I have newly shortened hair. It's a cute cut--just a little shorter than shoulder-length and layered at the bottom. When I styled it, I flipped the bottom out and fluffed up the top. When I was done, it looked very cute and very flirty. Just what I was looking for for summer. And I found a new hairdresser right in my little town. She used to work at a very prestigious salon downtown but opened a new upscale salon in our little town with 2 other stylists. I'm just tickled about the discovery since my hairdresser (who was 20 minutes away) is moving 45 minutes away.

Today was Annual Tie-Dye Day. Stace and I planned it last week and were raring to go when I finished my haircut. We met at Target to get the white shirts and the dye and the rubber bands. Then we came to my house and started banding up the shirts. I bought 6 shirts--2 for me, 2 for Joey, one for her cousin Isley (with whom we will be vacationing next month), and one for Ed--so it took me a long time to get the elastics in place. It's not just a matter of putting the bands on--you have plan out a design and decide how you're going to do it.

While we were banding the shirts, it started to sprinkle outside. But it was just a light sprinkle so we weren't concerned. We had to go to the grocery store to get more dye because we seriously miscalculated how much we would need. By the time we were back, it was raining a bit harder, but it was still a sprinkle by my definition. Stacy, however, was not delighted by the idea of sitting in the rain to dye our shirts so we got out our picnic tarp and set it up. This was unscheduled and completely unauthorized rain. According to my 2 web weather sites, this rain wasn't due until Wednesday.

This tarp is not easy to set up with 2 people. It's really cheap and really lame. We had the two girls out with us holding posts. I jerry-rigged the post set up using my patio chairs so that I wouldn't have to put 8 guy ropes in the ground. Finally we had a cover over our heads and something to sit on and we began to dye in earnest.

We had been working on the shirts for about 5 minutes when suddenly the tarp came down in slow motion. I summoned the girls to come back outside to hold posts while I got them situated again and put more guy ropes out (so much for trying to save time ::sigh:: ).

Once we got the tarp back up, we got back to the task at hand. We were using fuschia, tangerine and lemon yellow. Ed wasn't fond of the circles that the rubber bands made so I did his differently. I put bands around the whole shirt, 5 from top to bottom. Then I put the top of the shirt and sleeves in the orange dye and draped the bottom in the yellow dye and then let the colors creep up and meet in the middle. I used a gloved hand to help the dye move up the shirt. I did another one like that for me but did it vertically rather than horizontally so that my left sleeve and half of the shirt is orange and the right sleeve and half of the shirt is yellow. They turned out great--they look like fire. Especially Ed's shirt. And he likes it. The other shirts were more mottled and water-color-y.

Stacey had to leave abruptly when she realized that she was going to be late for Tae Kwon Do. She'll be back tomorrow so we decided to leave the tarp and buckets and chairs outside until we can put them away tomorrow because the rain was really starting to come down. I came inside and got out of my wet T-shirt and shorts and into warm sweats. Joey and I were both cold so we decided to have something warm to eat. She opted for oatmeal and I had hot buttered toast. The next time I looked out the back window, the tarp had fallen over into a big pile on the lawn.

Joey's bathroom now has 9 brightly tie-dyed shirts hanging from her shower rod. I can't wait to wear them. This is our third year of making these shirts at the beginning of summer. It's just such a fun thing to do--I was tempted to dye my new white sheets because I was just dying to dye something else. Usually, however, we do it on a hot sunny day and let the shirts dry in the sun before we bring them in to set in the dryer.

Despite the rain and the tarp and the crashing, a good time was had by all. And now we have a bunch of kick-ass new shirts for summer.