Home Salon Savings

I was supposed to get a haircut and color a couple of weeks ago but injured my back when I slipped on some ice and didn't reschedule my appointment. I was looking (and feeling) pretty ragged, but didn't want to spend $80 to $100 for a cut and color at this point and my daughter needed her hair done too. That would double the cost so we decided to do it at home this time around.

Both of us have long naturally mousy brown hair, mine is over 50% gray and my college aged daughter looks great as a redhead. Yesterday I did one of my couponing trips to the local Dominicks store and got nearly $200 worth of stuff for $106.77. Of course there were hair color coupons in there. I picked up Garnier for me because it was cheap and Feria for the girl because of the color (and coupon).

We broke out the old red towels, 2 timers and put on old t-shirts and got busy. This was actually the first time we did this together. Occasionally, I would dye her hair or she would do mine, but never both at the same day... with dinner cooking, too.

It actually worked out perfectly. We started with mine because of the gray it had to cook longer. While mine was "cooking" I started hers. Thank goodness for 2 timers. I don't know if I could stay on top without those. Talk about a bloodbath... when I finally rinsed her hair in the bathtub with the shower wand, it was like something out of a horror movie and looked like blood in the bathtub and she commented that maybe when she has her own place she'll do a psycho themed bath. That's my little spook!

After we were all rinsed and conditioned the haircuts began. Neither one of us are expert cutters and just cut an inch or two from the bottom and did a bangs trim. It worked out fine and we both have a basic long hair with bangs haircut. My hair was very stringy from the last kid at the salon who layered it all funky and I was happy to have some of that taken off. I still have some of the layering but its not all stringy like the step-child anymore. It really aggravates me that haircuts are so expensive, even at the so-called discount places like Haircuttery and everyone is so inexperienced. Ideally, I would want my hair done by someone over 35 and for about $50 for cut and color, but that ain't happening in the area where I live.

Now we look and feel so much better and saved about $200 ($300 if you count groceries savings that day). Just as we were finishing the stove timer went off. Dinnertime... and not a moment too soon.