Hair Dye Fiasco

I was just trying to be a good daughter.

I take unhealthy joy in dying my hair.  

I was brunette with some terrible roots that needed tending to.  My mom likes me better blonde and we are getting professional pictures taken when I go home for Christmas.  I thought I'd try for blonde.  

(A picture of brunette from a couple months ago)
It's difficult to go from dark to light hair, so I thought I'd use a color stripper.  And then I bought a lovely dark blonde shade with some nice highlights. 

It turnedorange .  When I say orange, I actually mean like a burnt orange color. Dark, but still orange. 

So then I thought, well, I'll bleach it. That'll get it to a color I can dye over top of with no red/orange traces.

 Two boxes of bleach and two trips to the store later,  my hair was a lovely light orange, sort of yellow color.  It wasn't good.  My roommate told me I couldn't go out in public like that.  Luckily, we'd bought a box of really light ash blonde to put over top.  It seemed to work, getting rid of the orange color, as you can see from the picture below.

The next day, however, I washed my hair after the standard 24 hour waiting period and found my hair was yellow and orange again.  My roommate described it as a cartoon sun color.  So, an hour and half before leaving to attend performance of The Nutcracker ballet, we went to the store one last time.  I bought a box of a darker ash blonde that could be done in 10 minutes..  

 Six boxes of hairdye later and IT FINALLY WORKED!  

 My hair is now a lovely shade of dark ash blonde.  It's probably relatively close my natural color, which contains no yellow or orange. 

A picture of my roommate and I excited after seeing the Nutcracker.  We are just about to leave for home to drink wine and eat cake.  For Christmas.  And in celebration of normal hair colors.

Merry Christmas, Mom!