Craving a Change

I woke up last Wednesday craving change. This happens every once in a while, most recently being in January when I decided on a whim to chop my hair that I has been so adamantly growing. So, appropriately timed at 6 months past that drastic change, I felt the intense need to change again.

From my teen years through my early twenties, I changed my hair often and drastically. I mostly kept it short and dyed it just about every color you could imagine. The image below is just a few examples of my wide array of hair adventures. Between the ages of 15 and 25, I was fearless.

Sweet collage skills, bro. 

Over the last four or five years, I've kind of tamed and grown up. My hair, while still ever changing in length, has only strayed from brown once or twice to explore into the comparatively not-so-adventurous regular, normal red. Because of this, I found myself intimidated by this new extreme change I was craving. Could I pull it off? Would I look ridiculous? Am I too old?

There was only one way to push myself: Instagram. It worked and later that day I made a trip to Sally Beauty. Having worked there for a few years back in the day, I knew what products I needed:

• blue bleach
• developer
• violet toner
• purple shampoo
• super extra mega deep conditioner

Tada.

I'm pretty stoked about how it turned out. When it's time for a cut and a root touch-up, I think I may try amping it up to platinum, but I'm still really happy with it at this level. I've received a lot of compliments on it and so far, luckily, only two Miley Cyrus comments (to which I have no idea how to respond).

My craving has been satiated.

So What!

It's that time again. I'm linking up with Shannon over at Life After I Dew for So What Wednesday.  So what!

if I said that I was growing my hair out until it could cover my boobies like mermaid hair. (And so what if I don't wipe off Chuck's nose smudges before taking mirror pics.)

So what!

if I decided that it was time to hack it off before I reached said mermaid lengths.

And so what!

if I decided to go for a super drastic cut. It's how I do.

And also so what if I spent 20 minutes trying to get just the right mirror pic to show it off.

So what if my hair looked nice when it was long. I was totally over finding long hairs everywhere, especially my butt crack. So what if I just told you that I had to pick long hairs out of my butt crack. I won't anymore! Nor will it get caught in my armpit, or clog the shower, or float all around the bathroom when I blow dry it.

I'm super stoked to have it short again. It's so much more "me".

(Many many thanks to my friend Jamie at W Salon in San Juan Capistrano for her talent!)

The Hair of My Dreams

I never knew how crazy my hair really was until I finally grew it out to a substantial length. My hair has been varying degrees of short for most of my life, meaning chin-length or shorter and reaching my shoulders maybe 3 times. Now that my hair is past my collar bones, it has been driving me ridiculously crazy. It's so curly on the bottom that it frizzes out no matter how carefully and tactfully I blow dry it. It's gotten to the point where even a flat iron won't tame it in under an hour. Yuck. But I really am trying to go for record lengths in my hair history book, so I wanted to push through instead of chopping it off.

I mentioned on Friday that I was heading into the salon for the Keratin Smoothing Complex Therapy. Basically, the process involves applying the Keratin treatment to clarified hair, letting it sit, blow drying it, then tediously flat ironing it. I'm talking like 5 hairs per section, ironed about 5 times over. Okay, maybe 20 hairs. It was very few hairs at a time. It took a couple hours, but I left with ridiculously flat and straight hair.

This hair was also very annoying. The last step to the treatment is waiting three days before you get your hair wet, wash it, put it in a clip or a pony tail or even tuck it behind your ears. It has to just hang there. For three days. It was inconvenient, but I suppose it was tolerable. I made sure to schedule the treatment for over the weekend when I didn't have any Pilates or Spin classes, so that helped.

Before, during and after... obviously.

The before picture is after letting my hair air-dry, then wearing it in a bun for a day. If it had been blow dried, it would have been even worse. The during picture is after I came home from my treatment. My hair was stick straight and my bangs were so pokey. The after picture was right after I washed and dried it on Monday and I was thoroughly impressed. My Instagram photo actually makes it look kinda frizzy, so I decided to make an animated gif to prove otherwise. (Why wouldn't this post have an animated gif? Duh.)

I just noticed that this gif is running in reverse. D'oh.

Let me tell you that this is how my hair used to look after blow drying with a round brush with multiple smoothing creams being followed by a flat iron. It took more than an hour to get it this way... that is, in the past! This is after a rough blow dry with a regular vented brush, no smoothing serums or creams and NO flat iron. Uhm. Amazing? Definitely.

Now, I wait. This treatment cost a bit more than I was really comfortable paying, but they say it lasts 3-6 months. I'll just have to wait it out and see how it goes to decide if it was really worth it, but so far, I say yes.