The Haircut – Before and After

Remember when I told you that I was planning to get my hair did? And that I was going to chop it off? And I showed you this collage of pictures from the Hairstyle PRO app?

I finally went to the salon Saturday, armed with my hairstyle pics and an overwhelming desire to chop my hair off. I ended up showing the stylist the top middle and bottom middle pictures from the collage as a reference for the length I wanted, the bangs, and to spell out that I wanted to be able to wear my hair both wavy and curly and still look put-together.

So here I am before going to the salon. Oh, that hair. Why did I think that my current life, with all its busy-ness and little people running around trying to injure themselves and destroy the house, was a good time to grow-out Rapunzel-length locks? It was even longer in the back. Washing it was such a chore, along with the blow-drying and straightening and curling that was required to look halfway decent. And the frizz was out-of-control.

Here I am after the salon (and after watching Bama school A&M). He cut the length how I wanted it and blow-dried it straight. I’m not crazy about the straight look, so I took a curling iron to it to get the look I wanted. The second picture was actually taken the next morning after I slept on it, but it still doesn’t look too bad. With my hair shorter, I need to switch to an iron with a smaller barrel to get the curls just right.

It’s a little hard to tell in the pictures, but I also had my hair colored and highlighted. We went just a bit lighter with shots of caramel highlights throughout. I’m getting more and more gray in my hair (hello, I’m almost 40!), so I know that over time I’ll need to highlight it more and more so that I’m not at the salon every couple of weeks. If my skin were lighter I’d really lighten my hair, but it’s not so gray is always going to be a struggle.

Billion-dollar idea: Invent a way to dye hair in the hair follicle as it grows out. I’d be RICH!

Back to reality…my husband loved the hair cut and thought it actually made me look younger, which I wasn’t expecting. Somehow I tend to think that longer hair makes me look younger, even though I’ve watched a thousand episodes of What Not to Wear that disprove that theory. So bonus, because the closer I get to 40 the more I want to hang onto my youth.

Have you ever been surprised by a haircut?