January 7, 2012

Crown Bun

This one is the new favourite around here.  The tutorial is here.

 

You can see here where I tucked in the remainder of the braid.  I would have put a flower over that part, except I needed to put it on the other side to hide the fact that I got a bit thin on that side and that the braid went too high … it should have stayed closer to her ear before it came back around the head.

And that ends my hair series for a while again.  As I post them on the blog it’s easier for the kids to quickly check out the blog for the favourites and tell me what they want done in their hair.  At the same time, they tend to gravitate to the other blogs looking for new ideas, so we don’t often get to doing hairstyles more then once or twice.

Twist Crown

This is a hairstyle I used to do more often when the girls were younger.  Not sure why, but it sort of got forgotten in recent years, until Marietta asked me to do it last week.  No link to a tutorial for this one, but it is a pretty simple hairstyle where you start with a section like you do when doing a french braid, then begin to twist it and as you twist it you bring in pieces from below to twist in with it.  I’m not the greatest at these type of twists (probably why I haven’t done it for a long time), I find I cannot get a nice smooth twist when I do it. 

I just did the top half of her hair, but you could also do the same thing with all of the hair.

Gift Exchange 2

We had a gift exchange afternoon with my family on January 7th where Grandpa and Grandma spoil the grandkis.  It worked out nice that it was at the end of the holidays since this gave Matthew some new things to do as the kids returned to school and he was left at home by himself again … and he was definitely spoiled and had lots to play with.

We usually open presents in order of age, starting with the youngest member of the family and rotating until the presents are done.   It was exciting that Cam and Jess were the ones who fell under the youngest and got to open the first present

 

The newest and youngest member of the family is expected to arrive at the end of June.

This means Noah will have a playmate and the girls will have two little ones to babysit and entertain.

 

Anyone else want to give this a try?

 

Aiden and Matthew received the same present, so they opened it at the same time. 

 

It was rather hard to get a picture of Matthew looking as he was jumping up and down with such glee and excitement over this wonderful prize that Santa had left him.  We should have wait until the very end for this present as after that we had two wild cowboys in our midst making a huge racket and unable to settle down.

We were smart enough to leave this present until the last.  I love the pictures and expression on Matthew face as he opened it.

. 

Matthew had put his letter to Santa in his stocking and wrote on it that he would like a remote control monster truck.  I have no idea where this idea came from, but he did talk about it from time to time and we kept telling him that Santa doesn’t bring everything on the list so he might not get it.  Well you can imagine how impressed Matthew is with Santa now that he got play guns AND his remote control monster truck.  He had no trouble figuring out how to use it and the truck zooms around our main floor each day.

Once again the kids were more then just a little spoiled!

Bottom Elastics

This idea came off of this video (at the end).  I liked how it looked, but when I did it myself I ended up putting too many elastics in and using too small pieces of hair (similar to what I’m used to when doing elastics), so it didn’t look much different then when I put the girls entire head in elastics (see here).  I should have used bigger sections and maybe even twisted the sections so that the pattern stood out more and it didn’t just look like my typical elastic-do.

It still looked nice and turned out well … just not what I had in mind.

 

Christmas Holidays

The holidays went by quickly as they usually do.  They were the right mix of busyness and rest and relaxation.  We enjoyed lots of sleeping in as well as enough mornings of getting up and out the door on time.  There was plenty happening the first week with Christmas and Boxing Day and the annual croquette making day, then a trip off to Chatham for a night, some quick visiting and partying before returning home to end the week with some New Years Eve get-togethers on Saturday.  Our second week we aimed to keep it mellow and stay home, resting, relaxing, playing games, doing crafts and just enjoying the lack of schedule and freedom to be lazy for a week.  It ended up not being quite to lazy like when the girls planned a last minute get-together with Hamilton friends, and then a trip off to Hamilton and London for a day, and a birthday party/sleep-over for Rebecca, with the end of the week being topped off by another visit from Santa.  But it was still relaxing and we did get some sewing done during the week … pictures of that will have to follow as the girls are just finishing up those projects (waiting for them to put the buttons on the outfits).

This year we made over 1000 croquettes, 300 of which were gluten free.   It was a busy day but it went well and we were impressed with how fast we had them rolled and ready for deep frying.  It was still late by time we were done, but we all left with our packages to fill our freezers.  The gluten free croquettes turned out scrumptious straight out of the deep fryer.  A few days later we tried them reheated in the oven as we do with the wheat ones.  This was a bit disappointing as they were quite dry.  We’ll have to decide next year whether we deep-fry them all ahead of time or do it when we eat them.  Having them deep-fried in advanced  is so nice as it’s so handy to just pop them in the oven and not stink up the house with oil smells – since our deep-fryer is broken I would have to do it in the house. At the same time doing all that work and then being disappointed after isn’t very nice.  They still taste good but they are dry instead instead of a nice soft “goop”.  The issue could also be that I did not have xanthan gum handy when we made them so when they were quite goopy and mushy (so much that we couldn’t shape it into balls) we ended up adding a lot more flour.  Good thing we ate some and enjoyed them that night .. we know it’s possible to get them yummy, we’ll just have to  keep trying on the reheating idea … but realizing that reheating is often a problem with gluten-free I guess we may have to accept that that option is no longer available.

 

Whenever we get together and Noah is around there’s a fight between the girls about who gets to watch him, care for him, entertain him.  Noah definitely doesn’t lack for attention seeing as the girls have to compete with Grandma also :)   Rebecca ended up going to bed when things got a bit late with the croquettes as she wasn’t feeling the greatest.  So Marietta got full dibs on watching Noah while the ladies finished up deep frying the croquettes.

 

And now here we are half-way through January already … wow, it just keeps flying by. 

Three Braid Half-Crown (short hair look)

Rebecca went with the five braid concept as well, but since her hair is too short we had to do three braids.  I have often found the three braids gives a nice look to the face, as well they seem to stay in a bit better, probably just because smaller and tighter in size.

Same idea … just only on the front.

We put some rollers in the back to give a bit of a fancier look to the back … we had hoped they wouldn’t be so tight and tried to stretch them out, but no luck, the girls hair holds roller curls well (but does not hold curling iron curls).  Had I known they would stay so tight (for several days) I would have done at least another row further down .. or the whole back of her head. 

 

Rebecca is enjoying that her hair is slowly getting long enough to do up into various styles … and now I have two girls competing for my time on Saturday nights.

Five Braid Crown

This is actually nothing new around here.  I have done this many times on the girls, often putting rollers in the hair to give a nice curly crown at the top of their heads.  You can see previous post where the girls are wearing this style here …. and now it’s been included in the hair posts.

No tutorial for this one as this is one I have done on my own for years.  The upsidedown braid means being creative on seating position.  The girls usually prefer to lay done for that one.  Proper mouse and hairspray means this one usually stays in about a week, after it is washed it’s a more fussy version, but still decent.

Snow … FINALLY!

We are so tired of dealing with this

This would be a perfect winter to live in the city … where you can enjoy the mild weather without all the mud that comes with it.  During our years in the city we had lots of snow each year, great weather for country living when the sledding and skating is in the backyard.  Now that we live in the country … hardly any snow.  This year has been the worst so far.  We had one small dusting during the Christmas Holidays that only lasted a day. 

Yesterday we finally seen a bit more snow and today the kids spent the majority of the day outdoors enjoying the snow.  It isn’t much, but it’s still fun to play in, especially the first snowfall of the year.

And for the kids snow = GTing.  The first question this morning from Rebecca was “can we go GTing this afternoon?”   Seeing as we don’t have the four-wheeler or snowmobile to do this we have to go elsewhere … and so off we went to Dave and Ange’s this afternoon.  The guys entertained the kids outdoors while us ladies enjoyed a peaceful tea-time.

It’s –15C outside right now.  You’ll never guess what they’re calling for on Monday!!  Yup, that’s right …. RAIN … you know, just in case we haven’t gotten enough this fall and winter.  Blah, I’m so sick of the mud!

Waterfall Weave

Still on the waterfall theme.

This hair-do did not turn out as I had hoped, but I think it’s just because I need to practice it again and work out a few mistakes. 

Next time I would work across her head from ear to ear instead of on an angle like the video showed.

I seen the idea on this video, but as you can see my braid is much thicker at the bottom then what shows in the video. This makes sense since by the end you have worked in almost all the hair, but I wonder if I try it again and try to even it out a bit it will work better … I’m just not sure how I’ll avoid having such a bundle of hair at the end, which greater increases in size when you have to tuck the extra under it.

So this one needs some work and practice, but it’s a neat idea.