Tidbit Tuesday

Did You Know???

That Little E is growing up way too fast!

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?

Katie

Tidbit Tuesday

*UPDATE ADDED*
Did You Know??????


That after all of the great suggestions on what to do with B's Easter style, I loved the BIG flower idea so much I ended up putting flowers in ALL my girls hair!

I purchased all of the flowers at the Dollar Tree!  Nothing like keeping it cheap!  I didn't attach them to any kind of clips or anything, I just kept the stems long enough when I cut them from the bunch so that I could stick them into the hair.  They held just fine!
The only real change I made to B's style from the first one was that instead of 3 cornrows I only did two.  I had said that maybe I would split up the hair from the middle cornrow and add it to the two outside ones.  This probably would have made things really bulky so instead, I just took that middle section of hair and did NOTHING with it!  After I finished the two outside rows I brought all the hair from the braids and the center section together in one ponytail holder.  See original style and finished style:

Ok, now that I look at the pictures, I realize I had actually done french braids, not cornrows in the original style.  They both look nice.  And I parted the hair slightly different the second time around.  But I loved the outcome.  It was lovely.

I don't have a step by step for V's style this time either.  But it is pretty basic.  I guess I am into the low side ponytail, because I did it on both girls!  I had cornrows start at the front left of her head  - do a sort of squiggle pattern - and then end at the lower right side.  To do this I started with the middle cornrow to set my pattern and then just worked out to the sides.  I finished with a puff!

I didn't really take pics of Little E's hair.  It was just two cornrows, a typical style for her.  I added the 3 little yellow flowers at the back.  Originally I also had one flower in the front, but it looked weird, so I took it out!

And that was Easter hair for Katie's girls!

I also gave Young Man C a fresh line up.  He is growing out his hair right now, because he is convinced that if he grows it, I will braid it.  We'll see about that!  Have I told you the story of the last time he grew it out?  Anyway, it was a BUSY hair weekend for me, but ended with a beautiful Easter Sunday with family!  Maybe I will post some family pics tomorrow.

Katie

Knotted French Braid

Here I am borrowing again!  I thought this Knotted Braid Style on The Princess Hairstyles looked really 1) pretty, 2) simple & 3) FUN!  So I had to give it a try. (Please click the link for instructions on how to do the style)  I first tried it out on little E.  We were in a hurry before church so I didn't have a chance to really play around with it, but it still looked cute.  It is SO easy to do and comes out just slightly different looking than a french braid.  I think it would have been better if E's hair had been a little more damp when I was trying to style it, but like I said, we were in a hurry!

Then I tried it on B's locs.  The first time I tried I used all of her hair and was going to do it just like the princess style - going into a low ponytail in the back.  Well, B's locs are getting SO THICK that this came out looking HUGE sticking off the sides of her head.  Although it was easy to do, I was not at all excited about how it looked.  I don't have a pic of that though - sorry.  So next I thought, maybe if I just used the top half of her hair and went into a half pony it would be better.  Well, you can see from this pictures that it still came out a bit odd looking.  Since she has a side part, the side with less hair looks really pretty.  But the other side looks goofy.  I think the braid needs to be down closer to her ear.

Overall - this was a fun new technique to try!  And after I play around with it some more I am certain I will come up with a way to make it work on B.  Stay tuned for an update on this style on both girls!

Katie

Borrowed from Babes in Hairland

Have I mentioned the Babes in Hairland blog yet?  If I haven't, my apologies.  This lady does some seriously B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L hair style on her 3 girls.  It's another white girl hair blog, so not a whole lot of it transfers over to my styles for B and V, but I have gotten some ideas to try on Little E.

Unfortunately though, (for me) her girls have LONG and THICK hair!  Man you can do so much more with that crazy amount of hair!  I really loved this post she had the other day about tween braids.  Obviously Little E is not a tween, but I wanted to try the partial version of this style on her.  It was pretty hard to execute on E's head, it turned out looking pretty much like piggy-back braids.  And then because they were hanging funny, I swept it all up into a ponytail.  But the end result was still CUTE!

My favorite thing about the teen braids was the interesting braid pattern that emerged as you continue to make new braids with one strand coming from the braid before.  I just found it visually interesting.  Didn't really work out that way on E though.

Someday she is going to have more hair, right?

Katie

Little E Has a Haircut!

I think I have mentioned before that I find Little E's hair to be a tad frustrating.  It is very fine and thin, there just isn't a whole lot there.  What she does have is all different lengths because of all of the new hair that is constantly growing in, and I also think due to breakage, her hair seems to be very fragile (although it appears quite healthy?)  Her hair detaches from her scalp with the slightest pull, it is crazy!  It is stick straight in the front, where it is also quite short, but in the back it has a slight wave that doesn't look straight or curly and just kind of looks like blah!  It was also getting quite long in the back.  Why is it so long in the back when I have given her several hair trims over her lifetime JUST in the back and NEVER in the front???


Anyway - I have also mentioned in the past that because Little E's hair is so fragile we don't style it on a daily basis.  Most days we just spritz it with water to tame the bed head and give it a quick brushing and leave it.  Maybe with a clip on the side to hold the hair out of her face.  Trouble is, I LOVE cute hair, and this just isn't very cute.  Take a look:

This is the longest her hair has ever gotten and while the length is fun for doing different styles (like the one below that we did right before we chopped it all off)  I decided, once again, to chop the bottom off and try to get the hair in the front to catch up!

I was also hoping that a shorter hair style would make it appear more full.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  What do you think?

Don't forget that the Nudred Giveaway ends TODAY at 12:00 PM EST!!!!!!!!  Just a few hours left to get more entries!  Be sure to check in tomorrow for the announcement of the winners!

Katie

Tidbit Tuesday

Did You Know??????

That Sidewinders are the PERFECT holiday hair accessory?  Not only do I love to have my girls hair accessories match their outfits, but I also love to have them match the holiday.  The only drawback is that if I spend hours loading their hair up with Christmas, St. Patty's, or Independence day colored hair accessories I am not going to want to change them out for at least a few weeks!  But then that goes against my whole coordinating with the outfit plan because I usually don't have weeks worth of Red, Green, or Flag colored clothing.

That is why I am proposing that Sidewinders are the best choice for holiday hair!  They are so much faster to put on the hair AND they can be easily swapped out for a different color long before you are planning to change the rest of the hair style.  AND sidewinders come in every color you could possibly need!

I don't actually have any examples of holiday box braids, but I think you all understand what I mean.  I DO however have some fun pics of things the girls and I did with sidewinders last night for some FUN Halloween styles.

On V we did a modified veil style with her yarn braids.  I could only fit 2 or 3 braids into the sidewinders so I had to get creative on the veil.  I did not include ALL of the yarn braids, I just used some of them and left the others hanging down underneath.  I also didn't use two sidewinders twirled together, ya know, I put in the first part of the sidewinder and it held so nice and snug that I didn't think I needed to try to wind a second one on with it.  Also I was planning to use black mixed with these oranges, but I figured you wouldn't really even notice the black up against the black braids.  This is a good way to stretch your sidewinders - it's like doubling the amount of sidewinders in your stash!

This was a simple and quick style for B.  We used solid Orange, translucent Orange and Purple.  They mixed beautifully with the pumpkin pony holder from Target!  Again, I stuffed so many locs into each sidewinder that I didn't double them up - I just put on the one sidewinder and it held so snug, it actually would have been difficult two twist the second half of the sidewinder up in there.  All we did was grab a few locs across the front and put on the sidewinder,  we did this all the way across the front and then just pulled all of her locs on top up into a half pony!

We didn't have any cute Halloween shirts for Little E, but of course she still wanted her hair done like her sisters!  We used the Orange and Black twisted together for the little missy.  Two braids going into pigtails.  Nothing to exciting, but still cute!

It might be a little late to order sidewinders for THIS Halloween, but there is always next year!  And of course, now would be a GREAT time to start thinking about Christmas and Valentine's Day styles!!!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Katie

Tidbit Tuesday

DID YOU KNOW??????

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:

Katie