Everything Changes: Cosmetic Edition

Somewhere around 18 weeks pregnant, I noticed that my roots were growing in dramatically darker than what my natural color used to be. Pre-baby, my hair was a dirty-ash-blonde that was easily highlighted to a bright blonde and required only four or five trips per year to the salon for touch-ups. But shortly before the halfway point in my pregnancy, I noticed that there was a major contrast between the colored shaft of my hair and the root. Boo!

I blamed my new stylist down here in Dallas for a while. See, I had been going to the same stylist in Minneapolis for 13 years. (Darrin at Darrin James Salon if you're in the Minneapolis area.) Since moving to Dallas, I've been trying to find someone who did half as good a job as he did. I had done the trendy ombre highlights thing this past fall, too. I figured either my stylist or changing up the highlighting process was to blame for these wacky roots...

Nope! My hair is just much darker post-baby. It's also stick-straight. So much so, that I don't want to deal with heading to the salon every two months to maintain the blonde color, because finding a sitter for Henry will be tough... And frankly, that's more high-maintenance than I ever want to be.

For the past few months I had been having "red hair envy" so I figured - what a great time to give a new color a try! I have an olive complexion, so I can't go too bright or too orange. I'm not into colored hair that veers too far from natural hair colors, so I can't go too red. This is what I'm thinking:



Amy Adams' red isn't too red or orange, and isn't overly bright. This could be a good look on me. Her skin has some color to it in this photo, which makes me hopeful that the color will work for someone like me who tans instead of burns.

I'm not sure who this person is (found the pic on Pinterest), but her hair color is super adorable! This could be an easier transition away from blonde, since it's a few shades lighter than Amy's color. It could also look terrible on me, since I'm no where near as fair as this woman in the photo.




Have any of you made a dramatic hair color change? The last time I did it I was in grad school, and went from my normal blonde to dark brown. I look back at pics from that time in my life and shudder at how terrible I looked! So hopefully, this looks better than that, because that was rough. Rrrough.

As it would turn out, I wrote the first part of this post a week ago. Therefore, I already have my end results! I showed my stylist at Dear Clark Salon the pics I found, and she thought it was a great idea and a good change. So she mixed up the coloring that she thought would work best with my complexion.

If you follow me on Instagram, then you saw this shot yesterday!

I got a little nervous while the color was processing because it was looking DARK... And I was getting flashbacks from my awful brunette grad school days. But, she was indeed a pro, and the color turned out really well! Here's what it looks like dry:

Ta-da! It's a fun change. Plus, it's still light enough to go back to blonde, if that's the route I want to go. Brunette isn't NOT my color, but maybe I can pull off a nice red!

In other news, I've found a fellow blogger who hosts a Wednesday link up about sharing girly ideas! I figured a new 'do post qualified as girly :)  Check her out!