Flash Back Friday

First the dirty work... not really dirty, but important. And hair related news. The other day I saw this report on TV and then heard it talked about on the radio the next morning. Odd, have you ever heard of little girls that faint while having there hair dried? Well I guess it is pretty common. And in girls my Beans age!!! So of course I thought this was important enough to share, so if you are interested in this condition you can check it out at this link. It has to do with blood flow and oxygen intake... it REALLY could happen to anyone.

So for today's flashback Friday I am taking you back to pigtail bows. (Tutorial found at this link.) I love making hair into bows. It is just one of my favorite styles. Crazy enough this was inspired by Lady Gaga. Who knew.Some other good hair styles using the bows in the hair can be found at this link for combining the bow with the ribbon braid, At this link for a finishing touch on a double braid or at this link where we originally posted the Lady Gaga look alike hair do. Enjoy using the bow and remember to share your bows on our Facebook Fan page. I look forward to seeing your work.

Flash Back Friday

My beautiful niece has a dance recital today that she has been practicing for week for with her daddy. It is seriously the cutest dance EVER!!! So today for Flash Back Friday I wanted to go back to an S.J. Hair do. And wish her and her dad luck tonight. I so wish I wasn't at school because I would love to be there.

To get to this tutorial click here.

THANK YOU ALL so much for your inspirational thoughts of encouragement last week. I can't thank you enough! Our situation has not improved, but I think I am moving past the blues. Its a choice to be sad, you know. And I don't want to be sad or stressed. So I am just doing the best I can with what we have to work with. But you guys have NO IDEA how much you play into helping me right now. THANK YOU!!!!

{Un-Inspired}

This morning I got up and walked the kids to school and I kept walking... I went for a three mile walk just my three year old and me. I came home and mowed the front yard and my back yard. I have a very HILLY yard, so it was a lot of hard work. This last week while I have been out of school on a (very small) break I have had a moment to stop and think. This morning I really got thinking about life (while walking and mowing the yard.) And started to feel a bit depressed. {sadly} My husband said that I should write out my feelings, because that is generally my own best outlet for hard times. So I hope you will indulge me this outlet of feelings. Read on if you want or scroll away. I just feel it is time to accept the way life is. And I know others can relate, so I decided to post this here at Girly Do's rather than bottle it up on my personal blog.

One thing I have never been good at with this blog is being real and showing who the real Jenn is. I don't open up. I keep things very secure around here. For one because this is a public form that anyone can read and I don't know all my readers. I get a lot of people contacting me to send me free product to test and blog about, but I feel so nervous in working with people outside my own little safe circle I have created. I know it would help there business as well as the growth of my blog, but I have always chose to side with caution and stay away from such partnerships. I've never really got down and dirty with details of my personal life because I don't know that anyone cares, but also it has never felt relevant.

Last Fall my husband was sent out of town to work. He was going to be gone five days a week leaving me as a single mom of three, two of which are in school, trying to go to school myself. We toughed through it. With the help of some very dear friends I switched to the day program for a semester and struggled through life. It was a challenge, but we felt if he went out of town we would be showing the company he worked for his willingness to work. It was worth it so that we could secure his continuing with work. Lots of people have been laid off (in his line of work) with the economy being what it is, so we did what we needed to do to keep him working.

Well the job came to an end and it didn't secure him a job like we had hoped. And like with any company when work just isn't available they had to lay off people one of which was my husband. After months of struggling with him out of town he was now going to be at home every day, out of work. Because it is a Union job he is on the books waiting for work to pick up and get picked up again to work again. In the mean time... we wait.

With waiting for work comes other struggles and stresses. Making unemployment wages is far from glamorous. And far from making life easy to come by. We have three kids, one that has several health issues. He has sleep apnea (one of the big issues) and has to sleep with a CPAP machine at nights. The thought of loosing insurance and giving the machine back is just unbearable! We've of course applied for the kids to be on State insurance until Andy is working again. He'll be able to stay on his machine. Can I just say that I can't imagine life with him off his machine. He is a total different child and his life has improved 100 fold!

This brings me to why/how this is hair related. I have been going to school now for a year (just over 1000 of my 2000 hours) to become a cosmetologist. I LOVE SCHOOL. I love that I have finally made HAIR my career path. I've been doing this blog for over three years now and I AM HAIR. I am passionate about hair, so I know I've made the right choice. But I am standing in a place where I am really hurting. My family is really hurting.

I'd love to be the one to go get a second job to help my family right now. It would mean the world to me to be able to do that, but I am a student. Any job I apply for right now they see that I have a year left of school, that I plan to continue and they don't consider me for any position. It is very frustrating. Any job I want to get has to have insurance, because no doubt we will loose insurance benefits if we have more income and we can't risk that with Jo's health issues. I need a job that has hours to not interfere with my schooling. And I almost need a job that knows I will leave once my schooling is done. Its a really being stuck between a rock and a hard place. And it really sucks!

I know people have it harder than me out there, but I just feel so depressed and so uninspired right now. I know there are people who can relate to my story. And I know that if we all just hold tight together we can all make it through these hard times. So for those for those of my readers out of work, or with sick kids and other struggles going on... I really want you to know that I understand. I'm there too. Please drop a line and leave me a comment today. You guys are always the best at making a down day a million times better, more happy and just over-all fun! Thanks for indulging this little vent session.

Flash Back Friday

RAG CURLS!!! I remember hearing about rag curling in high school. I talked my mom into trying it out and the first time I ever had her do them in my hair it was a kinky mess, but we tried again and things got better. Now that I have my own daughter to experiment on I kind of feel like we have things perfected. I love rag curls. I don't do them very often, but I still love them just the same. For the photo tutorial on these click on the photo or this link. And for my video help click here. Thank you again for your great feed back on my last post. Hope you have a great weekend. HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all the mommy's out there.

Twisted into Messy Buns

HAPPY HAPPY DAY!!!!!
Yesterday I finished up with my last test for the semester. I am thrilled to have a break. I have been overloaded the last few weeks and I have been aching to post something new on Girly Do's. I also got all my grades posted by last night and I am still sitting on my 4.0 GPA!!! THRILLED!!! Its a good day. This morning I slept in for the first time in MONTHS and went for a walk this morning. I got home and priority number one was to get one of these posts up for you guys. It feels good to be on break. Even if it is only a short two week break until my next semester. SO--- I've missed you all so much! HOW YOU DOIN'?
For today's hair tutorial it really is simple, but with Beans short hair I wanted to show you some hair do's with short hair. BEFORE it grows long again. Which her hair grows so fast I know we will have it long again real soon. Already it seems to be a lot longer than when I cut it. I'm jealous of her mad growth skills.

For this do, I am just going to do three twists on top to pull into messy buns. This is a great one for almost any bob cut. When you are working with the hair in the fringe/bang area you are working with the longest hair in a bob hair cut. The only haircut I don't see this working on is a pixie cut. Obviously you aren't able to do many hairstyles like this with a pixie cut. Doing the hair in three sections will make you feel like you have more hair to pull of making a messy bun rather than trying to use the whole front bang/fringe area pulled into one--- we split it into three. Work beautifully.

When you are working with the sections just use clips to keep the hair out of your working area. This can also help you to keep your parting lines crisp. Any braid will work and you can do smaller sections and smaller more cornrow type braids. Doing more ponytails in the last step if you want.

I wanted to just work with three twist braid sections. Who is still having problems with the two-strand twist braid? Anyone?

Now for the bun. I am going to show the step by step on this, but there is a video at this older post. First part of this messy bun is to divide each pony tail in half. You will make your loops even by using your fingers to establish the bun-bump.

Pinch that together and pull your fingers out of the way.

Now gather the messy hair left down around the sides all over to the side opposite of your hand. You start using your elastic around the loops you already have established for your bun...

On the last twist around of the elastic FOLD IN those messy hairs you gathered together in the previous step. This will make your messy bun. Do that same process on each ponytail from each braid until you have your three messy buns.

Set your loops and twists how ever you want and keep it messy. This is not a clean smooth style. It is supposed to be a little messy.

And there you have it! Working with short hair the biggest thing you need to realize is that top section, the fringe area to the apex (top of the head, highest point) is going to be your work area for anything other than just left down hair. That is your longest sections of hair, but can you do cute hair do's with short hair? You better believe you can!

I know some people have asked about how I cut Beans hair so that it would curl under a little more naturally... I am a little nervous about doing a video on that because you really need to have your hairdresser assess the hair and decide if your daughter has the right kind of hair to pull off razor cutting it like I did to Beans. I'd hate to have someone botch there daughters hair trying to get that curling under technique. If the hair is too fine and you try razor cutting it to curl under it can come out looking stringy and that is NEVER a good look. I am a little scared to show anything to do with actual cutting of the hair--- know what I mean? There are just a ton of factors that go into a "good" haircut. What are your thought?