Inspired by: Pinterest!

Pinterest is absolutely addictive. If you haven't signed up yet, you should. They have an entire section just for Hair & Beauty, but make sure you've got some time if you check it out. (Here is my hairstyles board if you'd like to follow it!)

I found this style a while ago, and tried it last week- super simple braids, but tight at the base of the head. It was a great one to do when my hair was wet, and worked well on my somewhat wavy hair, but would also look great on curled or straight hair as well. 

I only used 2 rubberbands and a few bobbypins and it held all day long. It even looked better as it dried throughout the morning. (Also, I did a two-into-one braid on one side, as my bangs still aren't quite long enough to reach without falling back...) So here's the video, although it is long, and a little boring, so feel free to skip through the steps. :)

Super Simple Milkmaid Braids...

Here's a super quick style for a short morning- simple milkmaid braids using a topsy tail. Takes maybe 10 minutes for all of the steps.

You'll need-

4 Rubberbands (I used two black, and two clear)
Bobby Pins
Topsy Tail


1. Start with basic pigtails- place them a little more forward than normal pigtails, these were a little too far back, I usually try for right above the ears.

2. Use a topsy tail to flip the pigtails up. (blech, sorry about the melted popsicle in the sink!)

 

3. Now braid the hair into simple braids and tie with a rubberband. 

Now just flip them on top of the head, and pin into place. I try to hide the ends in the little "flip crevice" that was made from the topsy tail.

These are Emma's new prized possession. $15 at Target. Nice. :)

M.I.A. Again...

So I've been completely ignoring this blog again. I'm hoping once school starts again, we'll have some more styles and different stuff. It seems like we do a lot of braids and ponytails when we just hang around the house.

One thing I did the other day that was a little fun on Emma's french braids for gymnastics was to start them on the top of her head so they would just go straight down her head, instead of curving from the front and going back. Here's a quick shot. Just shows that tiny little changes can make a cute difference on a simple style.

Also, Emma was baptized this past weekend- she did so great, and we had a lot of fun family over to play that Saturday. I had to plan something that wouldn't require any work afterwards, so I went with some braids. Here's a picture of how I finished it- just kind of tied it in a little knot and twisted the ends around to hide them.

In other news, here's a fun project that I've been working on for the past week. I love refinishing furniture, but this was a HUGE job, and really tested my patience. I really loved the end product though, and it was totally worth the work.

Hope everyone is doing well and is having a super fun summer! (Although I know some of you have already gone back to school- we still have 2 weeks left!) I have some fun mom-dos planned for the next bit, and hopefully will have the tutorial up for the cute twisted flower that Emma wore with her baptism dress...they are super fun and easy to make, and you can add them to anything- bobby pins, headbands, ribbons, etc...

7 Bobby Pins and an iPhone...

Sleeping on wet hair is not good for me. At least I used some product last night so it wasn't a complete frizzball-

I built a little bump using 3 bobby pins. If you have thinner hair, you'd get away with only 2...just make sure to cross them into an x and they'll hold all day. (And I know you can see that really well in this picture.) ;)




With the smaller section of side hair, I just did a regular braid and pulled it back and pinned with two bobby pins over the starting pins...

On the side with more hair, I had to do a twist to keep the front back, and then about 3-4 twists down, I brought that into a simple braid...kind of tricky while taking pictures. :) Pull it back and pin it with the others.

All finished! A cute 7-bobby-pin hairstyle!  (This looks a little poofy from this direction, but you get the idea.)  :) 

I also thought it would be fun to show you my daily makeup. As a mom of 4 kids, 3 of which require hair fixing time, my mornings are pretty short. I've gotten my "face" down to about 5 minutes or less. I use mostly all drugstore products. Here are my favorites:

1. Maybelline Falsies mascara
2. Maybelline brow pencil in blonde (I just found this, and love it.)
3. Covergirl eye shadow brush. I have other brushes, even fancy MAC brushes, and this one is still my favorite. Just a short stubby brush that works great.
4. Almay eye shadow for hazel eyes.
5. Aveeno tinted moisturizer- It's hot here in Vegas, and heavy foundations just melt off of me. This one works great and gives me just the right amount of coverage.
6. Olay face lotion.

And that's it! That's what I use every day. (Well, every day that I actually put makeup on!)

Here's my total drawer- I like these little baskets because when the little girls are getting too grabby with it, I just take them out and put them in my closet shelf. You can see I have more than what I use, and I have more under the counter too, because I like trying stuff. Any suggestions on great products I should try?

 Now, off to my day of freezer cooking!!! Does anyone else do freezer cooking? Any great recipes that you have? I'll post our finished products, but as a teaser, we bought 40 lbs of chicken and 20 lbs of hamburger meat. (for 3 families) Wish me luck!

Quatre

Emma's hair has been long and down the last few weeks. She's on a hair strike. Not so fun for a mom with a blog about fixing hair. :)

Anyway, today I finally fought the good fight and she let me fix it. And fix it I did. 4 small inside-out french braids. (Or dutch braids- would these be considered corn rows? I've never been clear on that...)

Here's the pictures! Hope everyone is having a good Wednesday! We've got storytime and laundry on our schedule. What's everyone got planned for summer? Anything super exciting? I'm running a marathon in 2 weeks!!! Aaak! I'm pretty nervous for it. :)

 You could easily make this an up-do look by making little buns out of the ponytails. Messy buns would also be super cute at the base of the neck.

Inspired By: Fairly Legal...

I should do a bit of research and find out who the actress is that plays on this new show, but I'm getting a blog post up, so that should be good enough, right? :)

Anyway, I really like this new show- they have a few episodes up on Hulu if you haven't watched it before...this week, the main actress has a great little braid in the opening scene- it looks to me like two french braids going into one, so that's what I did. Nothing too fancy, but it ended up looking really cute. I for sure would try this one on my own head if I still had long hair, and if I had a couple extra super-long arms. :)

I started with one loose french braid on one side, braiding a bit down and banding it to keep it in place.

 Do the second side- you can see that I started the braids more on the side of the head, and further back than I normally would. Plus, this picture looks like I kept it nice and tight, but part way through I would let it slack a bit.

Now, I started the center braid by putting one braid on either side, and then taking a section of both braids in the center. A little tricky, but I just grabbed all of the hair with one hand, and sectioned it like this. (And after I had it sectioned out was when I removed that first rubberband.)

Now just do a simple braid down the back, and band it. Simple and super cute. :)

In other sad sad news, it looks like Ruby is a biter...or at least she's starting to be. Any suggestions from you experienced moms? I've never had a baby that would bite...She got Maia's cheek HARD the other day. :(

Fancy Maia...

Maia loves Fancy Nancy lately. She's been a bit impatient about fixing hair lately, which leaves me to ponytails most of the time, but today I asked if I could make her Fancy like Nancy. Of course she let me. :)

I started out with an anchor ponytail, then sectioned her hair and pulled it into that ponytail.

Maia's hair is super thin and fine- definitely different than Emma and Ruby's. For her I have to use gel or everything would fall out. One of my little tricks with gel is that I just squirt a blob into the sink and smudge my fingers in it when I need it. Much easier than trying to squeeze a tiny bit onto my fingers and hold the hair at the same time.

 I just did twists in the front, but knew that twists would fall out pretty easily in the back, so I did simple braids back there.

 When I'm curling the hair in a little bun like this, I always try to curl it in the direction that I want it to go. (So curl this section forward since it's supposed to stay forward, the sides I do sideways, etc.)

The only curl I secured was the back one with a tiny clip under the curl, only because I didn't want the braids to be covered.

If you enlarge this one you can see the front and back pretty well. I've said it before, but playing in the sink is one of my other tricks to getting little girls to sit still for a bit. Maia's all about washing hands, so it's a good distraction.

4-Strand Braiding...

I saw the Princess' Facebook post the other day about 4-strand braids. (Her post is here) Of course I gave it a go, and yesterday did two small braids back into a ponytail- turned out cute, but I didn't catch a picture of it. Anyway, I wanted to try it again today, so I did two simple indian braids in the 4-strand woven style.

The link above has a great video, but the basic idea is start with 4 strands, then always start with the left side and go under, over, under the other 3 strands. Repeat this step many times. Yesterday Emma asked "Why do you keep saying that??" I was mumbling "under, over, under" while doing the braids, just to make sure I didn't get mixed up. :)

Today's do wasn't super impressive though. My braids got messy. I wonder if people even notice they are different than regular braids. Anyway, another fun braid to add to the mix. :)