not that we're supposed to spend tons of time on our hair and clothes . . .

. . . after all, St. Peter's pretty clear about that.

But you do have to wear clothes. (A little girl at my church once made this very clear to me. "Good morning," I said to her, when I met her on the church steps. She looked at me very solemnly, and returned my greeting by saying: "We MUST wear clothes." "Yes," I agreed, "we must." Her dad, standing behind her, explained, "She wanted to wear a swimsuit to church today. We explained that she couldn't." "Ah," I said.) And you do have to keep your hair out of your face.

Anyway, there's a lady at my church who wears salwar kameez every now and then, and looks stunning in them. I complimented her on the bright red one recently, and she explained that she finds them on eBay. Well, I had a bit of discretionary money, so I looked on eBay, and found some, but was then very distracted by the saris. Ooooh, saris.

So I ordered a couple of cotton saris. I already have a very fancy silk one, which I've never worn, since I didn't have a shirt to go with it. Discovered in my eBay searches that most saris "come with blouse" which means that on the end of the long sari is a panel of fabric that you're supposed to cut off and sew into a blouse yourself. Found out my lovely silk sari did indeed have such a panel, and even had a sticker on it that said, "comes with blouse". Yep. So I cut off the panel, and I'm planning on sewing it up sometime after I finish my sister's birthday dress. (Um, I'm sewing my sister a Jane Austen-style dress for her birthday. There's a ball she wants to go to.)

Anyway, I ordered a couple of cotton saris. I figure if they work well in India, they'll probably be perfect summer-weather-wear in SoCal. And since I am so very white, I'll just wear a tank-top under them till I manage to make the requisite blouses. I hope no one is offended at a non-Indian wearing saris - they're just so beautiful, and seem so very sensible. I'm going with imitation being the sincerest form of flattery on this one.

I told my husband, "Instead of being the homeschool mom who wears jumpers, I'm gonna be the homeschool mom who wears saris."


So that's the clothes. Now, the hair. After chopping my hair off last summer, in desperation over heat and twinfants, it's finally long enough to braid again (yay!). I love braids, because I can do them once, in the morning, and then my hair stays put all day long. Plus, pretty! I like braiding my hair in a crown, and I can do a modified version of that at this point, so I'm happy. It's easy to tie a scarf over too, if I want to.

But what I'm really waiting for is hair long enough to do this:


Wow. Check out the rest of her videos too. I love it!

Okay, so there's the vanity post for, I hope, the year. Braids and saris. That's my plan for beating the heat this summer.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell