A Hair Coloring Tale (advice wanted)

[Betty]

My daughter's hair is very very blonde.

But let me begin at the beginning...

Being frank, we don't have much money to spend on things like hair salons so I've been coloring my hair at home for years. We did the frost and tip cap on my daughters hair a year or two ago and all was fine. She's got naturally light brown/dark blonde hair and that was acceptable.

One fine day my daughter thought it would be fun to go darker instead of being blonde. With my husband's help, they did a color kit at home and she then had brown hair. Weeks later they did it again (the color was washing out a bit) and this time did not do as good of a job and it came out blotchy in places.

Enter my mother in law who offered to take her to a local salon to fix it. She came home with blonde highlights in dark brown hair... rather chola-ish. Not her best hairdo but whatever... it's hair and it grows.

Now it's a few months later and my Mom offers to get it colored somewhere again so it's lighter and more becoming and all that. I say to get something just a few shades lighter then her normal hair color so it grows in more naturally - as we won't be getting it done professionally regularly.

And she comes home really blonde. Stripped out all the color first and then colored it. She used to think her hair was the color of bean dip. (teens come up with interesting comparisons). Now it's more the color of lemon pudding.

So - the question is - how long is a proper time to wait to get the color something more natural? It's not really a good color for her skin tone... but I'm in no rush to have her go bald or damage her hair any further.

Do you think it can be done at home? I color my hair all the time and have for years and when we did the frosting thing we didn't have any trouble. Are their concerns about different kinds of coloring reacting and turning out odd colors or anything?

Any tips will be much appreciated.