Hairstyle – Dust Bunnies and Dog Toys

The Cut

Published on April 23, 2014April 20, 2014 by Jenna5 Comments

As I mentioned a while back I’ve been pondering chopping my hair off again. Don’t get me wrong, I love long hair because it means I can create beautiful curls like this. But 90% of the time I style it straight or clip it up due to my busy, busy schedule. And here recently, it’s almost always down and straight because it’s just too long to pull up quickly.

I set an appointment with my stylist for a color (which I was in desperate need of) and a trim, planning to take an inch off to make it a little lighter and clean up the ends. But I hadn’t realized just how much it had grown out since my last trim until I started thinking about what I’d ask for at the appointment. I don’t think it has been this long since high school! This is it after blow-drying but before styling.

Then I saw this. I love this gal’s hair and her blog! I’ve always been a fan of a mid-length style and often come back to this length, so I was sold on this cut.

I pinned the post and took it to my appointment where I showed the fabulous Miss Bri what I wanted. Here’s what she created!

I LOVE IT! It’s so much easier to wash, blow dry and style in the mornings and I still have length to do some variations of up dos and curls. I usually make it a bit more sleek on workdays, but a quick blowdry with a round brush works just fine for a casual family outing on a breezy day. 🙂

The hubs says he loves my look no matter what length my hair is (ahhh, love that lug), but I know he truly likes it short, so this is a good compromise of what he prefers and what I wish I had time for. What’s your opinion? Is longer or shorter better?

To Cut or Not to Cut… That is the Question!

Published on July 18, 2013February 6, 2014 by Jenna3 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that my hair and I have a love/hate relationship. Maybe it’s the whole, “you always want what you don’t have” theory that makes me detest the limp, straight, baby fine hair I’ve been cursed with. I seriously lust after the thick curls that seem to dominate Pinterest these days a’ la’ Kate Middleton’s gorgeous locks, but I know I’ll never achieve that exact look – unless I bite the bullet and get hair extensions to increase my skimpy strands.

Thankfully, I view my hair as an accessory in the way that if I don’t like it, I can change it and with my creative personality that tends to happen A LOT! Although I was born blonde and remained so through high school, I’ve sported strawberry blonde, brunette, auburn and now red manes. And my hair stylist knows I have a routine of growing my hair out and then chopping it, only to grow it out once again – which luckily is a fairly quick process for me.

I’ve spent the last several months growing my hair from a bob to below my shoulders and now I’m getting tired of the extra styling it requires so the itch to chop it all has returned. My husband is that one strange man who prefers women to have short hair, so he of course would vote for me to give in and chop several inches.

However, I know full well that short hair styles can sometimes require more styling time than long hair does, which can be a big hiccup on the rare mornings when I wake up late. Short hair also usually means you’re stuck with the same look all the time. Plus, when I see pictures of myself with shorter hair I think my face looks very round which I don’t care for on myself.

I’ve really liked some of my mid-length cuts, especially when layered for volume like this one, but they tend to be just short enough to not work for multiple styles so I end up wearing it the same way all the time and when I do pull it up the shorter pieces fall out, making the rest of the do more likely to ‘migrate’ on my head due to a lack of volume holding it in place.

So which look do you think I should sport? Short, medium, or long? Here are examples of me with each.

Granted the long picture isn’t much longer than the medium, but it looks shorter then it was because of the curls. It’s now quite a bit longer than this. One option I’ve been toying with is keeping the length, but having long layers added in, like this.

My concern is that fine hair tends to get super frizzy when layered. But Jennifer Aniston seems to make it work, so there’s hope right? Maybe all I really need is a live in hair stylist like that stars! 🙂

Trying Something “Different”

Published on June 23, 2013June 23, 2013 by Jenna2 Comments

My hair and I have a love-hate relationship. I love to hate it. I guess it’s that thing about you always want what you don’t have. I have thin, limp, straight hair. So I’m totally in love with any style best suited for full, thick, wavy/curly hair. I recently grew my hair out from the bob haircut I was sporting about a year ago just so that I could curl my hair and do the pretty up dos that abound on Pinterest.

Unfortunately, I’m not extremely proficient at hair styling, especially on myself. And the fact that I have to apply product, curl and then style each morning takes more time than I usually care to spend on my hair. So I searched for ideas on how I could comfortably curl my hair while sleeping and found this tutorial which I gave a try last night since it was the weekend and we planned to go trail riding in the morning, so it didn’t really matter what my hair looked like as it would be wind-blown by the time we were done. It’s a good thing because when I pulled out that headband in the morning, it looked like I’d been in a fight with a curling iron wielded by a beauty school drop-out! I was too frustrated to take pictures of what it did look like, and even if I had I probably still wouldn’t have posted them.

Let’s just say it wasn’t a style I plan to use again, but I figured I had some texture so why not try out an updo style I want to start using to hide the fact that they weren’t pretty curls. I’m in love with all of the tutorials Kate over at The Small Things Blog does, especially her messy buns like this one and this one. So I combined elements of each. And this is what I ended up with.

I was pleasantly surprised! It’s definitely better than the typical pony tail or twist & clip styles you typically see sported for casual outdoor activities. I think it needs some teasing for volume at the crown and the side twists should be done looser, but with a little practice and refining it might even be suitable to wear to work! And even better is that it’s comfortable and seems to hold fairly well. I had a few pieces come out while riding, which I just twirled and tucked back into the mess. I had the hubs take a typical side and back shot so you can get an idea of how the whole thing looked.

So maybe that headband curl idea wasn’t such an epic fail if it provides a base of texture to create something like this quickly. Perhaps I’ll give it another try next weekend when I have time to ‘play’ with the results. When I asked what the hubby thought of this new look he said, “It’s different.” *SIGH* He’s such a great friend who I want to share everything with that sometimes I forget he’s a GUY and not a girlfriend! I asked if it was a ‘good’ different or a ‘bad’ different. He said, “Well it smells good.” Um. Ok. I pointed out that it smells exactly the same as it does every day because I used the same hairspray I do every day! At least I know I smell good – according to him anyway! LOL