Hair Dye Double Take

We all love a good Hair pinstrosity, right? Well my daughter and I did a little experimenting back in April. Here is our story...  

A little back story, my daughter has been friends/classmates with a wonderful little girl named Maureen since kindergarten. In March Maureen was rushed to the Children's Hospital and was diagnosed with a very rare form of Leukemia. Less than 2 weeks later she passed away from complications from an infection. The school organized a "wear blue" week in honor of Maureen leading up to her memorial.  My daughter wanted to go an extra step.

She wanted blue hair!!  

I had no idea how to do this so I turned to Pinterest.  I found a few different ways to dye hair, but I wanted a non-permanent option. I decided to try this pin: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/258042253624145081/

The blog post showed nice easy directions - I even had everything on hand!! Score a Use It Up challenge as well!!  I used a hotel sized bottle of white conditioner & a bottle of blue food coloring. I even pre cut my foil into easy to use sheets like my hairstylist uses. 

Mixing it up seemed to go okay, just like the steps on the blog. 

I put a towel over my daughters shoulders and my lap. Divided up her hair in sections so I could easily apply the mixture. I foiled each section. I thought it looked a little light, but I figured the blue would show up with her blond hair so it didn't need to be too dark.

I continued on until her whole head was foiled. Following the blog's instructions we let her sleep in them over night. I wrapped her head in a scarf and then put a knit cap over it so that nothing would fall out and possibly stain her new sheets. 

The next morning she jumped out of bed (a rare occurrence for her) and we took out the foil for the big reveal. 

Not bad!!  

 

The last step of the blog said to rinse but not to use shampoo. My daughter put her hair over the edge of the tub and I watched all the blue rinse away down the drain. OH NO!!!! It was Monday morning, less than an hour before school.  No time to run to the beauty store and buy blue dye (if they even have it) and I am about to have a very disappointed daughter when she realizes that this pin was just BUSTED!  No color remained in her hair at all!

I didn't even have that much blue food coloring left, some but not a lot.  In a hail mary pass I put the ends of her hair in the bowl and put the blue food dye directly on her hair with the help of my handy dandy sponge brush. I had no idea if this was going to work, if the dye would stain everything or be permanent. All I knew is my daughter wanted blue hair and it had to be this morning. 

To lessen the chance of having blue food coloring everywhere I went ahead and blow dried her hair.  It seemed to seal the majority of the color onto her hair.  It did have a nice effect. 

It lasted the week that she wanted it too. She was turning a little smurf-esk by the end of the week, but she didn't ruin any clothes at least.  The night of the memorial when we got home she took a bath, we all laughed at the results.

Home is Where the Heart Is: Getting Pretty

When I arrived at my hair appointment I realized that the only camera I had brought with me had a dead battery.  What as a bride to do?  I whipped out my cell phone and my MOH took photos with my camera phone.  They are not the best but at least they are something.  I love how my hair and make-up turned out.  It was almost exactly how I imagined it.

A head above the rest

What to wear in my hair has been a dilemma for a while. Every time I see a bride with a short dress I look to see what she is wearing in her hair. I have been browsing Weddingbee and Etsy in search of inspiration. With our 100 day make rapidly approaching (like THIS week) I need to make a decision.

I have crossed the "big flower" off my list. I am only having sunflowers in my bouquet and centerpieces, so it would be odd to have some other white flower in my hair. I was also having a hard time finding them without feathers or bling.

For a while I liked the look of a headband. Check out these ones from etsy

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The middle two would match my gown since I am wearing Champagne not white or ivory. The last one with the sapphire blue Swarovski crystals would have been the perfect compliment with all the other blue accents in mine and Mr. B's attire.

In the end I decided I did want to wear a veil. I know that traditionally an encore bride is not supposed to wear a veil, but I have been bucking tradition for a while with this wedding, so I am fine with throwing out that "rule" as well.

I turned again to etsy to look for the perfect birdcage veil. I did not want a lot of poof, I did not want any flowers or feathers, and I wanted it to just barely fall above my eyes. It would bug me to no end to have something covering my eyes. I would also love to spend less than $25. Here are a few I found that met my requirements:

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The last one is definitely my favorite. It is not covering her eyes, the ends are perfectly finished (I saw some that had hard straight edges) The netting is not too big, not too small. It is only attached to a metal comb (although this seller does make fascinators as well. Best part? It is $22.99! Woo Hoo! Under budget!

You will have to wait and see how it looks on me untill I have my hair trial.

What are you wearing in your hair?

Hair Inspiration

I am not a hair person, and usually I just leave it up to my stylist Tammy to do what she thinks will look best. I have had various styles over the past 4 years she has been doing my hair, as well as multiple different hair colors and highlights.

At my hair and makeup appointment for our engagement pictures she asked me what I had it mind and I just said "natural." She used the round brush and added volume to the top, but I was a little disappoint in the ends of my hair. If felt a little too straight and didn't have mu body or movement. In the pictures it looks great though so I am not gonna complain directly to her.

I have decide that I want to have some hair inspiration for when we do have the trial for my wedding day hair style.

Katherine Heigl
{from a wedding bee board post}


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This is my favorite by far. When I saw it on Today's Weddingbee Gallery Photo of the Day I knew that I was taking the picture to my hair stylist.

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Friends ... Vendors - It's all the same

I am SO very blessed to have a wonderful collection of VERY talented friends to help with our wedding. Since these friends have all been confirmed I thought I would share our Friendors (thanks for the word Mrs. Hummingbird)

First up - Invitations
In town there is a (not so small) scrapbooking store called Mementos. She has expanded a few times since I originally met her in 2004 and it is much more than just a scrapbooking store. The owner, Lisa is a wonderful and VERY creative woman. I can't wait to sit down and put together our amazing invitations. She is an Envelopments dealer so we will be using their product line. I did some work for Lisa creating her blog so we are bartering some of the price of my invitations. What an awesome deal!

Photography
The 1st time I got married my mom tried to convice me to use this photographer that she met in our hometown in Arizona. At the time I lived in Orange County and wanted "the finer things in life" and we ended up booking with a larger photography company in Southern Arizona and was NOT pleased with the service we paid for. When I moved back to Arizona we started having family pictures done by my mom's photographer, Bill Bulter. He was so much fun to work with. Here is a family picture from that session:


Since then he has done a few more family sessions, a grandkid session and has even photographed a few of my kids birthday parties. I love when he captures the "real" moments:



Because we are returning customers (and we refer a LOT of people to him) we were able to create the package that we wanted for a price in our budget. He will be with us all day and has even promised to capture a grand exit photo for us (a little more on that later). We will also get DVD's of the high res images that should be ready when we get back from our Familymoon.

DJ Services will be provided by a close friend. You saw his wife's baby shower before on the blog. (She was the kid's nanny for years, and now they are expecting their own bundle of joy any day.) D-man has such a great personality and since he really knows Mr. B and I we are not stressing about music at all. D-man and his pal B-Man are better known as FranzAnelli Audio Services and are just starting out. I had the pleasure of seeing them DJ a wedding in March and they did a wonderful job.



The kids and I with D-Man on his wedding day.

D-Man is not the only one from his family that will be a Friendor. His FIL (Father In Law) will be our officiant. I have known him since I was a teenager and Mr. B is very comfortable with him as well. He was ordained a year or so ago and has only done one other wedding, but I am confident that he will be able to give us the relaxed yet meaningful ceremony we want to have. We will meet more with him in the upcoming months.

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His son has also agreed to perform our ceremony music. He is a very talented musician and he and his friend have performed at other ceremonies. I still have to get them a list of music but I am not worried. You can hear a sampling of his music on his MySpace page

with his sister on her wedding day

Hair & Make Up
I already mentioned that my friend and long time hair stylist will be doing my hair & make-up for the big day. She is coming to us, since her house is about 30 min from my parent's house. We will be doing a trial as it gets closer and I am SURE I will need your advice & opinions about my hair. What I didn't mention is that her mom is a florist and if my DIY flowers are not coming together when we get them in I can call on her for emergency help.

There are some other "Friendors" in the works as well and once they are confirmed I will share those with you as well. Are any of your friends doubling as vendors for the day?

Getting Beautiful

For our engagement pictures yesterday I went and had my hair and make-up done (of course).

Tammy has been doing my hair since 2004, when she and her family moved to town from Orange County. We met at church in the nursery, our youngest daughters are only about a month apart in age and our older children are about 6 months apart. After a few conversations Tammy and I started talking about my hair. I had been DIY my hair color (not a good thing) and so she invited me out to her house to fix it up. Tammy had worked at a very high end salon in Orange County and had done hair shows and demos, she had even been a rep for a major brand of hair products. She had more credentials than anyone that has ever done my hair. She has officially been my go to stylist since then. She now has a salon at her home. It is a great little studio that her husband built for her.

Thursday morning I woke up, took a shower and didn't do anything else with my hair or make-up. I took a picture on my way out to Tammy's so you can all see me "before"

I literally gave her no directions. She asked me what I wanted and I gave a few vague answers "Make my skin tone even"
"Take care of my horrid dark circles"
"Hide a couple chin pimple/zit/red spots"

This is her makeup station in action, I love all her MAC brushes!

She uses all MAC product and wow does she have a lot. She did write down what she used so we will know for the future. I wish I had got a list because I might be tempted to get me some MAC now.

For my hair it was a similar story ... I just wanted it to be down and natural. I LOVED how she did my bangs but I though the ends looks a little straight. Normally I have a little bit more "flip" on the ends. It looks great it the photos though so I guess I can't complain. I know for sure that my hair won't be that style for the wedding.

Ready for the after??


I really loved my eyes. It took a while to get a good photo of them and the photo below was actually taken AFTER our photo shoot. The make-up held up really well and it never felt "heavy" or "greasy" like other brands have felt.


I can't wait to show you the engagement photos. Right now all I have is a printed out contact sheet of our 10 favorite poses. We started with about 58 shots from her garden & main street (we didn't head to the river after all). To get it down to 10 was hard but Jill doesn't mess around with keeping the "outtakes" she uses that delete button LOL. I am scanning the contact sheets right now so hopefully you can all help me decide which ones we want to order & use for our save the dates.

What do you think? Are these eyes "wedding worthy"?