REMEMBER ME? LOTS OF PICS!!

Whew! It's been awhile! One of the parts of having puppies in the house that I forgot was the influx of people that come over. The little cuties will be 3 weeks old tomorrow. Already. It's going by way too fast, and I'm trying really hard to not think about them leaving for their furever homes.

Thankfully this time I get to keep one, and I'm also super happy that Seven's owners have decided to get another Tinlee pup this time around. So my little dark blue ribbon boy, Ziggy Stardust, already is chosen. I, on the other hand, am still undecided on who to keep. It's a good thing I only have 2 girls to choose from because having more options than that would be impossible. At this point, my red girl, Queen B, is really trying her best to make me pick her. She is the absolutely smoochiest of puppies and is always kissing my whole face and trying to eat my nose. China Girl has thrown her hat into the ring, too, but I won't be able to decide for probably a couple more weeks.

Regardless, they are all adorable. I wish I could keep them all.

 

 

Seriously....what's not to love here?

I actually have managed a couple of manicures over the past 3 weeks. Of course, in 3 weeks I have only left the house twice, so I'm not doing them very often.

The base for this is an opalescent white by the Target exclusive brand, Defy & Inspire. I found this on a clearance rack, and it had no name on it, but I "think" it's Petticoat. Over that I used MdU Black and Uber Chic 10-01. I managed to snag a couple of those polishes on the clearance rack, and I really am a huge fan. Tyler was here for a week for Griff's 6th birthday and brought the topcoat with her. Just for kicks I tried it over a mani to see if it would smear the stamping, and I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't smear the black stamp, and it dried very quickly. 

The lighter orange here is Sinful Colors Skylark stamped with Mundo de Unas Orange. The design is from the Uber Chic 4-01 stamping plate. I was just in the mood for an orange.

This one was actually the first thing I did after putting my nails back on. I had removed them for the birth of the puppies. I wanted something light so I chose Zoya Pandora. Within the first hour of painting my nails this color, I messed up 4 of them. My initial plan was to stamp on top of the pink, but I wore it, damaged, for like 5 days. When I finally felt like doing my nails again, I ended up taking it all off, starting over on all of my nails but painted them the same color all over again. I was just too tired from lack of sleep to go choose something and the Zoya was still sitting on my table. I did finally manage to stamp on them, though!! I used Fresh Paint Emma and Uber Chic 4-01 for the design. The Fresh Paint polishes stamp very nicely.

Last Friday night we had Griffin's birthday party, and I've been hanging on to these Lego water decals for awhile. I finally decided to use them. It seemed appropriate since we gave him a couple of different Lego sets for his birthday. Griff thought they were pretty cool. I did the water decals over a base of Square Hue Monch, which is bright yellow.

Right now I hear some movement in the puppy pen, so I'm guessing it's going to be time to do some cleanup and give some kisses. 

SO PRETTY, I THINK

I guess at some point last weekend Baylee got a little carried away. On Sunday we noticed her left ear was completely swollen. She wasn't in any pain, but almost her entire ear flap was full of fluid. I'm not sure if she hurt it while playing with one of the pups or if she banged her head in the driveway. Her fave thing in the winter is to start walking down our downward sloping driveway, take a few quick steps as she dives face first onto the snow/ice, flip to her back and slide. Then she'll get up and do it again. It's hilarious to watch, and she thoroughly enjoys her self-propelled sledding action. We think it's possible that perhaps on one of her flips, she hit her ear on a hard spot of ice, causing it to swell.

Kev brought her to the vet on Monday, and they had to sedate her, cut her ear and insert a tube which she has to have in for 3 more weeks so the ear can continue to drain as needed. Our job is to massage it and keep her from injuring it or taking out the tube. Enter the "cone of shame". The plastic, huge cone the vet gave us lasted less than 24 hours. She kept walking into things with it and managed to break it. Twice. I ordered her a Comfy Cone from Amazon which got here today, and that is a much better size. 

At this point we only make her wear it to go outside to prevent her from sliding because she couldn't care less about that tube in her ear. She doesn't seem to even realize there's anything going on, which works out well because not once has she attempted to scratch that ear. As long as someone is home with her, we aren't forcing her to wear the cone. I'll be very surprised if the vet leaves the tube in for the full 3 1/2 weeks because there isn't really much draining going on at all. I guess we'll see what happens next week. She has doctor appointments for the next three Thursdays.

Tonight around 11 o'clock I decided to take off the Snail Vinyl mani. I had the other polish that Tyler bought me sitting here next to me so I decided to try that out.

This is Target's Defy & Inspire Make it Work, which she basically purchased for me just for the name. We are huge Project Runway fans, and Tim Gunn is famous for saying "make it work". I love the names of these polishes; things like Toddlers and Tiaras, Big Brother, The Final Rose, Tribal Council....perfect for a reality tv junkie like me.

For the design I used one of my new Bundle Monster plates. This one is from the blogger collaboration with Nailstamp4fun, BM-XL206, and I used Mundo de Unas Mint.

I'm way happy with this whole thing. At some point I'm really going to have to get a bunch more of this Target brand polish because I'm in love with it. Tyler had Toddlers and Tiaras pink with her, and I was so hoping she'd forget to take it back home. I know there are at least six more that I want so the next time I'm near a Target, nothing is going to stop me.

Either that or I'm going to keep watching them online and hope for a sale. But I will have them one way or another.

Everyone should have a goal, right?

SNAIL VINYLS - A WINNER!

I was pleasantly surprised when I got a text from Tyler on Friday afternoon, letting me know that they were on their way home for the weekend. I didn't figure I was going to see her until the middle of March, and for that trip she is coming without the hubby or Griffin. This trip the whole family came, including my darling Zero.

It had already been pre-planned that two of my "extra" daughters were coming over to visit me on Friday after supper. Erica brought sweet little Evie, who is 2, and Jackie brought me Ayden, who is going to be 3 in a few months. I love when they come over. Erica calls me "me-mums", and the last time they visited, Evie was saying "me-grand-mums". This time as soon as she came in Erica asked her who I was, and she just said "Gramma Di". Being an honorary mom and grandma is one of my most favorite things of all time. I love those girls enough and those babies enough for them to seriously be blood relatives. The timing was perfection for them to be there because they stayed long enough to spend time with Tyler and Griffin. It was a big, noisy madhouse, and it.was.awesome.

Griffin was adorable, as always, and Zero is still my baby boy.

Honestly, is there anything more adorable than a boy and his dog?? At 5 1/2 years old, just about the only way to get a nice pic of Griffin is to have Zero in a shot with him. The rest of the time he just wants to make funny faces at me.

Because of all the company, I didn't get to nails until Sunday night. A couple of weeks ago, Aveline, the owner of Snail Vinyls contacted me on Pinterest, asking if I'd be interested in some samples.

I've seen lots of manicures where people have used them and thought they looked awesome, and since I have an IQ higher than 12, I told her I absolutely would love to try them. She told me to pick out a "couple" that I'd like, which I did, and a week later I got an envelope with a whole bunch of cool stuff.

They've been sitting on my table just waiting to be used, and finally on Sunday night I had some time to play.

My light purple base on this one is a polish that Target is selling now called Defy & Inspire. I had seen it when we were in Illinois visiting Tyler, and I wanted to buy all of them. In the end, I didn't buy any at all because I had already purchased so many bottles at the other stores we went to that I would have felt guilty spending $7.50 a bottle for polish I don't really need.

When Tyler got home on Friday she surprised me with two bottles of it. This is Defy & Inspire Laguna Beach. I love it. The formula is good, and of course I love any kind of purple. Of course, this only makes me want the rest of them even more.

After I topcoated, I decided on the Snail Vinyls Moroccan Nail stencil for my design. I won't lie; it took me a bit to get the hang of using the stencils. There may have been some swearing going on while doing my first two. I did get the hang of it, though, and the other eight went on without any troubles at all.

Once I had my stencil placed, I sponged  China Glaze Queen B over it and then immediately pulled the stencil off, leaving the design you see here. I did topcoat one more time, and that was that.

I'm still wearing this now and still liking it. I'm probably going to wear it for at least another day, but that depends on how motivated I feel tonight.

So yeah....I'm probably going to wear it for at least another day.