Painting

While we're tackling painting a guest room (trim and walls), painting stair risers and painting a credenza I bought at the thrift store for my husband's office, this post is about another kind of painting -- painting finger nails with nail polish!

I follow a lot of blogs, mostly about decorating and DIY, but I have a nail polish blog that I follow: More Nail Polish.  I also see some great polish colors and trendy styles on, where else, Pinterest! They got me motivated to make an effort to get my nails longer and polish them with some of the trendy styles I've seen on her blog and on Pinterest.  As a girl that rarely painted her nails, I tested the theory that keeping them painted helps them grow! My nails are weak, thin and brittle.

This past Fall, I bought a Living Social deal to a natural nail clinic, Atir. I also learned some things from the manicurist. You CAN file off those ridges. I thought it was really bad for you nails to file the tops, but with the right file (a very, very fine one) you can file the ridges. She compared it to giving yourself a facial scrub. You sloth off dead skin cells from your body and filing the tops of your nails is similar. You should only file the tops every 10-14 days. She also said that you should also always have something on your nails. Whether it's a ridge filler, base coat, top coat, or a full out base, color, top coat, your nails need a protective layer, like keeping your car waxed. Keeping a protective coat keeps them from breaking at the slightest impact. It also DOES allow them to grow longer due to the added protection. Here are some instagram pictures I've had over the last 6 or so months of trying to have nicer looking hands!



Funky French Manicure



VT Hokie Tribute




Steeler Nation Funky French with Accent Nail

Candy Corn for Halloween






Gray with Glitter Accent Nail



Nude with gold glitter polish and Seche's Collage Overlay which
has white large hexes and smaller holographic hexes and rectangular confetti

 Now if I could just make sure I fit in an actual cuticle maintenance in between some of the polish changes! Just ignore that little detail in the pictures please!

Favorite Halloween Decorating Ideas (a post from Halloween past)

Udpate: This is a post from October 2010. There were so many really creative and festive Halloween posts back then. This year I didn't seem to find as many ideas as I did back then. I think maybe people spend more time pinning ideas on Pinterest. Regardless, in decorating for Halloween this year I still found these inspirational so I thought I'd repost with updated links. I hope to take some pictures of my own Halloween decor to post - we got NONE last year {the 1st year in our new house}. Anyway, Sandy kind of pushed that back and forced us to take down a few decorations outside. We'll put them back up tonight and hopefully get a few shots before it gets too dark.
Enjoy! I still do!!
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There have been so many awesome Halloween posts by a TON of bloggers, both that I frequent and have recently found by link parties (and now follow!). In trying to imagine a convenient way to save my favorite Halloween decorating posts, it dawned on me to simply do a post on my blog. That also gives them a few more shout outs (you know, because I get so. much. traffic.) while giving them street cred for anything I might try in my own home. DISCLAIMER: As more and more are posted, this may not actually be a Top Ten, but many, many more! And feel free to let me know if you've seen any that you've loved!

In the meantime, here are my favs and Happy Halloween!! Come back for pictures of our decorating after we make some final attempts tonight.

See, I've already added more (AND MORE). And if you haven't checked out the link parties I've joined over the last 2 weeks, you should. There's just too many creative, great projects to list here!
19. Dream Home DIY for the Spooky Halloween Candleabra.
18. Create One Day In the Future for the spooky messages created on upcycled 'bath' blocks. Now private17. Muse Lodge for the super cool "Bloody Mess" wax paper project. I just HAVE to try this over the weekend!16. Fiddle Dee Dee for all the chic halloween decor. Now Private15. Young House Love for the Puffy Paint Pumpkins. (Come on, you knew it was just a matter of time before they made it to my list!!)14. Straight Stitches for the crafty use of 'useless' vases we all know we have.
12. Mod Vintage Life for her spooky mantel
11. Centsational Girl for the awesome mantel.

AND ALSO, peruse most of these sites for even more super creative Halloween decor. Truly Amazing and Fun Ideas!!



10. Craftily Ever After for the Halloween and Twilight versions of the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' art (there are 3 of them and downloadable on her site).
9. Everything I Love and More for the DIYed candy corn holders. (and her glitter pumpkins) The link now goes to a newer blog with no info on past posts if it is the same person!
8. Life in Rehab for the ghostly sconces.
7. Every Day is Crafting Day for the Floating Ghost
6. Red Heads Craft More Fun for the Day of the Dead wedding couple
5. Life in Rehab for a great purple & green skeleton wreath
4. Centsational Girl for the ghoulish wine & beer labels
3. Design Love for the PB inspired, Rockin' Mantle
2. The Autocrat for the Alfred Hitchcock Tablescape
1. Cul-de-Sac Chic for the Witch and Cats Yard Decor.

Please Vote for Me!

Imagine my surprise this morning when I saw that LambAround nominated one of my posts for her Best In Show award!! Get out! And get this, out of 122 link-ups, my Kitchen post made it into her Top 10. I am very excited. And in perfect time since we finished the last of the grouting of our backsplash on Saturday. So I'll do an update later this week.

Could you take a minute to head over to her site and vote for my post?

Here's the link: http://lambaround.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-hop-linky-time.html

The vote poll is on the right. THANKS!

What She Said...

My friend Carol over at The Antique Texan wrote the most profound words. They moved me to share them here as well. Take a look here.

I just found out this AM about the death of bin laden and I was so happy. On the radio was much happiness in the report and it cut to the people outside the White House singing and chants of U-S-A! in the stands at the Phillies game. I haven't had much time to read articles on the major news sites today, but it is so concerning to me that there may be AMERICANS badmouthing any part of what went down. Have you forgotten the images of that day in September 10 years ago? If so you should go back and take a look. They are etched in my memories forever.

An Award? Really?

Imagine my surprise when my slack arse got a note from the most awesome Carol over at The Antique Texan telling me she awarded me with the Stylish Blogger Award! I have been seeing this award all over the Blogisphere so I'm very honored that girlfriend awarded this to me and I'm now in the mix with Carol and other very inspiring bloggers! Truly astonished!

Carol's blog is one that I follow and check in on every day. Carol is classy, witty, bright and generous with a huge heart. She is truly one of my closest and oldest blog friends and if ever I had the chance to meet face to face over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, I bet it would be like I've known her for-evah. SO THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU CAROL!!

So, here's the lay of the land, or the accepting of the award in this case:
A. Thank and link back to the person that awarded you or me in this case. (above)
B. Share seven things about you.
C. Pay it forward to 15 (or so) recently discovered bloggers (I'm going recently discovered by ME b/c some have been around for longer.)
D. Contact those bloggers about the award!

B. Share: I found this part very difficult as I'm not really a 'share-er'. OK, that's total BS, if anything I probably over share. I'm just not that interesting. But here is my attempt at wowing you with trivia of me:

• I have been in my house for 12 almost 13 years now and if there was such a thing for me as a home pc, blogs or digital cameras back then, well, let's just say I could have led the charge in the whole DIY Single Female Blog genre.



• I am a dancer at heart, though not by body or willingness to be totally poor. I cry at EVERY. EPISODE. of So You Think You Can Dance and it literally hurts when I think that my years of dancing on a stage are long over.



• I am lucky to have been born skinny (though I'm totally average now), because I LOVE. FOOD. and do not think I would have ever had the will power to diet.



• I dream OFTEN of winning the lottery and thinking of all the good we could do and all the fun we could have if jobs and money were no longer 'worries'.



• I'm a girly girl, loving fashion, can't shop enough, love skincare, won't go without a pedi (but for winter to give the toes a rest from the polish).



• But I LOVE football and sports. I love college football and the NFL, I play co-ed 2-hand touch football in Spring & Fall.



• I have not just 1-2 besties, but a mob of 10-12 of close girlfriends! And they are ALL. AWESOME. And we have all been friends for over 10 years, most meeting during our post-college years here in RVA (and celebrated & mourned many, many things over those years).

C. Pay forward. While this should have been easy, Carol also loves SEVEN of the same blogs I love and would have awarded AND then I looked at some of my other favorites to ensure they had not already received the award.

Life at Chateau Whitman

Russet Street Reno

iheartmini

Dream Home DIY

This Fresh Fossil

Muse Lodge

Life and Love at Leadora

My Busy Craft Life

La Vie Quotdienne

Cul-de-Sac Chic

Our Humble A{Bowe}d

Pregnant with Power Tools

The Yellow Front Door

The Nest on the Hill

(I did check a month's worth of your posts, so if you've already received this award my apologies, let me know!)

D. Now that I'm finally done with all of these challenging things, I'm off to contact these lovely blogs. If they are new to you, please check them out. They're talented and worthy.

Finding Fabulous at CSN Stores - Part Duex

Incidentally, it was completely unintentional to make this a 2-part ridiculousness. However, it's true when I said I was tired of shopping and I looked at so many pages on CSN that I had to close out of Explorer about 5 times during one of my explorations. (I think part of that was perhaps more like overwhelmed on the decision making process versus all the possibilities.) The other biggie was just not being very good at blog know-how (like positioning pictures).

SO, without further ado, on Thursday I took a stroll with refreshed eye, down the Lighting aisles. I think I found a new love for lamps and I definitely think that an entire room could be build around a beautiful lamp. Here are just a few of my findings.







Prices on the lamps above were: 1st row: $637.60, 368, 2nd row: $99, 164.70 & 3rd row: $558, 217.55

WOW. A lot of pricey lamps, but they are more like works of art. My favorites ended up being from Robert Abbey, Lite Source and LumiSource.

I also loved this one and if it had been in green I would have been in trouble, because at $191.40 each that's way out of the price range for bedside lamps.




Then I ran across this one and it is the very one I used in this moodboard. It's only $35.66 but since it is for a future room and really doesn't match anywhere in our house right now, I'll have to table it as a future purchase.




The price range for a lamp search ranged between $9 - 37, 814. Of course I had to see the lamp that costs as much as a car. Hmmm, definitely cool, but great enough to warrant that price tag? It must be the brand, but I don't know much about lamp brands. Shoes, now that's another story.





Once I looked at my office moodboard, a light went off in my head. I LOVE the look of a world globe in an office. I know we definitely will have this in a home office someday but there is definitely a place in our house NOW where we can put one (like in our current home office/guest room/everything room). So I did a search for globes under Decorative Items & Home Accents and JACKPOT. I probably spent over an hour researching all the choices that were available around the $40 gift certificate. However, since I was already in the home decor area because the globes reside there, I OF COURSE looked around in candles, vases, and all things home decor that make one happy!

Here were a few things of interest I found under Vases, Statues & Figurines, and Candles & Candle holders:



Kokoware bowl $58.65, Blomus candles, set of 3 $61.01





Zodax Medium, Set of 2 $49 (add the small set of 2 and large set of 2 pictured for $39 & $59, respectively.) I guess if you wanted the look in the picture and had a friend that liked them also, y'all could order them and split them...

LazySusan Prickly Eggs, $32 small, $64 medium, $80 large (I do LOVE these but that's quite a price tag if you purchase all 3!)

There are so many great home decor items out there, but I narrowed down a few names that kept popping up in the various departments that had really cool style: LazySusan, Kokoware, Blomus, ZACK, Zodax and CAKE to name a few. Why name any? Because with over 1000 choices for candles, figurines and vases and over 600 choices for decorative bowls, you should narrow it down somehow!

As I realigned my focus to the globes that I originally went searching for, imagine my excitement when CSN had a whole aisle dedicated to just globes, all 327 of them with prices ranging from $5 to $8089! I knew I wanted it to be larger than 10" and I knew I did not want one that stands on the floor. I also knew I wanted one that had a metal or wood stand and axis, no plastic here.

For S#*ts & Giggles, here is the $8089 version which measures like a medium sized desk and weighs in at 65 lbs!






At first I really wanted one that is tan in color and this one fit the bill coming in at 12" and costing $48.99.





But when I found this one I knew I could live with the blue. This one has the metal stand, 12" diameter, rings in at $52.25, but also illuminates in the dark to show the celestial skies. That may sound random & corny to some, but my husband is into constellations and the solar system and even has a high-powered telescope which will no doubt be part of the future office decor. {Sidenote: Don't go classifying him as 'dork' b/c he was an ultimate frisbee player in college. Yes, the opposite side of the spectrum from dork!}








Whew! After weeks and days of shopping, I have finally found my treasure. I've ordered the Celestial Globe for our home office. When I came up with my office moodboard, I did start shopping around for globes. I found them easily enough at Walmart, Homegoods and even one on Craigslist. They were all in the $30+ range. So for $12.25 ($52.25 - $40 gift cert), I definitely got the best deal around!

Also, since I HATE paying shipping, I theorized that the $9.99 that I would have paid in shipping (free ship starts at $69) could go towards the 18-piece Pyrex Storage set that I mentioned in Part 1 of this post. Those are $29.99, less the $9.99 saved on shipping, so I'm essesntially paying $20 for something I would eventually buy anyway (and I don't have to waste my time going to buy them). To further justify to myself the extra item in my cart, the current price on the 14-piece Pyrex set is $29.99 at our registry store. Therefore, I'm getting 2 more bowls and lids & saving $9.99!! Double Score.

So there you have it. A short story about shopping made into a very long mini-series story. But it was so much fun looking around the site. Thanks again to Sunny over at Life in Rehab and CSN Stores for the gift certificate. I really like the store and I'm sure I'll pop back over there for other house decorating items! If you haven't witnessed it enough through my TWO posts about it, it really is a one stop shopping experience.

Finding Fabulous at CSN Stores - Part 1

In the last few days (ok past 2 weeks) I have been shopping around CSN Store's website in an attempt to pick out something fabulous with my gift certificate, which you can read ALL about here and here. I thought about the current projects on my To-Do List and started at the very top. Go Big or Go Home, as they say.

I REALLY want to update our bedroom so I looked at bedding and found these.

Our bedroom is Laura Ashley Olive (4 with 3 & 5 on mantel and ceiling trim) and our bathroom is Behr Chocolate Cupcake. Either of these would perfectly update our bedroom which currently has purple hydrangea bedding (a hand-me-down from my mom which used to coordinate with my purple bathroom). The husband moved into my house and we updated the bathroom to 'man it up' but haven't touched the bedroom except to update my 17" flatscreen to his 40" flatscreen. But I digress.... At $319 and $270 for the comforter, dust ruffle and shams alone, I better keep looking.

After I came back to my senses, I got a little more practical. I love neat & organized, so I went over to Storage & Organization and thought about having each one of these items in our house.

Our hamper sits in our bathroom for all to see.

Not a biggie but what if I made it match the room more? ($36.26)
Or what if I could get D to not only put his dirties in the hamper but sort them while he's at it! The Honey Can Do Folding Hamper for $19.99. Less work on me....

Hmm, both possibilities, but boring. I know.

Then I shifted my focus out of the master bed+bath and explored kitchen ideas. John & Sherry have some great space saving ideas when it comes to food storage. So I immediately thought of this post and #2 in this post when I saw the Zevro Triple Wall Mount Dispenser ($34.95) and thought this would be a fun and funky addition to our kitchen:

Then I focused on "What do we really need" and the canister thoughts disapated. D is recently concerned about using plastic in the mircowave and our rubbermaid sets are starting to look, well plain 'ol gross. (That was one of the few things we didn't get from our registry so they're all quite old.) So I found these glass storage containers, which would allow us to combine the storage container cabinet with the glass cookware/storage cabinet.
Pyrex 18 piece set ($29.95) Hmmm, definitely a possibility.
But these are oh so cute AND have a lid organizer. Fresh Keeper 31 piece food storage set ($25.53) I don't whole heartedly buy into the plastics and mircowave thing, so these could be a possibility as well.

I really want one of these. Not for me but for the prince of the house. Less work for me, yes, but not fun enough to even make the cut. In fact, somewhat unrelated to buying something for the home which was my very first inspiration when I started shopping. This shows at least how thorough I have been in looking around CSN and how easily I get off subject.


Two trips ago, our zipper on our suitcase broke. So don't think that I didn't take a stroll through the Luggage Department for some hip new luggage. But, I think American Tourister has a lifetime warranty. I just need to figure out how to work that. I also checked out the Shoes and the Handbags while I was there.

Mind you, all of my strolling took closer to 3 than 2 weeks. At some point you just get worn out and have to stop for the day (you know, to go home at the end of your WORK DAYS) and come back with a fresh eye. I took a break between Luggage, Shoes and Handbags and the Lighting Department and I'm very glad I did. I hope you will too.

Stay tuned for Part 2, which was totally unintentional. I don't think I've ever said it before and my mom would be in shock, but: "I'm really tired of shopping right now!"

Life in Rehab giveaway

So one of my regularly stalked blog friends, Sunny over at Life in Rehab is having a giveway - a gift certificate from CSN Stores! I found her blog thru another friend's and read from start to finish in 2 days (while at work - opps). She is creative and funny and a truly bright personality. Check out the giveaway by clicking here, but peruse her site while there, as there are so many very creative projects, and if you like spray paint, well you have GOT to bookmark her site.