So anyone who knows me knows that I get very vanilla haircuts and styles. I’m proud of the fact that I have naturally red hair, and I hate to have my hair short. I wear bangs and usually part my hair down the middle. If it has to take anything more than just washing and hitting with a blow dryer real quick, I don’t want anything to do with it. Yeah, totally boring.

A very good friend of mine, knowing that I’m trying hard to launch a web design/development company, offered me an opportunity to get my hair done however I wanted, no matter the cost. We all know how important it is to look clean and professional when meeting potential clients and/or employers. As much as I hated to do it, I took him up on his offer and made an appointment for yesterday morning.

So at 9:30 yesterday morning I was sitting in Sherry’s chair at Shear Stylin Hair Salon in Tarpon Springs. Being a fan of Tabatha’s Salon Takeover on Bravo, I took in the decor and layout of the salon and instantly felt comfortable. It was clean and warm and inviting, and Sherry seemed very confident and, more importantly, competent, and I was glad that I’d made the appointment.

We spent the first 15-20 minutes going over hair color and highlight swatches and talking about what I do with my hair on a daily basis and what kind of products I was using and what I’d like to have my hair do once I left her chair. One of my big concerns was whether or not the gray hairs on my temples would get covered well enough and long enough so that I wouldn’t have to get a touch-up in two weeks. That hair is totally like straw. Another concern is that I cannot stand my hair against my face so it’s almost at least pulled back and almost always pulled up. Well, that’s kinda difficult to get around considering that I really like to keep my hair at least shoulder length. Also, now that I was going to be coloring my hair, would I still be able to use my straightening thingamabobby.

Through each step of the process, Sherry let me know which product she was using and what the effect would be. We laughed about how yeah it’s easy to buy a bottle of dye at the grocery store and get that quick color fix, but there really is a science to doing it properly and getting the desired results. Quite frankly, if I’d bought a hair color at Publix, chances are I would have stuck with an auburn shade. Unfortunately, within a week or so those gray hairs on my temples would have been back with a vengeance. Sherry opted to use the highlights on the grays so that even as that hair grew out, it would blend better.

We selected a mocha hair color and what turned out to be a golden highlight (compared against the mocha color it really does look golden). The whole thing took about 3 hours and by the time I got to see what my hair looked like, I was in absolute heaven. The mocha was a great color choice with my skintone (so totally white as a ghost) and while the highlights look a little stripy on the top of my head and fade into the rest of my hair, I have never been more pleased with the way my hair looks. When I say that the highlights look stripy all I mean is they really stand out against the darker hair color. Since it’s been almost a year since my last haircut I had alot of dead ends so the length of the highlight didn’t blend as much as it would have if my hair were more healthy.

Sherry offered many suggestions on how to part my hair a little off to the side as opposed straight down the middle of my head so that my head wouldn’t look bigger and suggested that if I had to have bangs that I should let them grow out a little bit longer so that I could style them a little more than just laying flat on my forehead. While styling my hair, Sherry used the straight iron just the same as I would have at home. Even though she didn’t take any length off the bangs, she cut into them to give them their own layered effect (that’s totally not the right word but the only one that comes to mind). With the highlights and the way they were cut, they have their own highlight and shadow effect that’s absolutely gorgeous.

And did I mention that after I left Shear Stylin that I haven’t felt the need to put my hair up or pull it back? It has been cut in such a way that there is no heaviness to it. I did pull it back for a little while yesterday not because it was annoying me, but because it was a little warm. Normally when I wake up in the morning my hair is completely all over the place and all tangled up. Not today! Yeah it was a mess, but I was able to run my fingers through it and it was fine.

After my experience yesterday and seeing the way my hair turned out, I’m almost looking forward to going back for touch-ups and stuff. It’s a completely different look for me, but not so different that people will gasp when they see me.

Thank you, Dave, for the greatest hairstyle of my life! Thank you, Sherry and Roberta, for providing me with that hairstyle!

I highly recommend that if you live anywhere near Tarpon Springs, you should pay a visit to Shear Stylin. I know you won’t regret it!