Valentine’s Day Nails

I’m sorry I haven’t had much time to blog lately! I’ve just been super busy with work and family stuff and haven’t even had time to be doing my nails, much less writing about them!

I did get to go out to a super fancy Italian restaurant for Valentine’s day though, which was a much welcome break from the craziness February has been. My boyfriend Kyle and I went on a double date with his brother Richie and his girlfriend Taylor to Vivere in the Italian Village downtown. It was super classy and everything was delicious.

Bathroom selfies are necessary when you get this dressed up…

Since I haven’t done anything neat with my nails lately, I felt like I needed to step it up for this dinner. One of my favorite nail artists I follow on Instagram is @getbuffednails, who inspired the swirly heart nail with one of her sets.

I used Lechat mood changing gel polish “Heart’s Desire”, which in this picture you can see the different shades on my pointer finger. The dark red is the color of the polish when your hands are cold, and the bright red is when your hands are warm.

Cold Lechat “Heart’s Desire”

I used Color Club Halo Hues “Harp On It” for the base of the bling nail for extra sparkle, as well as the base for the negative space heart on my ring finger. I outlined the heart in ASP “Selfish” with a very thin coat so some of the holographic-ness still shows through.

Warm Lechat “Heart’s Desire”

We also went to the Chicago Auto Show afterwords, and I was super tempted to pretend I was one of the models showing off the cars. Can I please have that little red car? Haha.

 

Gel Polishes Used:

ASP “Selfish”
ASP “Black Beauty”
Lechat “Heart’s Desire”
Color Club “Harp On It”

Seven Years!

Today is a special day, Kyle and I’s seven year anniversary! It’s been a nice relaxing day off, we went out to breakfast and wandered around town since this is a freakishly warm December. We’re going to go rent a couple movies and cuddle on the couch, and later tonight he’s going to cook me a fancy dinner!

I can’t wait to spend many more years with the love of my life!

Much needed mini vacation!

It’s been a pretty hectic couple of months for me, and I was way over due to take some time off and enjoy myself. Luckily, my boyfriend’s mom owns a little vacation place in Woodsmoke Ranch about an hour away- perfect. I think I’ve posted about going out there before, but I never get tired of going out there. There’s just something so relaxing about not having cell service! Work can’t bother me, no constant unnecessary notifications… more nature (and corn!) than people. I’m all about that.

We took a two day three night trip, one night we found this little guy! (Little if you count being about as big as my thumb little… which Kyle did not and refused to get anywhere near this guy!) I’ve loved bugs since I was little, so I scooped him up and put him in a tree instead of on the deck.

It’s only a short drive from Starved Rock state park, and we love to take our dog Rosie for the longest walk she knows. She loves it out there too, so much to sniff, and all the people have to stop and pet her! She’s a huge attention hog. Nothing like a good hike to remind me how out of shape I am too! Haha.

It hadn’t been very rainy lately which has it’s pros and cons- no waterfalls where they should be, but we also didn’t end up covered in mud up to our knees!

After hiking we cooked a giant meal, we always eat like kings out there! Kyle made himself brats and I had an awesome steak since I’m not a huge fan of brats, I made grilled green beans in a foil pack, also made one to make grilled onions to put on the brats and steak, we had pasta salad, corn, and potato salad! Everything was so tasty but if I ate like we do out there every day I’d really be 500lbs! Cooled off after hiking in the pool, (spent half the time out there in the pool, really) and I actually managed to get a little bit tan! Can I just quit my job and go live out there please?

My first Bears game!

I’m not a huge sports person, I certainly played a bunch of them back in junior high and high school but I’ve never gotten super into watching pro sports. The only one I really enjoy is hockey, and I still wouldn’t call myself a die-hard fan. If it’s on, I like watching and usually yell stupid things at the tv, but I don’t go out to watch games in bars or even make sure I watch all of the Blackhawks games. Baseball is ok in my book, football bores me most of the time and is too confusing, and you can’t pay me to watch basketball.  But, my boyfriend’s dad had an extra ticket and was taking Kyle and his brother Richie and invited me, so why the hell not?

Not that I knew what was going on in the game besides when they scored.. kinda hard to miss that as there was a few guys that came running out waving giant flags! Not going to lie, it kind of made me miss being on the flag team at high school. You’d think with as many games I went to in high school to be in the half time show I’d understand more about the games!

Left to right: Kyle (my bf), Marc (his dad), Richie (his brother) and me!

It was a really beautiful night, not too hot to be sitting outside! Was a fun experience, thanks Marc!

I’m back!!

After so long, I finally treated myself to a new laptop with this year’s tax return! I just wasn’t a huge fan of typing much on my Surface’s keyboard, so the blog got neglected. Buying this laptop sure was a hassle! I was originally going to buy a Lenovo, placed the order online on the 6th, money was placed on hold in my bank account, and my ship date was the 18th because it was being built. Fine. Then I checked the order status a few days ago, and it had changed to the 23rd, the next day the 22nd, and the next day back to being shipped on the 23rd. That day I also noticed that I had the amount of the laptop back in my bank account, so a few calls later I find out that they released the funds as the laptop wasn’t ready to ship, and that they would charge me when it was ready. My problem with that is that they couldn’t tell me when it was going to ship! So I went out of town, spent more money than I wanted to, and didn’t have the laptop funds in my bank anymore. Since my ship date still said the 23rd on the website, I called to ask if they could just hold it til my next payday on the 24th. Seemed pretty reasonable to me, right? They told me they had no communication with the manufacturing plant and couldn’t guarantee any specific date for it to ship or control when they charged me. I was promised expedited shipping then told by the next person they didn’t do that since it shipped straight from the manufacturer. I was promised 10% off, but it had to be as a rebate after I already paid for the laptop, but they still didn’t know when that would be. In the end, I was sent an email that said they were sorry I cancelled my order, when they actually auto-cancelled it since they couldn’t place a hold on my bank for a THIRD time. The one sales manager I talked with even called me on the 24th to ask if I still wanted to order the laptop… it was hard not to laugh a little when I told him service like that will *never* get my money.

I then looked for other laptops, found a similar Acer model, called the sales department, placed the order, and got my new god damn laptop in THREE DAYS. Now that is a company I will give my money to! Long story short, don’t bother with Lenovo, they have NO idea what they are doing!

I’m pretty excited to start blogging again, I tried out two new recipes that turned out amazing that I’ll be writing about in the next couple days! One was a cornbread barbeque chicken casserole and the other was a somewhat improvised blueberry cream cheese puffs. Yum! Plus, I have plenty of nail designs and crafts that haven’t been posted yet!

What a busy month!

July has been super busy for me and I haven’t had time to do my nails much, and actually my nail polish was packed away for a good portion of the month while I moved! I’m in such a nicer place now, and now I’ve actually got room to do crafts and have my own little nail nook!

I am also going to have to order another polish rack soon, as a friend of one of my friends gave my a whole bag of nail polish she didn’t want anymore! THANK YOU SO MUCH IF YOU EVER READ THIS BLOG!! The bag also contained a basic stamping set and plates. I am super SUPER excited to try those out for the first time, I have wanted to get into stamping but just hadn’t actually gone out to buy the stuff yet! I feel like these could become their own addiction, needing new plates.

It felt like it was never going to happen, but now I’m posting this from my new couches in the living room of my nice new house. So happy! I’ll be going through all my polishes soon to catalog the new additions, and I’m going to have to buy more swatch sticks as well. I’ll try to start up doing regular swatch posts again too.

I tried out putting them in color order instead of by brand, what do you think?

50 Followers!

This blog has just reached 50 followers, and I can’t believe it or thank you all enough for wanting to keep up with my posts! I’ll try not to disappoint!

❤

The reason I’ve been slacking on nail posts:

I’ve been crocheting til my fingers bleed! Not literally, but I did have to take a day off a couple days back, my fingers were getting sore! My boyfriend, some friends and I will be attending C2E2 coming up in a couple weeks (The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo) and my boyfriend is cosplaying as the 4th Doctor Tom Baker from Doctor Who.

His scarf had many different incarnations, and the longest it version was 24 feet! Of course I didn’t give myself plenty of time of make this giant scarf, my boyfriend didn’t have any of the other parts to the costume yet. But it all fell together really quickly, and now I’m rushing to finish this thing on time.

Here it is, halfway through and rolled up. I still gotta tuck the ends in. He’s excited though, and tried it on as is. 🙂

 

What a year, 2013

The year feels like it has flown straight by. Running my restaurant take so much time and effort that I haven’t had as much time to do things I used to, and I’ve definitely been slacking on posting! It has been a pretty great year though. I was finally able to buy my first new car!

I love my little car, and it’s great to be able to drive wherever without having to worry that it’ll break down, and the check engine light doesn’t come on when I go over 40!

Work has gone pretty well, I just celebrated five years with my boyfriend, and Christmas was very nice.  I got a TON of polish, so there’s sure to be lots of new designs to do. Which brings me to resolutions, which I’m going to try to actually stick to this year:

1. Finish paying of the little bit of left over school loan and other misc debt to really fix my credit.
2. Read or craft for at least an hour a day. I need to get off my laptop and stop wasting time doing absolutely nothing. I’m terrible at time management and I really want to work on this.
3. Post all of my new manicures, crafts or whatever right when I finish them. It’ll give me a nice journal of my creativity through the year.
4. Plan meals, cook at home and STOP EATING AT WORK.

What are your goals or resolutions for 2014?

sorry for the lack of posts!

there have been all kinds of crazy changes going on at my job lately that have left me working all kinds of crazy hours. that being said, i haven’t had much time to craft or even do my nails! i’ve been going through polish withdrawals i think haha. but as soon as i have a little extra time, i’ll have some new stuff up, and in the meantime keep your fingers crossed and send some good luck my way that i’ll have some good news to share with everyone soon!