One of the frustrating things about living this Army life is trying to find a new hairdresser all of the time. We move, or they move. There is no consistency.
I had quite the adventure today. I wish I would have had somebody take better pictures than my iPhone self-portraits because you can't quite see how bad the salon results were.
I had planned on going to the Aveda salon in Bayreuth. They are expensive but I'm a big fan of their natural products, and they always do a really good job. But, it is about a 45 minute drive to Bayreuth and it usually takes about four hours to do my hair. I didn't want to spend the extra time right now when Sophia is out of school and we're still settling into our house. So, I went to the salon here in town. I thought it would be nice to go to a place in our village that I could walk to. My friend went and had good results so I made an appointment there too. I made an appointment with the lady that did my friend's hair. She is the boss of the salon. But, when I showed up, some other lady was there all by herself.
When she took my towel off I thought there was still soap in my hair because it was so white. Nope, I just had really blond highlights. She cut and styled my hair nicely, except for the zigzag part that was popular ten years ago, and I thought I would just have really unnatural highlights. When I got home I immediately undid the zigzag part and I saw that my roots were spotted orange, black, and blond. I looked like a jungle animal. I played with parting different ways. One side was much blonder than the other. I thought about going back to the salon but I just didn't want her touching my hair again and I didn't want to be the ugly American. But, I was really upset every time I looked in the mirror and I knew I couldn't go on vacation with such bad hair.
A friend who recently moved back to the States recommended Schwarzkopf hair color. Another friend and I went to the drugstore to pick some up. Luckily she is very interested in anything that has to do with beauty so she offered to help me. We chose Schwarzkopf's Perfect Mousse permanent color in Mittel-Braun because it looked like it would be dark but not too dark and it was the most expensive variety. It was maybe just slightly lighter than my natural color. We bought two boxes because I have a lot of hair.
I went over at 8:45 after we got our kids to bed. We were not done until about midnight. She did the first application, applying only to the areas that were highlighted. Thank goodness I didn't have my whole head done. I washed and conditioned and dried. There were still a lot of orange spots. She was shocked at just how bad the highlights were. Spotty and orange. Can't get much worse than that. She opened the second bottle and we repeated the whole process three more times, applying only to the bad areas.
In the end, it looks pretty good. I'm thankful to have a friend that had the willingness and patience to help me in a crisis. We'll see what happens when it fades. My next appointment will be with Aveda either here or in the States. They will probably have a lot to say about what they find.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
