30 Hairdos: Day 27- "Pumpkin Head"

Today is October 1, and you know what that means?  It means I can do my favorite hairdo of the entire year, the pumpkin head!  This is one of only a few hairdos that I can say I made up entirely 100% on my own.  It was not copied from another blog, or inspired by another hairdo I saw, or even an impersonation of something I found in a magazine.  You see, 2 years ago Savannah went through a phase where she would ask me to make random shapes, etc in her hair.  If they were simple enough I figured it out (pumpkin, S, star, etc)  On Halloween she asked me to do a pumpkin.  I spent about 10 minutes thinking about it and decided I could do a pumpkin hairdo.  It has evolved each year to what I did today.  This is NOT a fast hairdo.  It took me about half an hour today.  But I think its worth it.

First, put the hair in 6 elastics.  1 in the front, 1 in the back, and 2 on each side.  You don't need to be really particular about how straight your parts are, you won't be able to see them anyway.  I try to put the elastics as close to her hairline as I can to make the pumpkin as big as possible.

Now, take 2 orange ribbons and loop them through the bottom elastic, pulling them halfway through.

Split the hair in that bottom elastic in half, and put one half down or pin it out of the way.  With the remaining half, divide it into 3 sections, and add ribbons to 2 of the 3 sections.  So you have 3 sections, one is just hair and 2 are hair and ribbon.  Braid it until it is just long enough to reach the next ponytail and use an elastic to join your braid to the next ponytail.  Add the hair from that ponytail and divide it again so you have 3 sections; 1 with just hair and 2 with hair and ribbon, then braid to the next elastic.  Do this until you get to the top ribbon.  When you get to the top attach your braid to the top elastic then leave it and go back to the bottom and repeat with the other side.  When you are finished you will have a circle of ribbon braids around her head and a mess of leftover ribbon and hair almost on her forehead.  I probably should have taken several pictures to explain all of that, but we were at a football game and I just didn't think about it.  Sorry!

Now with your mess at the top, separate the ribbons from the hair.  Take one ribbon, pull it back down to the bottom elastic, tuck it under the hair on one side of the elastic, around the elastic, and back up the other side.  (this is easiest if you are sitting and have your daughter kneel down facing you and put her head down on your lap)



Do the same thing with 2 of your other ribbons and the bottom 2 side elastics, this fills your pumpkin in with orange.  Now the best thing to do at this step is to secure all ribbons back to the top with an elastic and cut them off, but I want to be able to reuse the ribbons and can't guarantee I will need the exact same size again, so I just left them all and added them to the "stump."  There are several ways to do the stump depending on how long your "leftover" hair is.  The first year we did this Savannah's hair was fairly short, so we just curled them and left it.  The second year I did a braid then folded it in half for a long stump.  This year her hair is really long, so I braided it, made a bun and secured it with bobbypins.  Whatever you do, tie a green ribbon around the "stump" and you are done, voila...  Pumpkin head!

PS- its a good thing I still have 3 days left because I realized this morning that I have not done any of my other 3 favorite hairdos!