Hair today...gone tomorrow

So, as in my previous blog about my hair, the saga continues. I had to forgo trying to find an alternative to shampoo and conditioner. It was just not working for me. I used Dr. Bonner's lavender shampoo and my regular conditioner, but my hair was still not silky soft as before. I decided to try V05, yep folks you read that right, V05. Because I'm a frugal momma, I've been using cheap shampoo as soap for years. It's way cheaper than purchasing a $4.00 bottle of body wash. I usually used Suave because it was cheap; well V05 is way cheaper now. It normally runs about .85 a bottle. When Kroger has it on sale, it's like .74 a bottle. So the other day, Baby Girl and I were at Kroger and there was a sale on V05 so I started grabbing a bunch for our body wash. Then it dawned on me: why not try some for my hair? I mean what could it hurt in this stage of the game? They have some tea series shampoos and conditioners so I grabbed blackberry and sage tea shampoo and conditioner. It is marvelous! My hair is back to it's silky soft self! I love it and it is cheap! SCORE!!

Now to the coloring of my hair. If I did not color my hair, it would be white. The last couple of times I colored my hair with synthetic dyes, I had horrible irritation to my scalp. I made the decision to try a more natural approach. This was about 8-10 weeks ago.

I started off with trying to use tea for two weeks to bring some color back. All I got was a drippy mess and nothing else. It didn't change the color one bit.

I finally get sage and rosemary and some henna powder. This is a whole different story. I had ordered some sage and rosemary from a crappy online site. For three weeks I have nothing, nada, not a thing. I email inquiring where my purchase was at and she tells me it will be shipped the next week. So I patiently wait and at the end of the week I still did not have my herbs. I emailed again to let her know that if the order had not been shipped to please cancel the order and refund me my 39 bucks. She refunded me and then proceeded to berate me for canceling the order after waiting for almost a month. I kindly replied to her email  letting her know that a well established business would not berate a first time buyer for inquiring about their order. That seemed to shut her up. So I decided to purchase my herbs from another online vendor that I've used before. I know what you're thinking, "why didn't you use them in the first place?" To that question my answer is, " I don't know." lol. Anyway, while I was adding my sage (I actually got lucky and got some rosemary at the State Farmer's Market when we went a few weeks ago) I noticed she had henna powder so I ordered that as well. It was cheaper than what I found at Henna for hair. And now I know why; the henna powder was old and did not do anything. While the sage and rosemary made my hair feel yummy, all it did to my white hair was to make it whiter and not darker. So back to the drawing board.

my hair in overhead lighting after using henna

my hair in natural lighting after dying with henna

So I finally purchased some henna from Henna for Hair. I should have done that from the very get-go. You live and learn. Where it took me almost 8 weeks to get my other herbs and henna I'd tried, it took me less than a week to get this henna. So, you go Henna for Hair, you go! Last night (which happened to be my 25th anniversary. Happy anniversary, Bear. Love you!) Bear helped apply the henna to my hair. I slept on it, not very well mind you. I was so excited about seeing the color. I woke up extremely early; I don't think it was even 6:00 yet. I rinsed out the color and was shocked to see that my white now looked like Ronald McDonald red. I dried it and decided it didn't look "that" bad. I'm still disappointed only because I let my roots get so long it looks the same as it did before just with red instead of white. So, I've ordered some indigo to put on top of the henna. I'm hoping that will get me to my dark brown color. I'll just upkeep it with indigo and henna.

In the end, I'm glad I went the natural route. My scalp is so thanking me for it. Eventually, I'll just let my white hair fly but until then, I'll use henna and indigo. Happy hair day!