Hair Musings

Hair.  Who cares about hair?  Well, I do...at least a little. 


Let me share how we're trying to save money on hair.  I think I've explained this way earlier, but I am the one doing all the haircuts in the house - at least for the boys and the little girls. That saves us a ton of money as even the discount haircutters' fees add up with so many boys - 5 of them to be exact.  I'm no professional, but their cuts are pretty basic and you can't really go wrong.  RM hasn't quite decided if he wants me to go at his luscious locks (he has a lot of hair for a man his age - kind of Richard Branxom-y - the billionaire, just thought I'd throw that in....).  My oldest daughter also has a ton of hair, very thick and my little scissors can't even get through it, so she pays for her own, but even then, we only go to the First Choice Haircutters (the discount, no-frills type of place).


As for me?  Well, I'm slightly higher maintenance as I started to highlight my hair years ago and I haven't quite gotten my head (pardon the pun) around doing it myself and my oldest daughter has offered, but......not sure.....so for my latest set of highlights (before Christmas) I thought I would go to the local hairdressing school as it was almost half the price.  Well, it seemed like a good idea at first.....


The student doing my hair wasn't the most confident.  She had a teacher watching her every move in a chair behind me and she would check in on her once in awhile.  I even had to put in a few suggestions here and there!  I think what ended up happening was the chemicals got left on way too long and she applied them to the whole shaft of the hair as opposed to just the roots for a touch up which I was more used to.  My hair is already in rough shape as it is naturally fine.  On top of that, in the process of having multiple babies back to back, I lose tons of hair after each pregnancy and never gain it back in time for the next baby.  Add highlights into the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster if you get the wrong student at the local hairdressing school!!!!!  Oh, that's just what happened to me!


I walked out of there looking like Britney Spears.  Well, minus the beach body.  The stylist had over-highlighted for sure and had singed all the ends quite badly. What can you do?  You can't get them to fix it!  I just knew I'd have to suffer the consequences of having gone the cheaper way and hope for the best in the future.


All the while I was wondering how I was going to explain this to my regular hairdresser!  You know how that goes - they feel like you are cheating on them once you get a relationship with a regular stylist!  How funny.  This particular stylist has literally become a friend of mine.  We met in our little town here and started talking about how we had moved here from the wealthier town a half hour away.  Funnily enough, she had, too!  In fact, she had owned her own hairdressing salon in that very town!  She was working at the discount place as a nice break from owning her own business.  She enjoyed just cutting hair now, so to her it was the perfect place to work.  This worked great for me as a lot of the hairdressers at these discount places aren't that good, so here I was getting a cheaper cut, but by a serious hairdresser!  I loved it!  But now I had gone and got my hair done by someone else and they had done it badly!  She wouldn't be impressed.


Sure enough, I went in at Christmas with my daughter for her hair and she immediately saw something had happened to my hair that she hadn't done!  I confessed.  She looked at me with "Well, what do you expect" eyes and told me some things I could do to fix it until next time.  I told her it was strictly a budget issue and she understood.


In the meantime, there was really no money coming in, so I was starting to feel a little "hag"-ish.  I was ok to wait though.    Then RM gave me the green light to go, so I found a coupon and got a small discount on the cut and highlights (at least there was a little off!).  It was so worthwhile.  When I was about to leave to get it done, my mom asked me where I was going and I told her I was going back to the First Choice place as it was much cheaper than a normal salon.  I said, it doesn't have cappuccinos or a  fancy atmosphere, but it gets the job done.  Once there, my wonderful stylist friend was able to fix it as good as she could and, get this, to top it off the other stylist went out and bought me a latte  - right after I said there was no cappuccinos!  I thought that was a cool moment.


So, back to the hair question - who cares about hair?  How do we work it into our financial vows?  Well, I am committed to not paying full price on virtually anything and this includes hair.  Doing the children's hair saves us a lot.  Getting it done at the hairdressing school did not work out, but was a good experiment.  I will not do that again!  Getting it done at the discount haircutters is about as good as I can do.  I will never go to a fancy salon and haven't for years.  I always look for the coupons.  I try to go as far as I can between appointments.  In the end, I like to make an effort to keep a tidy appearance.  I am still my husband's bride and I enjoy looking nice for him every single day.  So a splurge, perhaps, but one that he likes, I like, and I like that he likes it!  So it hasn't been cut out of the budget. 


Ok, not a particularly meaningful post, perhaps more practical, but there you have my hair musings.....