Manicure Monday
This is probably my one billionth pink glitter manicure. idk why I am so into pink glittery nails, but I am, so when I saw this Essie Luxe Effects ~multi dimentional~ top coat (tilde emphasis mine) I OBVIOUSLY had to have it. I didn’t want a repeat of last week’s Fresh Frog situation, so I rummaged through my collection to see if I could find a good pink to go under it. As it turns out, Quo by Orly in Twinkle Twinkle is perfecto!
I bought this colour a while ago but I’ve only used it in a pink/gold/neutral polka dot manicure before so I didn’t really have an opinion on it until. Like the other Quo by Orly polishes I’ve tried it went on nicely, had good coverage and dried quickly. I actually only needed one coat to get perfect coverage, which was great because I put three coats of glitter over it.
In semi-related news, I picked up this Burt’s Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream on a whim last month and it is my new favourite thing. I’m terrible about picking at my nails/cuticles all the time and constantly have gross infected hangnails, like on my index finger in the Fresh Frog post I linked to above. That picture is from the 23rd and the pictures in this post are from the 28th, and just look at that index finger! Totally healed and totally not gross anymore.
New Look for Pre-Spring
As I mentioned on Friday, I’ve been messing around with changing up the look of my blog. Nothing big, like no huge layout redesign or anything (PERISH THE THOUGHT), just a new header and buttons and whatnot. I finally finished individually placing every little tiny pennant yesterday afternoon, so here it is!
These colours together remind me of spring and Easter and basically every single piece of felt-tip marker art I made/letter I wrote in grades 4 through 7. Happy fun colourful bunting to get rid of these crummy winter blahs. In fact, I’ve had enough of winter, this is now pre-spring!
I also made coordinating images for the two facebook pages and my etsy shop, as well the contact buttons (I’m especially pleased with those), and I’m also considering making myself a new business card to match. I REALLY like this design, I think it’s really me. What do you all think?
I’m So Ashamed
I can’t believe I forgot this, but today (ok, maybe tomorrow) is Dougal’s birthday! I tried to take a nice birthday picture with him but he flailed around like an idiot and kicked me with like, fifty limbs so I let him go.
Scary stuff. Here he is as an adorable fat baby dog:
Okay, still a little scary. Anyway. HAPPY 8th BIRTHDAY, DOUGAL!
It’s For the Best
Last night all my feelings of sadness and trappedness and I-hate-my-jobness all came to a head in a fit of napping and weeping. After Taylor went to work I lay awake in bed feeling sorry for myself and planning out a big blog post about all the things that are bothering and upsetting me and why nothing can be done about any of it and blah blah blah. FUTILITY OF LIFE, basically. Anyway, then I fell asleep and when I woke up I’d forgotten Ev. Ruh. Thing. I was going to say.
So.
It’s probably for the best. No one wants to read that- even I don’t want to read that! I’m still having a crap year but OH WELL. It’s Friday night, I’m about to go get beer, and my banners were posted (featured?) on Bust.com today. WHO CAN COMPLAIN???? Not me, that’s for sure. Instead I spent all my free time today working on new headers and contact buttons and whatnot for all the pages in the Unicorn Parade empire. I’m not done yet (the ones that are up now are temporary) but the profile pictures for the facebook pages are SUPER SWEET. Here is the one for the blog’s page:
LOVE IT. So stuff can’t be all that bad, right? Right.
Dream Life Version Four
Usually when I make these posts it’s because I’ve been obsessing over real estate in North Vancouver. I mean, you can get a WHOLE HOUSE there for under a million dollars! AMAZING. Well this time it’s different- right now I’m obsessing over the Mount Pleasant/Main area of East Vancouver (for those who don’t know, East Vancouver is the east part of Vancouver, North Vancouver is a different city, a suburb of Vancouver).
There are a lot of cute/cool shops and restaurants (on Sunday Taylor and I had brunch at a place with MULTIPLE vegetarian options, I felt so spoiled) on Main, although I haven’t often gone out there because taking the bus is a hassle. With the new Canada Line train it’s a lot easier- there are a couple stops where you can just walk over to Main from Cambie. I like to walk on all the side streets and get into a jealous rage about WHY DON’T I HAVE A HOUSE HERE??? Oh, right, because I don’t have any money. There are houses for less than a million though. Like how great is this one???
DAT TURRET. Five bedrooms, three fireplaces, a master wing. SOMEONE BUY ME THIS RN. It’s actually a little further east than I like but whatever, I can live with it. $998,000 is less than a million, right?
Or house about renting a house? Only $2,200 a month for this charmer (not really that charming).
Since I can’t afford to buy or apparently even rent a house in the neighborhood I did the next best thing: I BOUGHT A TICKET IN A CHARITY HOME LOTTERY. The grand prize is 2.4 million dollars in cash (or gold, lol) OR a huge suburban mansion, OR a not-particularly-huge but still nice and well-located house right in the neighborhood I like (plus $200,000 and a couple cars).
The drawing is this Thursday and I’m using all my powers of positive thinking to try and win. Of course now that I’ve found that green turreted house I’ll have to decide if I want the prize home OR the cash. WOW MY LIFE IS SO HARD.
Busy Bee
Sooooooo I’ve been busy recently with all kindsa stuff, here’s a small update on a few things.
Crafts
One of the custom banners I sold during my CAT AID sale was this delightful gem.
Last week the woman who bought it posted it on tumblr and it got almsot 2,000 notes. The picture was reblogged by STFU Conservatives and people FREAKED OUT over it. My etsy was blowin’ up, by which I mean I sold two and lots of people added my shop to their favourites. I even got a hater on tumblr saying my work was overpriced and juvenile and everyone should just make it themselves, it’s so easy! lol, whateverrrrrrrrrr fool.
I’m also still working on my resolution to make non-custom banners and over the weekend I finished this one.
C.R.E.A.M. (Cats Rule Everything Around Me) in gold with the same printed cat paper on the back as I used on the Forever Alone banner everyone loves so much. And speaking of cats…
Claire
Last week I took Claire into the vet for a fructosamine test and guess what… she’s great! Her blood sugar levels are good, her diabetes is in control, and her insulin dose (which is HALF what it was before she went into the hospital) is keeping her that way. So like, TAKE THAT, random internet creep who thought I should just let her die/put her down. WHO’S DIGNIFIED NOW???
Life
Life is just happening all the time! Sym is awesome, the dogs are just so doggish all the time (so is Claire, actually), and Taylor is as handsome and amazing as ever. Even when I’m down they all make me feel so much better. I could say more about how much I love my little family but I would probably go on forever and I have to get back to work soon. But first, some fine pet pictures from my phone.
Enjoy the rest of your Monday!
Manicure Monday
I have been so insanely busy recently (more on that later) that I literally haven’t had the time to paint my nails. Last night I squeeze out a free minute and threw on a couple (okay, 27,000) coats of my newest polish.
OPI Fresh Frog of Bel Air
I was so into this colour when I originally say it that it pains me to say this, but I don’t love it. I mean it’s okay from afar but I’m close I’m not into it. I should have put it over another colour, but I don’t have a green that matches well enough with it, and I didn’t want to put it over black- although after I’d put on the first 3,000 coats I was looking at swatches of it online and I saw it over black and I loved it. OH WELL, I guess I’ll chalk this up as a learning experience.
Treat Yo Self 2012
Last Saturday Sym and I went out shopping and had a mini TREAT YO SELF DAY, except instead of fragrances, mimosas and fine leather goods, it was clothing basics, french fries and one ridiculous item each.
Sym needed some new jeans (in a shocking twist she chose skinny jeans, something she’s been adamantly opposed to for five years) and t-shirt, but what she was really excited about was this…. jumpsuit? onesie? idk what the scientific name is but she calls it her rapping outfit, and while she was trying it on in the change room she threw on her Tokidoki boots and floral fake Raybans and broke it down for me.
I got a bunch of plain, boring clothes- white tee, black leggings, grey tank, grey henley (remember in the summer when I was going to start wearing colours again? HAHAHAHAHAHA). It was all stuff I NEEDED (my old grey tank top had a hole right in the chest) but none of it was very fun. Then I found these Tom Haverford shoes at Winners.
AMAZING. I can’t wait until this godforsaken snow stops so I can wear them (yes, I’m over the snow already). I also found a bunch of OPI polishes from the Muppet collection there, so if you are in Vancouver and looking for discount glitter they have it. I got Fresh Frog of Bel Air, which is great because this is the one I really wanted; in fact, I had been planning to go buy a bottle at full price that day!
For us no trip to the mall is complete without a visit to New York Fries. Sym just gets plain fries but I always get the veggie works- fries with cheese sauce, sour cream, tomatoes and green onion. So delicious! It’s probably a good thing that I don’t go to the mall too often.
Winter Wonderland
This winter had been really unbelievably mild so far, so when I saw that the forecast for this past weekend was all snow snow snow I was a little excited. Unfortunately even though it snowed on Friday night and off and on Saturday, it was also very sunny and by Sunday morning all we had left was a few sad patches of snow.
Not very impressive. However, on Monday Mother Nature stepped up her game.
That’s more like it!! Of course I was working and couldn’t go out and enjoy it but Taylor and the dogs had fun.
It stopped snowing fairly quickly and by the afternoon it already looked mostly like that first picture again, but that didn’t stop every fool in the city from throwing giant handfuls of that horrible blue chemical salt stuff all over the place. That stuff is the worrrrrrrrst, it kills plants and is toxic for pets, I don’t see why people can’t just shovel their walks, especially since we only got like, AN INCH of snow! Two Christmases ago Taylor and I went to Kelowna to visit his family, and there is WAYYYY more snow up there than there ever is here, and yet NO ONE in his moms’ neighbourhood salts, the just shovel and deal with it. I wish people here would do that.
We put booties on the dogs every time we took them out but I still had to wash their little salted feet, and my hands got totally chapped raw just from pulling their boots on and off. In fact, even though I washed my hands every time, at some point I put my fingers in my mouth and I got total salt-mouth and now I have an ulcer on my tongue O___o So gross, and I’m probably poisoned and going to die now.
ANYWAY. At least Kichou enjoyed himself (he looks grumpy here but he’s THRILLED).