Blue or not to blue...that was the question

I love my hair. I'm a bit vain about it, actually. I spend more money on hair products than I do on makeup (not that I spend a ton on makeup...now if we're talking boots...).  My favorite product right now is Bumble and Bumble's Don't Blow It, which is a styling creme specifically formulated not to be blown dry. Saves a ton of time and it encourages my hair to curl a bit, since I twist it into a bun while letting it air dry. Another great product is Bedhead's After Party. It makes your hair soft and touchable.

4th of July, 2015

I used to highlight my hair every year or so, just for the fun of it. The dark, dark brown (no, not black...brown*) get a bit boring after a while. The last time I got highlights was in 2012, I think...two tones of a dark chesnut and a warm caramel. It looked great, but my hair decided to rebel after that, so I stopped getting permanent highlights. Instead I switched to a once-a-year 4th of July tradition of using blue temporary color, which was lots of fun (see right).  I like it so much that I've thought about getting permanent blue highlights, but more on that later.

One of the things I don't like about my hair is its tendency to turn grey. I guess that's technically not my hair's fault, but details. I found my first grey hair when I was 14 and still living in California. Since then they've multiplied exponentially, generally when I'm under a lot of stress. It's almost funny (but not quite) that my hair can be a physical gauge of how stressed out I've been. It's not unusual for me to find a hair that started out dark brown, went grey for a couple inches and then back to dark....or started dark and turned grey...or started grey and turned dark. So weird.

Because of the increasing number of grey hairs, I decided to finally color my hair. The end of last year I bought John Frieda Precision Foam Hair Color in Dark Natural Brown and liked how it turned out. It ended being a little lighter that my natural shade, but blended pretty well. In April I decided to redo it. I had a wedding at the end of the month and the grey was starting to be noticeable (to me) again. This time didn't go as well. I think I left it in a little too long and it brought out more of the red in my hair (I have natural red highlights), which started getting annoying as it grew out. One of my biggest pet peeves is being able to see the line where the color changes and, while I'm sure few other people noticed it, I saw it every time I looked in the mirror. Thankfully I found a Groupon for Estalla A. Salon for all-over color or partial highlights and decided to have a professional color my hair.

I had decided to go with my natural hair color, but the day before the appointment I read an article on Verily about different natural looking highlighting, including something called a Cherry Bombre (see right). I was very, very tempted to give that a try...and once I started thinking about going with a fun color, I naturally looked at some blue highlighting options and almost talked myself into getting the one on the right. If I ever grow out my bangs, that may need to happen. :) In the end I decided to go with my natural color. It turned out nice and I like seeing the dark, dark brown (no, not black...b-r-o-w-n) looking back at me from the mirror again. Since I didn't color it blue for the 4th (I figured it would be a bad idea for the temp color to still be in my hair when I was getting it color-colored), I think I'll save it for my birthday in October and have some fun with it then. :)

Tonight I'm off to see the Cirque du Soleil - Toruk: First Flight performance at the Pinnacle Bank Arena. I've never seen anything performed by the Cirque du Soleil and since I'm not likely to make it to Vegas anytime soon, I thought this would be a fun way to spend a Friday evening. 

Speaking of Friday, have a good one and enjoy your weekend! 



~ Katie
* I have argued with people on more than one occasion that my hair is in fact brown, not black. "Yes, it's very, very dark brown. I'm sure it's not black. It's my head...I think I'd know if I had black hair!" :)







The latest report I've seen is 84 people killed with another 202 injured in the attack in Nice, France yesterday. Praying for the deceased victims, the injured, their families and all of France.