Things NOT to Do on Vacation…And the Spa to the Rescue! – April 16th

I like to think of myself as somewhat of an intelligent woman, but I’ve decided that I have this uncontrollable (and perhaps not so smart) urge to alter my hair while I’m on vacation or away for the weekend.

Without fail, if I’m away somewhere, anywhere, I will decide that I need a bang trim/hair cut/color treatment etc. And almost always without fail, the end result is not a pretty picture. Again, not sure why I subject myself to this torture…maybe I am some sort of hair-masochist?

Anyway, I decided while on this vacation I was going to highlight my hair and I was going to talk Gwen into doing it for me. Now, I should point out that I have very dark hair, which should be a GIANT WARNING SIGN to NOT do on your own hilights and instead head right to a salon. And I knew Gwen was very nervous that I was doing this and on top of that talking her into being my partner in crime on this little adventure was probably NOT the thing to do to my wonderful friend.

For some odd reason, despite the fact that I have had several hair disasters with my spur-of-the-moment-out-of-state-hair experiments, I always believe that if it turns out bad, I can always fix it – unless of course, it was fried off or shaved – that might be “harder” to fix!

I guess I had it in my head that after having my hair highlighted several times at a salon and “carefully” observing the stylist, I of course would expertly know how to foil my hair or anyone else’s for that matter! AND…the model on the highlighting kit box looked great…so why on earth would I not look just as great?!?

So on Thursday before our previously scheduled day at the spa (massages and pedis), I thought now is a good time as ever to try this foil-experiment-thing.

So I sat in a chair in the bathroom as Gwen was a foiling-wiz around my head – it actually looked quite professional and I was having fun, so I/we threw caution to the wind and continued with the process.

Well…I/we learned several things that day: 1) You will NEVER look like the model on the box and 2) It takes you so long to finish the foils that by the time the first set of foils are ready to come off, apparently the later ones are still processing and they are not ready to be taken off at the same time.

So when it was “go time” I removed the foils – I was by myself so I didn’t stress out Gwen – and completely started to laugh in hysterics. My hair was literally dark brown, yellow and orange! When Gwen came upstairs I think she was in a panic, but I said this was all my doing and I made her help me. Honestly, I really was OK with it because I could slap on some dye over it and fix it.

So I called the spa we were going to later in the afternoon and begged them to fix my little experiment – thankfully they could fit me in after the spa treatments.

So we walked over to the spa – with me looking like some 30-something punk chick and laughing about my hair disaster!

For our spa treatments we went to an Aveda salon (love Aveda!). It was really cute – a quaint house turned into a spa. My massage was fabulous and my pedicure was even better. And I learned a great trick from Gwen – keep your fingernails and toes a light color and they’ll go with everything and any chips will go relatively unnoticed! I always have dark polish on my toes and getting the light color made all the difference – great tip Gwen!

After the spa treatments I had my hair color corrected by this fabulous stylist, who used a dark brown/chocolate permanent color to correct my rainbow look. It looked great and even picked up some of the highlight color only this time they actually looked like real highlights…not a crayon box!

So I think I finally learned my lesson with experimenting with my hair on vacation – fortunately I walked away this time with a great new color…albeit with a slightly lighter wallet.