Top Knot / Messy Bun Tutorial

File this under "Things I never thought I would do and will likely regret." But enough people have requested a tutorial on my little top knot/bun/hot mess hair style I tend to wear every day lately, that I succumbed to peer pressure and made a vlog. Some things to note:

--This is painfully awkward for me to watch back. In fact, I have yet to see the whole thing as I'm usually hiding behind my hands cringing. My camera presence is...lacking, to say the least.

--I realize there are lots of other top knot tutorials out there, so at first I just looked for one like mine to direct people to, but I couldn't really find anything that was the same. So this is my attempt at teaching you...not sure my point comes across, but I tried. :)
--The small rubber bands are KEY to success with this! I have tried with just my regular pony tail holders but they are way too loose. 

--Have you ever tried to record yourself on your computer? Where everything is reversed? It is HARD. And I couldn't get my top knot just right but I figured it mostly showed the technique and from there the only advice I have is you just have to mess with it a little while until it looks right. Mine is different every single time.
--My hair was super frizzy and this really wasn't a good day to take a video as I got ready at the gym and didn't have my frizz reducer stuff with me. But you get the point. Plus this is closer to reality as my hair is frizzy majority of the time.

--I realize this is far longer than necessary. I've never claimed to be short and to the point. In fact, if you hear me use the phrase "to make a long story short", you better just settle in for a spell because the story just tripled in length.

--I tried to edit some of the dead space out but I'm not good with iMovie and it was taking forever so I just decided whatever. Sorry. :)

--Manny was playing contentedly at the train table until I started "talking to the 'puter." I promise I don't neglect him, but knew if I didn't do this while MB was napping it probably wouldn't ever happen.

And with that, I give you the world's most random and awkward top knot tutorial ever! Please go easy on me. :)

The Proof is in the Pin: Volume 9

Looking back, I realized I stopped doing these the month of Manny & MB's birthday party. I think that's when life got crazy busy, then summer happened, and I continued to take on more orders...and all things Pinterest fell to the wayside. I don't even think I pinned for a few months there! It was serious, obviously. But lately, the crafting bug seems to have bit, and I find myself wanting to clean things out, make stuff, and redo everything (and no, I'm not pregnant). I think a lot of that comes from the fact that we've decided to stay in the house we're renting one more year. Yes, we did sell our house where we lived previously, which was a huge blessing! But we just think for the time being, we should stay put. It feels like we're busting at the seams here, but we really have enough room...I just need to be better organized, and maximize the space we do have.

Pin #1: Tension Rod Tent - So as part of what I was saying about maximizing space, I'm undertaking a few projects to try to turn our "office/sewing room" into more of a playroom/office/sewing room. Multi-tasking at it's finest right there. I would absolutely LOVE to have one of those DIY teepees floating around Pinterest right now, but once I stepped back from my initial excitement and realized it would basically occupy the whole room, I decided to look for an alternative option to better fit the space we were working with. I pinned this awhile back, but when I went to look, there wasn't actually a tutorial. So after some more searching, I came across this tutorial, which is what my mom we followed. Basically the idea is to use tension rods to create a little tent/fort between a piece of furniture and the wall, or in our case, between 2 pieces of furniture. One of the pieces is a bookshelf, so I stacked a few baskets on it of toys, along with some books for the kids to read. They absolutely LOVE it in there, and it has been a fun way to add some variety to their play space. Thank you mom for helping me make this happen! :) xoxo

Pin #2: Fabric Banner - I knew I wanted something to go over the tent, so I printed a picture I made with the Rhonna Designs app as a poster at SAM'S and put it in a frame I had. It wasn't quite enough to fill the space, so I decided to add a banner. I had pinned one of these awhile back, but the tutorial was a little more complicated than I wanted, so I did some more searching on Pinterest and found this tutorial. So incredibly simple and Manny even helped me with it. 

Pin #3: DIY Gold Polka Dot Shirt - It's no secret I love all things gold and polka dots. So put them together? And I'm there. So when I saw this pin for a DIY gold polka dot shirt, I thought it sounded easy enough and decided to give it a try. I just used a shirt I had in my closet already that I was actually going to get rid of, so I thought it'd be the perfect thing to try this out on. I was unsure of if it looked like something I made at middle school church camp during arts & crafts hour or not, but my friends on Instagram seemed to think it was okay so I went for it. :) You can see the full tutorial here.

Well that's all for today! If you've shared any Pinterest projects on your blog lately, I'd love for you to leave a link in the comments. I'm always looking for a few good pins. Happy Tuesday! :)

I'm linking up with Erin for Life Created Tuesdays!

Five on Friday - 9.6.13

A little late, but I thought I'd share 5 random things on this lovely Friday afternoon!

1. {Car Seat} Well I think the time has come to graduate MB from her infant carrier to a convertible car seat. We have the Graco MyRide 65 for Manny and like it for the most part. The only thing is it's kind of a pain to move. From time to time, we need to switch the car it's in and it's like an act of Congress to do so, so I'd prefer something a little easier to move. Any recommendations? And where did you buy to get the best deal? Also...am I the only one royally creeped out by this Dora car seat? It's like there's a peeping Tom in your back seat at all times. Now watch I'll end up with this one day. :)

2. {Bump2Buff} My sweet friend Tiffany just started a new blog called Bump2Buff where she is sharing her weight loss journey, workouts, eating tips, and more! She is a wealth of info and is such an inspiration to me as I'm still working towards getting healthier. I am so excited she's going to be blogging specifically about health and fitness. I've chatted with her via email before about this kind of stuff and she keeps it simple and most importantly makes it seem doable for anybody. So thanks for the inspiration Tiffany! Be sure to check her out if you're looking for some encouragement too. 

3. {Proof is in the Pin} I've been feeling rather crafty lately, and have been fairly productive with doing some Pinterest projects. So I think I'll start doing a monthly post again, still the 2nd Tuesday of the month. I don't think I'm going to do the link-up anymore, but if anyone else wants to join in  you can always leave your link in the comments. But I've had my mom a few people tell me they miss the monthly recaps of my Pinterest projects so I thought I'd try to start sharing again. :)

4. {Craft Night} Along that note, I have been thinking for awhile that it would be fun to host a Pinterest party, and am probably going to go ahead and put one together. I know I've asked before but I can't find the post (why don't I tag my posts??) but if you've hosted or attended a Pinterest party, I'd love to hear more about it, or if you blogged it please share the link too. And if you live in the OKC metro and would be interested in attending, shoot me an email at sjg_ou at yahoo.com and I'll keep you posted of the plans!

5. {Target Chairs} And it wouldn't be a proper post without a picture of my cute kiddos, now would it? So I thought I'd share a picture of them lounging in their new chairs from Target that I bought with the last of their birthday gift cards. I thought they were a steal at $35 each, and they are a hit with these two.

That's all for today...happy weekend friends!

Linking up with Darci & friends 

Vacation Time!

A few weeks ago, Patrick and I were able to go on a little getaway to Cancun. It was somewhat of a last minute decision (as are most things in our life) but it worked out and we had a great time! When we realized the timing for a vacation was going to be possible, we debated on a family vacation versus a trip for just Patrick and I. We went back and forth for awhile, but ultimately decided we were overdue for some "just us" time. While we were there, we spent some time in a marriage workbook by Jimmy Evans. He says in it that one of the best things you can give your children is a happy marriage, and I couldn't agree more. Everyday life gets SO busy that sometimes it's hard to keep your spouse a top priority, and they can often suffer because of the more demanding needs of the kids. I've often heard it said that one day the kids will be grown and out of the house, and it will just be you and your spouse again, so you want to make sure to keep "the fire alive", so to speak, so when that time comes you'll still have that strong relationship with your spouse. So we've been trying to be more intentional about that, which as I said, can be hard with small children. But we're doing a lot better about date night type stuff, and knew this vacation with the two of us would be a good idea too. And it was. We had such a great time doing NOTHING, relaxing, and having so much uninterrupted time to talk. A HUGE thanks to my sister Rachael for making this possible by watching the kiddos for us!

We used our same travel agent again and she made everything so easy. We decided on Cancun because it's a fairly quick flight, and our "travel day" wasn't so crazy that we were still able to spend over half the day on the beach when we arrived.

We stayed at the Riu Palace Peninsula in the Adults Only Villas. This picture is from their website - I never really took any pictures of the actual resort. I circled our room in case you're curious. :)

 

We had a room with a great view and a jacuzzi on the balcony...so nice! The resort overall was great. It's an all-inclusive and so there was always plenty of food & drinks to be had. :) There was a special restaurant for those staying in the Adults Only Villas, and the food was SO good there...definitely the best restaurant at the resort.

We spent the majority of the time at the beach, but sometimes would go to the pool for a change of pace. It had a great view and it was part of the Adults Only section, so it was perfect. I was able to read 4 books on this trip! Always reminds me how much I love and miss reading a good book.

Here we are at dinner one night. Didn't realize how weird that filter made our faces look til I saw it on the computer. Oh well. :)

Some more pictures from another night at dinner. We were basically huge dorks, but I guess that's what happens when you're kid free for a change. :)  

This was that same night. We had our pictures taken that night by the resort photographer (more on those below) so I decided to actually fix my hair rather than put it in a bun like every other day. Well that was a good idea for all of about 5 seconds. The minute I stepped outside all the curls went to a frizzy mess and I looked like a wet dog. So that was awesome.

We decided not to do any excursions this time but just to relax. One evening we got beach side massages in this little cabana. It was absolutely amazing and I basically could've slept there all night.

This was our final night at dinner.

Like last time we were in Mexico, we took advantage of the resort photographer and had them take some pictures of us. CHEESY doesn't even begin to describe some of these poses. But they're fun memories FOR SURE.

This one was hysterical. When the guy said to lay on Patrick, I thought maybe I was having a hard time understanding his accent or perhaps his vocabulary was poor. Nope, lay on him is exactly what he meant, as he started to demonstrate for me. :) It's like a middle school cheerleading pyramid gone wrong or something.

As much fun as it was, we were ready to get home to our babies! Manny had been telling Rachael just that day that he was ready for mommy to "come off to-cation" so I'd say we came home at the perfect time. They didn't want to let me go for quite some time, which I didn't mind one bit!