The hubby and I had an opportunity to take a quick three night trip to Cancun - all we had to do was get ourselves there! Whoohoo! Since the hubby travels a lot for work, he had racked up some points and free nights with Hyatt that we needed to use by the end of September. After finding cheap-o flights on Frontier, we packed up our bags and went on our little adventure this past weekend to the Hyatt Zilara.
I spent my morning creating this super fun and easy Easter mani, but first, let me tell you a quick story....
I abruptly woke up at 7:30 this morning, in that jolt out of bed in a panic sort of way. I looked over at my phone, saw the time, and thought "dang it Katey, you overslept!". As you might remember, I struggle with mornings, and I was immediately overcome by this feeling of disappointment and dread. I wanted to go back to sleep...I wanted another hour. To add to the disappointment, I looked outside and there was snow on the ground. WHAT?!?! But Easter is coming up...and Easter means Spring!
Flash forward a minute, after my brain caught up and my vision was no longer blurry. I looked at my phone again. Wait a minute, IT'S SATURDAY! I'm not tired! It's Saturday! The extra hour no longer seemed necessary. My dread turned to excitement, and I hopped out of bed, joyfully bounced downstairs, and got my morning started with a cup of coffee. Time to seize the day! Anyone else know this feeling? I think it's one of the best ways to start your day, one of those great little surprises that life throws at you. And to top it all off, the sun came out and all of the snow was gone within a few hours. Hello Spring! Alright, now that I have that little story out of the way...I was in a such a great mood this morning, and decided that I wanted to get creative and give myself an Easter mani to sport for the holiday weekend. When I think of Easter, I immediately think of jelly beans. The hubby and I are huge fans of Starburst jelly beans, soooo yummy!
I took inspiration from these little jelly beans, with their assortment of colors and blob shapes, and created this super simple and festive Easter mani. I used a variation of the blobbicure technique that Petra over at Blingfinger recently used here and here. Instead of dropping blobs of polish onto wet nails, I just drew blobs onto my nails. Thanks for the inspiration!
The blobbicure is one of the easiest mani techniques around, and it looks awesome, too! In order to achieve this look, I started with two coats of OPI's Sweet Heart, a light neutral baby pink. Next, I chose five complimenting pastel polishes to use for my blobs and dots.
To create the blobs, all you need is the brush that your nail polish comes with - no special tools required! Just start at the corner of the tip of your nail and paint a rounded blob. Next, go down a bit on the opposite side of your nail and paint on another rounded blob. Finish off the nail by drawing a rounded blob towards the bottom of your nail. The blobs can be any shape, any size. They are blobs, so they definitely don't need to be perfect! Can I say "blob" one more time? BLOB.
To finish off the look, I used the bobbypin dot method to create a fun accent nail that incorporated all of the pastel colors on one nail. I randomly placed dots all over the nail on my ring finger, and I really like how it turned out. I think it helps to tie together the whole mani. This is seriously one of the easiest nail art designs I've ever attempted, and also one of my favorites!
What are your plans this Easter? Are you going to sport an Easter mani?
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you stop by often! Katey Today, I'm going to share OPI's Sweet Heart polish with you, and also give you a glimpse into my Valentine's Day extravaganza with the hubby. If you're here strictly for polish, skip down a bit. If you want a few laughs, keep reading. This is the story of a young, child-less, pet-less couple, and the "fly by the seat of your pants" Valentine's Day that transpired. The hubby and I have been together for 12 years! Yep! You read that right! Holy crap, right? I was just a kid when we met at 15. I mean, even I know that's ridiculously young! I'm pretty sure if I had a kid and they fell in love at 16 I'd freak out a little. (Sorry mom and dad for the added stress of raising a lovestruck teenage daughter - but at least it worked out!) :) Pretty soon, I will have spent more of my life with my hubby than without my hubby. CRAZY! I'm not complaining, though, he's a great catch and truly my best friend! So this Valentine's Day really was no different than any other for us. We didn't really have any concrete plans - we're both indecisive like that. We had talked about going out to dinner, but didn't book a reservation anywhere and I was still in my pj's at 4 p.m. It had been snowing all day, and we actually considered not doing anything. Man are we getting old or what? Then, in a stroke of genius, the hubby said "what if we booked a hotel downtown and went to dinner and the casino?". Did I mention genius? Hubby travels a lot for work, so he said he'd check and see if he could use "points" and score a free hotel downtown. And guess what? HE COULD! Yay, we aren't lame! We had Valentine's Day plans...well sort of. We had step 1 of a plan. Oh yes, before I go any further with my story, I should mention the beautiful roses that the hubster got me! Red roses - so pretty! And, he left me a little note saying that he wanted to get me some nail polish, but wasn't sure what to get and figured I'd like to pick it out myself, so he told me to go on a little shopping spree - SCORE! Back to the story... So around 4:15 pm, we officially had Valentine's Day plans. And it's a good thing! I was in a bit of a funk that day, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have brushed my hair or even put real clothes on if he hadn't had his stroke of genius. I can always count on him to turn things around! So, the plan was...we were going to get ready as fast as we could, and head downtown and check into the hotel. (If you're new around here, I mean downtown Cleveland when I say downtown. Browns, Cavs, Indians...that city.) Then, we'd stop by Greenhouse Tavern and see if they could sneak us in for an early dinner or get us into a cancelled reservation. Hubby had been looking forward to having a steak, which he had there once over the summer (the gravy fries are also out of this world!). We had convinced ourselves that other couples would fear the snow and cancel their reservation, and we'd swoop in, valiant heroes, and save the day by filling the now empty table (wishful thinking, right?) I think I got ready in about 30 minutes tops. I didn't even remember to pack the toothbrushes! I remember thinking "good thing we don't have a dog!" I literally went from scrubbing it in pj's to scrambling around like a mad woman, as if the Feds were after me and I needed to escape before they found me! I don't know why we were in such a hurry, but we were convinced that if we didn't leave as soon as possible, we'd be left eating McDonald's! Once we got downtown, we parked the car at the casino, then walked over to the hotel. If you're lucky enough to live in the arctic...errr...I mean Cleveland...you'll know that it was NEGATIVE 50 THOUSAND degrees this weekend. So, our walk was a bit...FREEZING! On our way to the hotel, we passed the restaurant we had our eye on, and decided to stop in and check if anyone had cancelled their reservation. The nice hostess told us "no", but we could sit at the chef's table if we wanted. We kindly declined...hubby and I didn't even have to verbally communicate with each other on that one. 1) Chef's table sounds fancy 2) Chef's table sounds expensive 3) No. We decided to check into the hotel and then we would head back to the restaurant and sit at the bar. We aren't fancy people and the bar suits us just fine. Two double beds...sweet. We got to the hotel, and they told us they were out of king beds, but we could have two double beds. How romantic! However, when we got up to our room, it was a king bed! Hubby thinks that the lady at the front desk "hooked us up", and I'm thinking it's a sign that luck is on our side. Millionaires in the making? Maybe the casino wants us to win tonight! We were in the room long enough to look at our view (another building), then rushed back out to the restaurant. This whole evening was truly a whirlwind for the first hour and a half! We arrived back at the restaurant and parked our butts at the bar. Last two seats - yes! Menus came, and the hubby began to look for his beloved steak. Only problem...it wasn't on the menu! Nooooo! There was a different steak, but it was $60 and not the one he wanted! We had eaten here before, but usually just shared some appetizers and got drinks, so we weren't totally familiar with the full dinner menu. Change of plans! Luckily, we hadn't ordered anything and had only been sitting for about 3 minutes, when we quietly snuck out of the restaurant for the 2nd time in a 1/2 hour. We giggled as we left - close one! Luckily, a little spot called Barrio was right near by, and the hubby and I had been wanting to try it, so we popped in. Tacos, salsa, chips, gaucamole, margaritas - it was perfect! I'm a huge fan of Mexican, so this was right up my alley. I ordered a blood orange margarita, and it was delicious! You can tell that they mix them fresh, and the blood orange was an unexpected, but delicious flavor! The night was coming together! As I mentioned, the hubby sent me on a little shopping spree to pick out some nail polish for myself, so after we got back home, I spent Sunday afternoon stopping in different stores to look at the nail polish selections. The problem was, I didn't have any specific polishes that I wanted (or too many that I wanted?), so I sort of felt overwhelmed by the whole thing. I didn't know what to pick! Can you relate? You've just been handed money and been told you can purchase whatever you want, but you suddenly become paralyzed and don't want to spend any of it for fear of "picking the wrong one"? I decided to only get a few, and then saved the rest of the money to get something in the future. Good life decision, Katey! Way to be responsible! One polish I did pick up was Sweet Heart, from OPI's Soft Shades collection. I really wanted a soft, neutral pink. I had been using Ballet Slippers by Essie, which I really love, but I've used it so much that the bottle is half way gone and it's starting to get goopy. The two colors are similar; however, I think Ballet Slippers has more of a crelly base, which is one of the reasons I loved it so much. I didn't want to get the same polish, though, since it is a little bit of a difficult polish to work with - enough of a reason to give something else a shot. We ordered chorizo queso, traditional guacamole, and pineapple guacamole as an appetizer, and 2 tacos each for dinner. All of the food was incredible! Note to self...don't get the spicy salsa on your taco next time. Mouth on fire! The atmosphere at the restaurant was fun, and turned out to be perfect for us. Not quite as fancy as we initially envisioned, but absolutely fantastic! We ended the night at the casino, and tested our luck at craps. We like to go to Vegas, so we called this our "practice run" for our upcoming trip this summer. Luck was on our side and we left the casino with more than we started with, which is always a good thing! The night was a success! I preferred the formula on Sweet Heart over Essie's Ballet Slippers. It was a little bit streaky on the first coat, and had a few bald spots, but I was able to cover that up in the 2nd and 3rd coats. The pictures here are 3 coats. I probably could have gotten away with 2 coats, but I saw a few spots that weren't so perfect so I put a 3rd layer on to cover those spots up. One thing to note - the pink is very soft. It almost blends in with my skin tone since I have such fair skin, but there is definitely pink in this, especially when you see it in person. I'm in love with this shade! I'm very happy with Sweet Hearts, and I'm glad it can be worn for any occasion. I had such a hard time doing a Valentine's Day mani this year that I wish I would have had this polish for Valentine's Day, instead of finding it the day after. I literally hated every mani I attempted and ended up wearing clear polish on Valentine's Day out of frustration. A simple polish like this would have done the trick! How did you spend your Valentine's Day?
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you stop by often! Katey What inspires you? Sometimes it's an object, a scene, a person...it can be anything. It can set your mood for the week, your style choices, and in my case, my manicures. For this mani, I was inspired by a drive along the Ohio/Indiana Turnpike, and the beautifully simplistic countryside that I passed along the way. Join me on my journey, and see how I used OPI's "San Tan-Tonio" to create this mani. The hubby and I celebrated New Year's Eve in South Bend, Indiana, visiting some of our very best friends that recently moved there. The 3 hour drive is almost entirely on the Ohio/Indiana Turnpike (literally all but about 10 minutes), and I spent a lot of time looking out my window. Let me show you what I saw... Now, this might impress you...It definitely impressed me! All of these scenic photos were taken using my Iphone while traveling 75 miles per hour in our car. I kept snapping away just hoping I'd get something that wasn't a total blurry mess, and I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome! Obviously, lighting wasn't ideal (it was a cloudy day), but throw on a few photo filters and I think I managed to capture the essence of the countryside. If nothing else, it will give you a sense of what I saw on that drive. I'm always amazed by how much of Ohio is rural farm country. Living in the suburbs of Cleveland, it's easy to forget that just a short trip beyond the shopping malls, you see farms, barns, and simplicity. For the past two weeks, I've been sporting some pretty hard core glitter manis in anticipation of the new year. After this trip, though...it's all about going back to the basics. I was inspired to take a look at the neutral nail polishes in my collection. I wanted rustic barns, horses, cows...well, not literally! But the inspiration was there. Here's a deeper look into what I came up with. To achieve this simple mani, I used OPI's "San Tan-Tonio". I'll be honest...I was nervous about this color at first. This is my first time wearing it. While I really like neutral colors, this one has much deeper brown tones to it than I'm used to for a neutral polish. It doesn't exactly scream "pick me!" when you see it in the bottle; however, I'm really happy with it. It's a soft tan creme polish, and the formula on this is awesome! When a polish has a high quality formula, the color itself becomes slightly less important to me because I'm won over by the ease of its application. It went on so smooth and looks very rich and creamy - I almost felt like I was putting chocolate milk on my nails! To spice this up a bit, I painted a small heart on my ring finger. Here's where those barns come into play. :) Since I wasn't looking to paint a barn on my finger, I chose a color in my collection that reminded me of the red tones I saw on the countryside. Introducing... OPI's "Lost on Lombard". I used a small nail art brush to paint on a cute little heart. It adds something interesting to the mani, but still keeps the look extremely simple. I typically paint my nail art facing out towards the tips of my nails, but there's something about hearts. I like to have them facing me, so that when I look down at my nails, I see the heart (and smile)! What neutral polishes do you like? Have you had one that pleasantly surprised you? Share your stories! I always like to hear about new polishes to try out.
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you stop by often! Katey 2015 is right around the corner... Do you know what mani you'll be sporting for the countdown? I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know that hubby and I had a great time, and felt very blessed to spend the holiday with the ones we love. I ate way too many Christmas cookies, per usual, and I still have a ton in my kitchen! On the plus side, though, hubby and I did make a trip to the gym yesterday (so I think I can eat a few more cookies today, right? Isn't that how it works?). I also enjoyed a tasty drink at my parents' house this holiday season that is always a special treat - a Moscow Mule! They had the fancy copper mugs and everything! Keep reading for the recipe. Another perk to the holidays...I received some new polishes to add to my collection (YAY!), including the one featured in today's post. I'm sporting "Wonderous Star" by OPI, from the 2013 Mariah Carey Holiday collection. This is the perfect New Year's Eve look - full of glitz and glitter! "Wonderous Star" is a clear polish packed with a ton of gold micro glitter, as well as small black matte hex glitters. Since the glitters are in a clear base, it takes a few coats to bring this to opacity. I used 3 coats, and although you can still see through to my nail in some spots, the intensity of the glitter and shine when you see this polish in person makes it look more opaque than it actually is. The gold glitter is a softer gold (not brassy), and looks silver in some lights - it has a really pretty effect! The black glitters in "Wonderous Star" make it look like you have tiny polka dots on your nails - it's a unique look! LOVE! I may try out a few more polishes before I decide on my New Year's mani, but this look is definitely the front runner at the moment! On my accent nail, I decided to first paint my nail black, then topped it with "Wonderous Star". At first, I left my nail solid black, but I decided it looked a little too harsh, so I added the glitter polish on top and I think it really softens the look. Now, I mentioned that we enjoyed some Moscow Mules this holiday season, and they were delish! There's something about that iconic copper mug that makes you feel all fancy when you're drinking it, and it keeps your drink really cold, so it's functional, too! This is another super easy drink to whip up! Hop on over here to learn how to make this vodka treat. (Side note - doesn't it look all pretty and festive in front of the tree?????) There's only a few days of 2014 left, so make the best of them, and get cracking on your "Countdown to 2015" mani's! Send me your New Year's Eve mani's on twitter at @KTVandie. I'd love to see them! Thanks for stopping by! I hope you stop by often!
Katey |
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