Manicure Monday : Black Cherry and Gold

This week, we are going Black Cherry and Gold Glitter Gradient.

I talked in a previous post about how to do the gradient, you can find that post here.

It's a pretty easy technique, and not too difficult.  I do hope you try it sometime for yourself sometime soon(and also that you share a photo with me of your handy work, and I will post it)!

Manicure Monday : Leopard Spots

Happy Monday!

Well, yesterday I decided I wanted grey nails, and to add a little pop of fun in the mix,  I have done a leopard print before in my life, this time though, I decided to do the pink leopard look.

I promise you this: it is actually easy!  Paint your nails a base color. and then grab a contrasting color, and put some on a piece of paper or something, and dip the tip of a pencil, toothpick, anything that has a tip of some sort, and kind of dab it on in a dot sort of formation, or drag it a little into a 'v'.  Keep them pretty spaced out, because you need to add the black outline to it too!  For that, put a dab of your darkest, 1 coat coverage black, or other preferred color, and just sort of add a thin line with the tip of a toothpick or what have you around the edge of the dots, 2 or 3 marks should be good.  And then put your top coat on.

Then, as you walk around sporting your super sweet nail art, let everyone know what a bad A** you are.  Because you did it yourself.

I just googled it, and came across this polish-a-holic's site: Candy Coated Tips.  Same idea, grey and pink.

Have you tried this look, or do you have a nail art design you would like to share?!  Let me know below!

BLT's... mMMMmmMMmm....

Who doesn't love bacon?  Have you started baking your bacon in the oven yet?  I have, I like it, but to an extent.  See, yes, it is easy, and yes, you just toss it in, have no worries of frying bacon naked, and free up your stove top for other things.  BUT (and maybe it's just my oven) it tends to take like.. for-ev-er.

At any rate, I I came across this pin, and went to the source.  She used a whiskey/brown sugar syrup on it.  I did not, I am a purest.  I like my bacon - as bacon.

Pretty much followed her directions, for the most part.  I cut the bacon strips in half, weaved them set them in the oven at 350 for about a half hour/forty-five minutes. and then slapped them on top of  some lettuce and miracle whip on wheat toasted bread.

Looks great, right?  Well, it was, sort of.  Let me level with you.  I like a lot of bacon on my sandwich, and I always omit the tomato (not my thing).  But, biting into the bacon sandwich, there was too much bacon. And I generally do use probably about 6 half slices.. not sure why I wasn't a fan of this way.  It was fun, and I had high hopes, it just didn't pan out.

So, moral of the post, I will not do crosshatch/weave bacon again, but and I will use the oven, but only when I have large groups of people over, or need a mass quantity of cooked bacon. 

I am half thinking about buying the pre-cooked stuff in the store. Have you tried the pre-cooked bacon, or do you know of a fantastically faster way to make it in the oven?  Maybe I am doing something wrong. 

Thoughts?

Manicure Monday : Blue Glitter Gradient

I love how my nails turned out!!

I wanted something more fun than the traditional French tip, and I LOVE glitter, I didn't like the harsh line with glitter though, so I decided to fade it!!!

I used the tip of an ordinary dish sponge, just snipped the corner off, put some glitter on a piece of junk mail, and tapped away!

I love it!

What do you think?

Manicure Monday- the first of Many!

So I decided I needed to put something up once a week, a theme if you will.

I own well over 200 nail polish colors. Mostly OPI, some Wet N Wild, Orly, you name it, and if it's a readily available brand in the US, I probably own one or two colors from the brand.  With the exception of some of the high end brands.  I do own a couple of Este Lauder colors, but really, who needs to pay $17 for a bottle of polish? (please note, I paid like $3 a bottle) Not me, but thanks!

I decided on Manicure Monday, I paint my nails on Sunday night anyways, in preparation of the work week, so by Monday, my nails usually have the extra polish on my flesh washed away.  This week because of the holiday, I painted them a little earlier, and then washed them down really well.

So today, in order to show off my new fancy schmancy ring, I chose to go pretty subdued.

This year my New Year's Resolution was to always paint an accent nail. A nail that was different than the others.  I chose my ring finger this year for that purpose, and have been able to keep this resolution thus far.

I used OPI white and a holographic OPI topcoat for the tips and over the ring finger a few times.

Turns out my hands look really wrinkly.  Wonder why.  I'm only 31, so they shouldn't look that bad.. maybe I am just being hard on myself. :)

Do you have a New Year's Resolution?  Were you able to keep it?  We are almost done with this year, my other New Year's Resolutions were to try one new recipe per week on average (doing okay on that one) and to wear earrings everyday (haven't kept that one).



Duluth! Big things!!

Saturday I did the Women Rock 10K, with my friend Karen. She is also one of the girls that I did The Color Run with too. I am not sure how I talked her into it. My friend Sonya hurt her ribs awhile back, and decided she didn't want to do it.  Karen and I are doing the TC10 Mile in October, and according to the training plan, we were supposed to be running that distance anyways.  I mean, I ran 20 minutes straight on Thursday, I can do this.. Right?

I will say this, I am not quite sure we should have done it.  It was long. But she did make it better than it could have been, and it was the first time I had ever done a race with anyone, like, running/walking with someone, on purpose.

But we got a glass of champagne (warm), a 'W' Necklace with a real sapphire, and a jacket.  If we had signed up for real, we would have gotten a calendar of the half dressed firefighters.  But, at the end, we did get our picture taken with one.

Finished!

So after we were done, I went and visited my sister's kids, she has 3 now.  I went to see my niece who is 12, and nephew who is 6, they now have a littler brother who is like.. 2 weeks old or something.  I don't have a relationship with my sister. She is evil, and my life has been better without her games in it.

But we went to the little city wading pool, my niece told me about her new school (she has a new one every year) and about the uniforms that they have to wear.  She says she misses me, I miss her a whole heap too.  I was like her second mom until she was 5.  Literally.  She was born in April my Senior year of High School.  That summer, if I went shopping, so did she, people thought she was my baby.  Which I thought was dumb, since she had been to my final band concert, and I had shown her off then.

At any rate, it sucks for her, because she is put in the middle of everything, only hearing the evil and half truths her mother spews.

Changing gears.

On Sunday the the Boyfriend and I went to Duluth!  We like to go once a year, and we hadn't made a trip up there yet.  So we packed in to the car, and started up.  The Boyfriend doesn't really like breakfast, allegedly.  But one of the things you do when you make the trip north, is you stop at Tobies!  They make delicious caramel rolls.  They have a gas station and gift shop and whatever else.  But we go to the restaurant portion of it.  So yummy!

Tobies Caramel Pecan Roll

Once we were stuffed, we hit the road again, and onward to Duluth!  It's a little bit of a drive, about 3 hours from where we live now.  But we did it.  The last time we went there, it was July 4th, and quite fun!!  They had live music in a band shell, and a carnival, and beautiful weather.

Any who, we went up to the rest stop on Skyline Drive.  It's always a nice view from up there.  As a child, we would pile out of the car, and stretch our legs, knowing that it would only be another 20 minutes or so before we got to our Aunt and Uncle's house.

After we stretched our legs we went to Spirit Mountain, just on the other side of I-35, and we took a ride on the Timber Twister, and the Zipline ride.  I will say, the Timber Twister was way more fun!  We rode down once together, and then we each went two more times on our own.  We bought a package that included a trip on the Vista Fleet down in Canal Park on the shore of Lake Superior.  So once we were done with our ride tickets, we headed down to Canal Park.

Once we got to Canal Park we checked in with the Vista Fleet Cruises, and it turns out the only cruise that had any openings, was the 8pm Sunset cruise.  Well, it was only 3, so, we had awhile to walk around.  It was apparently Gay Pride time up there this weekend.  We didn't know, but we saw the stereotypical sailor.  It made me laugh.

We went and signed the log book in the Maritime Museum, dropped a dollar in for a donation, and walked along the park.

We ended up taking a tour of the William A. Irvine, our tour guide, was a college girl, but she had attitude the whole time.  It was one of the worst tours I had ever been on, and what sucked even more, I actually wanted the tour to be good.

After the tour, we walked around figured we should eat something, so we headed over to Little Angie's Cantina.  The food was really good, and relatively inexpensive too!  But while we were eating, it was getting cold, the wind was picking up, and the sun was starting to set.  It was about 7, so we got up and tried to find a couple of cheap sweatshirts, since neither of us thought we would be up there that long.  Our cheap sweatshirts were $35 a piece.  Bummer.

Once we had the sweatshirts, the Boyfriend had to go back to the car to drop off something, I didn't know what, but he insisted I wait in line, we still had a 20 minute wait.  So he headed back to the car, I went in to the store to see if I could use the bathroom, they had closed it already, they really only had the gift shop open to sell any last tickets. The Boyfriend got back just in time for us to be herded up on to the boat.

I used the bathroom on deck, and then joined him on the upper deck which was open air.  It was a GOOD thing that we had sweatshirts, because it got darn cold.

While we were on the sunset cruise, my cousins asked us to stop by, they were camping at a campsite on our way home.  We decided we would stop by for an hour, at least make an appearance.

When we got off the boat, the Boyfriend wanted to take the long way back to the car, and walk along the sidewalk to the amphitheater that we had listened to the bands on the 4th of July when we had came up 2 years ago.

And I was reading a little plaque, and he pulls on my shirt, and I turn around, he's down on bended knee, and he asked me to marry him!!

I said yes.  SO now, I have a ring!! :)

Very fun!  BIG THINGS!

Duluth Skyline from Lake Superior, and my new RING!

To tie up this post, we did end up visiting the cousins at the campsite, drank well into the night, and basically got outed by my cousin's wife, so had a lot of congrats from the seasonal campers.

We got home, and we didn't want to do anything today, besides sleep.  And soak my feet again.

Time to plan a wedding!!

Did you have a great proposal or were you kind of like.. well I totally knew, and it wasn't a surprise at all?
I think as people get older, they, unfortunately, are not granted the opportunity as the young'uns are, I think older people tend to date longer too.. not old, but older than 18-26.