Hide all of your kids' dolls with hair! Your daughter will be trying the haircutting methods seen on this DVD. Moms will be looking at their friends' kids, analyzing how to cut their hair. What will be leading them to do this? This new DVD set, Professional Haircutting at Home with Paula Baird. It is an instructional series teaching how to cut your family's hair with a professional quality. This is a simple 3-DVD collection of hair cutting lessons for different hairstyles.

Haircut styles in this series include typical female layered haircut, super curly female haircut, one-length female haircut, typical male haircut, male haircut with problem areas (or balding), male haircut on curly hair, little boy haircut, female short one-length bob, and extra curly male haircut.

Paula Baird is a licensed cosmetologist and a homeschool mother of eight. She saw that there were mothers who wanted to save money by cutting their own family members' hair but did not know how to make it look like a professional haircut. So she decided to create a "how-to" video teaching how to cut hair like a professional.

She goes through the equipment you need, cutting techniques, and tips for dealing with common hair problems. She does nine complete haircuts, explaining and showing the whole process, which is great because after seeing the whole process you can reproduce the same techniques. I was really happy she didn't fast-forward or skip through some hair cutting processes, assuming the viewer would know what was skipped. Instead, it was very thorough. This thoroughness does mean that each haircut takes time to watch; some are about 20 minutes long, while others are over 50 minutes long.

My daughter, age 10, and I really enjoyed this series and were happy that a homeschool mother has taken the time to do this. I think the price ($49.95) is reasonable for the amount of instruction, and it is easier than trying to learn from a book. I like that Ms. Baird explains what she is doing and why. I have been doing haircuts for myself and friends since I was 14 but have never learned how professionals do it. I just get tips here and there, but seeing it on the DVDs from beginning to end was helpful to me. In fact, a week after watching the videos, a friend asked me if I would cut her two kids' hair because her attempt to do so didn't work out so well. I applied the techniques I learned here, and the mother and father were really happy with the results.

As happy as we are with this series and have found it already useful, this is a review. So I need to also point out some of the cons of the video -- nothing major, just things to know. Some of the shots are at angles that prevent you from seeing her fingers holding the hair and the actual cutting of the hair. My daughter and I were hoping to see the actual cut. But it did not hinder us so much that we would stop watching or not understand what she did. Other times, there were long pauses without explanation when we thought she could have been explaining what she was doing, even if she had covered it in a previous haircut. Finally, when she talks and says something incorrect, a subtitle appears on the screen saying what she meant to say. I thought they should have just dubbed over these instances rather than using subtitles, because if you aren't watching every second, you might miss the subtitles. There are also a few subtitle tips, which are okay. But like I said, sometimes I was knitting while watching. If I looked away, then I missed the subtitle and needed to rewind.

So overall, if you are looking to save some money or if you always wanted to learn to cut hair but are afraid you don't know how to do it, here is a nice, simple and effective way to do both. I highly recommend it. And I totally agree with Paula that a good haircut rests in good equipment and good technique--and she will walk you through both. I hope you get as much use out of this series as I have.