Wedding Hair & Circus Tickets

Not a normal combo -- but I keep forgetting to show you the pictures from the wedding hair I did last month.  I chatted with my friend & she was gracious enough to let me share pictures that I took from her special day.  She has gorgeous naturally curly hair, but being that she was getting married on a hot July day & was having an outside reception she wanted her hair up and off her neck and out of the way.  She was very easy going about how she wanted her hair and after a "practice day" on her hair this is what she decided she wanted.

Because of the time in the morning, her hair was fairly damp.  She wanted her bangs/hair in front twisted back & so I did it like I did on my bangs in this video HERE and then continued twisting it in a rope braid which I then pulled it back into a feather braided bun which I did HERE so it would cascade beautifully over her veil which we tacked up underneath the bun.  She'd made some beautiful pearl accessories with a gem in the middle that she wanted to be in the twist around the front.

How it looked in the back:

The beautiful bride & groom after they were married:

It was quite windy so her veil wouldn't stay put very well so she ended out taking it out.  But I loved how you could see her pearls up in her twist up front.  It really added the quite the "pop" to dress her hair up.  She looked amazing.

Once her hair was drier it wasn't quite as heavy & it held the curls a bit better.  After pictures and the wind, we had time before the reception to go back & touch her hair up a little.  She'd made some little flowers to stick around in the back of her hair instead of having her veil in her hair so it wouldn't get pulled out as people hugged her at her reception.  She kept the cute pearls in the twists up front.  She looked amazing!

I think doing hair for weddings & proms has got to be one of my favorite parts of this "job" hobby!  Thanks so much Kindy for letting me part of your special day.

 

And if you are wanting to get in on the circus fun .... We're half way through our circus ticket giveaways!  2 down - 2 to go!  We've announced the winner for our 2nd circus ticket family 4 pack -- so if you entered that giveaway go see if you're the winner HERE.  We've also got the 3rd giveaway for 4 more passes up and going as well so if you want to enter, click HERE to go to the giveaway post.

A is for Alphabet

I'm sooo excited about our fun new hair series we're starting.  If you've been around for a while here at BIH I used to do a monthly hair share (before we had our FB page) and I'd post pictures of the hairdo's you guys were doing on your dd's.  About a year ago, I posted a hair share showing some fabulous creations from one of my wonderful readers Laura.  She'd embarked on a fun quest to do the entire alphabet in her daughter's hair.

Well, I sorta tucked that fun idea away in my head with plans to do it in Bee's hair since she's in pre-school now.  When I told her what I was wanting to do she got so excited at the mere suggestion!  So I hope you'll enjoy our fun adventure we have as we proceed to create A-Z in Bee's hair & share it with you!  

So since school starts for us next week, I thought it only appropriate that we start our alphabet series up now.  Obviously this can be done with twists, or altered to fit the length of hair your working with.  But this is what we came up with.  Feel free to recreate them however suits you and your dd!

Part the hair into a triangular section coming back from the temples on an angle to make somewhat of a triangle.  Make a ponytail & secure it with a rubber band.

Divide the pony tail in half and also part all the hair down in the back right down the middle (or as close too it as you can!)

Take the left half of the ponytail and braid it part way down - secure it temporarily with a clip or have your dd hold it.

 Make a part from the ear across to your middle part and make a ponytail.

 Add your braid into that ponytail.

Take a small section off the top of the pony tail you just made -

 Braid that section of hair and then temporarily secure it with a clip or rubber band.

Back to the pony tail on top -- braid it part way down.  Part out another section of hair from the ear back into your middle part and form another ponytail adding in your braid.  (You technically could do this first before the step just before this one!)

 Now take that 3rd braid that has been hanging down & pull it from the left side of the head & join it into the ponytail on the right.  Secure it with a rubber band.  It should sort of cover up the part you made.

 Braid the remaining hair in the ponytail that is hanging down on the right side and temporarily secure it.  Then with the hair that is down below everything for a little ponytail and secure it with a rubber band.

Add your braid into that ponytail.

**Then the optional step is you can continue braiding the rest of the way down for a longer side on your "A" **

So here's a look from above.

 And from the sides:

Bee was so excited when I got done.  It was a hit for sure!

Periodically I'll share with you Laura's version of how she did the letter and so here is how she made her A.  She used a ribbon to cross her A.  I love how she got the angle on her A much higher and depending on how much time you have in the morning, hers might be a bit faster for you.

Photo used by permission from  Laura W.

So -- "A" is for Alphabet ... but my husband says "A" is for "Aggies!" for all you USU fans! :-)  And Bee has learned her sign language alphabet, so she'll be sharing that too!

If you try any of our hair from our alphabet series, we'd love it if you shared it with us on our Facebook page!  Hope everyone is adjusting back into the swing of things with school schedules and such.  Monday is our 1st day back so wish us luck!

Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey - Fully Charged Tickets Giveaway #2

Just wanted to let you know that our winner for our 1st circus ticket giveaway has been announced.  If you entered that giveaway go see if you're the winner HERE.  We've also got the 2nd giveaway for 4 more passes up and going as well so if you want to enter, click HERE to go to the giveaway post.

Come back tomorrow to see a fun new hair series that we'll be starting!  I can hardly wait to show you!

Triple Braided Pocahontas Braids & Circus Tickets

No, our hairdo today doesn't involve braids and circus tickets!  BUT - it's that time of year again, and I've got circus tickets to give away!  So if you are interested in winning tickets to this year's Ringling Bros. &  Barnum & Bailey "Fully Charged" Circus head over to our giveaway blog HERE to find out how.

Today's tut' is is nothing majorly difficult, just something to jazz up your standard braids.

Divide the hair however you prefer like you're going to make typical braids on each side of the head.  I do a straight part off center on top of the head, and then a zig-zag part down the back.

Off to the right of the part on top of the head, make a long rectangular part.  Part it out into 3 sections and make small braids. 

 Braid them all the way down to the ends and tie them off with clear rubber bands.

I didn't get any pictures of the next steps -- but add the 3 mini-braids into your middle strand of your main braid for your Pocahontas braid.  I tried adding one braid into each section of the thick braid, but they didn't lay well.  Tie the braid off with a rubber band once you reach the bottom.

 Braid the other side just regular.  You could add 3 braids on this side, but I opted to just leave it plain.

How it should look from above:

If you're really careful about getting those little braids to stay on top of your thick braid as you work your way down, it'll look really cool like this:

 And then you'll have a happy little girl like this!:

Like I said, nothing majorly hard, but a fun way to mix things up from the typical braids for school one day.

Winner of Thirty-One Gifts Giveaway

Thanks to everyone who participated in our giveaway from Thirty-One Gifts this last week.  Hopefully you had as much fun going through their catalog as I did!

Random.org has picked our winner for us and it's #29:

And that means that Brooke is that lucky #29!

So Brooke, please e-mail me a.s.a.p. and I'll get you in touch with Jessica!   

(If I haven't heard from our winner w/in 48 hours I reserve the right to pick another winner.)

BUT WAIT!!!

There's good news for everyone else too! 

Despite not everyone being able to win the Little’s Carry-All Caddy and small rosette clip, for the month of August every customer of Thirty-One Gifts wins with 15% off everything in the whole catalog through August 30th. Order online at mythirtyone.com/JessStewart before August 30th to get some great bags and other fabulous products for the fall.  There are no codes needed, just order by clicking on her link above or go HERE and you'll automatically receive 15% off your order.  You can also still sign up to receive her newsletter by going HERE.

Thanks again to everyone for participating & thank you Jess for offering the fun giveaway!

Hair Things on Vacation

First off, just a reminder, we've got a fun giveaway going on from Thirty-One Gifts, so if you haven't had a chance to enter yet, click HERE, or keep scrolling to find it so you can enter!  It ends Saturday, so time is running out!  You don't want to miss out on this one!

I mentioned before in a post, as well as on FB that we'd been on vacation.  I thought I'd share a few things from our vacation with you!  I've got to tell you that it didn't start out overly well in the "hair department."  We had quite the drive to get to our final destination, so we stayed overnight in a hotel for the first night away.  So our first morning, I woke up to find that I'd forgotten my "favorite comb."  Does anyone else have one of those?  The one that just sorta makes you have a "good hair day?"  My husband laughed quite hard at me.  Well, once I'd gotten over that and managed to get my hair done I went to use my hair spray.  Mind you, I'd grabbed a new bottle from my stash because my other bottle was almost empty & I didn't want to have to bother with buying a new bottle while on vacation.  Well I pumped and pumped to try get hairspray out & nothing came.  I know you must "prime the pump" but it was ridiculous the time I pumped.  Finally I took the lid off & this is what I found:

Yup -- I about died.  There was NO straw that went down into the hairspray.  I deemed a "Hair Emergency!"  Let me tell you my husband laughed so hard at me!!  Well, I played "McGyver" (for those of you that know that lovely old show) and pulled out a bottle of  body spray /perfume and thought I could use the straw from interchangeably.  No luck.  So I ended out just holding the entire sprayer/straw from my body spray onto the bottle of hair spray (since it wasn't the same size to be able to screw on) to get hair spray out.  Dumb I know -- but I was desperate.  I'm a hair spray using gal.  Desperate times call for desperate measures!  Eventually I bought a new bottle once we got to where we were staying, but I was so bugged to have to pay for a new bottle, since that is why I'd purposely grabbed the new bottle from my stash in the first place!  Oh well!  We still laugh about it today!

We headed to the Oregon coast on vacation.  We just LOVE it there.  If follow us on FB we shared a few of these pictures over there - but just in case, thought we'd post them here too for fun ...

 I had some people ask if that was a ship or a whale in the background ... no, it's just a big rock out in the ocean.  This beach is one of our favorites to come to.

 It was funny because I'd written this in the sand and the girls had been playing forever in another area because tide was low.  A while later I told them to come over and take a picture by it and I managed to take this 1 picture with them sitting down by it ....

 Bee turned around and told me the water was coming, which I told her not to worry about since tide was so low, but - nope, she was right .... :-)

 

And on another interesting hair note -- not one I expected to find at a light house .... we went down to the Yaquina Bay lighthouse in Newport Beach.  It's not the biggest one you've ever seen, but a fun one with a house to wander through, so the girls found it really interesting.

But in the parlor, this is what I found interesting .... Above the fireplace was this (click on it to enlarge it):

 Off to the side was this sign that says:

         "This type of  craft has been traced as far back as the late 17th century.  It appears to have begun in the British Isles.  It spread to the European Countries and across the seas to America.  It probably began from the practice of saving a lock of a loved one's hair as a memorial.

        Preserving hair progressed into making jewelry such as earrings, bracelets, and watch chains.  Women saved their hair from their hair brushes and put it into a jar on the dressing table.

      In the mid-1800's hair jewelry advanced to hair pictures & wreathes.  Pattern books were published and it became a popular craft.  Many Victorian homes had hair pictures hanging in the parlor."

The cross wasn't what I found odd -- it was everything else around it!! It was so bizarre!  I couldn't get a great picture due to the lighting and windows in the room.  Have you seen anything like this before?  Maybe I've just been living under a rock & am the first!

It made me laugh really!  I say we've come a long way!  Instead of keeping our hair - we donate it to Locks of Love.  And could you see Martha Stewart doing a segment about this on her next show?  "Next up - How to create a darling pair of earrings out of hair that will go perfectly with your new Spring outfit." "It's a Good Thing!"  LOL  

Anyway, thanks for letting me share a little bit of our vacation - hair & non-hair related with you!  And don't forget to keep scrolling to enter our giveaway, if you haven't already!

Giveaway from Thirty-One Gifts is OVER

 I'm so excited for this giveaway today!  I've been chatting with Jessica Stewart & she is an independent consultant for Thirty-One Gifts.  She's the one who is offering up the fun items for the giveaway, for a while & this has been in the works for a while, but timing has just been crazy for both of us.  I don't know if you've ever heard of Thirty-One Gifts before, but they've got a catalog that is almost 50 pages that are full of so many things I couldn't even begin to choose what to buy!  They are designed so cute - but they are so practical too!  Anyway, here's a little more about them:

Thirty-One Gifts is a faith based organization that offers personalized gifts such as lunch totes, purses, beach bags, baby gifts, a men’s line and much more! Function & style…designed for your life! With Thirty-One Gifts, you can find the perfect personalized gifts for birthdays, teacher gifts, baby showers, bridal showers, Christmas and more!

 

Jessica thought it would be fun to giveaway one of the things she uses regularly - a Little’s Carry-All Caddy:

(Items in carry all not included!)

This is what she says about these cute totes:   

"One of the great hair organization tools I use is the Little’s Carry-All Caddy. I keep my gels, sprays and brushes in the main pocket. I keep my combs and hair clips in the front mesh pocket. What I love about keeping all my hair stuff in this one spot is how easy it is to move from the upstairs to my downstairs on those crazy mornings when we are running behind. I can send my oldest upstairs to grab the caddy and I can do all the hair downstairs and out we go. I have also found that by using this wonderful caddy my kids bathroom has stayed cleaner and I am not looking for things as often."

The tote comes if 7 different darling patterns from which you can choose. (click on the image to enlarge it):

 She's also giving away one of these darling small rosette clips to adorn your little ones hair (click the image to enlarge it):  Who wouldn't want one of these to finish off one of your hairdos?!  They are so too cute!

 So here's how to enter to win both of these cute items:

For 1 entry: Go to their catalog HERE and and then come back & comment on this post about what item you would LOVE to have. 

For a 2nd entry:  Subscribe to Jessica's newsletter newsletter (go HERE to subscribe) - & Be sure to leave a 2nd comment for your 2nd entry.

This giveaway will be open through Saturday 8/13/11.   I'll announce the winner the following Monday.  To get more information on Thirty-One Gifts, please feel free to contact Jessica Stewart to find out more about their fun products. If you have specific questions about Thirty-One Gifts, would like to learn more about becoming a consultant or have questions about ordering from Jessica, please contact Jessica directly by clicking here.

Thanks Jess for offering these to our readers.  So head on over to their catalog & sign up for her newsletter so you don't miss out on any of their great products!