My friend Brooke and I have always experimented on my hair together. When I was a sophomore in high school, we somehow talked my mom into letting me bleach my hair. I ended up with a delightful shade of orange hair just in time for my moms wedding. Oops. For the two years that I kept my hair bleach blonde, Brooke touched up the roots for me every time and endured the squirming and whining as my scalp burned. (She even dyed it black that week in the middle where i thought I’d like to look like Angelina Jolie in hackers.)

A couple months ago when Brooke and I were at the lake (as we are every Wednesday in the summer) we noticed a girl with a blue under layer in her black hair. As we admired it from afar, we talked about how it would be fun to do on ourselves. Once we were convinced we would indeed like to do it, we combed the whole lake to find the girl and ask her how it was done. She gave me explicit instructions and a few days later I found myself squirming once again as my scalp burned.

We first had to bleach out our hair. It turned kinda orangy but definitely lightened up a lot.

Then I applied blue and Brooke chose vampire red, which was supposed to be a really dark red that she was hoping would be more subtle than blue.

Turns out Vampire Red is actually fluorescent red and the dark blue was hardly noticeable unless in direct sunlight. We ended up wanting each others hair.

Brooke:

So after several weeks of taking blue showers, and dealing with my hair fading to green, I decided that I’d like to go ahead and go red. After using hair color stripper twice, we managed to remove enough of the blue and get it to take the red. (my worst case scenario in this is that my hair would turn purple and I would just dye dark brown over it. I hate purple.)

I have to say that I like it so much better now!

So I decided to add more buttons to my short sleeved cardigan from Fitted Knits and it turned out great.

It’s really comfy and now I’m just waiting for this warm spell to end so I can wear it! (not that I’m complaining, I lurve this weather!)

I used 2 skeins of Eco wool, added in 5 more button holes and knit this in about a week and a half. All it needs is a little blocking! I will say that I wish I wouldn’t have gone down on needles for the ribbing and knit one size smaller because the fit on top is a tad loose.

Here’s the sweater in action with Tucky puppy. (note: Friday I got my hair chopped. I don’t think it’s been this short since the terrible haircut of ’03. But this time I quite like it.)

(all photos by Eden)

I just finished cutting Honor’s hair. It’s been long overdue, but I’ve been putting it off because it’s always such a traumatic experience. I tried a new technique today though. Bribery. I told him that if he didn’t throw a fit during his hair cut, that we’d go buy a transformer. Everything was going great when the clippers stopped working. I had Jim come take a look at them, he got them working and I proceeded to shave a huge spot out of the side of Honor’s head. OOOPS, I forgot to put the attachment back on the clippers.

Of course that couldn’t have felt good, so Honor started crying, I kept saying, “OH, NO!” (bad idea) and that was the end of the peaceful haircut. And now, the poor kid is sporting a very short cut. I feel like such a ding-dong.

Last weekend we were at a friends house having dinner when the topic of love languages came up. Mine, according to Sarah, is nurturing. But none of us could figure out what Jim’s is. I remained unconvinced that Jim HAS a love language, but he determined that his love language is giving people a hard time. Relentlessly.

That is why what happened Wednesday should have come as no surprise to me:

During lunch, Jim walked over to the local barber to get a much needed hair cut. I was in the bathroom doing my hair when he got home. As he walked in, he was trying to keep a mischievous grin off his face, but that’s not terribly unusual so I didn’t think much of it. He was looking at me straight on and I commented on how happy I was that he cut his hair. That was until he walked away.

I did a double take and realized that he had told the barber to give him a MULLET. On purpose. FOR the purpose of annoying me. Isn’t he SO special?

better pics to come

• Today I cut Honors hair. You’d think by now, he’d be ok with the clippers. But, alas, he is not and it was so not very fun. This time I had him sit in the bath tub on a stool with just a pullup on. At least the mess was containable.

•Being in the hair mood, I decided to dye mine. Ahh, the things you get to do on a day off… It will just be a shade darker than my natural color. (I sit and type with a plastic bag over my hair while it processes.)
I’ve also been on the look out of a new hair cut. I had my stylist cut quite a bit off last time because the straightening iron was murder to my poor hair. But now I’m not really liking it. Right now it’s right above my shoulders in sort of that faux mullet that I’ve been sporting lately. Everyone seems to be wearing side-swept bangs and faux mullets these days… I want something different. And fast. I’ve been spending a lot of time on madradhair but to no avail. *sigh* Having good hair makes all the difference… Time to go rinse.

Tuesday I decided that I could no longer take Honors hair looking about as long as Edens. We have to keep that distinction between the two, because I was starting to get asked a lot, “Are they twins? Both boys?” Yeah. So I bribed him with a popsicle and got him to let me buzz his hair. Sort of.

Really it went more like this: 20 minutes trying to talk him into getting his hair buzzed, followed by setting him on my lap and just going for it. Surprisingly he wasn’t too freaked out about it and let me get about half-way done. That was until he wiggled and the clipper attachment jabbed him in the head a little. It was nothing major at all, but then he decided that I had lied to him and getting his hair buzzed did, in fact, hurt.

By that point we were at the point of no return. There was no way I could let him go out in public with his hair half buzzed, so we had to push on. Eden went and got the popsicle out of the freezer for Honor to see while I tortured him. It’s always good to see what you’re suffering for.

The popsicle held him off for awhile, but it didn’t last long and I just had to hold him down and finish. He was screaming and wiggling and hair was getting everywhere. Eden was even covered with hair. But it was done. And we ate our popsicles in the bathtub.

She came and got daddy and said, “Look, I made you out of playdoh.” (All by herself. You might need to click to see the detail.)

And look, her first ponytail.

It’s Perfect!! There is a God!! (joking) Ok, here it is. The photo doesn’t do it justice, at all, and my camera batteries died. I’ll post better photos tomorrow, but if you click on this photo you can see the other two that I took before the camera died.

Today, at 11am, I am going to get my hair cut. I am so scared! But also determined. I will not let her cut my hair if I feel she won’t do a good job. I will not!

And since this week seems to be post pictures of myself week, here’s my hair before (not the best pic of me, but oh, well). I think I look a lot like my little sister with my hair being so long. Isn’t it long? It’s the longest it’s ever, ever been.

I’ll post pics of my new cut as soon as I’m back to a computer. Say a little prayer to the hair gods for me.

I’ve always had the worst experience with my hair. It all culminated when I was pregnant with Honor and Jim suggested that I go to a lady who was in his business referral group. So here I was, 8 months pregnant, with the worst hair cut of my life. I know that it’s shocking that I’d freak out, but I did, so much so that Jim had to yell at me to stop because he was worried that I’d freak myself into premature labor.

I guess it was a good thing in disguise, because it led me to the best stylist in the entire world. She gave me some temporary extensions and was able to eventually work me into a great cut. You can imagine my distress when I found out that she MOVED AWAY. It was quite possibly the saddest thing in the entire world.

So now here I am, it’s been over 9 months since my last cut and I need one, desperately. And I’m scared to death to get one. Thinking about it, I keep fighting off mini panic attacks. I know that I want it to look like this or this but how will I get it? Where will I go? What will they do to my hair? I’m so scared.