quick as a whip I changed the Kwanzaa colored Sidewinders for three shades of light and hot pink, red, and ivory.!

I had to include the above photo because the outfit was G's Christmas gift from my Aunt Lee, and is SO darling I can hardly stand it. She doesn't usually have such tailored-looking clothes, but I just LOVE this...I'll have to seek out more like this. Thanks Auntie!

Then finally, we swapped colors for back-to-school to match her school color!

Last but not least, we decided to go completely 90's (I didn't know just how 90's it was till she put on the flashdance sweater LOL) and do a twistout. I ended up putting the bangs in Soft Spikes that night for some even more serious waves. She is still rocking this style today.

So that's my kid this past holiday! Hope yours was great, and if you have any styles that you believe rocked the holiday, please send us some pix!  We would love to do a post of all your best holiday hair.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!

Steph, Katie and the kids would like to wish you ALL a
VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!


We also want to say thank you to all of our loyal readers and faithful fans.  You have made the launch and running of this blog for the last 6 months so much fun!  We have enjoyed getting to know you, we have loved the ideas you have shared, and we have been blessed by your kind comments.

Our prayer is that this Christmas you will be surrounded by the love of your family and have plenty of time to stop and enjoy some special moments with your precious children.

Lastly, the kids themselves wanted to get in on sending you some Christmas love, so here they are:

Katie & Steph

She let me do Christmas Hair!

As I mentioned before, I am definitely losing control over G's hair. She has her own ideas and it won't be long until I can't do the colorful bling anymore, I fear. But, I let her know a bit ago that I would be doing Christmas hair, and this evening she let me go for it :) I feel blessed!!!

Please nevermind the Sponge Bob pajamas. I wanted to get a photo of this before sending her to bed.

We used Sidewinders and it was HER idea to mix up the colors! I love it!

I used Snapaholics #3 black flower snaps on on a few locs in each sidewinder to hold them on. Basically this is just three flat twists from a right-side part over to the left. Then I twisted the two sections on the right side of her head and put more sidewinders on and gathered everything back into a ponytail, and used clear star ballies (also on Snapaholics).

Thankfully, G LOVES IT! I think this will stay in thru Christmas. I think I will go back in and lower the three sidewinders so there is not quite so much of the locs coming thru the bottom.

I'm just so excited that we have blingy hair yet again! I will post more photos when she has her holiday outfit on. Still gotta go and get her one LOL.

We hope you will send us pix of your holiday hair! We will do a post of all your photos!

Tidbit Tuesday

DID YOU KNOW???

Today I let G handle Tidbit Tuesday. It only took us about 6 takes to get it...plus it was way past her bedtime...hence the tangents and eye-rubbing.

She wants to talk to you all about STYLE for just a minute :) And some random comment about me warning against using hot oil on the head. I don't remember saying that, but....ok...DON'T use hot oil on the head. Unless it's not-so-hot. :)



It's true! Life got MUCH easier during our adjustment time when I stopped trying to control the clothing. When she was 4+ we would have battles in the morning about her not wanting to wear what I picked out, and one day I thought "why am I doing this?" The child has clothes on either way. She is happy with her choices. Let's call it good and go from there!

Do you have a headstrong child who wants to choose his or her own fashion, even at a young age? Do you let him or her? Even if the end result makes you slap your forehead?

Tidbit, uh, Wednesday - I'm About to Lose Control and I DEFINITELY Don't Think I Like It!

DID YOU KNOW???

This morning, G insisted. INSISTED. That she wear HER ponytails as installed by HER, without any adjusting from me, to school. This crummy iphone photo doesn't do it justice.

It was all I could do to not force her to sit down while I redid the style. I was beside myself! Letting her walk out that door and get out of the car with her very lopsided, messy, horribly parted, locs hangin' out, lumpy low ponytails, was excruciating. I am praying it was just a one-time thing. I don't think I can bear losing Mommy-control of her hair yet, she's only 7!!!

Of course I could observe myself objectively being ridiculous for this behavior. I mean, eventually the child will be able to control her own hair that grows out of her own head. But, I am just not ready.

This girl has been choosing her own clothes, with only minimal input from me, since about age 4.5 or so. I just figured, during that early adjustment time, we were having enough head-butting. Head-butting about clothing was just not worth it.  So, she pretty much went out of the house looking however she wanted to. But she never cared that I had control from the neck up. I don't think it much occurred to her that she could say "NO I don't care for that hairstyle much, I don't want it. I won't be havin' it" until fairly recently. Because it has dawned on her that she can mess with her hair the very moment I drop her off at school and there's nothing I can do about it. So there have been more than a few times when I have picked her up from after-school care and clips have been removed and hair has been, like TIED to itself, in a bow-kind of thing, in the back, which I guess she thinks looks hip. When I see it I kind of just tilt my head to the side like Rain Man, mumble "Hi Shug how was your day poo, alrighty then" and just make a casual beeline for the head and straighten up the hair.

Is there something wrong with me?

Maintaining her hair is one of my joys. Styling it the way I KNOW it looks cute is like ambrosia to me. I love hair ballies. I love accessories...I mean not all overdone (anymore), but a couple here and there. Having her stick her hands on her head and block access to her hair while I'm about to put in an adorable clip or give her ponytails, because she is not in the MOOD for the style that day, is....well...

Because, darn her, she now has discovered that she has the right to have input as to her own appearance. Whenever she feels like it.

But I'm not ready!

There are so many styles left untried, bead mixes left unbeaded, ponies left untailed. But just coming up with cool ideas and then making them reality on her loc'd little head at my discretion has become pretty much a thing of the past. I have always ASKED her if she'd like me to do X style, but the answer up till recently has always been "YEAH!!!"

Don't get me wrong, it's not like this all the time. But this morning she was SO INSISTENT on those wacky ponytails (and it wasn't even crazy hair day!) I feel like I had a glimpse of fashion issues to come.

Sigh. I guess that is what we get when we raise our kids to be independent freethinkers. We get independent freethinkers!

I just wish there was a little on/off switch. :)

How have you handled letting go of total control over styling your young child's hair? Do you let them put in their own styles and go out sometimes? Is it painful? ;-)

Braided Yarn Ponytails

G has been asking and asking for a new ponytail and I FINALLY got to finishing it! And JUST in time for her to now have long hair so she can sing "Whip My Hair" and "whip it real hard!" See the end of the video for a sample ;-)

 

The video walks you through how to install the ponytail once you have all the yarn braids done. To create the ponytail, basically, all you do is get your favorite yarn (it's most fun when you just let your child choose the color scheme. If you don't want it to be too insanely colored, choose black or very dark brown and then let your child choose what the accent color will be), decide how long you want the ponytail to be, then cut your strands TWICE as long (you'll be doubling it over). I try to vary the lengths of the braids a bit so that it hangs like a real ponytail (which would not have all strands the exact same length), Then braid away! Six strand braids work best, I think, otherwise you'll be braiding till you fall over. Nine would be ok too, they'll be a little thicker. I put some beads on the ends for weight, then just knot the yarn below the last bead. I leave some loose yarn hanging down like real hair would be. Once the ends of the ponytail start to get a little raggy at the ends of the strands of yarn, then you have some excess to trim off.

So, just make enough braids to suit your liking, till the ponytail is as full as you want it. If you are doing a ponytail on each side, like this:

make sure you do some extra.

Remember, though, all the braids will be folded over when you install them...

I will now let the video do the rest of the talking!

What Language Is That?

I could NOT resist posting this video of G with her new favorite song....7 year old plus headphones plus Willow Smith song = "Whip My Hair" in an alien language. I got to hear this thru about 5 times. The hardest part was not jiggling the camera because I was laughing the whole time.

Ok, I admit it. After watching this, I DID kinda Whip My Hair!

I'm sure a whole lotta people have a whole lotta opinions on Willow Smith's debut video, "Whip My Hair." She's 9. If you have been living under a rock since Monday, when it came out, here it is for you:



Personally, I think the thing rocks, I've watched it about a dozen times, and it makes me want to dance and do all her little saucy moves in the mirror. And yes, I'm 41! Till now, I haven't found a catchy tune that I wanted to play over and over and over again since Beyonce's "Single Ladies." Unfortunately, I cannot in good faith share many of the lyrics of Single Ladies (at least not the video) with G. As to which dance moves I look more hysterical doing, Willow's or Beyonce's, no one will ever know, except me and the mirror!

I love that Willow is not dressed in any kind of a sexual way. She has her fashion grind goin' on, but is not wearing anything that a 9-year-old ought not wear (I'm not sure if rhinestone lip-stickers are "ought not" or just kinda eyeroll-worthy). She sings about being herself, not paying attention to the haters out there, how she's gonna keep on keepin' on, and that no one whips it like she does. Yeah I'd probably agree! The darn thing has infected my mojo and all night I couldn't wait to show it to G.

G watched it this evening and it only took about 20 seconds for G to start singing "I whip my HAIR back and forth...!" I love that she saw a girl that looked like her, that was her age, being confident and shaking her braids around, and having big fat zulu knots on the top of her head. I love that there were all different kinds of people and hair whipping around in the video. And I sure hope whatever new songs Willow comes out with to go on her first album are this fun, catchy, and appropriate. This would be a peer role model for G that I would wholeheartedly support. I think as long as Will and Jada don't allow Willow to start singing about things that are way beyond her years, and keep the videos appropriate and fun, we have a winner here.

Here is what G had to say about Whip My Hair:

It's so RADICAL! (is this word back in style??) I like how you can dance to it, and that they have crazy hair. And that you should be yourself (I told her what Willow said the song was about) and just shake 'em off, shake 'em off.... (she shakes it off like Willow)

I explained to her what "haters" are and she agreed that haters should be whipped off and shaken off like paint on your hair. She loved it when Willow's hair painted the walls, which it looked like they actually did for the video!

RADICAL!

And before we left the house she declared she wanted to watch it again tonight because it was

"...soooo BUMPY!"

Which is good, I think :)

G School Picture Day!

Today is school picture day for Miss G! I didn't really know what I was going to do  for sure until Wednesday night. Last year we did ponytails with some beads and snaps:

So I knew I could not do ponytails again!

Anyway...our new Full House dvds came from Netflix, and our exchange student

(who just recently asked to stay with us for a whole year instead of just 6 weeks..yay!)  has decided that she LOVVVEEEESSSSS Full House. So everyone plopped down with homemade pizza to watch. So this was my chance! I decided I wanted to do this knotted tiara style again for school photos:

but when i made the knots on Wednesday night, I did not put them back quite as far. So instead of the tiara being right at the top-back side of her head, they were more on TOP of her head. She was not wild about this, and I didn't like it as well either. Since we are in soccer season right now and I am somehow, some way, inexplicably head coaching, I knew I would not have time on Thursday night  after practice to redo all of the cornrows and knots. I had to think fast. So for Thursday I sent her to school WITH the knots, but instead of leaving the back of her hair down,  which would have accentuated the "knots popping out of the top of your head" thing, I did "messy" half pulled through ponytails up high behind the knots. It was a very formal look, a definite updo. She still was not liking it that much and didn't want to go to school with it. I had put a transparent mini ballie around each knot (instead of a big bead on the tail like in the above photos) so we had the kind of rainbow tiara thing going on. However, the magic happened when I told her that wow, this was like a very FLOWER GIRL kind of hairstyle. Ohhhhh my goodness. That changed everything. As soon as the hairdo was in any way associated with a wedding, she was all over it. Then I also bet her a dollar that someone would compliment her hair, since she has never worn a full updo before. I told her she had to be honest and tell me if she got a compliment, and then I would not owe her a dollar. She liked that, and then spent the rest of the way to school planning who we knew that might be getting married and whose wedding she could crash be a flower girl.

So, needless to say, I do NOT owe her a dollar, in fact I should have had her pay ME a dollar for every compliment she got on her 'do on Thursday, cuz I'd be going out to sushi lunch today! Everyone loved it. So what I did have time for last night was putting in a few soft rollers to make some spirally curls (am ordering me some Soft Spikes today) to frame her face. I wish I had also done the bangs, but they would have been SOOO short! So now, she's ready:

The locs really spiralled well....So, off to do some web shopping for soft spikes!

When we get the finished photos, I'll definitely scan and share!

If you are interested in this hairdo, I would be happy to explain it in another post.

Have a great day!