I pondered the idea of 'going grey'

for a few years...

Or silver, or natural as some of friends like to call it...

There's been years when I’ve gone progressively lighter,

only to realize that light – light blonde hair is not for me…

I can just never get used to it!

So then I’ve gone back to my medium ash blonde –

Which, really looks brown to me….

I always thought that FOR SURE by the time I was sixty I’d do the all grey thing ---

[And let’s be honest – that’s closer than I like to think!]

But! In January of 2015 I started looking around seeing more and more friends going for it,

and I was reading more and more articles about it – 

[There's even a few facebook groups to support us - ha!]

AND I was getting MORE AND MORE tired of coloring my hair –

Every. Single. Month.

[I hated that white line that would show up – ALWAYS. Ha.]

So I decided to give it a go…

Thinking I can always just put color back on if I don’t like it –

I went to a local cosmetology school, because I’m cheap…

Told them what I wanted to do and they put the ‘lightest blonde’ they had in [with foils.]

They added some kind of ‘toner’ as well - ????

I liked it – but still had a ‘grow-out’ line.

[My goal in all this is to not NEED to put color on

Every. Single. Month.]

 So I went back – again --- asking for something to blend in the grey…

And I’m not sure WHAT they put in [again, with foils]

But it took a little longer to see the new growth ---

I didn’t go back until May! [We’re getting there!]

THIS time they [the instructor, whom I respect] tried to talk me into putting in some darker grey – but I was determined that LIGHTER was the way to go – so they put in big chunks [again, with foils] of the VERY lightest light blond they have! 

It looked practically white to me…

And, for the first time in forever, my grow-out line was DARK ---

I could finally see the grey underneath it all….

 

So,the next time I went they put in two rows of silver [to brighten things up a bit]

and one row of the dark grey [it matches the grow-out underneath, in the back...]

Again, with foils –

And I loved it.

It was three months before I went back for another ‘treatment’ as I’ve called them and boy, did I get a student who wasn't quite ready 'for the floor' - 
both the color and the cut were one big huge mess. 

But the school had an instructor do their best to get things back on track and by Thanksgiving it was looking better.

I had the last color put on in January of 2016... and found a new hairdresser that I've been seeing regularly since then and I'm very happy with it all.

It's taken a few months to grow out [we had to cut it pretty short to fix that November mess] 

but I like it more than ever. 

Next week I'll share a bit about the reactions I've gotten -