Getting highlights every few months used to be a no-brainer.  I had a standing appointment every six weeks, so that all I had to do was show up, get my dark blond hair color bleached in all the right places, write a check and go on with my day.  That was before the financial crisis hit our home.

At first I simply vowed to go longer between appointments, but it was more difficult than I imagined watching my dark roots getting longer and longer.  It wasn't long before I hit the drugstore, in search of blonde on my own. 

I have had bad experiences with home hair dye in the past, so I was skeptical about the beautiful platinum blond ladies staring at me from their boxes.  I was pretty sure 8 bucks and thirty minutes weren't going to get me the color they had achieved.

As a little girl, I remember watching my grandmother pull my mother's hair through the cap.  The "frosting" kits were all the rage, and my mother was extremely proud of her stripes.  I felt a nostalgia towards these kits, so this is what I tried first.  I purchased Revlon Frost and Glow Blonde Highlighting kit.  I had read some reviews and thought it might be worth a shot.  Since my roots had only grown out a few centimeters, this seemed to be the perfect solution.  I was careful not to let the dye touch the highlighted parts of my hair, because I didn't want to damage the ends.

The results?  Wonderful.  Perfect.  For a while, at least, I was extremely happy.  However, after about four weeks, I quickly realized that using the cap and hook wasn't going to cut it.  Here's what happens:  even if you pull some hair through every hole in the cap, you really can't dye enough hair for it to look like you went to the salon.  The root color seems to multiply and multiply, until you essentially have dark blond hair with a few, very thin, beautiful strips of blond.  If this is what you're going for, perfect.  If, like me, you need a little more blond to brighten up the complexion, you may have to look elsewhere.

That's when I decided to try all-over color.  Back to the drugstore. More than once I have been burned by these all-over-color ladies, with their luscious, healthy, perfectly-tinted blond manes.  I have had apricot roots and green ends.  Always the optimist though, this time I tell myself, I will find the perfect shade. It won't be like last time.  After much deliberation, I decide to try Loreal Preference in Whispersoft Blonde.  Doesn't the name sound angelic?  Well, the results were okay.  I used it only on my roots, because I had been warned that dying bleached ends results in colors not found in nature.  For the first few days my roots were a bit orange, but after two washings they looked much better, a slightly-lighter-than-my-own natural blond. 

As blonde ambition tends to get out of control, I didn't stick with my new routine of cap and hook highlights every 6 weeks with Whispersoft root touch-ups in between.  Oh, no, I had to push the envelope.  I had a coupon for Loreal Feria and decided to give the color Starlet a try on the roots.  Why oh why did I mess with what was working already?  This color, Starlet, is supposed to be a very light cool blond, meaning it cancels orange tints as it colors.  No, no, no!  I left it on only my roots for 25 minutes, as instructed, and my roots turned out a bright apricot color.

But there is a happy ending to this story.  After a bit of research, I decided the only way to avoid an expensive color correction at the salon was to lighten the roots up a bit, essentially bleaching out the brassy tone.  Not all over, just in certain areas to break up the orange madness.

I have found the solution to both the orange roots issue as well as the cap-and-hook-not-enough-highlights issue.  Nirvana came to me in a box:  Loreal Hi-Light Styliste Hi-Control Brush-On Highlights, H90 Iced Champagne.  I loved the applicator, because I could put on as much or as little dye as I wanted.  And the color lifted to a gorgeous cool blond in 30 minutes.  As well, my hair was not damaged, because I could easily avoid coloring already-bleached strands. I highly recommend this to anyone who is a little lighter in the cash department, but who will never be light on the ambition to be blonde!