Curling without heat 2.0

You've probably seen this curling tutorial around the blogosphere, since it's been quite the hit lately. Curling your hair by twisting strands of hair around an elastic headband is really easy and sufficient, but if you have really thick hair like my friend Anneliis (here's a previous tutorial with her to give you and estimate how thick her hair really is), you might find it tricky to get all your hair around one tiny elastic band and get the results you're looking for.

I wanted to try and make this method work on Anneliis' hair. That meant doing a little modification to the standard technique. Instead of using one elastic band, we used two. Here's how:

Wardrobe Reinvention: 3 ways to wear the little black dress

The little black dress is definitely a wardrobe staple, and I'm pretty sure we all have at least one in our closet (or we should have). That being said, I realized I haven't worn mine that much since I thrifted it a couple of years back. Putting together 3 ways to wear that cute little number seemed just the right challenge for the first wardrobe reinvention of the year.

I believe that the only way to make more use of dresses is to incorporate them into our daily wear. I put together a casual look by layering a country style shirt under the dress.

For a more festive look, I added a sparkly scarf that my Grandma gave me. I tied the ends of the scarf in the back under the scarf creating a shrug effect.

A surprise favorite combination is this one - crochet blouse (made by me) over the dress making it more of a skirt. I added the wide belt to accentuate the waistline. And the funniest part is, I threw this together just for fun, I didn't really think it would work. I haven't worn the crochet blouse in ages, which is really a shame, since I spent all my genetics classes in university (I need to take some serious action to keep myself awake at 8 am) making it. I love this outfit! So much so, that I put it back on for New Year's Eve.

How do you wear your little black dress? Does it get lots of wear or do you pull it out only for special occasions? Do tell in the comments!

Happy New Year! + some plans

Happy New Year to all you awesome P&S readers! I don't know about you, but I've never been big on making resolutions on New Year's Eve. It's not an Estonian tradition and even with all this globalization, the tradition of giving promises you (mostly) can't keep has stayed foreign to me. I do love the opportunity to start over in a sense, but I believe we have to make every day count and if we want to change something in our lives, there's no better time than today. You can make resolutions any time of the year, as long as you follow through.

I do love dreaming about all the surprises that the new year could have in store for me. And being more of a planner by nature, I love cooking up goals and plans for the upcoming months. So, here are some of my plans for the first half of this year:

1. I'd love to be even more creative, so I decided to challenge myself to do a themed week here at the blog every month. That's a full week of projects and posts centered around a certain theme. I'm not sure if I can manage, but I'm going to give it my best.

2. I'd love to create my very first e-course this year. I'm not going to reveal more, because I'm just as terrified as I am excited about it. I do hope I can pull it off. Is there anything you'd love to learn more about?

3. I'd love to better my photography skills. I love taking photos for the blog, but I'm not very good at it, nor at touching them up in photoshop. I'm going to make an effort to learn something new about photography every week.

4. Last, but not least, I'm cooking up a blog design makeover. As much as I love the simple design I've done on this blog, it's time to move on to something bigger and better. Cross your fingers!

Do you have any big plans for the new year? Do share in the comments!