CANCUN MANI #1

Oh, it is soooo damp and gloomy today!! As if being November isn't already depressing enough. It makes the 50 degree weather seem much colder than it should. I'm going to try to just be happy it's 50 and not 30 out there.

I made a discovery on my way home yesterday. I knew that my car was hands free for phone use, not that I ever talk on the phone while driving. If it wasn't for Kev calling me almost every night when he's working, I can seriously go for weeks without ever actually using the damn thing to talk. It doesn't seem that long ago that I said I'd never use texting. Sha', right. Now if I hear a text come in and can't get to my phone immediately, it literally makes me anxious. I don't know what I think I might be missing, but it bothers me. It also bothers me if someone doesn't respond to one of my texts within the first 5 minutes. Yes, I know it's ridiculous.

Anywho, when I got in the car, I hit the bluetooth on my phone so it would connect and discovered that not only can I make and answer calls, I can actually talk to my car and make it do stuff!! Like change the radio station, the temp, the fan speed and I'm not even sure what else. I changed the fan speed 3 times on my way to work just for shits and giggles. I am easily amused. I would say it's sad to be so lazy that you can't change the heat by yourself, but I guess it's not a bad idea because I don't have to take my eyes off the road to do it. 

I wonder if it can have dinner ready and my house cleaned before I make it home.

Here's the mani I did before heading off to Cancun last month.

It's always hard to pick something to do when I'm leaving town. God forbid I decide I hate it once we leave! The light purple here is Orly Harmonious Mess, and I used the LeaLac LLC-A plate with Sinful Colors Nouveau Purple for the stamp.

I did do a different mani mid-way through the trip, but I wish I would have just left this one for the whole week. I never really get tired of purple and wasn't all that pleased with what I did after taking this off.

Too funny. I wrote the first part of this post before lunch. I must have spoken too soon because right when I left for lunch hour, I pulled away and my phone rang while I was driving. So I did actually use the hands free for phone talking! I have to say I kind of liked it!  LOL
 
I am so glad this day is almost over and tomorrow is a day off. Maybe if I sleep in a little later I can shake this headache. I am so over it and so over how it's affecting my mood.

Color me cranky.

PINK/GREY, ALWAYS A GOOD COMBO

Happy Monday!

Just kidding.....Mondays blow.

I woke with a headache, which I do every day, but ever since we got home from Cancun, my headaches have been a lot worse and more stubborn when it comes to getting rid of them. That means I'm taking more Excedrin Migraine than I should. Actually I'm not supposed to take any aspirin products, but that is honestly the best drug ever for headaches.  With any luck, the amount I've needed as of late won't cause my ulcers to kick back in. Can't win. Headaches or ulcers. Too fun!!

The weekend was fun because I had Razzie with me. What a sweet, well-behaved puppy he is. From what I've seen and heard, the entire litter are doing fantastic in their fur-ever homes, which makes me incredibly happy. They are all smart, spoiled and well loved, which is as it should be. I'm so thankful to have constant contact with everybody. I still miss them so much, but it's nice knowing I will get to watch them grow up and even get to see some of them from time to time.

On a completely unrelated topic, do any of you believe in ghosts? And if you do, are you of the opinion that orbs that show up in photographs are indications of same? 

I do believe in ghosts for several reasons that I won't bother getting into, but I have never been one to subscribe to the notion that orbs are always an indication of them. On the rare occasion that I've ever seen them in pics, I figure they are dust or bugs.

That being said, my daughter was at Universal in Florida last week and went to the Halloween Horror Nights thing they do every year, and she posted this pic on Facebook. It's a pic of her with her new boyfriend(s).

Don't know what that is, but it didn't show up in any other pics I saw. Kind of an interesting pic, right? 

I got my Julep Maven box over the weekend and am really pleased with the colors. One of the things I like about Julep is the fact that every month on the 20th I can see what's going to be sent and either change it or skip the month. You can also cancel at anytime. I'm a big fan of their polish formula.

I've also gotten a few of their other beauty products and found them to be awesome, especially their pedi prep and file and the glycolic hand scrub. I also have their roll on cuticle oil that I carry in my purse. It works great if you use it, which for some reason I have been neglecting lately.  If you follow the link, you can join and get your first box free using the code FREEFALL.

I decided to use a couple of Juleps for last night's mani.

I haven't bought any new grey polishes for awhile. The pic isn't showing this because of the lighting and the stamp, but this grey has a bit of a pink shimmer in it....really pretty!  The grey is Julep Devon. I knew I wanted to stamp with pink because I love a grey/pink combo and decided to go with  Julep  Maria for that. It made for great coverage over the grey using the MoYou Pro XL10 stamping plate.

I'm a fan of this one. I considered leaving on the Halloween mani just so I could say it left the house, but it somehow just seemed wrong to do that.

And although I started this post around 9:30 a.m., it's now 5:30 p.m. which pretty much proves that I worked today. Now I'm sitting here debating on whether or not to leave this one on or try to find something else to do.

Or mabes I'll just take a nap. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate doing 5 days' worth of work in the 2.5 days a week I now work?  If not, I'm mentioning it now. I hate it. It makes me tired.
 

MY NOD TO HALLOWEEN

Since it's 2 a.m., it's technically Halloween. This won't be a long post; it's simply for purposes of Halloween.

First, a complete VOTD. Or VO-Yesterday. Whatever. It's a vent.

Last night I settled in with what I thought was a foolproof plan for a fairly quick Halloween mani that I would actually wear out of the house. Mummy nails the water marble way. I'm good at water marbles, right? Should be a cinch.

I found the polishes I wanted and off I went. I marbled 'em all, and they looked really nice.  As a marble. As mummies, not so much.

And then being the genius that I am, not only did I not take a picture of that nice water marble, I took it off, painted my  nails blue and called it a night.

I went to bed pissed.

So the plan for today was work, clean the house, make supper, do Halloween nails. And that's exactly what I did. 

I'm not the least bit excited by these, but at least I can say I did a manicure for Halloween.  Cuz' I'm cool like that.

This is a gradient using (light to dark) Essie Rock the Boat, China Glaze Secret Peri-Winkle and Maybelline Color Show Blue Freeze. Then I used Julep Ledi for the black stamping. The graveyard is off of Messy Mansion's HD04 stamping plate, and the little bats are from the Bundlemonster BM213 plate.  As an afterthought I decided to slap on a bit of Orly Shine On Crazy Diamond to add a bit of twinkle to the night sky.

I'm assuming this will be on for a few days. Razzie will be here for some puppy fun this weekend, so at this point I'm just hoping to get this off before work on Monday, at which point it will be too late to be sporting a graveyard on my nails.

Happy Halloween!!!

FOILED AGAIN AND A WIN!

Geez, in all the rambling about the new car in yesterday's post, I forgot to share something else fun!

Kev and I love going to the casino. Unfortunately this is not usually a good thing. But because I'm a horrible person, I planted the idea in his head last Thursday night, and since he is also a horrible person, he agreed to go instead of telling me to shut the hell up.

So off we went at about 10 p.m. We like going later in the evening when it's not so busy. Of course, because I'm a girl, I have a fave slot machine that I can sit at for hours if it's giving me something to play with.  Sometimes it even does well. Thursday night, not so much.

So after letting that suck some money out of my hands, I wandered over to a set of penny progressives that Kev likes to play. He has won the progressive jackpot on it twice over the years. It's never a huge amount. It is pennies, after all.  Those machines traditionally hate me. But I was pouting over my other machine sucking so I sat down and stuck in 20 bucks. It was cruising along pretty nicely, and within a few minutes I had accumulated 100 bucks. Sweet. That's my magic cash out number, so I did that and stuck the slip in my purse.

Then I put in another 20 which got me nowhere in a hurry, but I figured I'd give it another 20 just to see what it would do. And in case you haven't guessed the end of this story, I won the progressive jackpot to the tune of just over $1,800. Sweetness!!

From there I went and stuck that $100 slip into the machine that earlier hated me, and it had changed its mind. I'd put in $100 and cash out $200. Lather, rinse, repeat, and I cashed in $1,000 worth of slips on that.

In the meantime, Kev had been playing all over the casino and was doing pretty well, too. As I was wrapping it up on my machine, Kev was playing $1 Wheel of Fortune slots. These also traditionally hate me and never let me spin the wheel.  Since it was time to head home, I joined him over there, played two machines and lost $200. Oh, well....it was profit money so it wasn't quite so painful. Still pissed me off, though. The machine Kev was playing was doing all right. Once he decided he was done and wanted to leave, I told him I wanted to throw $100 in it.  Cut to a half hour later, and I had racked up another $600 to take home. 

All in all, a pretty damn good night. It's fun (and rare) to walk out of there with that kind of profit, but it sure felt good!

Sorry I ranted on about that, but I couldn't help myself. I still get excited thinking about winning that progressive.

I'm also looking forward to a fun-filled weekend. I posted on my ex sister-in-law's Facebook wall to ask if I could steal Razzie for a few hours or a weekend to puppysit, and she is dropping him off Friday afternoon for me to play with until Sunday afternoon. How awesome is she!!

So I get to look at this little face for three glorious days.

It's going to be awesome!

Of course, it also means that doing nails will probs be out of the question. Puppies don't care if nails are wet and are also more than happy to knock shit over.  But puppies still trump nails.

Last weekend I thought maybe I'd do some foils. They aren't something I even think of usually, but I was looking through some of my stuff and ran across these.

These went on like a dream on top of a basecoat of China Glaze Agent Lavender. I used a topcoat I bought on Amazon and was going to post a link to it, but it's currently unavailable. I left a question to the seller because I'm hoping she is going to sell it again. It's still the best thing I've found for foil topcoating.

This foil probably would have been fine with regular topcoat. It's really only the shiny foils I ever seem to have an issue with.

I liked this one. It looked better in person, and I wore it for a few days and had no issues with wear at all.

I'm hoping maybe tonight I'll motivate and try to do something Halloweenie. Of course, I say that now while I'm sitting at work; that nail motivation may have died by the time I get home.

And yes, Halloweenie is a word.

NOT REALLY FLAMES

Last Wednesday we went off to Marquette to pick up my car. It's a beauty, and I love it! I wasn't kidding when I said it would take forever to learn how to use everything. It's ridiculous.

It didn't occur to me that it would take over 3 hours to wrap it up and leave the dealership. Not only did it take awhile to do paperwork, once that was all finished they actually do a "lesson" on all of the gadgets in it. I just sat in the back seat and let Kev pay attention. 

That might have been a mistake. It took me a good 5 minutes on Thursday morning just to figure out the heat.

It has a push button start which is pretty cool.  What is not cool is driving it to the store after work, parking and going in to shop and then coming out to find the car running with the doors unlocked. I completely forgot to push the button and turn it off. Thankfully I live in an area where car thefts are extremely rare. I still can't believe I did that. Needless to say, I'm being extra careful about that now!

The other night I was at a loss for what to do on my nails. Why I eventually decided on this is anybody's guess. It kind of turned out looking like flames although that wasn't really my intention.

I used Square Hue Scorched Summer for the main color and then used a nail art brush to slap on Kleancolor in Metallic Red, Orange and Yellow.

I do like how it turned out. I'm really not sure what I was thinking it would look like. I've just been struggling to feel creative.

It really is time to do some Halloween mani's. I've pulled all of my Halloween stamping plates out, but so far that's as far as I've gotten. I keep looking at them just hoping some kind of idea will hit me. Unfortunately none of them are doing it for me, and time's running out! At this rate I'll end up doing one that never leaves the house.

It's one of the drawbacks of only working a couple of days a week now. I take the time to do nails that only I see. Makes me kind of sad.

ORANGES PORANGES....WHO SAID?

Does the title of this post mean anything to anybody, or am I just really that old?  Even though I hated the show, for some reason this song from HR Puff-n-Stuff that was sung by Witchie-Poo has been stuck in my head forever. OMG, that show really sucked balls. I shudder at the thought of it.

Lordie, and from there my brain went to The Banana Splits.  Somebody shoot me.

I'm pretty excited today. A couple of months ago we decided it was time for me to get a new vehicle.  I've been driving my current vehicle for 11 years. That's a record for me. I've always been pretty spoiled and have never owned a car for more than 3 years. Thank you, leasing. My current car we purchased, and I have to say I have enjoyed not having a car payment, but I am so ready for something new!

I've been in love with my daughter's Subaru Tribeca ever since she got it. Just for kicks last fall when we had gone out of town to my shoulder doctor, we had stopped and looked. It was then that we decided we liked the Outback better; a bit less expensive and better gas mileage. We also decided it would be a good idea to wait. Our brains actually worked for once and logic made an appearance.

We've been kicking the idea around ever since. Driving the Alero in the winter is not pleasant. Kev always lets me take over his Equinox in the winter which leaves him traveling the two hours on wintery roads to get to work. Since he is now going to be moving up to a bigger plane and will make a smidge more money, we decided to bite the bullet. So off he went in July to find me my dream Outback. It was such a dream that they actually had to custom order it. I guess the pearl white ones with all the good stuff are hard to find. We've been waiting ever since and thought it was supposed to get here next week, but it's here a week early. 

When I drive home from work today, that will probs be the very last time I drive my little red Alero. This does actually make me kind of sad. I've loved that car. So much so that it was my second one. I owned the 2000 version of it, exact same color and options as the one I have now. I still look at it when it's outside and think it's cute. If they still made it, I probably would have bought it again.  I'll just have to force myself to drive the brand-spanking-new Outback. Poor me.

I am so far behind on blog posts that this is a mani I seriously do not remember doing.  That probably means I did it in July when I was brain dead. Or maybe in August when I was brain dead. Whatever.

It is very orange. Very. 

I actually  like it. I wonder if I liked it when I did it. Sad that I can't remember. Thankfully I did at least write down what I used so I must have had one working brain cell.  The gradient was done with Sinful Colors Cream Soda, Julep Gloria and Loreal Precious Coral. I stamped on it with the AliExpress 12-51 stamp using China Glaze Drive.

So yup....very orange.

I am wearing a mani now that I did on Sunday night, and I actually  might do my nails again tonight! I think that's going to be the fewest days I've worn a mani since July. 

Maybe I really am going to get back into the swing of things.

SOOOO FAR BEHIND

What a last few months it has been. It has easily been the busiest summer I can ever remember having. 

For a lazy person, that kinda' sucks. I'm a relatively lazy person. I'm thinking life will be back to my completely normal, uneventful manner starting Monday.

In actuality, I'm not really complaining. How could I complain about living with puppy cuteness (and the mess) for over three months. And how could I complain about spending a week in Cancun? (more on that later because I can)

Also, after missing the puppies for a bit, Tyler came home for a weekend, bringing Griffin and Zero with her, so I got a puppy fix last weekend. Oh, lordie....that pup is hell on wheels! She has her hands full. Griffin is madly in love with him and according to Tyler, every day he says he is so happy to have a dog now. He stayed at his other grandma's while Zero stayed here, and when he got back to my house the following day, you'd have thought he hadn't seen his dog in a month. He sat on the floor and held him and kissed him and just kept saying "awww" over and over again. Ridiculously cute.

I could really inundate you with the 8,000 pictures I took of the two of them, but I'll just do these three, at least for today. The shot with him in orange I got a bunch of other shots because he spent 15 minutes on the floor with him, and Zero got at least 50 kisses. Baylee walked up on that, and he told her to go away. When Tinlee went and stood by them, she got kisses, too. He still wants to steal Tinlee from me.

Once they left on Sunday I had a few quiet days where I got caught up on cleaning and laundry. Then on Thursday afternoon I got one of the other pups, Seven, to puppysit for the weekend.  She's asleep under my kitchen table right now. She is an absolute gem, very cuddly and quiet and well-behaved. She even goes and scratches at the screen door to go out to potty so we haven't had a single accident. She's amazing.

I also took 8,000 pics of her. And the weekend isn't even over yet.

In the midst of all the busy, I have managed to do my nails quite a few times. I just haven't had the time to just sit and do a post. In fact, I have a few where I didn't even remember to take note of what I actually used. Sheesh.

I did take note of this one, and it doesn't even have a name. It's a Color Zone yellow. The stamp was done with Sinful Colors Black on Black and the DRK-A plate.

I love the combo. I hate that it's kind of smeary. Normally I may have tried to re-do some of them to see if I could get them a little more clear, but re-do's have not been on my agenda.

With any luck, I can go back to my lazy life where I sit in front of the tv and do nails. Blog posting regularly would be nice, too. I do find that it was so much easier to blog when I worked full-time. Now that I only work part-time, I actually have to work the entire time I'm there. 

It's awful!! I wasn't aware people really did that.