Overhaulin'

Okay, so I'm guessing you (all 3 of my followers) noticed my new layout for the blog. You like? I needed to change it to freshen it up a bit. It still looks like a BlogSpot blog, but what can ya do?

I'm apparently on a renovation kick, because I also made a huge change - which was referenced in my previous post - and dyed my hair red. I've been blonde forever. I was a real blondie as a kid, then as I got older became a dark blonde. So I've been getting highlights added in for the past 10 years. I've always wanted to go red, since I have some red tones in my natural hair color. And with my freckles and pasty white skin, I figured I could really pull off the ginger look. The problem, though, is that when I've done some red highlights in the past, they fade really fast. Every hair stylist has told me that red won't stick - it will always fade. But *that's* just with chemical color.

Enter: Lush's henna hair dye.

Lush is a fabulous store that carries all-natural hair and body products. A lot (most?) of their products are vegan, too, so that's a bonus. This henna hair dye is completely natural. No harsh chemicals on your hair (therefore soaking into your body). And I could go red with the "Caca Rouge" henna. The names of these products could use some work, huh?

I showed up to Lush in the Tyson's Corner Mall after work one day, pretty sure I wanted to go red. But with henna, it sort of reacts to everyone's hair differently, so it was hard to know exactly how this would turn out. Especially since the ends of my hair were chemically treated (there were a lot of roots happening, too), so they could turn REALLY red. I wanted a Marcia Cross red. So I went to Lush and talked it over for literally an hour with the three girls working that day. In the end, one last phone call to my personal consultant (sister) who said "Why not? Go for it!" and I was sold.

We went with 4 blocks of the caca rouge and 2 blocks of the caca marron. So the red henna, plus the auburn henna would hopefully prevent a kool-aid hair look. They mix it up and apply it for you in-store. And by "in-store", I mean they pull up a stool from the Sunglasses Hut and set me on some newspapers in the mall hallway with garbage bags wrapped around me with a chip-clip holding them on. AWKWARD. Oh, and the consistency and color of the stuff is literally IDENTICAL to that of goose poop. I know this, because I grew up on a hobby farm and had a special pair of "barn shoes" whose sole purpose was to allow me to walk through the slimy green goose poop without tracking it into the house.

Let's document the journey in pictures, shall we?

Here is me right before we started (sigh, I do like my blonde tresses):


Here we are as Evan, the store manager, applies the henna (aka goose poop):



Here is me in my car. AFTER I'd walked through the mall and Macy's to get to the parking lot. And YES, that is saran wrap helping to secure my goose-poop-coated hair to my head and a towel catching the dripping goose poop.



And here is me the next night. Drinking WAY TOO MUCH at The Refuge (a bar) in Minneapolis as a red head:


All's well that ends well, right? I really do love it. The 6 hours that I had to sit on my couch and let the henna work wasn't a highlight of the process (no pun intended), but it was worth it to avoid chemicals and get to that ginger look I was going for!