weekend recap- mani & all

Hello hello! Back from my amazing weekend away and thus back to reality. I usually work the entire weekend, so I never have anything to "recap" on Mondays... however, I'm taking advantage of this whole having a weekend off thing, so I'm going to recap!

I worked during the day on Saturday, but I had the night off so the bf and I left for his lake house early Saturday evening. We went bowling and hung out with his friends Saturday night. Long story short, I'm a horrible bowler. The last two times I bowled strikes, however. Not sure how that happened because I completely bombed the rest of the game. Sunday morning we got to sleep in, which was glorious. B insisted on having the wood stove going before I got up so I laid in bed which he started the fire. Let me tell you, a lake house in the middle of the woods with a wood stove and a guy as amazing as B is this girl's dream come true.

After moseying around the house being lazy for a few hours on Sunday, we went into town and had lunch at this cool place called the Gypsy Joynt. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was awesome, too. Then we Redboxed a movie and got some dinner food (read: Spongebob mac & cheese, popcorn and some Goldfish) and headed back to the house. It was sooooo nice to relax. The lake house has a sauna that we got to use Sunday night which was the cherry on top of a perfect weekend.

Getting back to work this morning downright sucked, but it was nice to get away if only for a day and a half. The mani I'm showing you today was done on Friday night. I'm actually still wearing it now, with minor chip wear.

 

This is two coats of Essie Sew Psyched with Essie Beyond Cozy accents. I used a pointed q-tip to create the polka dots on my pointer finger, and scotch tape to create the solid, straight lines on my other nails. 

The formula on SS was great and the color is awesome. Slight shimmer, green, grey-ish? Perfection. The BC spiced it up a LOT and the two colors looked great together. Formula on both gets an A+. I love Essie, and I always forget how much I love it until I use it again. Essie wears very well on my nails. Not much tipwear and barely any chipping after 3-4 days is awesome in my book, and hard to come across for me with my busy lifestyle.

 

 I am obsessed with rings- here's another I got that I had to show you all. I just bought earrings at Express that match this almost identically. 

And I'll leave you with this beautiful picture I took on the lake while I was away this weekend. This was about an hour before sunset. Ah, how I long to go back...

 

Day 12: STRIPES

Hey hey! :) Happy hump day. I worked a realllly short shift today and planned to be super productive afterwards... that plan completely died. I came home and got pizza for lunch with my mom. We watched The Voice while we ate lunch. It was nice to spend some time together. :o) Not to mention I am becoming obsessed with The Voice. Arrrgh! Blake Shelton + Adam Levine.. and Michael Buble is joining the mix as a mentor... can it get any better? I'm in a picture mood today... here is Blakie & Adam if you have no idea who I'm talking about (or if you want a photographic reminder ;D).

 

YUM. I will take the both of them. But mainly Blake. Really. 

 

I've seen Michael Buble in concert twice. The second time, we were in the 2nd row and I touched his
hand as he walked by. By touched, I actually mean grabbed & wouldn't let go of. *swoon*

Ok. Done swooning. Back on task, back on task. I did like three different manicures for this striped theme but the first two sucked. My Seche kept ruining them.. and the colors weren't working out. So, I decided to revert back to what I like to call old faithful:

This is Essie Ole Caliente and China Glaze I'm Not Lion. I'm practically obsessed with how these two polishes look together. I can't even handle it. =O I'm just in awe. I've never striped it like this before, but I figured why not go for the gold. This was so easy to do. I slapped on a few coats of polish, a layer of Poshe (because Seche is being pissy), then used Scotch tape to add the lines. I love the middle two fingers where there's just one vertical line. So cute!

Let me leave you with a REALLY funny picture. I found this one when I was browsing on my Facebook for a picture of Michael Buble. This was my OPI stash circa April 2011. This means I've accumulated over 400 polishes in about seventeen months....

 

My caption on Facebook for this one was "This is $100 worth of polish..I think I have a problem" HAHA!

Naked Bubbly Bombshell

Hey ladies! Happy Friday! I have a pretty busy work weekend ahead of myself.. working all day today and babysitting tonight.. working 9-9:30 tomorrow, and doing a mani/pedi, tutoring, and working on Sunday. Busy busy busy! I need to replenish the good ol' bank account after my expensive road trip, so it'll ultimately be a good thing! I'll reward myself on Monday; my best friend gets home from vacation this weekend, so we're going to the beach Monday! Yay for having Monday mornings/afternoons off! :D

 I'm wearing a tape mani today! Check it out:

I used striping tape on my accent nail and regular Scotch tape for the triangles on my other nails. This look is very simple but I love it. I used Deborah Lippmann Naked for my base color, and Orly Bubbly Bombshell for the glitter accents. I hate when manicures are hard to photograph. This manicure kicks ass in person but doesn't look as great in these pictures. Ahhhh well. Until next time! 

Tape & Stamping Mani: Cheetah Print!

Hi everybody! Happy weekend! Sometimes, my weekdays get so swamped and I leave the same polish on all week! That's what happened with this manicure! It's gorgeous, so I didn't mind. I was sort of disappointed with how this photographed and I almost wasn't going to blog it, but I decided to go for it anyway. Here it is!

Tape Mani: China Glaze Smoke and Ashes & CND Effects Jade Sparkle

Howdy all! Happy Monday! I've found a new polish that I am so in love with. Each time I start to doubt China Glaze they come out with something new that makes me fall in love with them again. This was proven true again with their new color, Smoke and Ashes. Smoke and Ashes is a color from their brand new Hunger Games: Capitol Colors collection.

The China Glaze press release for the collection described this color as a "black-based teal with multicolored shimmer." 

Pink Wednesday: My First Tape Mani!

I wanted to try something different today, so I decided to give the ever famous tape manicure a shot. I googled "tape mani tutorial," and wound up with this one from Nailside's blog. Of course, my manicure doesn't look anything like hers but I think I did an okay job considering this was my first time using tape!

I didn't do any cleanup on this manicure, as I was running really late for work and just didn't have the time... usually I have to do a ton of cleanup, so I'd say this isn't half bad.