Tuesday, December 29, 2015

OH, CHRISTMAS TREE?

Thankfully our "huge" winter storm turned out to be pretty minor. I think we probably got about 4-5 inches at my house. It is pretty chilly out there, though....not a fan.

As expected, the only creatures in my house that were happy about the white stuff were the dogs. Zero had fun chasing the laser light through it, and Baylee always has a good time rolling around in it. Tinlee simply doesn't seem to care one way or another.

The plow went by our house right before I had to leave for work. Luckily my Outback had no problem plowing through what he dumped at the end of my driveway. By the time I went home for lunch, the neighbor had removed all of that, and Kevin and Griffin were bundled up to go shovel and snowblow. They were still outside when I went back to work, and Griff seemed to be having a pretty good time playing in his first snowfall of the year. Oh, to be young again.

Before I did the Christmas lights mani, I had taken a few minutes to throw on a red with an abstracty kind of tree for my two days of work last week.
Orly Smolder, Essie Good as Gold, Uber Chic Christmas 01
When Kev and I had bebopped up to Marquette the week before Christmas, we made our usual stop at TJ Maxx, mostly so I could check out their polish offerings. 

They didn't really have much of anything, but I did manage to pick up several Orly and a couple of OPI. This deep red is Orly Smolder, and by itself it has a real nice shimmer to it. I used Essie Good as Gold and the Uber Chic Christmas 01 plate for the tree.

I had a dickens of a time trying to center that damn tree and had a couple of do-overs that needed to be done. I briefly considered adding rhinestones for ornaments but decided against it.

Right now I'm wearing snowflakes again. I can't decide if I want to change them up before we head to lower Michigan tomorrow or if I just want to be lazy and leave them as they are.

After work I'll probably spend 30 minutes staring at all of my stamping plates looking for a New Year's idea.

And then just do nothing.













Monday, December 28, 2015

CHRISTMAS EVE SHENANIGANS

This year for sure will go down in our family as having the most interesting Christmas Eve. For one thing, we still have NO snow. Like not even a speck. Evidently that is going to change sometime today, as we are under the threat of a pretty huge storm starting this afternoon and extending into tomorrow afternoon.

My bossman was very nice and let me stay home on the 23rd so that I could get ready for the family Christmas Eve. All day Wednesday I cleaned and baked, making sure I had everything done so that all that would need doing on the 24th was the actual cooking of the dinner.

Around midnight, Tyler and I were just hanging out watching tv, and I decided I would actually do a holiday mani that took some actual effort. While I was doing that, Tyler started doing her gift wrapping. All was going great, and I was in the middle of putting rhinestones on my 6th nail, when we heard a loud "pop" outside, the lights flickered, and then the  entire neighborhood went black. A few minutes later we heard another pop, this crazy-ass wind kicked up and we had a downpour of what sounded like hail that lasted for probably 30 seconds.

I immediately grabbed my phone to go to the power company website to report the outage. It was 2:45 a.m. At that point their website gave an estimated time of 3:45 a.m. for the power to come back on. We saw the power company's truck go up and down the street a few times during the next half hour. My battery operated holiday lighted items were still on, of course, and I grabbed the one battery lantern I own so we weren't in complete darkness. Kev woke up when the power shut off, and he went out to the garage and came back in with a propane lantern he had picked up when he went downstate during hunting season. That thing was super bright, and I sat with that and finished the rest of my rhinestones while Tyler wrapped by the light of the smaller lantern.

I've never had the power be out for more than a couple of hours, and I had no reason to believe this time would be any different.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

When we finally wandered off to bed at 7 a.m., the lights were still out, and the website gave no indication as to when they'd return. I got out of bed right before 11 a.m. because I was freezing and got up to find still no power, which in my house also means no running water because there's no power to the pump.

The power was out in quite a few places throughout the Upper Peninsula due to high winds, but ours was the first to go. Unfortunately we were not the first to be fixed. I called my sister to let her know what was happening and to find out if we could move the festivities to her house since I obviously couldn't cook without power. We saw a truck head down our road with a new power line pole on it at about 2:30 p.m., so Kev hopped in the car to go see what was up. A ginormous tree had split in half and fallen on the power line, snapping the pole. Since they had to remove the old pole, put up a new one and then reattach everything, it was pretty obvious our power wasn't going to be back on anytime soon. We loaded up all of the food and headed to my sister's house where we were both able to take showers.

After dinner, we let my grandkids open their gifts from everyone, and by the time we got home at 7:30, power had been restored. It hadn't been on for very long because it was still only 62 degrees in the house, but at least life was back to normal, and my daughters and their hubbies were able to come over at 9 p.m. to open gifts with us before heading over to my mom's at 11 p.m. for more food and more giftage. We got home from there about 2:30 a.m. and finally got to bed around 3:00.

Christmas Day was nice and normal; dinner at mom's and present opening and then home at a normal hour. As usual, by then I was tired of all the running around and just happy to be home.

So here's my done-in-the-dark Christmas mani.
Anonymous Lacquer Baby Vamp, rhinestones, Christmas
The green is a lovely holo I got from Anonymous Lacquer, Baby Vamp. I did the light strand with my Uber Chic Christmas 01 stamping plate and then used rhinestones for the lights.

I'm pretty amazed at how well this one lasted. I lost only one rhinestone, and that was when I was rough-housing with Seven who came to play with Zero on Saturday. I finally took it off yesterday.

I hope your holiday was merry and bright, and I wish for you all nothing but great things in the upcoming new year.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

IT WORKS!!

Oh, man. December 20th already? I am so not ready for this week. I feel like I'm actually forgetting things I need to do. Everything I have here is wrapped, but I'm still waiting for quite a few things to arrive, thanks to the extremely late list I received from my daughter. As of right now, she's not getting anything because it's all spread out across the country as the items make their way here. It's out of my hands.

Last Christmas Eve Tyler and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning putting together a Lego Christmas scene. Once we finished, she loaded it up in the car and brought it to her in-laws' house so that Griffin would see it under the tree and think Santa built it for him.

It was at that time I decided I was for sure going to buy the actual Lego Christmas North Pole set for this year. It's been hiding under the bed for about 6 months. I asked Tyler on Friday night what the plan was for it, and she said she wanted it to be set up at my house since I bought it. I then asked when she was coming home, and she told me she's hoping to come home Monday. It's a good thing I asked what the plan was, because this plan required me to get busy!

Let me make it clear I was not upset at this prospect whatsoever. I think putting Lego sets together is way too much fun. My biggest concern was where I was going to put the darn thing.

My next concern came about 2 hours in when it became clear to me that there was a piece missing from the set. I texted Tyler and sent her a pic of the missing item and told her to grab one and bring it home with her. I told her I was going to bed with the hope that maybe I was just blind and the piece would make itself appear on Saturday morning.

No such luck. Here I was, only partway through the first building, and I was stuck. It just so happens that I bought Griff two Lego sets for Christmas that were already under my tree, so I unwrapped one of them to see if I could steal the piece I needed. Of course, that set didn't have that piece. So I had to unwrap the other set, and luckily the piece I needed was there. Problem solved. I'll put the piece Tyler brings into the new set, and everything works out perfectly.

So I spent the next couple of hours playing with Legos. The whole thing was just about finished, and I was working on the reindeer, when I discovered I was missing a reindeer face. You have got to be kidding me. The reindeer faces are a common piece that simply have eyes drawn on it. So now I'm looking at the two buildings I already made, wondering if I accidentally used a reindeer face.

Well, shitballs. Next step? Start taking apart the houses I just spent hours building looking for reindeer eyes. And after all of that extra work, I discovered I did not mistakenly use it. Final solution? A black sharpie draws very nice reindeer eyes. Done.

I decided to set it up on the shelf under the tv. I'm not going to say a word about it. We're going to wait to see how long it takes for Griffin to notice it. I'm excited because he is going to love it! I will say I'm going to be a little sad to see it go home with him because it's pretty damn adorable.
I haven't done much with my nails, but I did manage a gradient and some snowflakes the other night, even though we still don't have any snow here.
Zoya Carey, Zoya Caitlin gradient, Nubar Star Sparkle, Mundo de Unas White, Ali Express 12-51
This is the first mani shot with the new camera. I'm a pretty happy camper because this purple toned Zoya Carey and Zoya Caitlin gradient actually photographed perfectly.

After I did the gradient I did a bit of sparkle with Nubar Star Sparkle and then stamped with MdU White and the snowflake pattern from the Ali Express 12-51 plate.

I did this last Tuesday and just took it off tonight.

I'm really hoping the new camera is going to make my purple problems go away. I did take a pic of this mani with my old camera, and the old camera definitely photographed this as blue. Hopefully this is a good sign that there will be no more running around the house trying to get the color right. 

I'll have to do some more purples before I can say for sure it's the result of the new camera.


Tuesday, December 15, 2015

LOVE ME SOME ARGYLE

Somebody should have let my stomach know that the egd says my ulcers have healed. I spent most of the weekend sick, in pain and on the verge of throwing up. Maybe I picked up a bug at the hospital. All I know is I was miserable.

That stopped me from leaving the house in the pouring rain, but I got a lot done in spite of it. I wrapped everything I had (of course I now have tons more to wrap), did the laundry, soaked off my nails and reapplied them. I even decided to risk throwing my tulle and lace shower curtain in the washing machine because I couldn't figure out a decent way to hand wash it. I was very happy that it came out beautifully clean, undamaged and with no wrinkles. Whew! 

My new camera came yesterday. Holy-moly that is a lot of camera for me to figure out. I need my how-to book for dummies to get here. It definitely seems to photograph beautifully with truer color than my old camera. I told Kev I need to paint my nails purple as soon as I have time. That'll be the true test! 

We also went looking for a new couch last night. I figured we'd probably have to order one, but they had one in the store that we liked. It's being delivered on Thursday morning, so new couch for me for Christmas! Now I have to decide whether or not I want to try to teach the dogs to stay off of it. That is a much bigger decision than it seems. I know I'm going to feel like a real shit-heel if I don't let them lay on it. But I also know that the only reason I even needed a new couch is because I let the dogs go on it. 'Tis a dilemma. 

Anywho, here's a mani I did last Monday. It's been hard to even think about doing winter mani's or Christmas nails when the only thing we've seen so far is rain. Craziest, warmest December I can remember.
OPI Russian Navy, Mundo de Unas Black, Uber Chic 6-03 stamp
I wore an argyle sweater in these colors so I was very matchy that day. The base is OPI Russian Navy and I stamped with Mundo de  Unas Turquoise and the Uber Chic 6-03 plate.

This one stayed on for a couple of days. After awhile I was just tired of looking at that lighter blue. It didn't seem so bad when I was wearing the matching sweater but didn't look so great with anything else I wore.

And of course, I'm sure people were just horrified that it didn't match!! 

Nope! Only I was.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

THANKSGIVING MANI A TAD LATE

Well, I think maybe the holiday mood is starting to creep in. I decided to get serious the other day and did some major shopping.

Part of that shopping included a new camera for myself. I've been saving up my credits on my survey account, so I ended up getting $432 in Amazon credit to use toward the camera. I've been saving for a pretty long time, but I'm so glad I did that. I never would have bought a new camera without that extra help towards the cost. I bought the Canon Rebel 5, and it came with a big bundle of other stuff to go along with it. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out how to use it without too much difficulty.

Yesterday I took the day off. Kev and I went to Oconto in the morning for a long overdue follow-up EGD and a colonoscopy. Good times. The prep on Tuesday night was not cool. Drinking that stuff was not easy to do, and nothing started happening until after 1 a.m. which means I was up most of the night. I slept for part of the drive there. We got there at 10:45, and I have absolutely no clue what time we got home.

Everything went great and after years of problems, my ulcers have finally healed. I'm pretty happy about that. Poor Kev had to tell me my results probably five times yesterday because I was seriously out of it all day. Apparently I ate crackers at the hospital. I'm pretty sure I talked to my mom on the phone yesterday, but I'm going to call her later to find out what I said. I slept all the way home and then slept most of yesterday. I managed to stay awake long enough to watch a couple of tv shows and eat supper, and that's about it.

Since I was in a coma, Kev did the entire tree all by himself. He did a great job, and I didn't even rearrange anything. My only contribution to decorating it was some icicles that were in a box he forgot about. It's so weird how I can have a real surgery and snap right out of it, but knock me out for something like an egd and I'm useless for 24 hours.

I'm just glad it's over. I've been trying for many months to get it scheduled, and now I don't have to think about it again for a very long time.

This is the mani I wore on Thanksgiving.
OPI My Private Jet, Essie Good as Gold, Uber Chic 6-01 stamp
I started with OPI My Private Jet and stamped with Essie Good as Gold using the Uber Chic 6-01 stamping plate. I like it. It was purdy.

Now I'm going to finish up cleaning. At some point maybe I'll wrap some presents so the tree doesn't look naked. Or maybe I'll just finish my sweater. All that's left is to finish knitting the hood, so I should have no problem getting that out of the way. I slammed my finger when I was cleaning earlier and loosened a nail so I suppose I'll have to soak them off in the next day or two. I really jammed it hard because it's painful to type.

Have a great weekend, peeps!!

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

JUST BLUE

It's been over a week since I even thought about blogging. I'm just not feeling it lately. Of course, I did have family home for Thanksgiving, company on Saturday and other stuff going on, so that probably contributes to my absence.

Hopefully your Thanksgiving holiday weekend was at least half as nice as mine. I was happy to have Tyler, Griffin and Zero at the house from Wednesday to Sunday. On Saturday, Seven came over to play with Zero, and her family brought pizza, some extraordinarily delightful pudding shots and a homemade banana cake. I can't complain when I get good company plus good eats. Even Kevin was home for the entire time, and he managed to get a great schedule for December so he'll miss none of the holidays this year.

Thanksgiving was spent at my mom's. Every year my sister and I make the offer to take it over, but she insists she wants to do it as long as she's able. She turned 87 in September, and she is still rocking it. I'm so lucky to still have her around and in good health. The food was great, as always, and I ate way too much. As always. I was miserably full when I went home.

Before Kev left to go back to work on Sunday I had him bring in some of the Christmas bins from the garage. My plan is to clean the house today after work and get the majority of the decorating done. Kev is gone until next Monday, and I didn't want to wait that long to get started. The tree will go up on Tuesday while he's around to help with that. I'm hoping the decorations will finally get me in the holiday mood because I really do need to start shopping.

I have been doing nails every few days, but I'm still focusing on knitting. I have one sleeve and the hood left to knit on the second sweater. The first sweater now has a new home with Tyler, which is pretty much what I figured would happen. 

I'm not even sure when I did this one.
Orly Decoded, Zoya Kristen, Stampaholic 2 stamping plate
I started with a base of Orly Decoded and then used Zoya Kristen and the Stampaholic 2 plate that I recently received from a specialty group buy.

In looking at this now in the picture, I like it more than I thought I did while I was wearing it. That makes no sense whatsoever, but it's a fact.

I'm not sure if nails will get done at all for the rest of the week. I'll be cleaning and decorating, and I've decided to steal Razzie for the weekend. Tonya will drop him off on Friday and pick him up on Sunday. I needed a Razzie fix so I'm happy she's letting me take him just for the fun of it. I'll have to see if Seven wants to come over to play with this brother, too.

I love having "puppies" I can steal every so often. Even if they aren't little anymore, it's still just the best being able to keep my connection with them.