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. 

FULL NAIL WATER DECALS

Yesterday I took the hummingbird window feeders out of the closet. I debated whether or not I should hang them yet, but the migration map seems to show the little cuties showing up a little earlier than last year in some places. I decided I'd wash them and made up a batch of nectar for them. 

While that cooled down, I washed the windows and searched around the deck hoping I'd find the suction cup that went missing at the end of last summer. No luck there. Luckily when I bought my mom her first window feeder as a Christmas gift, I bought one for myself, too. I absolutely need to have three window feeders.

It was starting to get dark out when I finally filled them and hung them up. And so begins the obsessive window watching, waiting for my first sighting. One thing about having these feeders, I'm pretty sure I have spectacular peripheral vision. I see every little movement at those windows. I really hope the birds show up sooner than last year.

When I finished up with the pink flower nail foils, I decided to use a set of water decals that I bought many months ago.

I did one coat of Cult El Porto. The white base definitely was necessary to show off the decal colors. I was pretty happy with these decals. I've had them so long that I don't remember what website I bought them from. There was a bit of a learning curve, and I did manage to damage the first decal as I tried to move it around on my left thumb.

After making that mistake, I didn't really have any more problems. I found that as long as I didn't try to slide them around, it was very easy to lift them off to move them if I needed to. That was a good thing because the set came with exactly ten.

When I added topcoat, the excess decal that was hanging off the edge at the tip pretty much melted away, and cleanup around the rest of the nail went very easily using non-acetone.

I'm kind of obsessed with full coverage water decals right now. I'm looking forward to using some of the floral ones that I bought, but I need to wait until they get to me from Ali Express.

I think I left these on for 5 or 6 days, and I have to say they held up pretty well. It's fun to use something like these just to change things up once in awhile. Lately I've been uninspired when it comes to colors for stamping manicures. Having things like decals and foils to play with gives me a little bit of motivation.

What keeps you motivated when it comes to mani ideas? I see so many gorgeous, intricate stamping manicures, but some of them look like they took forever. Back when I first started doing my nails, it wouldn't have bothered me to spend all day doing something on my nails; now I just don't want anything I do to take that long.

I bought the Uber mat and have purchased plates that would be good for doing decals, but they are so involved. I made a half-assed attempt one night awhile back, but as soon as the decal dried, it curled up horribly and was unusable. I haven't tried since. 

Maybe this weekend I'll try again. So if you hear swearing and don't know where it's coming from, it'll probs be me.

DOGGY DECALS

Eight week old puppies are a ton of work. The end.

That being said, they're still cute. And since they are so cute, right when I decided to breed Tinlee, I also decided I should have nails that have Golden Retrievers on them.

Onto eBay I went in search of the perfect decals, and I found these little cuties.

I was really happy to not need a white base for these, and I went with OPI My Vampire is Buff which is my fave neutral and added some little hearts.

I much preferred these decals to the hummingbirds I used awhile back. Rather than needing to put them in water and then applying, I cut them, peeled off a plastic layer and pressed them right onto my nail. Then I put a drop of water on them, and the backing slid right off.  Some topcoat and done.

I was very surprised when I went to remove them last night. All of the polish and rhinestones were gone, and those little buggers were still stuck tight. Even using pure acetone took a little more effort than I expected. So I'm calling these a win.

I left them on for almost a week. Of course, lately I'm leaving everything on for at least that long. Right now I have just polish on. By the time I did a soakoff last night, it's all I had time for.

If I didn't work part-time, I'd never even get a blog post done, let alone nails.

Thanks a lot, puppies.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF FOIL

As if I wasn't already wasting a bunch of time with hummingbirds, now it's just become just a plain bird fascination in general. I'm like a crazy person, constantly going to the kitchen to look at the feeders and just standing there. My brain used to constantly thinking about nails; now it's focused on birds.

I'm not a gardener. Whatever the opposite of a gardener is, that would be me. I've never kept a plant alive for more than a month. My mom and sister are great; even my brother is. Evidently they scooped up all of the talent from that area of the gene pool. I got the looks and the brains instead. lol

I did decide, however, that my hummingbirds need flowers. Hopefully it will attract more of them as well as look pretty. I'm going to plant along the side of my garage which is under where my six feeders will be, and I need to plant more stuff along the front of the house. My daughter and hubby planted some a few years ago. And yes, I looked at them a few times so most of it is just dead stuff now.

Kev and I went to the greenhouse yesterday and spent close to $200 on flowers to plant. I even bought a pair of gardening gloves. I also got one huge Supertunia which I replanted in a large pot to put on the deck under my window feeder. The flowers are light and dark purple, and they are beautimous! It's too cold to plant the other stuff yet since.....wait for it....

....we might get snow tonight and tomorrow. Even I can't believe that. I'm calling bullshit. It's mid-May. Enough already!!

Last evening after dinner I was sitting in my recliner, constantly looking to the left at the kitchen feeder and then to the right at the picture window feeders. Quite a few times I'd have one boy on either side of the house. They always feed a lot before it gets dark out. I finally couldn't take it and went out on the deck to hold the feeder. When I first went out there were two flitting around the garage feeder. Then I heard one on my right, and a boy flew up close, then checked out the flowers and then left again without snacking from my feeder. I was freezing so I gave up for the night.

Or so I thought. I went back out about 20 minutes later, and my younger male came up, parked his cuteness and ate for a solid 3 minutes without moving. The wind was cold and my hands were going numb so I finally cleared my throat to get him to leave. It's just too much fun.

Over the years I've heard woodpeckers in the trees but have never actually seen one. I saw this weird big bird on the seed feeder. It was a woodpecker! Of course by the time I grabbed the damn camera he had flown up to the top of the utility pole. All I got was a fuzzy pic of his butt. This morning when I got up I looked out the window and that feeder was swaying like crazy! Lo and behold, the woodpecker was back! And once again that little shit took off before I could snap a picture. Annoying.

While I was making supper I did look out and see this little beauty. I've never seen one before, and I have two of them that are out there all the time now. I'm sure there are females of them out there, too, but as seems to always be the case, the females aren't cute.

How gorgeous is he?? While we immediately thought it was a bluebird, my more knowledgeable Facebook friends told me it's actually an Indigo Bunting. Never heard of it. Love it. He is amazing!

I also have a couple of these cute little chubsters hanging around that I've never seen before, White Crowned Sparrows.

So far I've seen two, and they'll both sit in that cedar forever. I never see them eat although judging from the bellies, they must.

Every day now I'm just expecting to see something I haven't seen before. I'm hoping for some more Cardinals or maybe some Orioles. I've never seen Orioles, but I know they're around here somewhere.

Awhile back I got some free nail foils from the Amazon seller I bought the foil topcoat from. While the application on this kind is nice and topcoat doesn't ruin them, I'm not really a fan. 

I think my issue with these is that you really need to put them over a white polish, and I'm really not a fan of white polish unless I'm using it to marble, gradient or stamp. The flutterbies are cute-ish, tho!

My work day ended at noon. The water softener lady is coming over to once again try to figure out why our system still isn't working properly. I'm so over it. If this goes on much longer, they're going to have to get that thing out of my house. And I know just the place they can move it to, although I'm not sure they'll appreciate my "suggestion".

Before that we'll have to go get Kev's car from the mechanic. His car is having some work done on the brakes. 

You know, because we haven't spent enough money in the past month.

HUMMINGBIRD FINGERS!!!!

Today I spent a whole bunch of time looking at my hummingbird pictures and videos. I just really miss that adorable chirping. I'm just dying for spring so they'll come back.

For months I've been thinking about getting a puppy pawprint tattoo on my foot, and today it occurred to me that maybe I'd also like a hummingbird tattoo. Why it took me this long to think of that brilliant idea is beyond me. 

Of course the first place I went was google to look for pictures. I know that I would want one that's tiny.  I have no tats now, and I'm certainly not gonna' get a nice big tramp stamp at my age. Lordie, that would be pretty effing hilarious, tho.  I also wouldn't want something big enough to give my mother cardiac arrest, although that is a distinct possibility no matter what size I get.  I've already been advised on many occasions that, a) I dress too young b) I should stop being blonde and c) at some point,  meaning SOON, I'm going to have to cut off my hair.  I never know quite what to say when she does that to me. It's not like these kind of convos are new, but I refuse to force myself into gumpsville. Ever.

So yeah, me getting any kind of tattoo might just push her over the edge.  Just one more thing in a very long list that she won't approve of.  So I'll be pondering that tattoo. I think it would be cute on the inside of my wrist, but I don't know if there's anyone around here I would trust to do a photo-realistic hummer that small. We shall see.

In the meantime, I decided I would settle on a hummingbird on my nails.  I bought my first water decals on eBay a few weeks ago. I've never used them before and have been hanging onto them until I'd actually be wearing them so they'd be seen.

Today I couldn't wait any longer. Since I didn't want to use them up, I opted for just doing one on each ring finger. Then I matched my other nails to the flower of the decal. 

I'm pretty happy with this. Really happy, actually.  I did ruin two decals in the process, but I still have enough left to do a complete set. And they were cheap so I'll probs buy some more. I'm thinking I might just get some Golden Retriever ones, too. Just for funsies.

My pink here is LA Colors Electric Charge. I can't remember ever using an LA Color to just do a normal paint job, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. For such a cheap polish its formula was great. I'm not even sure where I got this one. It was in my top drawer of pinks which means I got it way back when I first started doing my nails.

And that's my afternoon in a nutshell. Kev is on his way home so this evening will be spent getting caught up on our tv shows and discussing some things we're thinking of doing around the house. Fun things like a new furnace, water tank, etc. Actually, those aren't fun things at all. Just mother-effing expensive as hell things.  

I need my ship to come in or a money fairy to stop by. Soon.