I’ve had almost the exact same haircut since the day I stood up for myself in third grade and said, “I am NOT cutting my hair like a boy anymore!!!”  Since then it’s just been shoulder length, layered, and for the past five years with side bangs.  And that’s really been fine with me, I don’t mind it at all and haven’t seen another hairstyle I think would really suit me.  (Probably because my projection of myself is all about consistency.)

Now, for the past year, in an effort to save money, I’ve been cutting my own hair.  With the same scissors I use to cut my yarn.  I know, that’s horrible for my hair, you don’t have to tell me or my split ends that.  It worked for about two months, but since then my hair’s just a ridiculous mess, all uneven and choppy and shapeless.  Not to mention the back-and-forth I have with its texture and cleanliness.

So for Christmas I asked for a haircut, and my mom one-upped me by saying I could go crazy, get it done however I want, and get highlights.  That’s where you come in.  I’m not really looking for a change, per se, but with this option on the table I might as well make the most of my head, right?  What do you suggest?

Here are my requirements:

• No blunt/full bangs.
• No obvious highlights — I don’t want to look striped in any kind of way.  Just kind of… better.
• Preferably just a one-off on the highlights — I don’t want to be picking up root touch-up kits or anything.  But I obviously also don’t want my roots to show after a few weeks either.

I’m very low maintenance about it, I’m really not looking for a big change.  But any tips on what to ask for so I can make sure my annual haircut turns out really nice?

Botanics is, by my best estimate, the Herbal Essences of the UK and Ireland, even though Herbal Essences is also sold in these stores.  Cheaper shampoos have never been the best for me, and I think I’ve tried most of them.  They tend to just get the job done without ever really adding much to my hair, which can be a bit annoying when all you want to do is blow your hair dry and be done with it.

But oh my God.

Botanics is the king of drugstore shampoos, with powers incomparable to any other.  I lather, rinse, and repeat, towel dry, apply a good helping of the conditioner, and then blow dry with a round brush.  And?

Yes, yes, more intelligent!  This shampoo is so smart that I even realized I could just take a picture over my shoulder in the mirror.  This is now my hair on a normal day.  It moves, it shines, it smells amazing, and even though I didn’t go with the specifically brunette one, I think it’s making my brown nicer.  I’m the type that has to blow my hair dry if I want it to look presentable, but the other day I was so bedridden that I just washed once, combed it, then took a three hour nap on it.  I woke up like this:

Glamorous?  By no means.  Publicly acceptable?  Yes!  I was able to go outside looking like I’d used the Surf Spray and was intentionally going for the fashionable scraggly yeah-my-shirt-is-wrinkled-what’s-it-to-you? look.  I was too stupid to be able to aim the camera correctly, but hey, one out of two ain’t bad.

I thought this hairapy mini feature would go on way longer than this.  You have no idea how many shampoos I’ve tried in the last few months, how much money I’ve spent, how many full bottles I have sitting around here.  (Seriously, does anyone want Aveda Pure Abundance?)  I thought this would never end.  Now, I’m going to go take a nap with the Botanics tucked under my pillow and wake up looking fresh as a daisy.

I love beauty and make-up blogs.  I love reading them and gleaning advice, knowing which women to listen to and which ones to ignore.  I like submitting questions and having them answered.  I like finding a new product I can’t live without.  I read the label obsessively and hold the bottle close to my heart when I go to sleep.

BUT THIS HAIR SHIT IS RIDICULOUS.

I figured that once I got settled into Dublin, once I got used to the water and found a working hairdryer, things would get better.  My hair would adapt and cooperate and I could go skipping off into the sunset.  But this is not so.  It is still a gamble every morning whether I will look presentable or like I haven’t showered.  So today I am starting a mini section of this website: we’re going on a hunt for NICE DUBLIN HAIR.

My current morning routine (the whole “wash your hair every other day” thing doesn’t work for people like me) is:

• Bumble and bumble’s Sunday Shampoo, meant as a weekly cleanser but now upgraded to a daily.  I either use this alone when no one’s going to see me (as it adds no oomph, merely strips out the collected crud), or before…
• Wella Color Preserve Hydrating Shampoo, even though I don’t color my hair.  It’s very light and was perfect on its own in the summer.  Nowadays if my hair just feels too heavy I use this, but it’s resulting in a very stringy appearance.
• Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo, simply because it was the only brand I recognized in the store.  I use this on days when I plan on curling my hair, because it is so thick that my hair barely moves once it’s dry and that way the style stays.  It smells great and might work better in the States, but here I can’t use it without first using Sunday.
• Somedays I follow with a healthy spritzing of Bumble and bumble’s Styling Lotion, which acually helps a lot for texture, although I am nearing the end of my bottle so I am holding out.
• I think everyone is familiar with Bumble and bumble’s Surf Spray by now, although it’s a tricky product to handle if your hair can easily look dirty (blondes don’t normally have this problem, I’ve noticed).  I can use it right after I’ve had a haircut and my layers are still apparent, but not at the moment.
• Pureology Root Lift if I’m feeling brave.  It works great in the States, but here, if it’s been a bad shampoo day, it may just kind of crust up.  But I can never tell if it’s a bad shampoo day until after I blowdry, so sometimes I just risk it.

Right, so, yesterday I used Sunday Shampoo with Wella, no product afterwards, and this was the result:

Okay!  Now that’s a fine looking scalp, right?  All looks well in the front up there–the part isn’t too severe from grease, everything’s falling into its right place.  BUT.  Look at the back.

Folks, that is not okay.  Look at that.  (BTW, has anyone tried to take a picture of the back of your head?  Shit’s hard.)  It looks like I did not wash my hair, in spite of all the scrubbing and sudsing I did.  There’s absolutely no shape to it, and I feel like I look the way I did in middle school when I wanted to grow my hair out long but didn’t know how to take care of it, and didn’t yet have the hormones that would keep it naturally healthy.

Today, I was in a really awful mood and was suffering from some bodily unpleasantness, so as I was in Boots Pharmacy anyway, I decided to treat myself to a new shampoo to cheer myself up.  Since I haven’t had much luck lately with really expensive brands (and since I’ve unfortunately discovered, after the fact, that you can’t return opened bottles here like you can at Sephora or Ulta), I went with the €4.99 Botanics Hair Ultra Moisturising Shampoo and the €4.99 Botanics Hair Leave-In Volumising Conditioner.  They’re cheap but they’re purportedly natural, and good GOD do they smell good.  The result:

Thicker!  Fuller!  More intelligent, even?  That might be the Glasses of Intellect influencing my opinion, but probably more intelligent.  It feels pretty nice, although I have to not touch it so much or else I know it will get greasy, as most cheap shampoos do to me.  I think the Leave-In Conditioner has the same sort of effect as the B&b Styling Lotion, just not as nice.  I also parted on the other side today because I hadn’t changed that up in a long time, so although my bangs were oddly flippy, I kind of liked them.  Back view:

Argh, I don’t get it.  What is it with the back of my head?  I shampooed twice today, did the back portions in sections and really focused the spray in there, and yet… that, that really bad texture that simply does not match the front.  It saddens me.

Whither next?  I need to get a haircut, first of all, since my lady simply didn’t cut my bangs last time (they’re usually on my cheekbones, but now they’re at my chin), and she didn’t use those texturing sheers as much as she usually does.  I like having that in the back because it kind of masks a bad hair day–plus the Surf Spray works best then.  Of course, there are about 100 salons in Dublin and no one responded to my email about recommendations (granted, one of the girls has dreadlocks), so I need to do some research there.  I’m going to keep up with the Botanics for the week and hope that my hair gets used to it in a good way.  In the meantime, what do you guys use?