Natural, Orange, Brown, Black, Red, Purple, Blonde, and even Blue

My hair has been every color. I'm not joking either. My very first experience with hair coloring was in seventh grade. My mom got us temporary blue hair spray and we put it in our hair and went downtown. Let's just say that I was hooked from that point. My natural color is sort of a mousy brown color (it's not attractive) and I am not a big fan of it. So in eigth grade, my mom decided she would let me get blonde highlights. Unfortunately, she did it and it did not turn out the way either of us had imagined. Here's one picture I have recovered from this incident:

During freshman year, I had longer hair and I dyed it a dark brown with bright red streaks in it. Unfortunately, I cannot recover the picture I used to have from that era. In tenth grade, I went all weird and tried to be emo. With that, I decided to dye the top of my hair reddish brown and the bottom layer black. Here's a sample of how that turned out:

I'm sure in between those two stages there were other colors (I know one time I asked for red at the salon but it came out a purple-burgundy color), but honestly, things have just blurred together. So I had that interesting duo. Then during my junior year I got a job at a hair salon and I went blonde. This was one of the worst decisions I ever made (even though I would eventually make the same decision again three years later). Here's a picture of that stage (I'm the one on the left):

Unfortunately, that ended up turning a gross yellow color, then it had rather a greenish hue, and then it started turning grey. And my hair was getting pretty dry and straw-like (I later learned one kid called it my "mane") and I finally dyed it a different color. Again, I am not sure which color was next, but probably some kind of brown or red. At the end of my junior year, I made another horrible mistake. I had done some modeling (some for money, some competitions, etc) and I got a call about doing a hair show. This seemed like a fantastic idea (little did I know) because I was going to make $200 for them to cut and color my hair. After the guy showed me a semi-radical but promising style that they wanted to try out on me and he and my dad did some persuading, I agreed to let them do it. But let me tell you, it was AWFUL! It ended up quite different than they had explained to me. I can't really explain it, but here is a picture:

Essentially, black hair with red tips and red streaks in my bowl-cut bangs. It was so bad. BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. The result of this was that I had to cut my hair pretty much entirely off. As so:

I don't remember if we immediately dyed it back to a normal color or if I waited for a while, but needless to say, it was a terrible decision. I know that the color when I dyed it back looked like this:

It was a pretty color, but the shortness of my hair took away from that. Anyway, as it began to grow back out over the course of senior year, it stayed that color (I think) until I dyed it burgundy red for graduation. This was not so great because it was pretty much the exact same color as my cap and gown:

A few months after graduation, I dyed it a better red and colored the underneath part of my bangs blonde. These colors were accompanied by some extensions that I loved:

Then once the extensions came out, I kept the colors for quite a while. After that, my friend and I pretty much exceeded the amount of times you can dye your hair over the next year. Mostly, it was black, dark brown, or red, but we also would occassionally put pink or purple strips in the back:

Then in the fall of '08 I went off to BYU. The sudden independence prompted me to dye my hair blonde again. Apparently, I hadn't learned my lesson yet (I have now, I promise!). It was fun and lasted longer than the first blonde stint:

After this, I dyed it back to brown, and have remained pretty conservative ever since. It definitely has still changed colors, but for the most part, I haven't done anything crazy.

When I met Dan in the summer of '09, my hair was that black color above. That was probably the last time I was crazy about my hair. Since then, I've been either a dark red or a brownish color. Until yesterday, the last time I dyed my hair was last July. I had about six inches or so of outgrowth of the aforementioned ugly mousy brown color, and the rest was orangey/brown/red. It was the longest I have had it in a very long time, but it was also incredibly scraggly and unhealthy. So yesterday I got it done again! And I love it. Here are before and after pictures:

As you can see, it is a dramatic improvement. I cut five inches off and dyed it dark brown with red highlights/lowlights. And after all of my crazy experiments with coloring my hair, I think I have officially settled on my favorite.