Ten Days: Hair Confessional

Warning: longest post ever...

Alright, so remember when I promised you good folks a while ago that you'd get to see my number one most embarrassing photo? That time has finally arrived. I re-dyed my hair for my Ten Days quest, and thought this would be a good time to confess to my love-hate relationship with my hair and show you what I've done with it over the years.

Begin.

Presenting: roughly 14 year old me at my great-uncle's New England cabin, complete with post-lake air-dried hair, corn shucking, the most unflattering pose ever, a dorky/toothy smile, and untimely blinking.

I'll wait for you to stop crying from laughter. No really, I'll wait.




Done yet? No?


How about now? Ok well I hope so.
In any case, although my hair is still a terrifying beast today (see photo 9 below), I've learned to tame it through copious amounts of coconut oil and learning how to properly blow-dry it. But because my locks have never been terribly beautiful on their own, I've never been afraid to dye and cut and change it frequently, which is the point of this post:

DO NOT BE AFRAID OF YOUR HAIR.

It is only hair, and it will grow back. Want turquoise tips? Do it (see how I did them here!). Want a dark brown blunt bob? Go for it. Side/full bangs? Done/done. Hate it? Wait a little while or go back to the hair stylist! Here's a brief synopsis of my wildly fluctuating hair styles over the past 6 years or so, ending with my current 'do!

Oh the crunchy curls I rocked at my Dad and stepmom's wedding... my natural color though!

One of my high school grad photos. Super dark brown! My sister makes fun of this one since it looks like I have gray hair... 

Freshman year shaggy bob... still dark brown.

Slightly more blunt bob and still dark brown, but more reddish.

SUPER DUPER PROFESSIONAL BLONDE WITH AWESOME HIGHLIGHTS for a play my sophomore year (wassup Helena??)

Fuuuuuuuudge that, back to dark brown summer after sophomore year.

Aaaaaaand then back to a lighter brown/blonde-ish shade later that year.

Frizzy beach hair - Spring Break 2011 baby! Slightly more blonde/massive roots.

BAM SIDE BANGS. Also, junior year ultra-frizz. Not even kidding, this is what my hair looks like right after I blow-dry it.

Not a fan of this weird/uneven brown dye job the summer after junior year.

Curls were my jam senior year - back to a more neutral brown.

Much more natural looking brown curls for my college grad photos

Turquoise tips, woot woot! Except then I had to cut those 5 inches of hair off a month later booo

Amazing strawberry blonde professional color.

FULL BANGS OH YEAH!

...aaaaaand after dyeing it again last night (and realizing I do this face A LOT)...

It's current shade of a slightly lighter strawberry blonde. Really digging the red-ness!

TTHHEEEEEEE END!

DIY: A Bit of Teal Rebellion

After an impromptu almost-cross-country roadtrip, I'm finally home. First thing I do? Dye my hair tips teal.

And buy not-so-ironic hipster glasses (I'm looking at you, RHu)

This was a somewhat small act of "rebellion" against complacently sitting at home waiting for my future to fall in my lap. Staring at this giant cliff of graduation and the rest of my life, I decided that since I don't have a job yet and so am not tied down with work commitments etc yet, I might as well have some fun with it while I'm searching. Here's how I did it:

What you need:

Hair dye color of your choice
Old shirt you don't mind getting dyed/bleached

Hair bleach (optional, though recommended if you have dark hair)

Plastic gloves

Plastic wrap

Hair dryer

What you do:

1) Put on old shirt. Bleach the section of your hair that you want colored. Since I have pretty light hair anyways and didn't want the color super bright (and didn't want bleached hair tips once it faded) I skipped the bleach.

Look how excited I am about my light-ish hair!

2) PUT ON GLOVES. I didn't, with this as the result. Eek.

3) Separate hair into sections and apply dye to hair according to the directions for the dye. Make sure to work the dye into the hair really well so it doesn't end up patchy.

4) Wrap in plastic wrap and blast with your hair dryer on high heat for however long your dye instructions say. For me, it was about 40 minutes (or, roughly the length of a Psych episode).

Works best with dramatic lighting.

5) Rinse really really well and let air dry.

I aaaaaalsooooo have some really really exciting news that I can hopefully share with you guys tomorrow, so stay tuned!!! In the meantime, do you guys have any recent "rebellious" acts? Let me know what little things you've done to spice up your life!

Operation Stunna Cum Laude

In exactly one week from now, I will be chugging sipping my celebratory bottle flute of champagne after I finally turn in my thesis. This means two things. First, I will not be posting much until then (in case you couldn't tell by my total absence the past few days). Secondly, I will not exactly be the epitome of fashion until then.

Or will I??

In an attempt to combat these two rather unpleasant things over the next week, I've come up with a challenge for myself: Operation Get The F*** Out Of Bed And Fix Your Hair Stunna Cum Laude. The idea is, if you dress nicely, you feel nicely. If you just wear sweats and hoodies, you feel not nicely.

So basically, my challenge for the next week is to get up every morning (meaning no sleeping in), wear nice-ish clothes (not just jeans and the closest tshirt), put on nice-ish shoes (comfy heels or cute flats), do my hair (more or less), wear make up (or at least mascara which is about all I normally wear), eat properly (but with as much caffeine as necessary), and make sure I see the sun at least once every day.

Pretty manageable right? To make sure I do it though, I'll be taking a picture everyday and posting it here, which kinda fixes unpleasant thing number one except it'll just be pictures of me which isn't terribly exciting.

I'm counting today as a by-day (hey, I make the rules around here) but here's a tutorial for how to curl soft waves from my new blog obsession Hair and Makeup by Steph.

Couldn't resist including this one hehe

I WANT MY HAIR TO DO THIS

On Coconut Oil

I really really dislike coconut. The flavor, the texture, how it ruins perfectly good chocolate with its gross flaky appearance, the insistence of the rest of the world that it's the best thing since sliced bread... you get the point. Coconut is not my thing.

Buuuuut after hearing one too many good things about the potential benefits of coconut oil (seriously, apparently it does everything and anything ever - like you could probably get it to sort your laundry for you), I decided to use up an old gift card and buy some so I can see what all the rage is about. I mean, even Jenna Marbles likes it.

I think I'm mostly going to use it as a hair treatment for now, maybe as a skin moisturizer if I'm feeling fancy. In any case, don't think I'll be using it in any food stuffs in the near future (still can't stand the taste).

I'll report back with my (very non-scientific) findings once I use it for a bit! In the meantime, let me know if you've had any good/bad experiences using coconut oil for whatever!

Wild Hair

Quick, someone convince me not to do something crazy with my hair!

I'm loving all the ombre, neon pink, rainbow, colored highlights, even pastel colors we've been seeing on the runway. I don't think my potential employers would be as enthusiastic about it as me though.

DIY: Ombre Dress

Alright, so you've seen it a million times at this point: ombre is fashion's lady of the week. Dresses, shirts, skirts, pants, you name it, it's been ombre'd, and that includes hair (I'm really trying to convince myself that I shouldn't follow this trend...).

via Etsy

via Tuula

This last image inspired me to try my hand at ombre'ing (or dip dying) a dress I originally got for an Alice in Wonderland costume. Great for the costume, not so great for anything else.

Super pale, super snoozeville.

Boil some water, add some Navy Blue dye, and dip it in! I wanted most of the dress to be a darker color, so dipped almost all of the dress in. The dye stains linen and cotton really quickly though, so your lightest "layer" should only be in the dye for a second or two.

I left the second level in the dye for about 3 minutes. 

The last "level" of dye took about 10 minutes to deepen to the color I wanted.

Make sure to dry your newly dyed article of clothing on a towel that you don't care too much about. It will get dyed too! I have a specific "dye-drying" towel that I use. Here's the final product! Of course I took these pictures plenty past midnight, so the photoshoot devolved pretty quickly...

Pretty normal so far

I really like how the back turned out - the line of color is much straighter.

This is where I start getting a bit delusional... "OMG LOOK I finished something!!"

 "I wonder what shoes I should wear with this dress? I guess these are okay!"

You get the idea. Super easy DIY that I definitely need to try on a pair of jeans or two. Or three.