EIGHT RANDOM MANI'S

It's Monday. Monday's suck. The end.

Here are eight pics that have been sitting in my drafts section feeling lonely and neglected. I decided since I'm in a craptastic mood I'd just throw them up here to get them out of the way.

Enjoy. Or not. Whatevs. After each pic I've posted what I used.

Square Hue Gibson Girl, Mundo de Unas Red, Uber Chic UC 4-02 stamp

Sally Hansen Lustre Shine Azure, Essie No Place Like Chrome, Uber Chic Christmas 01

Zoya Avery, Sinful Colors Bare, China Glaze Passion for Petals, gradient

OPI Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window, Loreal Because You're Worth It, LeaLac LLC-B stamp

Julep Winter, Mundo de Unas Dark Gray, Uber Chic 5-03

Ever After Bite Me, MdU Black,  Uber Chic 3-01

Sally Hansen Olive Branch, Essie Good as Gold, Uber Chic 5-01 stamp

Color Club Halo Hues Eternal Beauty, Mundo de Unas Violet, Uber Chic UC 5-02 stamp

And that's it for me. Even with posting all of these, I still have several more that are sitting in drafts.

I'm holding off on those; maybe they'll eventually earn a spot as their own post.

LAST DAY, THANKFULLY

Halloween weekend wasn't the best. The weather was just awful, and poor Griffin didn't get to trick or treat for more than a few minutes because he was freezing. He was an adorable little Batman, though. Luckily he had enough Halloween activity in Illinois so it didn't seem to really bother him that he only got about 15 pieces of candy in his bag. 

Of course, we bought him a new Lego set to do on Friday when he spent the night. I figured I'd rather do that than add to a candy stash. Actually, it really was just an excuse for me to play with Lego's. The little stinker is getting too smart now, though, so I didn't get to do nearly as much as I thought I would. I got part of the submarine together while he worked on something else, but then he kind of pushed his way into my chair and took over. It's great that he's so good at following the directions, but it's not so great for the grandma that wants to make stuff.

I spent the weekend the same way I've spent the past 10 days, sick. I never left the house at all and spent my days dozing off and on. Today is my last day of antibiotics, and I'm hoping that means I'll start feeling normal again tomorrow. 

And how did it get to be November already?? I'm nowhere near ready to start thinking about the holidays, but I need to get my mind focused on shopping. I've already told two of the grandkids if they don't get a move on with lists, they'll be getting a check and no giftage. 

This mani is from quite a few weeks ago.

I used Ivy League by Salon Perfect for the dark green base and then stamped with China Glaze Metallic Muse and the LeaLac LLC-B stamping plate.

This is one of those that turned out great but wasn't very exciting. If memory serves, I was looking to do something quickly and knew that Metallic Muse would stamp like a dream. 

I cleaned up and reapplied my nails on Thursday evening while I was waiting for Tyler and Griffin to get home. I had hoped I would take some time to do some fun Halloween stuff, but they ended up staying naked until last night. 

I'm really itching to do a water marble but don't feel like I have the patience to monkey with it right now. Maybe sometime this week my motivation will return. We shall see, I guess.

NOT THE PLAN BUT LOVE IT

Last night was fun. I had a sleepover with my daughter, two of the grandkids and their friends. They had come to town to go to a play and since it got over pretty late, they decided they would spend the night with me. 

I made a pan of brownies figuring they might want a snack. One pan of brownies with two 16 year old boys does not go very far. I don't even know if the girls had any, but there's only one small brownie left. I lost count of how many cans of Dr. Pepper disappeared.

They didn't even get here until almost 11 p.m., and overall, it was just kind of a silly night. We played with free ghost hunting apps on our phones, and I told stories of the different strange happenings that went on in a couple of the houses we lived in. Unfortunately, my current house is ghost free, much to the disappointment of all but Peyton's friend.

Earlier in the day I had swatched the new Square Hue polishes that came. I wanted to do a water marble with two of them, but the three colors I tried were too dark together. Epic fail.

I did still decide to use the dark grey.

After I painted with Square Hue Y2K, I stamped with Mundo de Unas Pink and the LeaLac LLC-B plate. After that I did one coat of a holographic topcoat. I kind of thought the light pink was just a bit stark and flat looking without it. I really like what the holo topcoat did to it.

When I was doing my nails, I figured it would come off tonight so I could do something else to wear to work tomorrow. That's not going to happen because I really like this one a lot.

Hopefully your weekend was a good one, too!

MINTY FRESH

After a damn near perfect weekend, it's actually painful to have to work. If life could be the way I want it to be, I would never have to work if the sun is out and it's over 70 degrees. Right now just thinking about the pool with water that is probs 90 right now is driving me crazy. When I went home at lunchtime I'm going to guess and say it was probably 92 degrees in my back yard. Do I want to be inside in a nice air-conditioned office? NOPE!

Lisa, Laura and two of the kids came out yesterday afternoon for some pool time and to drop off Seven. Today is Laura's birthday, and they wanted to go out of town to celebrate so of course I offered to keep her until Tuesday. As much as Seven loves the pool, she loves it even more when her kids or Laura are in it with her. She always makes sure to swim by every one of us at least once during her laps around. So cute.

I may have to do something highly unusual and go in the pool after I get home at 5 o'clock. Normally I don't see the point in going in the pool if I'm not in the sun, but poor Seven has been dying to go swimming ever since I covered it up yesterday. She keeps going partway up the stairs to try to get in. Whether I go in or not, if Kev hasn't taken her in this afternoon, I'm going to have to make the effort and uncover it for her. She loves it so much! Not only that, it will make her take a break from shoving every dog ball in my lap every 3 seconds. She has much more energy than I'm used to. Even after all of the swimming yesterday she wasn't tired at all. I think she only laid down for about 15 minutes right up until I went to bed at 12:30. She didn't stay in bed with me, either.....no clue where she slept. Within 5 minutes of me getting up at 6:15 she once again was shoving that toy in my face and then cried when I took a shower. What a baby.

I actually did my nails for the weekend. I didn't have any reason to, but I did them anyway.

This is such a pretty green, China Glaze Too Yacht to Handle. I will say that as much as I like the color, I did  not appreciate the application on this one. I had to do three coats, and the third one I did fairly thick to prevent bald spots. I hate when polishes do that. I used Mundo de Unas White and a pattern off of the LeaLac LLC-B stamping plate that I don't think I've used before.

Right now that's kind of my goal; use some designs I haven't tried before. I'm a terrible creature of habit, and I tend to lean towards the same colors and designs over and over again. That's the one flaw with stamping plates. I'll get a plate to get several designs that I want but then there are a bunch of other weird-ass ones I know I'll never use.

I even decided to do my nails again last night. Seven wasn't very helpful, which slowed me down considerably, but I did manage to get them done with nothing knocked over, spilled and no stray pieces of dog hair landing on my wet nails.

If I had a dollar for every time a piece of dog hair screwed up my nails, I could probably retire.

LOVE IT? HATE IT? CAN'T DECIDE.

It is hard to get back in the swing of normal life after a vacation. Being at home seems too quiet after living with a crowd. To top it off, Kev left yesterday after being off since the 12th. He comes home Friday and then leaves again on Saturday. I miss him when he's gone so much.

I also am missing Tennessee weather. It's actually summer there. Here, not so much. We're barely cracking the mid-60's even though it's almost July. At this rate I'll never get to use my pool. Of course, even on the few days it has thought about being warm enough, it has rained. Awesome-sauce.

On Sunday night I decided to use this little sunshine in a bottle.

This blazing yellow is Studio M Neon Caution. I grabbed it at Meijer while we were on our trip. I topped that off with KB Shimmer Dust in the Bottle which is a really fine glitter. It's "almost" a holo but it doesn't quite get there for me. I love it, though, since I really love super fine glitter.

I had planned on taking this off after work but instead I decided to just stamp over it.

For the added flowers I used Mundo de Unas Violet and the LeaLac LLC-B stamping plate.

I've been looking at this one a lot today. I can't decide if I love it or hate it. In the sunlight the KB Shimmer flashes a whole lot of rainbow specs, which is cool, but it's not like I get to sit outside all day to stare at it.

I'm already contemplating what to do tonight. I might have to break down and use something dark. It's only been two weeks, but I feel like my nails need to be redone already. The cuticle line is bugging me. I want to hold off for at least a few more days if I can.

Once my hair starts getting caught under them in the shower, though, I know their days are numbered.

OFF WE GO

Dang it all to hell. I don't have time for this nonsense. I was all set to leave for work this morning, and as I tried to zip my coat, my damn left thumbnail popped off. I just applied them the other day and used the replacement nail I got last week.

I should have known better. It seems the first couple of times I use a new nail, I get some pop off troubles. Since there was no way in hell I'd be going anywhere with a naked finger, I hurried up and grabbed my glue and stuck it back on.

And now I'm sitting here at work looking at it, and I applied it a little bit crooked. Way to go, genius. Now I'm going to have to waste time when I get home at noon to soak it off properly, reapply it and then paint and stamp it so it matches the rest of them. Since I'll be in Illinois until Monday night, I highly doubt I'll have time to mess with them until at least Tuesday. 

Hopefully Kev won't be super annoyed that I'm slowing us down. Sheesh. 

All day yesterday I pondered what I'd want to look at for that many days. Of course that led me to doing something multi-chromey. Then I don't get so bored.

I'm completely kicking myself for not taking pics of this before I mucked it up with a stamp, but I just had other things to do. In fact, I didn't even realize what brand I had grabbed. It was a square bottle so I assumed it was Square Hue. Turns out it's Parrot Polish Arco Iris, and I'm really mad at myself for not realizing it.  The stamp design is from the Llarowe LLC-B plate.

 And now we are in the road, nail not redone. I tried to pry it off, and that sucker wouldn't budge! I guess they only come off when they make that decision on their own.

 I guess I'll just hope it stays put!

It is not easy finishing a blog post in a car from my phone. Just sayin`.

THE HOLIDAYS HAVE BEGUN

I don't know how your Thanksgiving went, but I won't need to eat again until Christmas. Between eating at my mom's yesterday and then heading over there tonight for leftovers, I am pretty much good to go for the next month.

Yes, I ate that much. And I have some salad and pie that I took home with me, too. Right now I'm miserable for the second night in a row. It's really not my fault, though. I was all finished eating, but there was stuffing sitting in the bowl right in front of my cleared plate, and I swear it was literally calling my name. So I went for seconds. If I hadn't done that, I'd probably not feel so crapalicious right now.

My plan for the rest of the weekend is nothing. Well, except for playing with the grandkid and grandpuppy.

Right now I'm wearing another snowflake mani, but I haven't even bothered taking pics yet. I really should probably do that soon because the tips are staring to wear.

This is one I did a couple of weeks ago.  This Above the Curve The Silence. It's gorgeous. Right now they don't seem to have this one, but they do have it here.

They do have a whole lot of other polishes that would be worth getting, though. I have several, and they are all gorg and have nice formulas. They also have a big sale going on at the moment so I recommend checking them out.

I had planned to stamp, but I thought it was necessary to show it all on its own first

I didn't want anything too shockingly obvious so I used Julep Farrah and the LeaLac LLC-B stamp.

I like how subtle this one turned out. It's like swirls of smoke over the dark.

Now I think I'll take a pic of my fingers and either decide what to paint or soak these suckers off and start from scratch. First I have to decide how ambitious I am and whether or not Zero will cooperate and let me do it. 

He's a puppy. I can't count on him just laying around for a couple of hours without getting into a wrestling match with his mom.

GARDENER? NOT SO MUCH.

Minor bitch today. Just a minor one. Why does it take forever to get anything done? Just trying to get workers scheduled to start things at the house is like a second job for Kevin. I feel like I'm constantly asking him to call so-and-so to find out if they ever plan on doing the work we contracted them to do.  As a matter of fact, even though the ship has long since sailed, we're still awaiting an estimate from one of the local companies that came out to check out the a/c and furnace replacement. Seriously? It's been over a month since they were there. It must be nice to be just so damn rich you can just not even bother.

Second minor bitch. Not really minor in my opinion, I guess. We're still waiting for the solution on the water issue. Over the weekend I found the very beginnings of a stain in my brand new toilet. I managed to get rid of it, but I was on the verge of either full-blown panic or a complete throw myself on the floor tantrum. And still, we wait. I'm so effing over it. You had no problem taking our damn money; just do your mother-effing job that you guaranteed you'd do.

Next up, gardening. Just kill me.  Or should I say, just watch me kill the plants. I'll finally be getting them planted, but it appears as though some of them are already failing. I swear I didn't do anything bad to them! My $40 Supertunia is fading fast. I spent some time this morning googling that shit to see what to do. I'm not sure if I learned anything or not. For regular Petunias I learned a lot about deadheading them. One would think the same method would apply to Supertunias, but everywhere I look it says they don't need it. Methinks I'm a-stopping at Shopko on my way home to buy gardening scissors. I'm gonna' deadhead that bitch; can't hurt it more than it already is, I guess.

On a brighter note, the deck has stairs, and it's awesome! Sometimes I forget and still jump off the side. There's no railings yet, but that will probs happen next week, although in my opinion, my pool needs to up first. For some reason Tinlee won't go down the one set of stairs. She's so comical. I did get her to come up that set of stairs before bed last night. I'll call that a win.

Also, my new bird bath came yesterday, and it is adorbs. It's got a solar powered fountain, so I'm excited to go home and see if it works properly. I have visions in my head of my little hummingbird friends frolicking in the fountain. Crossing my fingers on that one, although if it happens, I'm just going to have to put some kind of built in seat at the window by the kitchen sink because I'll never want to stop watching.

For today I figured I would show a mani that shows my green thumb. Apparently this is the only kind of green thumb I will ever be allowed to have.

I hadn't used any of the Color Club Halo Hues in quite awhile, and I do love this one, Angel Kiss. For the green stamping I used Barielle Date Night and the Llarowe LLC-B stamp.  I really like those Barielle polishes. They have a nice formula and stamp and water marble well.

Now it's about time to head on out of here. Off to buy the gardening shears and get to cutting. 

Wish me luck.