Keep Me Curly!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:04:00 +0000

Hi everyone! We have news of a great giveaway, and a chance for you to help a family with the adoption of their little girl. Without further ado, I will let Paula Ramm of Lilla Rose Hair Accessories, which we featured and reviewed in this post, do the talking!

I have exciting news, and a great opportunity for you! I am sponsoring an adoption fundraiser for our dear friends, the Gullett family, which includes a MEGA-GIVEAWAY with a fabulous prize package worth over $245! All proceeds from Lilla Rose purchases made through the special fundraising party link, will be donated to the Gullett's adoption fund! All party orders will also receive FREE SHIPPING! This is a great opportunity to save on your Lilla Rose purchase and help a sweet family at the same time!

To read more about the Gullett family, and enter the huge mega-giveaway, click here: Adoption Fundraiser and Mega-Giveaway

To place an order to benefit the adoption fund and receive free shipping, go here: Lilla Rose orders

This fundraising party will run Jan. 16-21, and orders will be shipped out at the close of the party.

Thanks so much for helping this sweet family bring home their daughter!

Blessings,
Paula

Hope everyone gets some great stuff!!

KEEP ME CURLY IS BACK ONLINE!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:44:00 +0000

Hello everyone! After being in webhosting limbo for a little while, we are BACK up! Sorry to have blipped out for all of you.

Stay tuned to hear about a HUGE giveaway we caught wind of.....

Steph & Katie

HOLIDAY SALE at SNAPAHOLICS!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:36:00 +0000

In case you didn't already know from being my fan on Facebook, I wanted to tell you that Snapaholics has some holiday colored beads including the much-loved "snowflake" beads...this is how great they look with holiday colored beads:

....and EVERYTHING on the site is 30% off through Dec. 18!

Use the coupon code "holidayhair" and you will be on your way to some bling....for yourself or to give as gifts....if you know anyone with little girls, what's an easier gift than some new beads for hair?

Check it out!

Steph

Product Review - Lillibands and LilliWear

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:44:00 +0000

The lovely ladies over at Lillibands have sent Steph and I some GREAT stuff to try out and review for you all! Their signature Lillibands are headbands that are made from bold beautiful fabrics with an elastic that holds them in place all day long! The LilliWear line are unique dresses and skirts that you won't find on stores or see on any other girls around town!

These headbands are SO pretty and they would make GREAT stocking stuffers! Here are the girls and I modeling the ones we received!

Here is Miss V wearing a Girls size Lilliband

Little E is wearing a Baby size.

I am wearing a Teen/Women's size.

Miss B is also in a Teen/Women's size

We have all enjoyed trying out the Lillibands! The "baby" size is marketed for children under 2, but Little E has a tiny head and although she is 4, it fits her really well. The fabric part of the Lilliband increases slightly in width the larger the size you purchase.

Miss V and Miss B both have kind of big heads and I have a kind of small head, but the headbands we used all seemed to fit us well. The girls reported NO slippage throughout the day while wearing them to school!

I have never been a huge headband person. The old plastic kind gives me a headache and usually cloth ones just slip around too much. When I wore the Lilliband I experienced no headache or discomfort. I also have to say there was considerably less slippage than I normally experience with headbands but I still kind of felt like it was moving backward over time. When I would check the mirror everything still looked great, but it just felt like it was wrong! My husband really thought I looked cute in it though, so that is a plus!

Lucky Little E also got to try out the "Messy Girl Dress." I know I wouldn't want her getting messy in it, though, it is WAY to cute for that! Although with the bright colors and busy patterns of the dresses, I am sure they would hide stains very well! Actually, I'll tell you why it's called the Messy Girl Dress.....because since it's fully REVERSIBLE, when your girl gets a bit messy (as we know they can during a day of play) they can flip the dress inside out and VOILA! Clean again! The material you see on the front pocket is what the other side of the dress looks like. That is like having two dresses in one! What a great idea!

There was a misunderstanding about Little E's age so they sent her a dress meant for a two year old. Fortunately Little E is still quite Little! The GREAT thing about this dress is that once your girl has grown a bit, it can easily become a tunic top worn with jeans and leggings as you can see E doing here! I was really impressed with the sturdy quality of this dress. It is super durable.

Check out the rest of the LilliWear too. I love, love, LOVE the pocket skirts with matching tops. TOO CUTE!

Steph here! G was sent an aqua-colored (fave color!) Lilliband, as luck would have it, with OWLS on it.....her classroom theme this year happens to be owls...so she L.O.V.E.D. getting this Lilliband!

By the way, the reason this looks raised at the back and rolled/miscreased at the front is because on her first day wearing it at school the colors matched her outfit and apparently she wanted to gather her loose tunic top into a "tail" behind her and so of course thought her new headband would work fabulously for that purpose. So I just need to roll it back to the normal crease a tad and steam it for a few seconds....just haven't done it yet :)

G usually removes headbands, like the ballerina ones, by the time I pick her up from daycare it has been stuffed into her backpack. Not so with the Lillibands. They are so comfortable to her that she usually forgets to remove it at night (she's asleep in hers right now, actually). She is really wanting me to curl her hair into spirals with the Soft Spikes and wear it like that with the Lilliband, but we haven't found time yet to do that style.

I was sent a black and white teen/adult size Lilliband. I was told that they are typically worn at the front of the head, as you can see in the photos of the ladies on their website. My hair is straight and fine but I have a lot of it. I will tell you that this headband stayed in place more so than any fabric headband I have tried. I would say that during a normal day it may have slipped backwards from where I initially put it maybe a half an inch or so. That is AMAZING for a fabric headband on straight hair! And I like the fact that the elastic that goes under the hair at the back of your head is thin and so doesn't feel like a bunched up annoyance back there.

These would be fabulous Christmas gifts, as would any of the LilliWear (here is the link to the Pocket Skirts with matching Tees). The prices of Lillibands and LilliWear reflect their fine handmade quality. These are moms creating quality clothing and accessories, inspired by their very own little girls!

Thanks so much ladies, for sending these to us! Please go check out the Lillibands website and let us know how you like their products!

Woven Cornrows and The Braided Crown

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:47:00 +0000

Do you remember this style?

I named it the Braided Crown. I love it! It was gorgeous with this puff.

But after a few days with the puff (you know I never keep a puff for long!) I needed something else to do with the center of her hair.

So I did this.

And I thought it was boring.

Well a few months ago, a friend of mine posted a pic of her daughter with the cutest style!
This is little V! Cute girl, cute style! (my friend got this idea from the blog: chocolate hair vanilla care)

This style is different than my braided crown because it is only braided from the middle of the head out and than the crown is made with the ends of the braids. For my crown, the hair is braided from the hairline going in. (opposite) BUT this gave me a great idea! IF I did this in the center of my braided crown than I could braid together the braids going from the hairline IN along with these braids that are going from the inside OUT!

It was a fab idea! I never did it though.

Why?

Because I got a different idea on the fabulous Tweeny hair blog! WOVEN CORNROWS!!!! So cool! And beautifully done. I have to admit my first attempt isn't as pretty as Rae's. And of course, I made a demo video on my first attempt. Plus my hubby was out of town so Miss B and I were doing the filming. All together, it probably makes one of the worst videos I have ever done. But, I think if you are an experienced hair braider you will get the idea :)

And if you don't. Well, just go read Rae's instructions!

As is typical with me, I didn't like the style as much once I did it as I did when I was imagining it. Oh well. It did work really well with her angel costume for Halloween!

And a few days after that I changed it up a bit by braiding the crown starting at the front, left side of her head. One braid went around the front, the other around the back, and they met up at the bottom, right side. We made a little bun there. I liked this look better.

And here is the video....

Katie

How to do a Twist-Out

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:44:00 +0000

I have another video for you all!

After I posted a pic on facebook of V's Twist-Out I had a few questions from people about how to do a Twist-Out....so this is for you!

In the video I do not really talk about the longevity of a Twist-Out, so let me address that here.

In our experience we have never had V wear a Twist-Out for more than a day. Often we will take out a hairstyle the day before we plan to wash her hair and restyle it, so the Twist-Out is just sort of the first step in that process - her hair looks cute and we are getting a jump start on hair day!

V's Twist Out at the end of a long day. Much less defined than when we first took them out as you can see in the video.

Because we don't use a lot of gel in our styles and I don't use any kind of setting or curling cream her Twist-Out's loose definition by the end of the first day. Each of the little sections start to puff out and expand. We also don't take any special care to preserve the style over night, other than the sleep cap she always wears. BUT if you wanted to try to preserve a Twist-Out you could either loosely band the hair in sections of maybe very loosely braid the hair in big sections over night, and don't forget a sleep cap or scarf! The next day you can than either lightly spritz and scrunch the hair, or put a bit of oil on your fingers and run it over the curls.

As the Twist-Out looses definition it will start to look more like a chunky afro which is also a really cute look and fun style! So I would say you could go with a Twist-Out for several days to a week, just realize it is going to loose definition and change it's look as time goes by.

Unfortunately, when Miss V wears styles like this she tends to get a lot of attention that she seems uncomfortable with. She is used to people commenting and raving over her beautiful hair, and when she wears big puffs she gets a lot of attention too, all of which she enjoys. But for some reason the Twist-Out (which is usually pretty big and fluffy) seems to elicit stupid comments like, "wow, look at your crazy hair" or "wild hair" "or something similarly negative in feeling no matter how nicely a person seems to say it. So I think if we ever do a Twist-Out for more than one day, we would pull it back into pigtails or something.

This is V's hair after a Braid-Out. I guess it is big and wild, but Adorable!

Have a LOVELY day!

Katie

Fun idea - Headbands from Hair Things!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:49:00 +0000

Hello friends!

I was sitting on the couch the other night, not even playing with hair things, and suddenly this image popped into my head! What if I looped hair elastics together to form a headband? So I went and tried it...and it worked!

I went to bed that night, and my mind started turning and I started thinking of other hair accessories I could use to decorate my little headbands.

Then when I pulled out all of our extensive collection of hair dodads (wow there is a lot of it!) I got this idea to use barrettes to secure the two ends of the headband and avoid the little "tail" I was getting.

Which then led me to this whole new idea for how to make a headband with hair elastics AND barrettes without needing to loop them together!

If you aren't quite sure how I did this by looking at the pics - have no fear! I filmed a ridiculously long video to explain a very simple concept! Check it out. At least little E is in it, and she is fun to look at.

What do you think? Fun? Are you going to try it? Can you add to my ideas? Please post pics on our facebook page of what you come up with!

Katie

Oh where, oh where has Katie gone???

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:56:00 +0000

Enjoying some truly gorgeous fall weather in Michigan!

Oh man friends! I seem to have disappeared again after a pretty good streak of regular posts. Well, we are in the eye of the hurricane around here, otherwise known as fall soccer season!

I am SO glad that Miss V is sporting those yarn braids right now, because we just have not had time for hair. A few weekends ago I did change the piggyback braids in the front into more box braids, but it was a pretty quick process thankfully.

Here are a few pictures to show you what life has been like the last few weeks:

The Young Man on his club soccer team

The Young Man on his Middle School soccer team

Miss B on her club soccer team

Little E working on her soccer moves!

Let's throw in some hair pics. I thought V's yarn braids looked great with this red headband, and Miss V (for reasons unknown) LOVES to wear headbands!

And here is a pic after we took out the piggy back braids. The front is pulled back in a half pony, but you can kind of see the new braids.

We still have a week and a half until I take out the yarn braids and put in something new. I have a bunch of cool ideas spinning in my head! So if you can be a bit patient with me, I promise I will be back to posting when the hurricane has died down.

Katie

Katie Bradley Art Giveaway RE-DRAW!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:22:00 +0000

Hello everyone! We are doing a re-drawing of the Labor Day giveaway of your choice of a 5x7 print! We never did hear back from the first winner, so some other lucky KMC reader is about to win! You can see all of Katie's work at Mossy Rock Designs on Etsy.

The fun part about this is that Katie Bradley has a BRAND NEW piece of art that you might choose. I have already ordered mine :) This is near and dear to me, having BOTH of my child's mothers honored in a piece of art.

Check out "Woven Together"

Isn't it lovely?

Well, without further ado, I have used the random number generator to choose our new winner, and it's comment #2!!! JANET! Congratulations Janet!

Janet said... [Reply to comment]

I am a fan of MossyRock designs on FB

August 28, 2011 5:21 AM

Janet please email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com and let us know which print you would like from the MossyRockDesigns etsy shop, and also your mailing address, and we will forward it on to Katie Bradley.

Congratulations!

We have more fun giveaways in the future so keep reading!

We LOVE locs!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:13:00 +0000

B and I (and Camera Guy of course) made a quick little video about one of the reasons I am jealous of her locs! This isn't novel stuff but maybe you just never thought of doing it before. Check it out:

Katie

Shades of Us WINNERS!!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:26:00 +0000

Thank you to everyone who participated in this giveaway! We hope you have enjoyed seeing all of the many different styles of accessories at Shades of Us. Keep checking back at their site because she is adding new things all of the time! In fact, she just added 50 new items yesterday!!!

The THREE lucky winners of this weeks giveaway chosen by Random.org are:

Comment #48

Michelle G said... [Reply to comment]

As I have been entering all my entries I was trying to decide which thing was my favorite. I couldn't so I had to do "innie, minnie, miney, mo" to come up with 091. But I also really like 073, 087, 070 and 088, LOL.

September 30, 2011 12:30 PM

Comment #36

Precious @ Precious-Curls.com said... [Reply to comment]

I'm a new follower!

September 30, 2011 11:10 AM

Comment #13

Dalene said... [Reply to comment]

I love the black & white circle flower, #87. It would be so versatile!

September 30, 2011 4:27 AM

Congratulations! Please contact Laura at laurapk21@gmail.com and let her know your accessory choice as well as your mailing address. Laura is going out of town in a few days, so email her ASAP if you want her to mail them out before she leaves!

For all of you who entered the giveaway and did not win - don't despair! Laura would like to offer you a coupon for FREE shipping on your next order! All you need to do is head over to her facebook page ("like" it if you haven't already done so!) and leave a comment saying you are a KMC reader and you are dropping in to get your coupon code! Cool huh?

Mommy Hair

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:53:00 +0000

So I have spent the last two days becoming completely ~~addicted to~~ inspired by stuff on Pinterest. I knew Pintrest would be trouble before I even saw it, and I was right! Such a wealth of awesomeness! (and amazing time sucker!)

Anyway, I have been in limbo trying to decide wether or not I wanted to cut my hair. I normally cut my hair every 6 months to a year. I always do a big chop, let it grow, big chop, let it grow, short, long, short, long. Well, after last nights browsing through braided hairstyle ideas on Pinterest I am quite happy that I haven't had the time or money to get my hair cut in a whole year and a half! It is decently long right now, which means I can actually do some fun stuff with it. And with all the great inspiration out there, I don't think I will be cutting my hair anytime soon.

Now, with 3 little girls to get ready in the morning I rarely have time to do much with my own hair. Usually don't have time to blow dry it. So I often wear it in some type of ponytail. To jazz things up when I have a few extra minutes I throw in one of those cornrows in the bang area that goes back into a messy bun. It's cute, but I need more than ONE hairstyle!

This video I stumbled on is PERFECT for me! Meant to be done on wet hair, meant to look messy, fast and easy - PERFECT! I was in a particularly big rush this morning but I had to try one of the styles out anyway. Here is the video link: 5 Styles for Wet Hair in Under 10 minutes.

And here are the pics of my take on it:

My hair is not quite as long or thick as hers so it doesn't come out as amazing looking. This pic was also taken at the end of the afternoon so my hair is no longer wet.

Because I was in such a big hurry I skipped the "dutch braid" as she calls it, better known to me as a "cornrow." For that front section, I just grabbed a hunk of hair and made a regular braid.

So you can see it isn't quite as visually interesting up front without the cornrow but it still looked good in person.

I will be trying out more of these styles and others I have found on Pinterest. Are you interested in seeing them? Or do you just want to see kid styles? I will also be modifying some things I am finding to do on the girls hair!

DON'T FORGET TO ENTER THIS WEEKS GIVEAWAY FOR A FREE SHADES OF US HAIR ACCESSORY!!!!!!

Katie

Shades of Us - GIVEAWAY!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:29:00 +0000

Giveaway time! Three lucky winners will win ANY hair accessory of their choosing from Shades of Us!

Have you gone over to the Shades of Us website to check out the cute and creative stuff she's got? I think the really cool thing about this company is that you never know what you are going to get. I was looking through the site last night and it had a ton of different stuff from the last time I was there! I am sure it depends on what fabrics, flowers, jewels she happens to pick up at the time! So if you buy something from Shades of Us, you can be pretty sure you won't see the same accessory on anyone else - they are so UNIQUE! Here are the pics of the cool stuff that Laura sent to Miss G!

One thing I love about these clips is the very well-attached plastic faceted "crystal" button in the center. It really adds a fine finishing touch to these and makes them look very refined!

This unique hair clip was G's favorite. She loved that it was unusual and the black button off-center! (PS we have 4 floss hair wraps going on right now, with no end in sight! I did insist that we take out the first two which have been in for a couple of months! I've gotta tighten locs!)

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE remember to write a SEPARATE comment for EACH thing you do on the list. If you put all of your entries in ONE comment you are selling yourself short! Each comment gets a number for our random generator, so you want to get as many comments as possible.

You have until NOON EST on Sunday, October 2nd to enter the drawing. We will be choosing the winners from the comments left on THIS post!

To enter this giveaway please leave a comment on THIS blog and answer THIS question:

After visiting the Shades of Us website, which was your favorite hair accessory?

____________________________________________________________________

If you would like to earn EXTRA entries do one or all of these things:

1) Go to the Shades of Us facebook page and become a fan! Leave a comment stating you are a fan.

2) Head on over to our Keep Me Curly! Facebook fan page and become a fan. Leave a comment stating that you are a fan. (or that you already were a fan)

3) "Share" our Keep Me Curly! Facebook page with your friends and come back and leave a comment letting us know what day you "shared" us THIS week.

4) Follow @keepmecurly on twitter Come back and post a comment that you are a follower and leave your Twitter ID. (or that you were already following)

5) Tweet any unique tweet announcing our blog or the giveaway with @keepmecurly in it! Cut and paste your tweet (not tweet id status) and post as a comment. You can get 1 entry for EVERY new and unique tweet!

6) Become a follower of our blog or subscribe to our blog through an RSS feed. Simply post a comment saying that you are a follower. (or that you were already following)

7) Subscribe to Katie's youtube channel and come back and leave a comment stating that you are a subscriber. (or that you were already a subscriber)

8) Leave a comment on one of Katie's youtube videos. Leave a comment HERE letting us know the title of the video you commented on.

9) Place an order at Snapaholics between 9/27 and 10/1 Noon EST. Leave a comment including your order number and order date.

10) Grab our badge! If you add our badge to your blog leave us a comment saying that you are using it with a link to your blog.

11) Advertise our site or this giveaway in a forum or other blog! We would really love it if you wrote about our site or this giveaway on your blog. If you are passionate about natural hair care, or Katie's youtube videos have been really helpful to you, or if you love cute hair things, talk it up on your blog! Earn TWO entries for doing this one! Simply post a comment saying that you are talking about us with a link to the forum or blog, then put (first entry) then comment again and write (second entry).

12) Get a friend to talk about us or our giveaway on THEIR blog, earn two MORE entries! Just leave us a comment with a link to THEIR blog and tell us that you encouraged them to participate. Then make sure they enter the giveaway for themselves too!

________________________________________________________________________

The winners will be announced on Monday, October 3rd. It is the responsibility of the winners to contact us at keepmecurly@gmail.com to let us know their mailing address and the hair accessory that they would like. IF the winners do not contact us by Friday, October 7th, we will choose a new winner.

Who can participate? US only please. Shades of Us is a new business and is not yet set up for international customers.

*** If you have any questions or if you have comments that are not related to the giveaway please feel free to email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com or leave your comment on a different post. In order for this giveaway to work we have to ask that you do not leave any other comments on this post if they do not follow the guidelines of the contest.***

Shades of Us Hair Accessories - Review

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:50:00 +0000

It's been a long time coming, but I told you all we had another giveaway in the making. Here it comes! These adorable hair accessories come from Shades of Us. Laura makes them all by hand and she has quite a variety of styles. She sent all 4 of our girls 2 hair things each. Katie's girls were SO THRILLED to get this package of beautiful hair stuff that they immediately put them in their hair!

They have continued to enjoy adding them to different styles to spice things up. Here are a few pics:

Little E's favorite color is yellow and we have used these hair things A LOT! I like that they are a solid color because they are a bit more versatile, I can pair them with so many outfits!

Miss V is ALL about the pink, so this pink and red fabric flower is perfect for her! I love how unique this one is!

I know the pic of B is a bit overexposed, so I included a pic of this one in E's hair too. B loves orange and turquoise, so this is the perfect choice for her! Aren't the different fabrics cool?

These flowers are great for older girls. I think the colors are bold and gorgeous! I am a bit afraid to send my girls to school in these though because they can be so rough on their stuff! I am sure they or their classmates will destroy them. So I am reserving these ones for special occasions.

Here is another precious flower that I think is well suited for younger girls. I love how it is made of soft, touchable fabric.

You can check out Shades of Us on Facebook or at their website. They have many many more styles than what we have shown you here! There is something to suit every little girls fancy! And priced from $3.00 to $12.00 (for headbands) these handmade and unique creations are a great buy!

Please come back tomorrow for your chance to win one of these fabulous hair accessories!

Tidbit Tuesday

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:12:00 +0000

Did You Know???

That Little E is growing up way too fast!

I am sure most mother's feel that way about the baby of the family. Right? I have probably mentioned before how much I love babies. The baby/toddler stage is my absolute favorite!

I adore the fact that our family was knit together through adoption, but I lament the fact that I didn't have the opportunity to know and love on my oldest three kids when they were babies.

So when God blessed our family with Little E, I was thrilled to finally have a baby! I think I was hoping she would stay a baby forever. Clearly that is not to be, because my baby turned 4 last week and had her first day of preschool yesterday! Oh how time flies!

So, I will share with you a little photo montage of E's birthday and first day of school - mostly pics of her cute hairstyles! And since she is still tiny and cute as a button, we will all pretend she is still a baby!

Little E has been begging for Soft Spikes for months! It is so cute because I don't think she really cares about the end result, she just wants me to take pictures of her looking like a porcupine head and put them on the computer like I do with her Sissys! I put three tiny cornrows up in the front before putting in the Soft Spikes.

Do you see that cute yellow flower clip in her hair? That is a teaser of something we have coming up!

Picnic lunch with mom and dad for her birthday!

Ready to open presents now that the big kids are home from school!

Ready for preschool!

I almost always do cornrows on E (or inverted french braids) because my hands are more comfortable braiding underhand. I decided to try a more traditional french braid on her and it looks so pretty!

Painting at school!

So, the big question here is: When do we drop the "little" and start calling her Miss E?

Katie

Back to School 2011 - B's Hair

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:05:00 +0000

Nothing really new or impressive here, but I think it looks really cute and the best part of this kind of style on B is that it keeps the locs OUT OF HER FACE! Kids- I'm telling ya! Why on earth would you want to walk around and talk to people with hair hanging in your face????

All we did for this style was put in 7 cornrows from front to back:

These cornrows on their own turned out pretty cute and we might do a variation on this for a style sometime, but it wasn't quite the look we were going for on a special day.

So, she washed her hair in the morning and I put in these rows. She wore them all day and night and I took them out (half way) the next morning to get the wavy locs!

At the point where I stopped taking out the cornrows I used 2 of her locs to tie off the braids so they wouldn't unravel. You can't even see them! Then we added the pretty butterfly headband - EASY!

The style looked just as adorable on day two without the headband. And as a bonus we didn't need to wrestle with her bangs to get them out of her face for soccer practice - we didn't even put in a ponytail, she just wore it like this and it was perfect!

Katie

Back to School 2011 - V's Hair

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:12:00 +0000

We seem to have fallen into a pattern of giving V yarn braids every fall. She did not have them for the first day of school last year, but we did them shortly after. I really only like to do yarn braids once a year for several reasons. 1) they take a long time to put in 2) I leave them in a long time -which is both awesome and boring 3) I just like variety so once a year makes it exciting every time she gets them!

This year I decided to basically repeat the fall inspired colors I did last year because I REALLY loved that style, but I HAD to make some changes. I NEVER do any style exactly the same way twice! I will be referring to last years braids all the way through, and I won't be explaining much about how I did the style so you should check last years post before reading this one!

Change 1- I added Red yarn. I was going to use this last year but thought it was too bright. This year I was ok with it! So we had black, brown, burgundy and red.

Change 2 - No beads. The beads were great last year, but again I like change, and it is easier to get the hair into ponytails and other styles without a clump of beads on the ends.

Change 3 - I went for longer braids. These are the longest we have ever done.

Change 4 -We did a layered look instead of a blunt cut look. I usually try to have all braids the same length at the bottom, so for a change I tried layers. I am not sure it is as cool looking as I envisioned, but to achieve this look I just made the bottom rows really long and then with the rows after that I made them a bit shorter each time.

Change 5 - We did piggy back braids on top. Last year we had criss cross cornrows. Again, I will leave these in for a few weeks and then take them out and put more yarn braids on top while leaving the back as it is.

Change 6 - I also kind of changed the pattern in which I put in the different colors of yarn. This time I did the colors row by row from the bottom up. I did two black rows on the bottom and than did a burgundy row, a brown row, a red row, and back to black etc.

I think that covers all the changes. I made some little braided yarn pieces to use as hair accessories on the pigtails. I kind of liked them, but I got sick of them and took them out after a few days.

Lastly, if you don't know how to do piggy back braid, here is one of our original videos on how to do them! They are a great alternative for those who can't do cornrows. Notice that B is the hair model in this video - before locs!

Katie

Back to School 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 21:05:00 +0000

My kids went back to school today! Last night I was giddy with excitement, like a kid on Christmas Eve. Don't get me wrong, I loved having my kids around for most of the summer. Family time is to be cherished, and we had a lot of it this year. But for the last week or so we have all been needing a little space! Not only am I ready for some peace and quiet, but I thrive on structure and schedules. While I do enjoy a break in the summer, and I take full advantage of sleeping in almost every morning, I got a whole lot of pleasure over the amount of things I accomplished this morning ALL before I normally would have rolled out of bed! I also LOVE when I can tidy up the house in the morning and it actually stays that way for a good 8 hours!

The funny thing is, as eager as I was to shoo them away today I had to choke back tears as I pulled out of the school parking lot! I guess no matter how much they drive you C-R-A-Z-Y, you are still crazy about your kids!

Don't they look cute? Who wouldn't be proud?

Little E starts preschool next week and I am seriously choked up about that one! But as difficult as it will be to let go of my quickly growing baby, I am super excited to watch her with this new experience! She is super shy and a big time mama's girl so I am expecting some tears on her end as well. But I think after a few weeks of getting used to things she is going to LOVE it!

You are able to get a glimpse of B and V's hair in these pics. There is nothing newly earth shattering about either style but they look sure do look pretty! I will be posting detailed pics of V's yarn braids tomorrow and B's style on Thursday.

I know we are about the last schools in the country to go back for the fall, but for everyone else who had a "first day" today, I hope it was as wonderful as ours!

Katie

Labor Day Giveaway WINNER!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Happy Labor Day!!!

At my house we aren't so much celebrating Labor Day, since my kids finally go back to school tomorrow, we are celebrating the Last Day of Summer Break! I LOVE my kids, but boy oh boy I couldn't be more ready for life to get back to routine and to have a few minutes of peace and quite around here! Anyway, enough about me, let's find out who is the lucky winner of a beautiful piece of artwork from MossyRockDesigns!!!

And the winner is comment #29 - Congratulations Kierstin!

Kierstin said... [Reply to comment]

I'm a fan of Mossy Rock on FB

September 1, 2011 12:17 PM

Kierstin, if you would please email us at keepmecurly@gmail.com and let us know which print you would like from the MossyRockDesigns etsy shop, and also your mailing address, we will forward it on to Katie Bradley right away!

Thanks everyone for playing! We just love giving stuff away, so stick around because we have another giveaway coming right up!

Interview: Rae and Syd from TweenyHair!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 07:26:00 +0000

Hello everyone! Today we have an awesome interview for you. I checked out Rae and Syd's blog at TweenyHair! The minute we saw this blog and the photos of Syd's stunning hair, we knew we HAD to feature her! This is what we all aspire to as our little girls approach teen-hood. Syd is an inspiration! Here we go....

(For the record, this here is the most epic twistout Steph has ever seen! Wow!)

Hi, I’m Rae and I’m the mother of 11 year old Syd. We both love Syd’s natural curls and coils and we agree that relaxers have no place in the future of her hair. The number of girls at school with natural hair is slowly dwindling as they choose to go the relaxer route. Syd knows that her natural hair will stand out more and more as she gets older, but she’s ok with that. She actually thinks it’s fun to stand out. Our challenge recently has been trying to find creative styles that fall somewhere between looking too baby-ish and too sophisticated. We’ve also begun to make the transition from mommy doing all the hair care to Syd learning to do it herself. We’re still in the middle of that transition now, with Syd doing more and more on her own all the time.

Syd says: I love my hair. Especially when it’s big! Sometimes it’s hard to do my hair because I have a lot of it, but I’m getting better and my mom is always here to help.

Here are Rae's answers to our KMC questions:

1. How would you describe the thickness and texture of Syd's hair? What was it like when she was young and it was shorter? How did you used to style it then?

Syd has very thick hair. Most of it is tightly coiled fairly tightly (4a) but there is a section of thinner, more loosely coiled (3c) strands up by her face. It has always been super thick, even when she was a baby, and it was several inches long by her first birthday. When she was younger, she mostly wore cornrow styles or various amounts of braided or twisted ponytails with beads or barrettes on the ends.

2. At what age did she stop wanting all the beads and barrettes?

She was done with barrettes by about second grade. The beads lasted a couple years longer. She is still ok with beads every once in a while, as long as they aren't the brightly colored plastic ones. Wooden beads at the ends of some cornrow styles can still look very age appropriate.

3. How did you first figure out how to do her hair once she wanted to stop the bling?

It wasn't as hard as you would think. For the cornrow styles, I did her hair the same as I always had and simply stopped added things to the ends. To replace the styles that consisted of lots of braided or twisted ponytails, I just removed the ponytail aspect and put her hair into box braids or twists instead.

4. How has the transition been into this "older age" with regard to how she feels about her own hair?

A few years ago, she was very self-concious whenever her hair was a little bit frizzy. Twist outs and braid outs could only be worn for one day because she didn't want anyone to see her hair after it started getting fluffy. Then around her 10th birthday she started to embrace her curls. She's now 11 and her favorite style is "big hair." (see photo at right...BIG!) She wears wash and gos, twist outs, and braid outs all the time.

5. How much of her own hair care does she do herself? Is she interested in it?

She washes, conditions, and detangles her own hair. I usually help her with the detangling because her hair is so thick and it takes her a long time to get through it all on her own. She can also remove braids and twists for the "out" styles and she can do her own 2 strand twists. I normally let her do the front and I work on the back section that she can't reach very well. She's learning to cornrow by practicing on my head. Eventually, she'd like to be able to put the front of her hair into cornrows by herself, but we're not there yet. She's definitely interested in learning how to do her own hair, but she still likes that I do most of the actual styling.

6. How active is she and how does that play into her hairstyles. Do her styles hold up well?

Syd is a VERY active young lady. Right now, she's on the cross country team at school which means she has been running 4-5 miles a day in 80 - 90 degree weather. Needless to say, we're dealing with an abundance of sweat right now. Box braids hold up pretty well. Lately, we've fallen into a routine where she wears twists one day, a twist out the next, and then we cowash that night and twist her back up again. It's more time consuming, but it gives her the big hair she loves so much.

7. What are her 3-5 most favorite styles?

Wash and gos and twist outs to give her the volume she loves. She also likes small box braids and twists because she can style them different ways every day before school. Being able to go a few weeks without detangling doesn't hurt, either.

8. What is your hair routine with Syd?

Syd's haircare routine is constantly evolving. We shampoo every week or two. It just depends on how dirty her hair seems, when we're going to do new styles, etc. Our products are always changing. We always have Bee Mine products on hand, but we use plenty of other products, too.

9. What do you do after washing when it's wet, are you able to preserve the awesome curl definition after conditioning and detangling and just let it dry like that, and is it good to go? Also, how does she keep her hair at night?

If she wants to wear a down and out style, we can't just add product and go. We have to use Teri Laflesh's Tightly Curly method and define each individual curl one at a time. When she wears it down and we want to preserve the style for the next day, we make a part down the center of her head and very loosely put each side into a banded ponytail. We use one band at the base, one in the middle, and one at the end of each ponytail and we are sure to keep the bands very loose. It's really just to keep the hair from tangling up too much. She usually wraps a satin scarf around her hair at night and she always sleeps on a satin pillowcase.

10. I have to comment on how gorgeous these all-natural box braids are, in the photo at right. How long, and how long? :)

The box braids in that picture took about 5 hours to do and they usually last around 3 weeks, sometimes a little longer.

11. What are her thoughts about her hair and does she have any opinions on straightening or chemicals?

She loves her curls and swears that she will never use chemicals on it. She has had it straightened with a flat iron a couple times in her life, but she hasn't asked for that at all since she started embracing her natural hair. She actually notices how damaged some of the girls' hair is at school after they use relaxers and says she wishes they would keep their hair the way God made it.

We want to thank Rae and Syd for appearing on our blog, we will be following TweenyHair to see what kind of fun we have in store for us as our girls get older! We sure hope they have the confidence and spunk that Syd has, and will love their natural hair as much as Syd and her Mom!

Thank you!

Little Hair Style Recipient!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:47:00 +0000

I had another small, sweet, curly haired visitor a few weeks ago. We will refer to her as Little M. She is 3 going on 4 and just a little doll! It seems I am branching out from hair blogger to hair stylist, and it is SO much fun! If you recall I did Little C's hair a few months ago.

Little M has big loose curls, very different from any hair I have worked on before. So I am learning as I go here. Little M is adopted like my girls and similarly has a white momma who had little experience with curly hair prior to becoming her mom. The difference is that Little M's curls are pretty easy to care for even for someone with little experience. To this point they had stuck to ponytails and french braids without a huge need for learning to cornrow or do other protective styles. Until recently when they began to tire of the constant ponytail (M doesn't like wearing her poofy hair down, and it becomes quite messy and tangled if she does) so a mutual friend made the connection for Momma Kara and I.

After looking through my blog, Momma Kara decided she liked the versatility of box braids. So that was the first style we would try. I put one cornrow in the front and then Kara and I worked on the braids together. This style is something that Kara will be able to duplicate on her own, but just needed to be pointed in the right direction. As we worked I gave her some tips and tricks to doing protective styles and keeping M's GORGEOUS curls healthy. I am not sure she needs help with that though, because M's hair is already long and beautiful! I also showed her a few blogs of kids with looser curls that she could gain some inspiration from. It is so fun for me to help inspire a mom in person and get my hands into some sweet little girl hair!

By the way, you would never know that this was the first time M had her hair done. We worked for at least 3 hours to braid and bead her hair and she sat as still as a statue!

I learned something really interesting from this experience too. I am not sure if this is true on all hair types but it was certainly the case with Little M's looser curls. When I do hanging braids I braid pretty tightly, and I don't mean near the scalp - although I do make that as snug as I can, but I mean that each stitch of the braid is very close to the next, I have many many stitches per braid. Kara was braiding a lot looser than I was, fewer stitches per braid. On her side of the head, M's individual braids were making big loopy, curls as though they had been curled with soft spikes! On my side, the braids pretty much just hung straight down. They were more stiff. Neither way was wrong, or bad, just different. The curly braids were actually super cute! But we ended up putting beads on the braids and that weighed them down and took a lot of the curl out.

You can see on the right some of the braids curling up a bit!

Since I am new to the loose curls I was unsure of how long these braids would hold up for Little M. I have heard from Momma Kara, and they easily lasted a week! The whole family was thrilled with M's new look and her little straight haired sister wanted in on the fun! So both girls ended up with beads and new sleep caps!

What a GREAT experience! I can't wait to do M's hair again! Who's next????

Katie

Labor Day Giveaway! Beautiful Artwork!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 12:10:00 +0000

I am quite sure you all remember the adorable Hair Time artwork that we had the pleasure of giving away last April. Well, the oh-so-talented Katie Bradley of MossyRockDesigns would again like to give one lucky Keep Me Curly reader another beautiful 5x7 print!

All of the proceeds from Katie's artwork go to help fund their adoption, so even if you don't win, check out her shop and consider purchasing one of her fabulous designs! She has been working on more adoption themed prints recently. These are a few of them:

Great stuff huh?!?! Well one of these can be yours! Just follow the directions below!

You have until NOON EST on Friday, September 2nd to enter the drawing. We will be choosing the winners from the comments left on THIS post!

To enter this giveaway please leave a comment on THIS blog and answer THIS question:

After visiting the MossyRockDesigns Etsy shop, which was your favorite print?

____________________________________________________________________

If you would like to earn EXTRA entries do one or all of these things:

1) Go to MossyRockDesigns facebook page and become a fan! Leave a comment stating you are a fan.

2) Head on over to our Keep Me Curly! Facebook fan page and become a fan. Leave a comment stating that you are a fan. (or that you already were a fan)

3) "Share" our Keep Me Curly! Facebook page with your friends and come back and leave a comment letting us know what day you "shared" us THIS week.

4) Follow @keepmecurly on twitter Come back and post a comment that you are a follower and leave your Twitter ID. (or that you were already following)

6) Become a follower of our blog or subscribe to our blog through an RSS feed. Simply post a comment saying that you are a follower. (or that you were already following)

7) Subscribe to Katie's youtube channel and come back and leave a comment stating that you are a subscriber. (or that you were already a subscriber)

8) Leave a comment on one of Katie's youtube videos. Leave a comment HERE letting us know the title of the video you commented on.

9) Place an order at Snapaholics between 8/28 and 9/2 Noon EST. Leave a comment including your order number and order date.

10) Grab our badge! If you add our badge to your blog leave us a comment saying that you are using it with a link to your blog.

________________________________________________________________________

The winners will be announced on Labor Day, September 5th. It is the responsibility of the winner to contact us at keepmecurly@gmail.com to let us know their mailing address and the 5x7 print that they would like. IF the winner does not contact us by Friday, September 9th, we will choose a new winner.

Who can participate? ANYONE! Katie is an international girl herself and welcomes all international fans!

Picture Day Puff!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:02:00 +0000

Here in Michigan the kids haven't returned to school yet. They go back the day after Labor Day. But they did go in last week to get their school pics taken. Due to some time constraints I had to take out V's current braids, wash her hair, and put in the new style all in the morning before going to school after lunch! When I told V that we had to do something simple, she excitedly suggested a big puff! Brilliant girl! I hadn't even thought of that!

Of course just a puff isn't quite exciting enough for me, so we needed to jazz it up a bit. I don't really stress about school pictures though because I don't buy them. They just go in the year book. I always take my own pictures of the kids every fall that I make prints of and give to family and friends.

As you can see. I decided to add these little twirlies all the way around her hairline going up to the puff. There is probably a better name for these like single stranded rolling twists or something, but I like twirlies. After all, that is how I did them. The hardest part of this style was parting out the puff. Trying to make a nice round circle on a not so perfectly round head is tricky. But after that, I just made triangleish parts, twirled each section, and stuck the ends up under the ponytail holder that was holding the puff. Simple!

The next day I wanted to get all that free hair tucked into something more protective, still wanting to keep things simple though because it will be time to do Back-to-School hair soon. I chose twists. We have been doing a lot of braids lately. I also didn't make these the rope style twists (you know the kind where you twirl the hair as you twist) I wanted these to be loose and fluffy. Well, fluffy they are, and they are great! I just reused the triangle parts that were already in and than sort of randomly made more triangleish parts all over. This wasn't a meticulously planned out style. And I LOVE it!

I am afraid with the twists being so loose they won't last long. Although they have been in about 5 days now and are still holding up pretty well. It is funny when a quick easy style turns out to be a favorite!

I am still undecided about how I am doing V's Back-to-School hair. What are you all doing?

Katie

G Gets Her Curl On!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 07:04:00 +0000

From porcupine.....

To flower girl!

It's G's first wedding gig, and she was SO excited. It was a small one, but she took her flower girl and ringbearer duties seriously. We decided for this occasion we needed CURLS! This is the first time we have curled all her hair using the Soft Spikes. Putting them in was incredibly easy. You might remember Katie's review of Soft Spikes, and her video. I didn't want to take hours to put them in so I put about 4 to 6 locs in each spike. I knew that they would result in a big shrinkage in hair length, so I figured we would want the curls large so we'd get some of the length back. We put them all in during one movie, and I finished the several leftover after she went to bed.

We spritzed each set of locs with Taliah Waajid's Mist Bodifier with some high quality extra virgin olive oil added, before rolling them, so they'd be rolled damp. She had no trouble at all going to sleep with these in. They really are soft! We kept them in for most of the morning, just to make SURE the dampness was dry. Then when we took them out, those suckers were CURLY!

When G initially felt them with her hands she was thrilled. When she saw how short her hair now was in the mirror, she was not so thrilled! She decided she looked like a boy. Not exactly the feeling I wanted her to have for her first wedding experience! It took me awhile to get the style just right, and I think I adjusted and re-did so much that I pulled some of the curls out a bit too much, but in order to get some length back we ended up more with the wavy and tousled look. I also had an IDEA of how I was actually going to style it, but I manipulated it a couple ways before I settled on something. Initially I was going to do an updo in the back, like a french twist, and leave the curls all spilling around the top, but she didn't want that, she wanted length. So once I undid the updo, that had stretched some of the curl out. She wound up happy with the end result though. We utilized the sparkly headbands I bought, and a couple of glittery hairpins. I knew I had to stop messing with it or we'd lose more boing in those curls!

I had just finished tightening her locs the night before, and since I swept some of her locs up to put in the circular crystal pins you can see on top, it caused some of her parts to show. I think the flash made it more noticeable than it really was.

All in all, she was adored at the wedding and everyone loved her dress and her hair. I have to give a shout out to this seller on Amazon.com for the dress, because we looked at about 6 stores to find just a simple but dressy lavender or light blue dress to use (this was a simple wedding as you can see from the bride's dress above) and could find NOTHING. Pastels are not in right now and we couldn't even find anything in a dressy style. This dress was very simple, was not too satiny, just polyester, but for the price, I was very pleased. It fit perfectly. The edges were not turned under to be finished, as you can see when you zoom in on the photo at Amazon, but for basically a single-occasion dress, for getting the exact right color, degree of dressiness, and flair, I couldn't have been happier.

So, the Soft Spikes worked GREAT to curl her locs. I think once her locs are longer and curling them won't result in them being "boy-length" then we could just curl, finger comb them out, and go. We highly recommend the Soft Spikes!

Peace out!

Winner Winner!!! Flexi-Clip Giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (Katie and Steph) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 23:05:00 +0000

I am So very sorry to those of you who entered the contest and were eagerly waiting to find out if you were the lucky winner! We had a serious medical emergency with my Father-In-Law and we ended up spending the weekend at the hospital on the other side of the state. I totally forgot about this giveaway! The GREAT news is my FIL is doing so much better now and we are praising the Lord for a much better than expected outcome! God is GOOD!

So on to the giveaway! I have used our random number generator

and the lucky winner is:

Ginger said... [Reply to comment]

My favorite product is the flexi-8 multicolored clip.

August 8, 2011 6:31 AM

Thanks everyone for playing! Ginger if you would please email Paula directly at LillaRose@rammnation.com and let her know that you have won the Keep Me Curly giveaway, she will get your $15 gift card to you!!! (be sure to do so by Friday or we will choose another winner!)

And don't forget to let us know what beautiful accessory you choose and send us some pics after you receive it!

Everyone please keep watching our blog as we have two more giveaways coming right up!