Dark Hair

All right, here's the story:

The day after my birthday I decided I could FINALLY get around to taking care of my dark roots growing in. I hate those dark roots so bad. I usually go to Evans Hair School in St. George, Robert Evans is the owner and is a close friend of my parents. He did my hair for years, but at some point I started letting his "advanced" students do it, because then I didn't have to go in at 6 a.m. They usually do a really good job. I was feeling a little too washed out and decided to have some dark lowlights put in. I took in a picture of how I wanted it to look, and off she went.
Long story short...I liked it, but it was a little too chunky for me. I went back the next day to have her break up the chunks, but I came out with really thin highlights, and instead of looking like lowlights, I had a light brownish/grayish looking head of hair. I might have been a little too tired, or insane, but I decided that maybe it was a good time to go dark brown. (I should have listened to my friend Sara who says NEVER MAKE BIG DECISIONS OR DO ANYTHING TO YOUR HAIR AFTER HAVING A BABY. But I didn't. I went to Target and bought two boxes of dye, I got a shade DARKER then I wanted, to make sure all the blond was covered up evenly. (That was my first mistake. For those of you with highlights or bleached hair, learn from my mistake: That hair soaks up the dye FASTER so go a shade LIGHTER!) I happened to be in Arizona and we went down to Tucson to visit friends. I talked my friend Kat into helping me do it, (I remember her saying, are you SURE you want to do this? I assured her I did and that I wouldn't hold her responsible in any way for how it turned out.) I made mistake #2 by leaving the color on for a full 45 minutes (trying to cover up that blond!) and my hair came out like this: BLACK!! It was pretty shocking. It looked kind of like a Halloween wig, I thought. It was even darker than this picture shows.
Well, I called my friend Lara, who had a very similar experience. She told me it cost her $200 at a salon to get hers fixed (AUGH!) but that if I wanted to try something on my own, I could go to Sally Beauty Supply and get a color corrector that would "lift" the shade without bleach. (Remember, my hair has been bleached so many times over the years, if I bleached it all again, can you imagine? It'd probably break.) So, I bought the color corrector and did it two separate times. It's now a dark brown, with a bit of red in it. I like it. I don't think I will stay this way forever, but I admit, I feel SO free, knowing my roots can grow and I don't have to stress about it. My natural color is not this dark, so I might have to try another root touchup thing, but oh well, for now, this works. I'm thinking that I might have to cut off my hair before going back to blond, but my sister has been talking about donating to Locks of Love anyway. So we'll see. My 10-year reunion is next summer, so I can't decide if I should go back as a blond or brunette.

And that's the story of how I became a brunette. Maybe people will think I'm smarter or something. :)