Frivolous "Firsts" of 2015 - 10/19

This year was the first time that I did two things:
1) used dark/colorful nail polish in my fingernails (the most I'd done in the best was French manicures);
2) dyed my whole hair dark blonde (NEVER doing this again!).

I loved the nail polish and I want to keep doing it, although I didn't do it at all this semester because I didn't have time :-(

Very first time, March 2, one of my "favoritest" colors, brown:

Same color and (cheap) polish, a few days later:

 Next color, aqua green, the same one I'd first used on my toenails in 2014:

 A darker aqua, this time from a better brand:

Second Essie polish I bought, Cartel Style:

"Butler, Please" from Essie, matches my colorful dress:

Bonus Photo, Ombré toenails, since I own too many aqua hues of polish:

It was a colorful year!

New Haircut and Curly Hair Resources!

I had a haircut and new highlights and color done to my hair yesterday by this lovely hairdresser that was recommended by my colleagues at the university! The photo is not that great, but it gives a good idea:

And I bought this book and these products to see if they will help. 

I already love the book, which was written by the woman who launched the DevaCurl line of products. I'll report back after I start using the products! I'm excited! 

When you're curly haired & sleep with wet hair

Also, the dark brown (that covered the blonde blunder from the summer) is washing away a bit... In addition to the hair being thick and tangly and feeling tough and unhealthy at the tips. I'm never ever dying my whole hair again! Only highlights for me as I've always done. I wonder if any products can help or if only growing it out and cutting will solve the problem! :-(

Back to Brown

Today I got brown highlights (with some darker blonde) all over my hair, but the brown washed over the blonde, so my hair is pretty dark right now. I'll be buying clarifying shampoo & washing multiple times and I hope that'll help to bring the blonde highlights back.

The hairdresser, who had loved the blonde on me, was pretty disappointed, but I'm happy to go back to a more normal me! My older son just said "it is weird, but better!" 

The original results from back in May are here.
Before (today):

After:

I will probably get highlights again in December for family photos, but I'll never ever go blonde again, that's for sure!

P.S. Later my son added the following: "You're not as cute, though." Yeah... I guess blondes are the cute ones . BLAH! (Sigh...) And I told him that I'll be soon adding some highlights to be "cuter." Oh well! ;-) 

Goldilocks

I just made an interesting mistake! ;-)

Sigh...

I didn't give the best instructions to the hairdresser, so, instead of two tones of highlights, I ended up with my very first full head hair coloring experience! Two tones of blonde. Darker and lighter. The plan is to add more light brown highlights in three weeks, so family will be less shocked by it when we meet in July. ;-)

In the meantime, I will hopefully enjoy looking quite different for these next three weeks. My sons thought it was okay, but different. I already called my husband, but I have to wait for the verdict when he gets home. I think he'll be ok too. 

I guess at 40+ one has to shake things up once in a while!

I'll let you know what K thinks!

Curly Hair Woes

When you have curly hair...

... you have a haircut (a few inches off in the back!) and nobody notices (my sons said, "It looks the same to me!" I don't know if students noticed, maybe they were too polite to say anything? Nah... It doesn't make too much of a difference, really).

... your hair always looks undone, messy & even crazy... (because if you actually comb/brush it it'll look even worse!)

... you can't even think of washing your hair at night (unless you're going to blow-dry it straight).

... longer hair always looks way shorter (and my hair won't ever grow long anyway*)...

... even when it's not bad-hair-day for other people it's always slightly bad for you and when it is an actual hyper humid bad-hair-day, whoa!!!

I blow-dried my hair  straight for almost a year and then went curly as the humid weather started back in June. I decided not to go back to straight for the school year and I had a haircut yesterday (first one since early summer). Not that it makes any difference. Sigh...

yeah, hair issues, big time! :(

* the biggest source of my "hair issues..." I will never ever have long hair and that makes me very sad. (my hair is too thin, fine & breakable to ever go below my shoulders in any decent way. It runs in the family -- paternal grandmother & dad)

Artificially Blond(ish)

This is a "hair" post. 

If you read me earlier this year, back in this January post, 
you'll know that I've got tons of  "hair issues." ;-)

I have mixed feelings about it, but I caved in got highlights again in Brazil (2 different tones).Take a look:

But now I'm having second thoughts & thinking that it's so artificial and whatnot and that I shouldn't have done it and should have remained a brunette (these are the photos of my haircut back in March that I never got around to showing you):

 One thing is certain (IMO), the highlights look best when I wear my hair blown straight and not naturally curly like below (though with the bathroom lighting, my hair-color does look OK with the curls + 7 months old highlights in this April 2011 photo):

 Unkempt Curls -- it could be worse, believe me!

 Tamed to be more photogenic:

(I took these photos to register the hair & got to show the glasses too -- remember that I was forced to wear glasses for nearly a year because of this, I couldn't me more thrilled with my lasik surgery!! :)

Oh, and BTW, my new haircut? (from the top 2 photos above) It looks positively AWFUL with curls. :( I'm not kidding! The longer tips at the front just don't go with curly!

Anyway, unlike in past years, I'm planning to redo the hightlights on a regular basis with our hairdresser from church (the one who lost her son, a senior in high school, to a motorcycle accident a month before graduation) and not let my hair grow for two years without redoing the coloring.

It's a bit sad, however, to think that with my two latest haircuts (first on my birthday in July last year, then twice earlier this year) I had gotten rid of all old color in the tips and the hair was uniformly brown. Hmmm... well, with a few white ones here & there (nothing that required the highlights to hide, so that was not my point in getting them... it's that silly childhood with to be blonde surfacing from my unconscious, ha ha ha).

One thing is very true: I never liked myself with glasses and now I don't like to see myself with curly hair. Maybe it's sad, but I think it's ok. I'm not chemically straightening my hair, just "physically" doing so with the blow drier (maybe 'cause my husband is in the latter science, not the former, there you go! ) ;)

The "Hair" Post, or how I've been agonizing about hair since 1977 ;)

Here's the plan, folks. I'll write the post, then I'll take my time and make a photo album & link to it. And then, maybe I'll insert photos in the post later. I'll do this because I've been writing this post in my head for at least four or five years, it's hard time I get it out, isn't it?! 

I think it must have been 1977, the year I turned six. I don't know for sure. All I know is that my mom must have overreacted and been so upset about it that now I remember details from that day. Walking down the street and entering a door that led to the hair salon and leaving the place afterwards.

Problem was, the hairdresser cut my hair way too short, not exactly what you call a "pixie" cut here, but short and ugly. And I think that my (yes, that's unfortunately true) "unfulfillable" lifelong wish to have beautiful, long hair must have started that day. Alas, it was not to be!

I don't think I cared much about the short haircut, but I most certainly remember it. My mom kept my hair at "bob" length for most of my life. And she always carefully combed it and tried to straighten it, so it didn't look that great, but it was OK. What I never understood was why my mom never let my hair grow long (and I don't have the answer to this question, I never asked her, but I can speculate why).

At 13 I rebelled against my nicely combed curls. For the first time in my life I tried what was called (in Brazil, in English!) "rinse" cream (creme rinse). I distinctly remember the first times I put it in my hair and rinsed it off. I hated the sensation in the skin down my back, I got all slippery and sticky and even after the shower, it still felt strange. But... it made the hair so soft!!

And I quickly found out a secret! If I washed my hair, got out of the shower, shook my head like a wet puppy, and let my hair air dry like that, I would have a head covered in curls! That was new and pretty much it consisted the bulk of my "teenage rebelliousness."

From that day forward (I think it was 1984, time for the "New Wave" fashions, bright colors such as neon and lime green, hot pink, strong lavender... sigh... it was fun), my mom never touched my hair again.

A few years later I was able to proudly wear my hair in a short bob, parted on the side, kind of puffy, shorter in the back, just like a famous actress, I felt so cool!

That must have been my "high point" as far as hair is concerned. After that, I could never find a good hairdresser and I had a series of bad haircuts. The one I hated the most was the "mullet," which is how my hair looked when met K. I started growing it out soon after we met, though, and let it grow long for our wedding. Sigh.

My hair cannot be grown long, though. You  may think that such a thing doesn't exist, but that's becaue you don't know my hair. It's curly, so it looks like a lot, but I don't have that much hair and... the worst part of it, it's extremely, horribly fine, super thin. So... I can let it grow all I want, but it will thin out at the bottom and just look bad. (I rarely did it throughout my life, only now in the past 3-4 years -- but blow-drying the hair straight just make it look even thinner and lifeless).

After I moved to the U.S. I never cut my hair. Lack of money, fear of having a bad haircut. I went for years without haircuts, literally. I know. Horrible. The worst was during my pregnancy with Linton, I think it was the longest it ever got in my life. And it didn't look good, no, it did not.

I found some wonderful hairdressers in Brazil, though, and they cut my hair short and I realized it that I could even blow dry it (only during late Fall, Winter and early Spring) because the heated and dry environments here in the U.S. would keep it nice.

One of my favorite jokes (with just a hint of truth in it) is to say that I cannot go back to Brazil because that would mean living constantly with "bad hair days" (and, summers are one looong, never ending "bad hair season" for me, I have the photos to prove it, many of them).

In conclusion, I'm writing this post to document this angst with hair that has followed me all my life. There's obviously more to this topic (not to mention tons of photos documenting every single thing I say -- remember the day of my 40th birthday, for example?), but I'll stop here for now.

The reason I wrote this post? I am always 100% decided that I will have the most radical haircut of all my life, in which the back will be really short and the front longer, which is the total opposite of how I've had my hair for the past 7 years when I began to have a "bob" most of the time.

You have no idea how "brave" I need to be to do this. This post cannot convey all that I've felt about hair and having haircuts over the years, but... you know what? I think it's time to "rebel" again, enjoy my forties, enjoy my dark hair before more white ones starts to crop up and when getting highlights won't be just an option, but a need if I want to disguise them. ;) I have this crazy "dream" though, that like my dad, and his mother before him, I will have very few white hairs. Except that I've got my mother's genes & everyone in her family gets to have gorgeous silver hair...  Well, the future will tell what will happen to mine!