Quest for Curls

A few weeks ago our church organized a Princess Tea Party for all the daughters of the King. C was very excited about going to the party. We planned to wear matching dresses (thanks to my sister who had made C a dress for Christmas from the material left over from her wedding) and C wanted to have her hair curly for the event. Now C did not get my curly hair...she got hubby's dead straight hair. I didn't think it would be that difficult to curl her hair, but I was so wrong and very glad that we experimented ahead of time.

First I tried to curl C's hair with a curling iron. This has always worked very well for me, but curling curly hair is totally different than trying to curl straight hair. I wrapped her hair around the curling iron and waited a little bit. When I released her hair, there was only a little curve at the very bottom of her hair. I wrapped the hair around the curling iron again and waited longer. This time I got a little more curl...but not a lot. After about 5 minutes, I gave up on the curling iron.


I then tried to curl C's hair using hot rollers. I've never used hot rollers before and didn't really know how to use them. My initial attempt looked pretty pathetic. My second attempt was better as I figured out how the pin worked to keep the roller in place. The hot rollers did give more curl than the curling iron, but the curl quickly fell out.


My sister-in-law told me to try rolling C's hair in foam rollers and have her sleep on them. So I went and purchased foam rollers from the Dollar store and rolled C's wet hair in them. In the morning, C was quite happy with the outcome and I was impressed with how well the foam rollers worked.


The curl stayed in longer, but by mid afternoon it was droopy. I figured if I used more rollers and put less hair in each one, I would be able to get a tighter curl. So the night before the Princess Tea party, I put 30 rollers in C's wet hair.

I thought the curl would fall out of her hair if I took the rollers out too early, so I waited until 45 minutes before we were to leave for the Tea Party to take the rollers out. We both got the shock of our lives as the curl was so tight, her hair sprang up above her ears.

She was NOT impressed and quite upset. I tried to stay calm and reassure her I could fix it (even though I wasn't convinced I could). I tried to pulled some of the curl out by running my fingers though it to separate it. But it was still really tight. So I pinned the sides up so that they didn't fall in her face and hoped the curl in her hair would start relaxing soon. It did and looked great.

The Garden Battle

Here are the gardens in our backyard. Actually, just half of them as there are more gardens along the back of the house and in the front yard. The previous owners planted them all.


You probably think it looks really nice...except maybe the sandbox in the middle. Lets take a closer look.



The weeds and plants are out of control. Every year we battle to keep the weeds out of the garden and the plants out of the lawn...but it looks like this year they have already won. It looks awful and extremely overwhelming. We have avoided using pesticides for the last 3 years thinking we could control weeds without the use of chemicals...but now realize it's impossible unless we plan to spend all our free time in the garden. So this year, we were going to use pesticides to regain control of the yard...but can't because pesticides have been banned in our area. So all I can do now is covet my neighbour's beautiful garden free backyard which also has a really nice deck and shed.


Although the task is daunting, I still love to see the new growth of the wanted plants coming back.


C was a great help in the garden this weekend...digging weeds and pulling out dead growth. I was a little shocked though at what she chose to do when she wasn't helping...cutting worms with a stick, or cutting an ant with the snipers, or poking holes in snail shells because she wanted the slug to come out. After I requested numerous times for her to be nicer to the bugs, she got upset and told me I never let her do stuff like this.