HERE'S ANOTHER THREE

It's been a good last few days. I took Tinlee to her boyfriend's house on Friday and Sunday, and I'll take her one more time on Tuesday. It's a three hour drive to get there, so it is time consuming, but the drive isn't too bad.

I've enjoyed spending time with the owner of Copper, who is the father of Tinlee's last litter. They also have Copper's daddy, who is 14 and one of Copper's sons, who is 2 and gorgeous, just like Copper. Mary, the owner, is really fun to talk to. Her husband, John, is a cutie, too. I brought them some banana cake that I made last night. When I went inside to use the restroom before making the drive back home, he had already finished his piece. It's fun to bake when somebody appreciates it.

Saturday was spent taking pictures of the neighborhood birds. It was bird-crazy at my house for some reason. I even had a female Hairy Woodpecker on the feeder. I've never seen one on my feeder before. I also had some Cowbirds and a whole lot of Goldfinches. I also took a whole lot of pics of hummingbirds. Adjusting to using my new camera is proving to be challenging. It's so much bigger and clunkier that I just can't get to it as quickly as my old point and shoot. I hope I get better with it as the summer progresses.

Sunday for the first time I had a Rose Breasted Grosbeak on the feeder, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera because I had the wrong lens on it at the time.

This first mani is from March!!

The yellow is Milani Yellow Whiz, and the scrollwork is done with Mundo de Unas White and the Uber Chic 6-01 stamping plate.

This orange thing is what I had on Friday. The base is Essie Peach Side Babe, and it's stamped with MdU Orange and the Uber Chic 7-03 plate.

I like this green one more now that I look at it again. I used Glitter Gal No Worries and MdU Green. The design is from the Cooi 035 stamping plate that I got from Ali Express a few weeks ago. 

I really recommend wandering over there and getting these Cooi plates. I'm super happy with them and if they come out with more full coverage designs, I'll for sure buy them. I bought all of the ones they currently make. They also had some plates with smaller designs, but I didn't get those. I tend to only buy full coverage designs.

Truth be told, I really should just stop buying for awhile. I have so many plates now that it makes it even harder to decide on a design. Of course, I say that right after buying the latest Uber Chic 3 set.

I suck at not buying.

I ALWAYS FORGET!

This weekend's weather sucked! I got about two hours in the pool on Thursday, but the rest of the weekend was mostly cloudy. I have a feeling my pool days for the rest of the summer are numbered, probs in the single digits at this point. Of course, I can certainly hope for hot weather that lasts throughout September. I can dream, can't I?

The weekend was absolutely fantastic for Hummingbirds, though! They have all just been crazy busy at my feeders. I have an adult male that is being super mean to a younger male, though. I've never seen anything like it. All weekend long I watched him attack this poor bird. I got some great videos and some pretty great pics, too.

The fighting went on all day Friday. I'll give the younger guy credit, though. He never backed down or flew away. He just stuck to his spot, and when the bully would leave, the little guy just went right back to eating. 

After putting the crab ass on blast over in my Facebook Hummingbird groups, I snapped a pic of him. Sassy-pants stuck his tongue out at me.

On Saturday, they were right back at it. After a couple of hours, I guess the juvenile got tired of it because at one point as the bully was resting, the younger guy flew up and knocked him right off the feeder. 

I am now ass-less from laughing.

I also spent a whole lot of time sitting in my chair in the front yard feeding the little darlings. It was seriously crazy out there. If they weren't landing on my fingers to eat, they were dive-bombing each other right next to me. I even had two that were nice enough to share the feeder with one sitting on my left index finger and one sitting on my right. It was awesome.

Last night most of the action seemed to be taking place in the back yard for some reason, and I stood and watched from the doorway as they all played and chattered and jockeyed for feeder position. Finally I had to give in and go sit on the deck, risking getting nailed by one of those wasps that are residing under the siding, but I just couldn't resist. It was worth it. Even the douchebag from the other night landed and ate a couple of times.

I did manage to soak off my nails and reapply them on Saturday and finally painted them last night.

I started off with the lovely green holo, Milani Hi-Tech. Before I even started painting, I knew I'd want to get a picture of it on its own.

And then I went right ahead and stamped over it using Mundo de Unas Papyrus and my DRK-A stamping plate. So yup, I'm a complete airhead once again. You'll just have to take my word for it that Hi-Tech is super pretty all by its lonesome.

With that, here's hoping your week is wonderful!

TURNED OUT COOL!

Hey, ladies....and gents, too, I suppose, are your heels as in craptastic shape as mine? 

I'm not a feet fan, and certainly not of my own. After 55 years of avoiding their proper pampering, they are not exactly cute. My heels are rough as hell, and since  a)  I'm too cheap to go get a real pedi, and b) I don't like people playing with my feet, I've tried off and on to find something that I can do on my own to fix them.

Last year I discovered the Best Pedi Prep Ever from Julep, which is a roll-on solution that you let sit on your feet for a few minutes and then use a file to get rid of dry skin. It actually works quite well, and if I wasn't too lazy to keep up with it, it might have eliminated the issue.

But I am too lazy and don't really concern myself with my feet until summer hits and want to wear sandals. In the winter my feet are covered in my socks which are only off long enough to shower. 

So I had seen an add for the Amope foot file thingie on tv and decided that would be the next thing I try. I ordered it from Target. OMG. It works crazy good!! I used it once a couple of weeks ago, and it really made a difference. I did it for the second time last night. My heels are smooth. They are so smooth my damn feet are literally sliding around inside my socks. This smoothness is completely foreign to me. I'm already looking forward to wearing sandals.

Enough for the commercial that I'm not getting paid for.

I did manage a mani last night, and now I have a dilemma.

I have seen the different water marbles using hairspray or alcohol, some of which were for the look of turquoise.  Since I don't buy hairspray and didn't have a spray bottle lying around to put alcohol in, I didn't think I'd ever try this method.

Well, I found a little sample bottle of hairspray in the spare bathroom so I decided to try it.

I did two coats of Kleancolor Pastel Teal, and once that was dry I used saran wrap and dabbed on some spots of Milani Gold Dust. I did a coat of topcoat before I marbled. I put just one drop of Orly Liquid Vinyl in the water and after it spread, I sprayed it with hair spray. 

Holy coolness!! I was surprised at how easily it worked. My only complaint with the method was that after spraying it, then the polish wouldn't spread for the next finger. I managed to mostly solve that problem by kind of swiping the water with a cotton ball between fingers.

I only have this on my left hand right now, so now I have a decision to make. The plan was to do a few different mani's this weekend, and now I can't decide if I really want to take this off. Part of me wants to do the other hand and leave it on until Monday night.  The other part of me wants to take it off and do a striping tape mani I've got halfway planned in my head. Another part of me wants to play with some new stamping plates I just got from Ali Express.

Decisions, decisions!! I honestly do not know what I'm going to do.

Geez, it's a good thing there aren't any more parts of me.

THROW-AWAYS PART TWO

I'm bummed.  Someone was lined up to come and look at my car today, and I was really hoping it would get gone. Unfortunately, once they showed a picture of the Alero to their daughter, they found out she really wants a four door. Dammit to hell.

I'm a bit shocked that the car hasn't flown out of the garage. It's such a nice car, but I guess poor Kev isn't going to get his side of the garage back yet.

Right now I'm trying to motivate. I'm kind of doing this post because I'm stalling on doing a soakoff. I did manage to do some rearranging of my stash. I went out to the garage to grab a couple of my old plastic bins that used to store my stuff. One of them had several dried up dead spiders. SO gross!! I also heard some movement toward the back of the garage so I got the hell outta' there as quickly as I could. Mouse, squirrel, someone's cat, a bird.....I had no intention of finding out. 

I guess all I have left in my draft pile are these two. I have two others, but they are just plain polish photos. I'm not even sure why they're in there.

The nail decal thingie was originally done for Nail It mag, but I decided I didn't like it enough to submit it. 

This first one was another last minute mani I did. It's hideous, but it matched a spring sweater I wore to work. For the record, the sweater is not hideous.

I used Loreal Rendevous on this and stamped with Zoya Noot and the DRK-A stamp. 

Oh!! Speaking of stamps, I asked Llarowe if there were ever going to be any new LeaLac plates, and they said, yes!! I was so excited I almost peed myself. They are still my faves of all time because the images are so big.

On to the decal nonsense.  I know there are several different ways to do the decals, but this was the first time I tried them. I think the pics are pretty self-explanatory on what I did.

 

After I stamped the pattern from the DRK-A plate on the plastic and it had dried, I used Square Hue Ocean Drive and High School Crush, Milani Yellow Whiz and Salon Perfect Bellini to fill in the flowers. I just used a dotting tool to do that.

Once it was all dry, I peeled them off, cut them and then stuck them on and topcoated.

Technically it's a success. I just think it's kind of ugly. I wish I had used different colors. I'm sure at some point I'll try this again, possibly with the same design. It's just kind of time consuming and lately it seems I have been doing things that go more quickly.

I suppose now that I've finished this I should get off my arse and get these nails off. I wish I had done it yesterday. I considered doing them last night, but it was already 10:30 so I thought it was too late to start.

When I went to bed at 4 a.m., I was kicking myself because if I'd known I was going to be stupid and stay up that late, I would have had plenty of time to get it done. One more time where I just didn't think. 

Am I old enough now where I can use that as an excuse?

IT'S A "KATHY" MANI

Today I finally completed the refinishing of all of the wood cabinets in the bathroom. Thank God. Now I just need to wait for Kev to be home so he can remove the sink so I can start refinishing the countertop. I'm so excited to do that part and kiss that blue goodbye.

I also spent a good part of my day bird watching. I'm now officially obsessed with cardinals, and they are apparently obsessed with hanging out on the railing of my deck. Which is fine with me because I get good pictures. 

When I was sneaking up to the door to snap pics one time today, the momma' was directly in front of me on the railing. I glance to the left, and there are two goldfinches perched on my shephard's hook. What the what?? I'm not sure why my deck area is bird heaven this summer, and I've never even been a fan of birds, but I am completely enjoying this. So before I show you my "Kathy Mani", here's a couple of my birds. :)

S

 

 

For whatever reason I guess my pics are all weirdly sized, probs because I crop them to get closer shots. Oh, well. Sorry.

Anywho, here's my mani, dubbed a "Kathy Mani" because this is totes the kind of thing she would do, and not so much the kind of thing I usually do. But I likey.

I did this using Colour Gossip Nature Girl, stamped the daisies with my LeaLac LLC-A plate and Konad white, and did the yellow centers with a dotting tool and Milani Yellow Whiz. 

I had never heard of Colour Gossip until I saw them on Instagram, and they sent me a sample. Nice, right? It came yesterday, I swatched it, and it is really nice polish. It goes on like a damn dream. I had looked at Colour Gossip a couple of weeks ago and love their colors.  Consider me a fan.

I'm going to assume you're tired of this post now, so I'll just let it be done.

 

TIME FOR BED, DAMMIT!!!

Ahhhh, Monday. You can suck it. I just don't see a reason for you to even exist. If only I could just sleep through it because my ass was dragging today for some reason.

Holy shizballs!! We just got insurance info for my 6 hour hospital stint: over $3,000!! Unbelievable. $69 for "after hours", $53 for the x-ray, and I would love to know what the rest of that bill breaks down into. All they did was put Prilosec and Nexium in an IV and give me that godawful "cocktail" to drink. That's IT!! I wonder what it would have cost if they had actually had to DO something!!

I'm really struggling with inspiration lately. I spend hours wandering around just trying to find something to do. Do you all have that happen; where no matter what you see you just don't know what mani to do?? Hate it when I really am in the mood to do my nails but not in the mood to even do an MSMD, let alone something original. Maybe it's spring fever....or the basic lack of spring, that's doing it to me. Having it snow in the middle of May is not conducive to a good mood.

One of my honorary daughters came to visit tonight, which I always love. She is simply the sweetest, and I adore her....I wish she was actually mine. Feels like she is.  She brought me a Mother's Day present....five nail polishes, and not a single one that I already have, which is pretty remarkable! Of course I immediately had to use one for a mani.

This is Milani Gold Dust. It took three coats to get the coverage I wanted, but it's really a pretty muted gold shimmer. I struggled with an idea to go along with this and decided I'd try one in a dark burgandy. The first one I grabbed was an unnamed Color Club which I stamped with a design off of the DRK-A stamping plate. Done deal. 

I'm glad it went easily because I had actually done almost an entire mani before she came over that simply was not turning out like it looked in my head. I was more than happy to remove it. lol

Sorry so late tonight, but Jackie is much more important than a mani. :)