For my entire childhood and teenage years, I wasn't allowed to dye my hair. No chemicals were allowed within a two-foot radius of my head (unless it was shampoo or conditioner, of course). I'm exaggerating quite a bit, but I hope you get the idea.

My parents think that my natural blonde hair is beautiful and everything. The thing is, I didn't want to dye my hair because I don't like it's natural color. I just want to give other colors a try while I'm young and still have a job that'll let me do what I want with my appearance. I can go back to being blonde when I get bored of dying it (which won't be anytime soon. I'm having a blast).

About half a year after a turned 16, I finally bleached and dyed my hair for the first time. My cousin helped me turn my hair into a very nice teal. I'm going to skip over the next few dying cycles and take you to last week. My hair was a nice dark maroon and I was sick of it.

Without any professional help, I bought myself some supplies. I skimmed some articles (most of them telling me how dangerous it is to bleach your hair on your own) and dug back to over a year ago to try to remember what my cousin bought for my hair. This is what I ended up getting.

After I got home from the Sally Beauty Supply that is 45 minutes away from my house, I decided to do some more research. I'm obviously not very smart, but we can talk about that later.

I mixed the bleach and the developer together and just put that bleach all over my hair. No mercy. Then I covered it with a shower cap and waited. Here's an unflattering picture of me waiting.

After a good 15-20 minutes, I rinsed off the bleach and looked at the progress.

I wasn't super pleased. Don't worry, I knew I wasn't going to get it blonde after bleaching it once. I was expecting the pink. I was more concerned about the places I had missed completely, like my roots and the sides. Luckily, I bought extra bleach. This next time around, I got my lovely sister's help with all the parts I missed.

She got all of the essential spots and then put the remaining bleach on the rest of my hair. I kept it in for another 10 minutes. I wasn't too concerned about getting an even color throughout, because I knew I was going to put purple dye over it anyways.

Much better. Since it was 11:00 p.m. at this point and I had work very early in the morning, I gave my hair a 20-hour break.

Here's a picture of my bleached hair I took in the bathroom at my job.

I thought it looked cool, but I got a lot of bad reactions from my coworkers and I already had purple plans.

I'm no professional, but I think it looks pretty stinkin' cool. Pretty good for a total amateur.