Do Brunettes Have More Fun (Part 2)?

It's official, I am no longer a blond. As you know, I've been fretting over the idea of dying my hair darker for some time. Part of me wanted to continue shelling out $100 bucks every three months to continue the illusion that I am a "cute blond." The other part of me wanted to make the economically sound decision and spend $10 on a box of hair dye and be done with it.

Quite uncharacteristically of me, I decided to make the economic decision and ditch the blond (see, I'm already acting like a brunette, haha). Since I have NEVER ever dyed my hair at home, I decided to call my former hairdresser Darria and ask for advice (yes, I have that kind of blessed relationship with my hairdresser). She gave me some useful instructions. She told me to forget about the box color and instead go to Sally's and buy the following: two tubes of color (that matched the shade I wanted) and some violet toner to mix with it. But when I arrived at Sally's last night, the store was closed.

Instead of driving home and trying again the next day (like a reasonable person might do), I headed next door to the CVS, where I walked up and down the hair dye aisle for about an hour, agonizing over the exact shade of brown to buy. I called Darria for help but she told me to go to Sally's the next day, and when I refused to listen, she pessimistically said she didn't want to get the hysterical phone call when my hair turned green.

Despite this foreboding prediction, I was determined to change my hair. ASAP. So I stumbled back and forth in the hair aisle, trying to figure out the difference between the shades (light brown, red brown, black brown, chocolate brown) and tones (warm, cool, normal). Fortunately, I met a girl in CVS, a cosmetology student and fellow Weight Watcher named Ariel, who turned out to be a life saver. She helped me to select a shade and didn't mind having to reassure me 100 times that it wouldn't turn my hair green. And she very patiently looked at the millions of nearly identical brown colors that I picked up before I settled on L'Oreal's Medium Brown, Cool. That was really nice of her =)

Afterward, my friend Brandi was kind enough to dye my hair, and here is the verdict:





That's a pretty big difference, right? Bizarrely, because I really wasn't trying to do this, I actually kind of matched my natural shade, so I have hopefully (fingers crossed!) ended my dependence on hair dye. It came out a bit lighter than I expected, even though the color on the box looked pretty dark.

Please tell me your honest opinion. Too boring? Too gray looking? Since going to the dark side, two things have happened--one, a guy at the convenience store this morning called me "Ma'am," and two, a random guy last night yelled up at my balcony and complimented my cat. Hmm...I'm not sure what this means for my future as a brunette...