Amazing Kitchen Cures ~ Hair Coloring

I've been a little hair lightening crazy this summer. You may remember that I recently experimented with cinnamon on my hair. Well, here is what our kitchen have to offer for the topic of..... 

HAIR COLORING 

• Country Time Lemonade - To get the rust color out of your hair, pour a dollop of your regular conditioner in the cupped palm of your hand, add enough Country Time Lemonade powdered mix to make a thick paste, then using a little hot water to dilute the paste, apply it to your hair. Let set for five minutes, then rinse clean.
• Hunt's Tomato Paste and Q-Tips Cotton Swabs - If you want to be a red head, wash your hair thoroughly with shampoo, rub Hunt's Tomato Paste into your hair, then rinse lightly. For red streaks, use a Q-Tip to apply paste to strands of hair.  
• Kool-Aid and Jell-O - If you'd like to find out how you look with purple hair or rainbow streaks, mix the contents from a packet of any flavor Kool-Aid with a little water to make a thick paste and apply it to your hair. The coloring is non-toxic and will last through a few shampoos if you have medium or dark hair. Blonde may find the coloring to last longer.
• Lipton Tea Bags - Use several Lipton Tea Bags to brew a strong pot of tea by letting the tea bags steep for about ten minutes. Let the tea cool, pour it into a trigger-spray bottle and spray your hair. Wearing sunscreen, sit in the sun for an hour. The tea will give your brown or red hair highlights. 
• Maxwell House Coffee - Highlight brown or red hair by rinsing it with Maxwell House Coffee for a rich and shiny color.  
• Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing - Adding a couple of drops of Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing to the rinse water when washing gray or white hair eliminates yellowing and gives hair a lush whiteness that products made especially for this purpose cannot achieve. This product is perfectly safe, and a few drops cost less than a penny. 
• RealLemon - To create blonde highlights, rinse your hair with one-quarter cup RealLemon lemon juice in thee-quarters cup water and wearing sunscreen, sit in the sun until your hair dries. Lemon juice is a natural bleach. 
• 7-Up - Prevent the itchy feeling from hair-coloring products by adding two tablespoons 7-Up to the formula before dyeing your hair. 

(NOTE: Using name brand products isn't necessary.) 

STRANGE FACTS

1. The Assyrians began dyeing their hair around 1500 B.C. 
2. The ancient Greeks revered light-colored hair, and most of their great heroes had golden-blonde hair. Many dark-haired Greeks used soaps and alkaline bleaches imported from Phoenicia to lighten or redden their hair. Others dusted their hair with yellow flour, talc made from yellow pollen and gold dust. 
3. Ancient Romans of the upper classes preferred dark hair, and elderly senators and consuls dyed their graying hair with a concoction made by boiling walnut shells and leeks. To prevent graying, men went to bed wearing a paste made from herbs and earthworms. 
4. In the 1600s, many Europeans erroneously believed that frequently combing gray hair with a lead comb could restore the hair to its original color. 
5. When England's Queen Elizabeth I dyed her hair bright reddish orange, thousands of her faithful subjects followed suit.
6. In 1909, French chemist Eugene Scheuller created the first safe, permanent, commercial hair dye, founding the French Harmless Hair Dye Company. A year later, he changed the company name to L'Oreal.      
   
7. Today, three out of four women in the U.S. color their hair. 

ANTIDOTES

1. Prevent dyeing the skin around your hair line, forehead, neck and ears by applying Chapstick, Vaseline Petroleum Jelly or Alberto V05 Conditioning Hairdressing. Wrap the ear pieces of glasses in Reynolds Wrap to avoid dyeing them. 
2. If you dye your hair too dark you can...
1. Wash your hair with a handful of Ajax cleaning powder to lighten the color.
2. Spray Fantastik in your hair, work in well, then rinse, repeating up to four days.
3. Use Spic and Span diluted with water to remove excess color. 
4. Be careful not to get any of the cleaning solutions in your eyes. 

I know you can also lighten hair with peroxide. I looked that up on the internet and experimented again just a few days ago. I mixed equal parts hydrogen peroxide (3%) and conditioner and applied the mixture to my hair. I covered my hair in a plastic sack and sat in the sun for about 45 - 50 minutes. My hair lightened up quite a bit. I think I'll leave my poor hair alone now.  *WINK*

Look for the next Amazing Kitchen Cures post that will tell us what the kitchen can do for cleaning, defogging and repairing eye glasses.