Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of your own hair?

I love trying new products, especially hair products, and fortunately for a lot of companies, I am also gullible when it comes to shiny packaging and over promising on results.

This is pretty much my thought process every time I walk down a haircare aisle: "What? This new shampoo/conditioner/mousse/etc. can make my hair look like a cascading waterfall of smoothness? Even in the middle of a Houston summer!?! Of course I believe that can happen! Why would I ever have reason to doubt that claim?"

Oh, one might think that the abandoned graveyard of 3/4 full bottles of various hair products taking residence up under my bathroom sink might make me think twice before I buy before researching again, but you'd be wrong. So very, very wrong.

Luckily, in my apparently never-ending quest for perfect (to me) hair, I have managed to stumble upon a few products that I have really liked. As in, I've-finishd-the-bottles-and-returned-for-more liked.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Highlights in a bottle.

John Frieda's Sheer Blonde Go Blonder Lightening Shampoo


This is my absolute favorite shampoo. I have never ending highlights because of this shampoo.

I started using this after I had finally grown out all the poor hair that I mangled by over-dyeing it. Repeatedly. It had been a 2 year process to get my hair back to looking healthy, and breaking myself of habitually dyeing it. And of course I started to get the itch to change my hair again. If you've never felt this particular itch, consider yourself lucky. This is the itch that leads you to believe that giving yourself bangs (without professional intervention) is a good idea, or that because you saw another woman with a short haircut, you could totally pull it off too regardless of past experiences with short hair, or that going from blonde to redhead to brunette (in a two week period) won't make your hair feel like hay and break off when brushed.

I had used John Frieda's Sheet Blonde Highlight Activating shampoo when I was blonde and had blonder highlights. I had used it to keep my highlights from getting brassy, and it had worked. So when I saw this, the wheels in my head started turning. This shampoo claimed to lighten hair, and in teeny letters on the bottle, it had the word that sold me -- "gradually." Gradually meant that I wouldn't end up with orange hair after one shampoo. And that is a good thing. This product is meant for all forms of blonde hair. I do not have blonde hair. So by using this, I WAS taking a risk, but as crazy as all my other hair risks had been, for me, this was pretty mild. I ended up using it as my every day shampoo for almost 5 months. It did happen gradually, but over time I noticed that I was starting to end up with highlights. I had expected all of my hair to become lightened, but this was a way better outcome. It has been about 2 years since I started using this, and I now only use this shampoo a few times a week, and I've had permanent highlights, without getting roots, pretty much the entire time. I wish the lighting was better in this picture, but this is my hair today. The highlights are there, but they are subtle and never need touching up beyond using this shampoo. Now I'm pretty sure I'd end up with some roots if I ever just stop using this product cold-turkey, but my hair still seems pretty healthy to me, so as long as it is still being produced, I'll probably continue to use it.

WHERE I BUY IT: Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens (I think pretty much anywhere)
HOW MUCH: Usually around $4.99 per bottle (I try to keep an eye out for John Frieda coupons
though because that is getting pricey to me. Yeah, I'm cheap.)

Time between haircut extender. Oh yeah.

Nexxus Split End Leave In Creme


I do not like getting my hair cut. It all goes back to a haircut trauma when I was in third grade that I will not go into, but that has obviously messed me up permanently. So when my sister raved to me about how awesome this stuff is, I became very excited. If it had the same effect on my hair as it did on hers, I was going to buy boatloads of this stuff. Well, until I saw the price. Did I mention I'm cheap? Nexxus Split End Leave In Creme costs about $10 a bottle at Walgreens. I have not price compared anywhere else because I've only bought it twice, and haven't really had a need to seek it out at other stores. You don't have to use much to see results, so I feel like I can justify the cost. My hair is fairly long, and I just use one or two pumps. You really only need it on the ends of your hair. Also, I only really feel the need to use it when I've gone past the date where I'm starting to notice that I could really use a trim. I am at that point now. I got my last hair cut in November. It's now February. I know, I know, I need to just suck it up and make the appointment. But I'm getting married in December. What if I get an insane beautician bent on revenge for some, unbeknownst to me, slight someone has lodged against her and I happen to be her next client? Don't you see just how scary this all is!?! Do you know how long it takes for hair catastrophes to grow out? I could end up with a lady mullet in my wedding pictures!

Forgive me, I've veered off course. I was trying to explain that this Nexxus split end mender does what it's supposed to. It binds the split ends to make them appear as if they don't exist! Really! The first time I used it, it made my hair look like I had just gotten it trimmed. Just like my sister had told me it would. This stuff really is awesome. Check out the ends of my hair.

This picture was incredibly hard for me to take.
I just want credit for trying.

WHERE I BUY IT: Walgreens (I just haven't looked anywhere else really)
HOW MUCH: About $10 (but worth it!)

Suave Smoothing Lower Sulfate Conditioner from the Suave Professionals Keratin Infusion line

Lately I have been using Dove brand conditioners because they smell really good, come in big bottles at Sam's Club, and have caused me no angst. All things to look for in a good conditioner.

Well one thing that did end up sucking about those big bottles is that once you reach a certain point of use, the pump no longer pumps the conditioner out (why would you make the pump too short for the bottle Dove? Why!?!) and you have to unscrew the pump cap turn the, once adored, mega bottle over and try and force the conditioner out . . . every time you are in the shower. That is too much hassle when I'm already annoyed by the fact that I had to wake up and get ready for work. I was so annoyed by the hassle of begging for tiny amounts of conditioner to break free of the mega bottle, that the next time I was at Kroger's shopping for groceries, I u-turned at the milk and headed straight for the haircare aisle. I usually don't buy hair stuff at the grocery store, because it always seems to be pricier there than at Wal-mart or Sam's Club. But I needed conditioner that was willing to come out of the bottle. This new stuff by Suave caught my eye because the bottle is a nice gold color. And when there is a whole display of it, it really stands out. Way to go marketing people at Suave! You got me! (By the way, when I looked up Suave's website to make sure I was spelling the name correctly, they had put sparkles -- sparkles! -- on the model's hair to simulate how magical this line of product is. It is a good thing I saw those sparkles after I went into the store, or I may have just bought the whole freaking line of this stuff expecting miracles. I'm not even joking.

So I bought this conditioner and I have been using it for about a two weeks. It has a very pleasant smell (to me) and I really liked that it made my hair feel smoother after the first use. Instant gratification is pretty important to me when using hair products. That whole 5 month wait time for me to see highlights from the John Frieda shampoo mentioned at the top of this post is extremely rare for me.

I would like to find out how people with curlier or courser hair how found this conditioner to be, but for me it has held up pretty well. And the air conditioning issues we have been experiencing at work, plus the wet dreary weather, have provided me a nice (Ha!) place to help act as my "variable" hair environment. I fully expect that I would have looked like a frizz ball had it not been for this conditioner. I will have to wait and test it out during the summer to get the final results in though.


WHERE I BUY IT: Kroger (but I saw it at Target too)
HOW MUCH: $3.49 (not too bad)

DISCLAIMER: I like these products because they worked for ME. They worked in a capacity that I believed to better my hair. They may not work for you in the same way they did for me. I've been taken before by products that worked for other people, but not for me. If you need proof, I'll arrange for you to see my haircare product graveyard under my bathroom sink.