THIS STAMP ANNOYS ME

My garden is still alive, believe it or not. Even my Supertunia seems like it just might survive the drowning I tortured it with. Not quite sure about the Snapdragons yet, but I'm hopeful.

Kev helped me plant my two rose bushes in the small section by the garage, and at that point I decided that rather than put those two and then some other random flowers, I should just go and get two more rosebushes.  And since we had to yet again go to Menard's for some other items, that's exactly what we did.  Hopefully that section will eventually just be a whole bunch of coral and white roses. Since they are just newbie plants, it might take years. With any luck I'll keep them alive long enough to get actual flowers.

While I was in the nursery section and he had run off to get some drywall, I wandered around just kind of looking for things I may want to plant along the front of the house. At first I thought mabes I'd do all roses. And then I walked out to a different section and saw this:

Um, hello! I couldn't walk over to those fast enough. A periwinkle colored huge flower? Are you effing kidding me? I am in love with these. Hydrangeas. Now, obvi I've heard of them, but I had never seen them this color before. And they are in big pots and already well-established. At that second I knew I wanted them, but I figured I'd better find out how hard or easy they are to keep alive. Based on what my Facebook friends tell me, I just might have good luck with these. If I had actually seen these before I planted those two rosebushes, I would have done that whole section in just these.

Once I was done drooling all over those, I continued to wander and found Lilacs!! These are probably my fave flower of all time. They bring back fond memories of childhood when my friends and I would make up bouquets of them and sell them door to door to everyone in the neighborhood. And more importantly, they smell delightful! I'm always jealous when I see them blooming at people's houses and wish they were in my yard. My mom always says they're hard to keep in check, but I really think I need to find that out for myself.  Right now I'm thinking Lilacs on one end of the house front and Hydrangeas next to the front porch. What's going in between, I haven't decided  yet.

As an added bonus, not only are my flowers still alive, evidently I am now growing Sunflowers. Not on purpose and not where I would plant them if I was. I'm not even a fan of Sunflowers.  It seems that if you put a bird seed feeder above the garden that has black oil sunflower seeds in it, the damn things will actually grow. I did not know that and haven't decided if I should yank them as they grow or just let them be to see what I end up with. 

Now for the nail failure.

When I did that stamped gradient the other day, it was supposed to be for a gradient theme in one of my nail groups. I guess I should have read the challenge with my eyes open, because the gradient was supposed to be the actual stamp, not the base.  Dummy.

I decided I'd give it another go since I didn't have anything more exciting planned.

This is a fail. Big time.  I started off with my new Square Hue, Ka-ahumanu.  I grabbed my Ninja DRK-B plate and decided to use one of my fave designs. I took Square Hue Glacier Skies and Zoya Blu to do make the stamp a gradient. It looked great on my practice spot but failed miserably on the nail.  Not only that, no matter what I did I could not get this stamp design to not be smeary looking.

So by the time I finished, I was completely annoyed and disgusted, and it was too late to do anything else. I hate when that happens!

Off to water the flowers and change the nectar in the hummingbird feeders.  

And that's going to be the extent of my weekend excitement.