Beauty And Fashion: A new year...a new do

I have become so bored with my dark hair lately and I ~~needed~~ wanted a change. I have to admit though if I dye my hair any other color than dark brown I usually end up dying it back within a week or 2 weeks max. In my mind I think I want a change and I envision just the perfect color (which it NEVER turns out that way) and once I do it I feel like the lighter color washes me out. I went to the mall tonight and saw so many beautiful heads of dark and was tempted to color it back. It's been about 5 or 6 days since I colored it.

THIS is the color I always have in my MIND but my hair has different plans

This is what I did:
I bought a kit from the store in Dark Ash Brown (because my hair is so dark I knew that the ash blonde color would lighten it to a lighter brown shade).

Then the next day I used Garnier Color Breaks Dimensional Lightener No.3 Medium Brown to Dark Brown and put about 6 highlights on each side. This kit gave reallyyyyy natural looking highlights. I was scared that they would be really bold and dramatic but they blended perfectly. This kit you don't use a cap but pick and choose where you want to put the color. You grab a few strains of hair and put the cream on... it doesn't matter if that section touches your undyed hair...it won't color the hair it's laying on. It was so easy and simple. This kit was not a lot of money and well worth it.

I waited about 4 days and I highlighted my hair again with Revlon Frost and Glow in Honey. This one was more of a pain in the butt. It came with one of those silly looking plastic caps which are almost next to impossible to get any hair out of and when you do it always comes out tangled. Ugh. I didn't leave this one on very long (only 25 minutes... 60 minutes is max time) because I was really nervous it would come out too light and zebra striped. This one did make my hair a little lighter then I'm comfortable with but it didn't turn out bad like I was predicting.

So, in the end... am I happy with it? No. I never am. It came out too red and I wanted it to be a light ash brown... oh well. I think I should just stick to dark hair but I was bored and needed a change.

Here are some pictures of proof that I went lighter (and one before):