My first VoxBox arrived from Influenster and I was pretty excited to get to try out the Schwarzkopf Professional BLONDME tone enhancing shampoo and conditioner mask for free. This is a combo product review and regular blog post, because I actually already had this “Blond Ambition” post in my drafts just waiting to be finished so I figured, why not combine them?

I’m usually excited to try anything for free, but currently my blond needs some help so this was just what I needed. Since I went SAHM, I have not gotten within 20 feet of a salon and only then because I was driving past it.

I’m just going to confess right now and tell you all I was not born blond. In fact, I was so un-blond that I had a full head of nearly black hair. I’ve always felt this was a terrible mistake. Like, maybe somebody switched my hair follicles at birth. My hair continues to disappoint me by growing out of my head several shades darker than I desire, so of course I turned to the bottle at an early age. The bottle of Sun-In, of course.

As soon as I discovered this “natural” way of going blond I soaked my hair daily and fried myself in the sun all summer. I was rewarded with a brittle mess of very brassy blond strands and got to tell everyone honestly, “the sun did this.”

I later moved on to the salon, and spent my son’s last day of daycare at the salon getting highlights, lowlights and all the lights in between because I knew it would be the last time I saw the salon for a looooooong time. Stay-at-home-moms do not get the luxury of 4 hour salon visits.

So now I am tackling these dark roots with some fancy Miss Clairol from Sally’s Beauty Supply. And I’ve been wanting to go a little darker blond so of course that translates into “orange.” So back to my free sample stuff. I liked it! But, I am a fan of the purple shampoo products in general. I felt like the products toned down the brassiness and darkened the blond a little, while making the lighter blonds stand out a little more. I probably would have been super impressed if I’d never tried a purple toning product before. But I was very happy with the results. And the hair mask was conditioning enough that I didn’t have to follow-up with my favorite conditioner. I have curly wavy weird hair that just turns into dreads if I don’t use a good conditioner. I think every blond needs some kind of toning shampoo/conditioner to brighten things up every now and then and these products did a nice job. They are a bit on the pricey side for me right now as this SAHM gig doesn’t pay well, so I wouldn’t use them as my every day product but more like a weekly blond refresher.

And one day, after pre-school starts, I’ll get to visit a salon again. I’m hoping they can give me the most perfect blond I’ve ever seen…the color growing out of my son’s head (I produced a true blond so I think that grandfathers me in, right? Lol)