I've got Big Buns

Yeah I've secretly been wanting to write "big buns" as a post title for YEARS.  Finally, the opportunity has presented itself!  Actually, this is another post about....

Crochet!

Hooray!

This is another thing I made over Christmas.  I think it's a perfect thing for a beginner as it is just a single crochet rectangle whip stitched together.

(Yes, that IS Ariel standing on her head in the background.  It's the only way to get ALL the water out of her tail so that nasty black mold doesn't grow in there.)

Um...so what IS it?

It's a "sock" bun!  There are a bunch of hair styling tutorials (here and here are the ones I've seen most) out there on using a sock to give volume to a hair bun.  There is even a tutorial on how to get big "no heat" curls using a sock bun.

Basically what you do is cut the toe off an old sock and roll it into a donut.  You want the sock to be similar to your hair color in case the donut shows through.  Personally, I think putting a sock in your hair is gross.  I don't want something that was on my feet to be in my hair.  I know the socks are clean, but it just ooks me out for some reason.

Then I saw this crocheted pattern from sock bun over at Crochet Dynomite.  I even had brown yarn leftover from a craft project from years ago.

I must have used thicker yarn, or crocheted looser than the sample over at Crochet Dynomite because my bun was REALLY big!  

Ugh, it's a pain to try to take a picture of the back of your own head.

One of the benefits to using a crocheted bun roll vs a sock, is that you can easily stick bobby pins through the entire bun so the whole thing is super secure.  I put this bun in my hair to keep it out of my way while I scrubbed the dinning room floor after we had the ceiling fixed.  The dry wall dust got into every crack and crevasse on the wood floor, so there was some serious scrubbing going on. 

Had I just used a butterfly clip it would have fallen out after 15 min.  Those things never stay in my hair unless it's soaking wet.  The fact that this style stayed in my dry hair while I cleaned was awesome.

I didn't get a chance to test out the sock bun curls.  In the winter, I wear my hair down for extra warmth when I go to work, so I had to take the bun out after a few hours.

And for my fellow geeks: Yes, I did make two buns, just in case I want to rock it Princess Leia style

Princess Crown Braid

I was feeling experimental with Blockette's hair so I tried out a new braid.  I call it the crown braid, but the tutorial from Princess Hair Styles called it a "never ending French braid bun." 

I won't get into the hows and whatnot of how to make the braid because Princess Hair Styles has a great video tutorial, which explains the technique much better than I could.

 This is what I call the wonky side, where the braid ends.  I think I could have tucked it into the other part of the French braid a little better.  Over all, I think it's not too shabby for the first attempt.

 ...and the "nice" side.

The hairstyle took a bit longer than regular French braids. This is most likely due to the fact that it is awkward to braid the part by her neck and then up the "nice" side of the braid.  I had to have Blockette sit with her head down on her lap which she was not happy about.

 Blockette wore this hairstyle when we went out to visit her Grandparents.  We went out to dinner and a couple people stopped us and told us how cute her hair was, just like a princess.  I asked Blockette if it was worth the extra trouble to have her hair styled like this and she said she loved it as a sometimes fancy hair do.

By the end of the day her hair did sag a bit but held together through a few hours of vigorous playtime crawling on the floor playing with Grandma's spunky kitten. I don't think many hairstyles would survive those sort of crazy activities.

Oh and as for the short sleeves in the middle of winter?  It was nearly 60 the day this photo was taken. Crazy Chicago winters.

Headband Fix: No more Geordi La Forge!

Maybe I've reinvented the wheel here, but I feel pretty creative that I thought of this.

Blockette has very fine blonde hair.  Most headbands slide down her face after less than a minute.  This causes her to look like Geordi LaForge from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

LaVar Burton as Geordi La Forge

While LaVar Burton totally rocks this look, Blockette can't quite pull it off. 

It's really rather disruptive in school, church, watching TV, eating, breathing, etc 

when she has to keep adjusting her hair do every thirty seconds.

We pretty much gave up on headbands.

Then one Sunday morning I could not get my hands to cooperate.  I told Blockette to "just put on a headband"  so we could be done with it.  You would have thought we lived in Napa Valley for all the whine.  Ugh. I decided that we should eat breakfast, and I'd give her hair another attempt before we left for church.

While we were eating, I got to thinking about how some baby hair clips are just velcro with a bow on it.  If velcro works on fine hair, maybe the hook part will give the needed grip to Blockette's headbands.

This was the velcro I had.  It's hook only and 3/4" wide.  It even has a super strong sticky back.

I know the sticky back is super strong because it is leftover from covering up the opening to our 

crawl space.

I attached the velcro to the molding around the opening, and covered it with cream fleece.  

(Not only did it cover up the ugly door, but blocked out the draft as well.)

The Velcro has been up for over 5 years now with no sign of losing it's adhesion.

Here's what I did with the headbands:

I debated whether or not to put the Velcro all the way down the headband.  As I was a bit pressed for time, and the ends were tapered, I opted to just put Velcro at the top of the band.  I figured if it didn't work as well as we wanted it too, we could always add more.

It worked wonderfully!  

I only saw Blockette adjust her hair once the entire time we were at Church.

I'd call that success!

Crazy Hair Day

Over the past few weeks Blockette's class has been doing a theme for every day. 

The other day was "Wacky Hair Day.  

I did the wackiest thing I could think of...Bantu Knots.

Blockette kept saying she was Madusa's little sister.  

She hissed and turned me to stone throughout out entire walk to school.

And here's what it looked like when I took out the "knots":

 Lots and lots of curly waves!  

When Blockette saw herself in the mirror she exclaimed, "I don't even look like myself!"

 Now if I could only figure out how to do this on my own hair!

Rainbow Headband

I've had this rainbow head band from fabric scraps from Sugar Bee Crafts as a work in progress for almost two months.  

Which, if you think about it, is pretty ridiculous.  

The headband is only a series of skinny strips of fabric made into little tiny braids that get attached to two hair binders.  So simple and no need for such crazy procrastination!

Here's what it looks like on.  Blockette was nice enough to take a picture of me.  

Please ignore my dirty grungy hair.  I'm just tryin' to keep it real here.  

The headband is really wide and great for keeping back different layers, say if you were growing out your bangs, which I'm not.  My bangs are as long as the rest of my mangy hair.  

But if I was, It would be super useful.

I think the headband looks much cuter on Blockette

 

Although, the headband is a bit too big for her.  

 We solved that problem by twisting the braids around each other.  

There you have it, two great ways to wear one fun headband.   Yay headbands!

Swedish Piggies

No!  Not this Swedish Piggy:


These Swedish Piggies:

 I found the tutorial over at Princess Piggies.

The Swedish braids (or piggies) were a nice change from the usual French braid to keep her hair out of the way.  Blockette's bangs are still not all the way grown out, so this style didn't last through a long day of hard playing.  Next time I'll have to put some sort of product in it, or wait until her hair gets a big longer. 

Twisty Hair for Me

I was feeling particularly yucky today but still needed to get something done, so I thought, if I try something funky on my hair, maybe I'll feel better.

Here's what I did:

Man is it ever hard to take a picture of the back of your own head!

It's called a French twist and pin.  I need practice the style some more as it doesn't look exactly like it's supposed to, but I don't think it's too shabby for my first attempt. We'll see how well it holds up for the remainder of the day.  If you'd like to see how I managed to do this to my own hair, head on over to Hair Romance for the video tutorial. 

Curly Girly

Last Friday Blockette and I had a girls day. She had the day off and Mrblocko went out with his friends. We filled the day with girly spa frivolities for Blockette. (I painted her nails, we made lip gloss, she had a bubble bath, etc etc.)

A while back I had seen this hairstyle online where you twist the hair into little tiny buns all around the hairline. You go to bed with the buns and in the morning when you take them down, you have nice bouncy curls. I wish I could remember where I saw this so I could link it up here. Usually I'm pretty good at bookmarking things. I guess not this time though.

Since I didn't have my reference link, I couldn't quite remember exactly what they had done.  I tried to make little buns, but I couldn't get the hair binders to stay in.  So I improvised.  I twisted the hair strands together much like I did for this style, only just not in a french braid. 

This is what we got in the morning:

Yes, those are glow stick necklaces twisted together to make a princess crown.  What else are you supposed to do with them?  Wear them as necklaces?  How dare you suggest such a thing.

I learned a few things from this whole experience:
1.) I should never take pictures in the computer room.  Bleck.  The light is so weird in here that the photos always turn out so grainy.

2.) Don't be afraid to tie the twisted hair close to the head.  I didn't do that with the one on her right side closest to her face and it didn't turn out as well as the rest of her hair.

3.) This is a great way to get curls for your curl loving girl who is scared to death of the curling iron.

One final thing, I put mousse in Blockette's hair while it was wet, and then let her hair air dry until it was damp.  I know the curl would not have stayed at all had I not applied mousse.  Also, if the hair is too wet when you twist it, it won't be dry by morning.  If the hair is still not dry by the time you let it down the curl won't stay either.

Second day hair-twisty braid

This what your hair will look like once you undo the two stranded twisty braid.   When Blockette saw her hair after the braids were removed she exclaimed, "I look like a brand new girl!!!"  I absolutely love that soft body wave.  I wish my hair looked wavy like that every day.  Too bad I'm not coordinated enough to braid my own hair.

As a completely unrelated note, does anyone have any tips or suggestions why my pictures are turning out so grainy?

Two Strand Twisty Braid

I saw the neatest looking braid on Girly Do's by Jenn.  It's called a two strand braid and it is awesome.  I couldn't stop thinking about it.  How it would look, how I would hold the hair while twisting and adding hair, etc.  So I just put the silly braid in Blockette's hair so I could go about my life not thinking about the two stranded twisty braid.

It turned out so much way better than I thought it would. And it didn't take any longer to do than a regular French Braid.

This is the picture you get when you are running out the door for church and realize that if you don't take a picture of the child's hair RIGHT now you will never get a picture because it could just fall out completely by the time you get home.

Blockette's hair stayed surprisingly well in this style, even after a day of being stuck inside and rolling around on the floor, and under blankets.  The next time I put this braid in, I think I will put some mousse or gel in her hair before I style it, and somehow convince Blockette to keep the hair binders on while she sleeps.  If we had done this she would have had some really cool looking waves in her hair the next day.

Hair Band Wrangling

Since Blockette has been allowing me to braid and style her hair on a semi-regular basis, the little hair bands have been an ever increasing problem. Once upon a time I kept all the hair accessories in a plastic storage drawer thingie in the bathroom. Then, last year, we had a huge problem with earwigs in our bathroom.  So almost everything in the bathroom migrated to various other locations throughout the house.  This year did not have me earwigging out, but I never really put everything back where it was originally.  I mean what if they come back like that again next year?!  Ew!

Fixing Blockette's hair in the morning required me to remember to get the hair bands from the storage box in my closet.  This shouldn't have been a big deal, except I would frequently realize I had forgotten the hair binders once I had already started braiding.  Doh!

So what I started doing was leaving a few hair ties in the bathroom medicine cabinet.  But the little suckers liked to migrate around in there.  It seemed like I could never find them when I wanted them.  Then there was the problem of what if I needed 3 bands for the hair style I was doing, and there were only 2 in the bathroom.  Or if I broke one?  I was back to my original problem mentioned earlier.

Then, I saw this idea for Hair ties on Carabiner from Lifehacker. Hooray!  Nice and neat and easy to find when I need them.  I sure wish I'd thought of this first.

Waterfall Braid

July has been insanely hot. So hot that I'm convinced I don't really have earwax, just melty brain coming out my auditory orifice. EW.

Blockette gets hot and sweaty even on mild days, so it's been quite a relief that she is allowing to me to put her hair up on a semi regular basis.  Mostly just French Braids and pony tails.  Nothing too special.  Two weeks ago I put her hair in a sort of bohemian twist on each side for church.  (I was in too much of a rush to get out the door to remember to take a picture.)  By the end of the service her hair had started to fall out.  If I ever try something like that again, her hair is going to have to be several days from being washed.  Her hair is just too fine to be cooperative without some natural hair oils/grease in it.

This Sunday I wanted to try something different as well.  I had seen several videos online about waterfall braids this past week, so I was anxious to give that a try.

I think it turned out pretty well. There was no issues with the hair falling out at all. Her hair ended up looking the same on the way home as it did on the way to church.  Yay!

I think the style looks better from the back than from the front, but Blockette thought she looked like a princess with the braid on the side.  Now if I can only figure out what to do about her bangs.  She wants to grow them out, but they are at that gross in between stage that always drives me bonkers.

Perhaps I could start this braid on the other side of her part and have her braids incorporated into the French braid.  Then, maybe that would tone down the shaggy look from her bangs.

Anyone have any other suggestions of what to do with Blockette's bangs in the medium stage of growing them out?  We've also tried a headband but the bangs just stick straight out from the headband, which is worse than if we did nothing at all.  They are still just a bit too short to clip back with a hair clippie.