Hunny

You can lighten your hair with honey water instead of bleach or Sun in.

2 TB honey to 12 TB room temp (distilled) water, let it sit for an hour. Glop on hair, cover with clngfilm or shower cap and towel for at least an hour.

I have used this to lighten up a henna application or even out demarcations. It has no ill effects on your hair ( au contraire, it conditions!) and can be used as often as you wish. It takes a couple of applications -2-3 to get a dramatic result. After 5-6, the result is really dramatic, but always soft and natural with no brassiness. Most people use it to take out a henna that has gone too deep (too many whole head applications) or for a summer fling.

A few helpful things to know, which may be obvious to you but which I really didn't think about:

This is sticky
and messy
and drippy

so you really need that towel covering, and another for your neck
forget clingfilm; a plastic bag or shower cap is necessary
And if you add cinnamon - which is supposed to boost it - did you know cinnamon creates hydrogen peroxide? - make sure you're not allergic.
How do you know if you're allergic? You add cinnamon EO or powder to your (daughter's) henna and it burns your (her) scalp. Oops! How else to know? She's not allergic to eating it!

Forget spray bottles they just clog up, (especially when using cinnamon)
The best way is to do like an old fashioned chamomile rinse (or nettle or whatever your granny used) - just like washing your hair from a pitcher and bowl -keep pouring the stuff over your head (with a small container- or pitcher) and let it fall into the bowl. Repeat til hair is saturated.

What? Your assorted country relatives did not have errant pitchers and bowls lying about for your use in the back-to-nature 70s? (Complete with charming pictures of modern girls in Edwardian underwear washing their hair with grandma's soap and rinsing with chamomile) You had relatives who had some other form of indoor plumbing? Don't know whether to pity or congratulate you.

Anyway, keep pouring till the hair is saturated, wind your hair into a knot on the top of your head and grab that shower cap. Hurry with the towel(s) too. And delight your family by announcing (in a rather sticky voice) that it's done.

Clean the lav. Don't want to draw ants. Well you've got an hour, might as well do something productive....

Seriously, I've done this before - without the cinnamon - using a different (earlier) dilution and a spray bottle and it was drippy but not quite such an adventure. THIS practically cries out that one read the Foxfire books to while away the time.