Crazy Hair Day

Each year, on the last day of school, Cara's school has Field Day as well as Crazy Hair Day.  In previous years, we've gone fairly tame with the crazy hair, opting for multiple ponytails or a wig or colored hair spray.

I asked Cara what she wanted to do with her locks this year and she said that she wanted to have her hair sticking out, Longstockings-style, but not exactly like Pippi.  Okay.  We can do that.

Side note: I am fairly competitive, a fact that I was in denial of for MANY years.  My competitive nature has come out in the weirdest times.  Like with phone app games. (Curse you, sister-in-law's sister who continually beats me in Scramble with Friends!)  I don't have to even know the person that I'm competing with (multiplayer Solitaire, anyone?) nor does that person need to know that I'm competing with them.  

So, Cara and I took to Google and entered "crazy hair day", amazed at some of the hairdos we found.  After I saw this picture, I mentally had someone hold my purse, took off my shoes and earrings and said, "Oh, it is so ON!"

We had practiced the do a few days ago, using various types of wire (thanks, basement remodeling project for leaving us wire to play with!) to get her hair to stand up. Nothing worked satisfactorily until we came up with the pipe cleaner idea.  After a trip to Michaels with my 20% off coupon (NEVER go to Michaels without going here first), we picked up the pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and wooden fish.  

We hot glued the fish to some of the higher-gauged wire we had and the googly eyes to pipe cleaners.  

The night before, we divided Cara's hair up into the sections we'd need for the next day so that we didn't have to wake up so early the next morning.

She could have gone to school like this and it would have been crazy enough.

I had dreams all night about Cara's hair.  It was variations of her having taken this pre-Hair Day hair down in the night and having to do all of it from the beginning, having overslept and leaving us with not enough prep time, and her deciding that she really didn't want to do this after all.  

Friday morning finally came. Like Christmas.  We were so excited to see if we could get her hair to turn out like we both had pictured it would.  

I began by wrapping each ponytail with about 5 pipe cleaners each, making them malleable enough to make any shape and sturdy enough to hold the weight of her hair in that shape.  Once that was done, I took the top rectangular section and wrapped it around an open hair clip, much like you would with a sponge roller.  I affixed the clip to the base of that section of hair and then poofed the curled section so there was a bit of height (think Snookie).

We then went outside with our colored hair spray and, when I saw that the spray matched the pipe cleaners  perfectly, I almost shed an OCD tear. We sprayed the poof and the sections surrounding it with the purple and waited for it to dry before we began attaching the fish and the googly eyes.

I was so excited with how her hair turned out that I had to Facebook the picture right away. (Yes, I'm aware that I used Facebook as a verb. Yes, I know it really isn't.) 

She's crazy octopus head. Give her some candy!

Reminds me of the "starving brain sucker" jokes from grade school. Minus the starving part.

So, next year's Crazy Hair Day is going to be even awesomer.  (Yeah, red squiggly lines. Awesomer is not a word but I'm going to use it anyway. Watch me not backspace!)  Next year, we'll be competing with ourselves.  We are so gonna win!