I am sure most mother's feel that way about the baby of the family. Right? I have probably mentioned before how much I love babies. The baby/toddler stage is my absolute favorite!
I adore the fact that our family was knit together through adoption, but I lament the fact that I didn't have the opportunity to know and love on my oldest three kids when they were babies.
So when God blessed our family with Little E, I was thrilled to finally have a baby! I think I was hoping she would stay a baby forever. Clearly that is not to be, because my baby turned 4 last week and had her first day of preschool yesterday! Oh how time flies!
So, I will share with you a little photo montage of E's birthday and first day of school - mostly pics of her cute hairstyles! And since she is still tiny and cute as a button, we will all pretend she is still a baby!
Little E has been begging for Soft Spikes for months! It is so cute because I don't think she really cares about the end result, she just wants me to take pictures of her looking like a porcupine head and put them on the computer like I do with her Sissys! I put three tiny cornrows up in the front before putting in the Soft Spikes.
Do you see that cute yellow flower clip in her hair? That is a teaser of something we have coming up!
Picnic lunch with mom and dad for her birthday!
Ready to open presents now that the big kids are home from school!
Ready for preschool!
I almost always do cornrows on E (or inverted french braids) because my hands are more comfortable braiding underhand. I decided to try a more traditional french braid on her and it looks so pretty!
Painting at school!
So, the big question here is: When do we drop the "little" and start calling her Miss E?
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!
That Little E looks adorable as a curly girl? She has been waiting and waiting and waiting for her turn to try out the Soft Spikes and today was the day! Here are the pics:
Spikes In: 20 minutes, 37 Small Spikes used, On dry hair, Setting Gel - yes, End papers - no
Spikes Out: After allowing to dry and set for 1.5 hours
After Separating the Curls and Adding a Head Band:
Not a whole lot to say about this one. When I reviewed the Soft Spike Curlers on B's locs I told you all I wanted to give them a try on V. So I did! She is still sporting her Back to School cornrow pigtails. We just took out the beads and put in the Soft Spikes:
The little cornrow in the front was too small for a Soft Spike so I used a straw. It is the kind of straw that already has that handy little bend in it, so I just cut the long end off and used a rubber band to hold it together. If you recall, she did have 2 cornrows in the front, but I took the long one and added it to the pigtail.
I guess I haven't learned my lesson. I had V take a shower before we put these in and I had her rinse her hair really quick. This was kind of a big step for me since I normally don't have her get her hair wet while it is in cornrows. But I am trying to teach myself that it is OK! The bad news is, those braids just won't get dry overnight in the Soft Spikes if you get them that wet! We squeezed the water out of them, patted with a towel a little, and in the morning I even used a blow dryer, but when I took the spikes out, they were STILL DAMP! URGH! The curls didn't hold as well as I would have liked because of being damp. If her hair had been totally dry, they would have been AWESOME! Here is the finished look:
That curl ended up a bit tighter than expected!
So you can see the ends of the braids were curly, but the tops fell pretty straight. Next time I will be sure to not get them very wet. V did say that she did not mind sleeping in them at all - so that is good! Overall, the style looked cute even it it wasn't the exact outcome we were looking for, and V was very happy!
If you loved the way B's Beautiful Braidlocs looked after we curled them with the Soft Spikes in yesterdays post, than this is your lucky day!!!!! (If you didn't see the review - go back to yesterday's post! There was a bit of a mixup, so the correct post wasn't on the blog until late last night.)
The lovely people at Soft Spikes are giving away one set of Soft Spikes to TWO of our wonderful readers!
Now if your little girl does not have locs that doesn't mean you can't use Soft Spikes! You could use Soft Spikes to curl box braids OR it would be really cute to curl the braids that come out of a ponytail or pigtails like this:
Just picture it....Remove the beads and curl all those braids and have the cutest curly pigtails! OOOooooo....Now I want to try it!
It is possible that you could flat iron your child's hair and then put sections of hair into the Soft Spikes for some big curls. Kind of a weird idea, taking out the natural curls to put in different curls???? But I bet it would be cute.
And of course, like with any of our giveaways, you can also use them on yourself! Moms like to do fun things with their hair too, so if you are a mom with locs, slightly curly hair, super kinky hair, or hair as straight as mine, I am sure ANY of you could find something fun to do with the Soft Spikes. We would LOVE to see what you come up with!
I also look forward to trying the Soft Spikes on little E one of these days, I just haven't gotten around to it yet! I do believe the Soft Spikes were originally made for curling straight hair, so if you have any children with straight hair in your home, these would also be perfect for you!
So what are you waiting for? Go get those entries!
But PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE remember to write a SEPARATE comment for EACH thing you do on the list. If you put all of your entries in ONE comment you are selling yourself short! Each comment gets a number for our random generator, so you want to get as many comments as possible.
You have until 12:00pm EST on Friday, August 27th to enter the drawing. We will be choosing the winners from the comments left on THIS post!
To enter this giveaway please leave a comment on THIS blog and answer THIS question:
We're curious...Do you or your daughter have Locs??? If not, what would you do with the Soft Spikes?
If you would like to earn EXTRA entries do one or all of these things:
1) Go to the Soft Spikes website and tell us what color of Soft Spikes you would order!
2) Head on over to our Keep Me Curly! Facebook fan page and become a fan. Leave a comment stating that you are a fan. (or that you already were a fan)
3) "Share" our Keep Me Curly! Facebook page with your friends and come back and leave a comment letting us know what day you "shared" us THIS week.
4) Follow @keepmecurly on twitter Come back and post a comment that you are a follower and leave your Twitter ID. (or that you were already following)
5) Tweet any unique tweet announcing our blog or the giveaway with @keepmecurly in it! Cut and paste your tweet (not tweet id status) and post as a comment. You can get 1 entry for EVERY new and unique tweet!
6) Become a follower of our blog or subscribe to our blog through an RSS feed. Simply post a comment saying that you are a follower.(or that you were already following)
7) Subscribe to Katie's youtube channel and come back and leave a comment stating that you are a subscriber. (or that you were already a subscriber)
8) Leave a comment on one of Katie's youtube videos. Leave a comment HERE letting us know the title of the video you commented on.
9) Go to Steph's Snapaholics website and leave a note in her guestbook. Come back and leave a comment HERE letting us know that you signed the guestbook.
10) Place an order at Snapaholics between 8/22 and 8/26 Noon EST. Leave a comment including your order number and order date.
11) Grab our badge! If you add our badge to your blog leave us a comment saying that you are using it with a link to your blog.
12) Advertise our site or this giveaway in a forum or other blog! We would really love it if you wrote about our site or this giveaway on your blog. If you are passionate about natural hair care, or Katie's youtube videos have been really helpful to you, or if you love cute hair things, talk it up on your blog! Earn TWO entries for doing this one! Simply post a comment saying that you are talking about us with a link to the forum or blog, then put (first entry) then comment again and write (second entry).
13) Get a friend to talk about us or our giveaway on THEIR blog, earn two MORE entries! Just leave us a comment with a link to THEIR blog and tell us that you encouraged them to participate. Then make sure they enter the giveaway for themselves too!
The winners will be announced on Saturday, August 28th. It is the responsibility of the winners to contact us at keepmecurly@gmail.com to let us know their mailing address. IF the winners do not contact us by Friday, September 3rd, we will choose new winners.
Who can participate?
*** If you have any questions or if you have comments that are not related to the giveaway please feel free to email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com or leave your comment on yesterdays post. In order for this giveaway to work we have to ask that you do not leave any other comments on this post if they do not follow the guidelines of the contest.***
Soft Spike Hair Curlers are the Original self-lockinghair curlers. Soft Spikes are designed to handle all types of hair, including heavier locs. Made from a closed cell foam material, Soft Spike Curlers don't absorb moisture or hair products, are easy to clean and will not dry out your hair.
Note: Pink, purple, lime, and teal made from softer foam and may not be suitable for heavier types of hair.
Soft Spike Curlers are specially designed with a self-locking loop that will not slip out after your have set in your curls. What's more, they are soft and smooth, making them easy to sleep in without damaging your hair or causing discomfort.
Now that you know what Soft Spikes are, I will tell you everything I have learned from using them on B's Beautiful Braidlocs! Watch this video for all of the details about Soft Spikes and for a demonstration on how to put them in. If you prefer reading, I have restated all of the key info under the video:
Size: Soft Spikes come in 3 sizes, Small, Large and Long. For B's length of hair the SMALL spikes are plenty big enough! I think even if your locs were twice the length of B's the short ones would work, but I guess it depends on how many you put on each loc. I didn't know which to buy so I got small and long. The long are WAY longer than necessary - maybe I should cut them?
Quantity: One set of Soft Spikes actually comes with two packages. Their are 30 spikes per package so a set is 60 spikes. The first time I did B's locs I used 72 spikes, but I was putting more locs per spike on that time. The next time I used the spikes I used close to 100 spikes. I would recommending getting TWO sets, which would be 120 spikes and you will have plenty! Unless you have a lot more locs than B. She has 188.
Locs per Spike: The first time I used the spikes I was putting 2 to 4 locs on each spike. I decided that I preferred to only use 2 locs per spike because the hair dried better with less per spike and the curls were tighter. The more locs you put on each spike, the looser the curls will be. So now I do 2 locs per spike for her whole head.
End Papers: The first time I used the spikes I put end papers on half her head and no end papers on the other half. Turns out that with locs, the end papers are just an unnecessary hassle! They actually made taking the locs off the spikes HARDER instead of easier! And it made it take longer to put them on, so totally not worth it. If you are using the spikes with locs than I don't recommend purchasing the end papers.
Curling Spray Gel: I also do not find this necessary for those with locs. I am super picky about what touches B's locs since I don't want anything causing buildup or getting trapped in them! I have found that B's curls only last a day or two, so maybe the gel would help them last longer, but I am thinking of finding a product that is meant for locked hair to try instead.
Wet or Dry Hair: I first tried them with very wet hair straight from the shower. We put the spikes in before bed and she wore them all night and some of them were still a bit damp when we took them out in the morning. So the next time we started with dry hair that I lightly dampend with our usual Taliah Waajid spray that is watered down. This worked much better.
Sleeping in them: Not To Bad! B is not one to complain a lot about sleeping with stuff in her hair. But these things look like they are going to be really uncomfortable to sleep in so I was expecting B to put up a fuss! NOPE! The first few times B used them she didn't have a problem, this last time she got a bit uncomfortable but I think it was because she had them in too long! Of course there is no way I was going to fit a sleep cap over those crazy spikes so she has to sleep without one. But I figure that one night without a cap isn't the end of the world.
Time to Put In: It took me less than an hour to put them in B's whole head of locs!
Time to Take Out: It only took me 15 minutes to take them out! This worked really well on Easter morning when we didn't have a lot of time, but she was still able to go to church looking FABULOUS!
B hunting for eggs on Easter morning! We used a lot of long Spikes, shorter ones don't look as crazy!
Remove spikes, add a white bow - Ready for Easter!
Cost: One set of (60) Small Soft Spikes is only $19! I think that is really reasonable! The Large cost $20 and the Long are $21. You can buy them with End Papers and Curling Gel for more money or you can buy the End Papers and Curling Gel separately. The spikes are also sold in large quantities for less!
Overall Impression: I give Soft Spike Curlers TWO THUMBS up for a great product! They are fun and easy to use and create adorable curls! I have yet to try them on any of the other hair types in our house, but when I do, I will be sure to update you!
Right after removing the Soft Spikes
After shaking out the curls and adding a double cornrow headband.
Gorgeous!
*I was not paid to do this review. I already owned this product and decided to share it with you. Soft Spikes IS donating some products for a giveaway. Better check back here tomorrow!*
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