Claire's Claire's Claire's!!!

I have a couple NOTDs for you ... both from Claire's. First up, my first ever Skittle mani! I bought a cute little set of minis on clearance a week or so ago. It contained 7 little bottles of pastels and brights with monkeys on them. I thought they were no names until I noticed that each of them had different words with the monkey pictures.

Sweet: a bright pastel lemon creme
Superstar: a bright pastel lime creme
2 cute 4 words: bright pastel blue creme
Whatev: purple shimmer
Smile: dark red leaning pink shimmer
Not Monkeying Around: lightish orange creme
Play: bright pastel pink creme








I'm wearing from Thumb to Pinkie: Not Monkeying Around, 2 cute 4 words, Sweet, Whatev, and Superstar. Aren't they awesome?! They are all jellyish too, which makes them even more fun. All required 3 coats except for Sweet (yellow) which took 4.

I gave The Divine Miss M (that's my 6 year old daughter) a skittle mani with these colors. After seeing mine, I had no choice, lol! It wasn't a request, it was a demand!

The only thing different is that she's wearing Smile on her thumb. Neither of us chose Play, so that one isn't swatched. It's just your basic pink.

Here she is holding a couple of the bottles:



The next NOTD comes from my intrigue with the whole Chanel Jade craze. According to many other nail bloggers, Claire's Dreamcatcher is a near dupe, soooo ... for $4 I had to see what was up.








I don't have this one in natural light as the weather hasn't exactly cooperated. We've had just a little snow here in NJ over the last week ... you know, nothing real big, just about 2 feet! LOL! But anyway, the color shown is pretty accurate. It's maybe a little darker in real life. Here's a close up of the color:




I like the color, a minty/jade green with a subtle shimmer, but it's really nothing all that special in my opinion. Application on this one was trrrriiiiicckkkyyyy!!! Glumpy as all hell, thick and didn't spread on the nail very well (I wonder if a little thinner would help this??). I had to keep dipping the brush back into the polish several times per nail. It took me 3 coats to achieve some semblance of even coverage. It was a super slow drier as well. I let it dry (with a thick coat of SV) for over an hour before going to sleep, and I woke up with sheet marks. :( Anyway, based on pics I've seen of Chanel Jade, Dreamcatcher is VERY close. I wouldn't call it a dupe, as Dreamcatcher leans a bit more green while Jade is bluer, but it would satisfy a craving if you just haaad to have it.


Last but not least, here are a few pictures of our winter "wonderland" (which I would refer to as a nightmare, lol):







And a little kitty torture (don't worry, he was only out there for a minute or so) ...




Hope everyone has a good night!!

VS How Sweet!, no name minty green and Avon Peach Passion

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Here's what mine looked like ...

EEP!!!

I have a few NOTD's for you, as I've been painting, but not been able to spare enough time to put a posting together in a while.


First up, Avon Peach Passion!

Indoors

Outdoors, overcast :(

I really love Peach Passion. My pics are really subdued compared to the real color. Every light source I could find just washed this color out. The natural light pic is the most color accurate, but IRL Peach Passion is much brighter and pinker. Shown here is 2 coats over Essie Fill the Gap with SV topcoat. The formula applied well, nice and thin, albeit a little runny. With 2 coats, there was some obvious (to me) VNL, but I liked it that way. A third coat would have made this one completely opaque. My problem with the Avon polishes I've used so far is that they chip terribly. This mani lasted 2 days before it began flaking at the corners of my nails. *cry*


Next is a no name minty green from a Simple Pleasures set I picked up at Ross recently (I swatched an amazing jelly blue from the same set a week or so ago).



I didn't waste too much effort photographing this one because it was an absolute NIGHTMARE. Streaky, glumpy, the brush kept wiping the nail bare on the second stroke ... UGH! AWFUL. In this low light indoor pic it looks almost lime-ish, but it was definitely more minty. Either way, it doesn't matter. It SUCKED. I removed it immediately.


Finally, here is How Sweet! from the Victoria's Secret Beauty Rush line.


Another disappointment. *grumble* Shown is 3 coats over Essie FTG with SV topcoat in sunlight. The formula was thick and streaky and impossible. The color is REALLY pretty, a little cooler and crisper (think bubble gum or pepto bismol) than in the picture. Too bad the formula is BAAAAAD. It also chipped super fast. That weird spot on the tip of my ring finger happened in my sleep, and it was totally dry when I went to bed. FAIL. Ugh. I'm hesitant to try the 4 other colors I got from this line now. :( Oh, and the fat round cap combined with the stumpy brush made it very hard to handle as well.


Aaand, that's all I have to say about that! Check back soon because you will LOOOVE my next NOTD!!

The snow cometh ...

HAHA!!! They are calling for about TWO FEET of snow here, and this is after we already had about 18 inches the week before Christmas (plus the couple of times since that we've gotten 2-4 inches). I haven't seen this frequency or quantity of snow fall in New Jersey at ALL in the 11 years that I've lived here (well, except that one time when I was preggo with my 2nd--I think, might have been my 3rd--where we got about 2 feet, but that was only ONE instance). How exciting.

Anyway, I've been slacking on my task of keeping my home well stocked with items we use every day. You know ... bread and milk?? And WHAT does everyone do when a snow storm is coming?!? Run to the store for bread and milk!! HA! Awesome!! So, off Mr. Raz and I went, to the store of doooooooommmmmmm-uh! *queue doomie sounding music*


Mannnnnn ... what a MESS. They were out of the bread I like (at least I was able to find suitable HFCS free alternatives) and the deli counter line was 30 people deep! It took well over an hour to purchase: 1 pack of kaiser rolls, 4 loaves of bread (no, I'm not crazy, 1 whole grain for me, 2 white wheat for the kids and Mr. Raz, and since Mr. Raz was present, he had to have a loaf of pumpernickel rye that will prob end up going half eaten and get stale), 4 packages of assorted deli items, 1 can of cocoa mix, and 2 boxes of crackers. That was IT. AND!!! ANDDDDDD!!!! There was a guy 2 people ahead of me in the self check line that was trying to SCAN his bananas. SCAN!!! Honestly, in this day and age, if you don't know how to work the self check, go to a line with a human! And no, you don't have to have ever worked as a cashier to know how to use one of those things ... I never have. (/high falutin' rant)

We also ran to our obscenely named warehouse club (BJ's, teehee) ... store for milk, water, juice pouches (damn school v-day party, and they need everything by Monday, and I don't expect to be able to get to a store between now and Monday morning) and pizzas. It was busier than I'd ever seen it! Not unbearable though. We were in and out of there in about 20 min. Not that anyone cares, but I figured if I was going to say I needed milk at the beginning of the post and then have it look like I didn't actually get it ... yeah, soooo ....


Anywhooo ... grocery store = ridiculous mess. Oy.


And the most fun is that I have to work from 6 till 9 tonight. Ugh. DNW. AND, our brand new $1000 bed that is supposed to be delivered TOMORROW will have to be postponed to the end of next week. BOOO!!! My neck hurts so damn BAD! I NEEEED this beeedddddd!!! *grumble grumble*


I hate when I ramble like this because I never know when or how to end, soooo ...


THE END!


~raz

Snows Froze the Toes

So, my day started ordinarily enough ... me slapping my phone until the alarm went off every 10 minutes for an hour, then rolling out of bed and heading to the bathroom to shower and get ready for work. That's when it got interesting. I turned the shower knobs and nothing came out!! EEK!! WTF?!? Nothing came out of the sink faucet or the kitchen or the downstairs bathroom either.

It was then that I realized that we neglected to leave the water dripping throughout the house (it snowed yesterday, about 5 inches and temps were in the teens). Nooooo!!! Our pipes were frozen solid!!

Thus began the frenzy to alert my coworker and my boss that all was not well in the Casa de Raz. Boss ended up being in Pennsylvania helping a friend move, and of course coworker doesn't have a key to the store, so I had to scurry to find a place to shower and get to the mall to open my store. The only place to go is my sister-in-law's, and of course she was a church. Oy. What fun. I ended up getting in at 11:30 (supposed to be here by 11), and the mall is threatening to fine the store $500 for opening late. *eyeroll* I told them to suck it, I've never opened late EVER in the last 10 years!! Anyway ...

Mr. Raz got the water running, the point of freezation was in the garage (I have to LOL because firefox isn't underlining the word freezation ... tell me that's not a real word?!), and was remedied with a space heater and a blow dryer. Whew!

Sooo, here I am, stuck at work on a snow day, and my family is all having a blast sledding. Somehow, even though I am inside and wearing my snow boots (Raz has proclaimed this a casual day at this optical retail chain ... I dare you to contradict me), my toes are freezing cold. *cry*