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.

Double Waterfall Braid

If you have the waterfall braid figured out then this is a pretty easy braid to do also, you can find a tutorial here.  If time allows you could carry on and do a triple braid.

 

The fancier look … we put roller in the dropped sections overnight.

 

Waterfall Braid

The waterfall braid is actually considered a relatively common braid, although I can’t say that I’ve ever really seen it before.  In this braid you drop a strand as you go and pick up new hair to keep the braid going.  It creates a rather elegant look to the normal braid and you can do a wide variety of different things with it, whether it’s double braids or weaves or such.

You can type waterfall braid into your search engine and come up with tons of videos and tutorials on how to do it.  Here is one from one of our favourite sites, Adopt-a-‘Do Cute Girl Haristyles

Since the dropped strands are loose the braid does not stay in a well as a typical braid, and since I usually do the girls fancier hairdo’s at night then I will usually gather up the dropped stands and put them in a ponytail to keep them tight overnight.

   

I tried the curled look with Rebecca’s hair but it did not work the greatest since her hair is not very long.

On the other hand it looked okay with Marietta’s hair, except that her hair (and Rebecca’s) does not hold curl for a curling iron very well.  It took quite a long time to try get the strands to curl and so I ended up not finishing all the strands, maybe next time I’ll try put rollers in overnight since her hair holds those curls much better.

Twists into Messy Bun

I’m not the greatest at these twisty things, but we did manage to do this one a few times.  One of those things that I just have to try more often so I can get the hang of it and make smoother twists. 

 

   

Click here for tutorial

Front Twist and Weave

Rebecca had short hair for about half and year and then was ready to start growing it out again with the intent of donating it again.  Since Rebecca has thick hair that easily knots long hair can be a fair amount of work … and now that she’s nine she’s going to have to learn to care for it herself a bit more.   At the same time when her hair is done it is very nice hair with a nice thickness that looks full.  So we’ll see how long it gets this time before we get tired of trying to get the knots out and decide to cut off.

This hairdo is the same as the Twist and Weave that I previously posted, but I only did the front/top of Rebecca’s head.  I did four twist that I weaved and brought into the pig tails on the sides.  Because the front section of her hair by her ears was not long enough to twist across her head I just pull that back into the pig tails, using only the center section

Rebecca is happy to have hair that starting to get long enough to try different hair-do’s in.  It’s a new challenge for me to try work with hair that is not long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chain Link Headband

Okay, so I figured I’d do another hair series since I have a few new ones that we’ve tried.  We sort of stick to the ones we like now, but every now and then decide to try something new again.  There are lots of neat ideas out there, but not all of them ones that the girls would actually want to wear, they’ll just look at them and say “that’s neat, but not for me”. 

This one has become a new favourite for a quick elegant hairdo.  Marietta constantly has people coming to check whether she is wearing a headband or if it’s actually her hair.  The biggest trick to this one is making sure it’s good and wet.  As usual I found this one on Princess Hairstyles called a Chain Link Headband.