All grown up, my brave girl

Last night, The Divine Miss M was treated to dinner by her Nan as a belated birthday treat, and it just so happened that she chose a restaurant in the mall ... I also work in the mall, so I joined them when I got finished up. After our ice cream, we headed over to Claire's to see if they had anything good to spend her birthday gift card on. M immediately headed for the clip on earrings, because, at 7 years old, she had not yet worked up the nerve to have her ears pierced.

When I saw the price for the clip ons, I was appalled. $12 for 3 pair of crappy plastic 'lost in 5 minutes' clip on earrings is crazy! I couldn't, in good faith, let my poor daughter get hosed for that! Soooo, I said "Hey, I bet you can get your ears pierced for the same price as the bunch of clip on earrings you want! You could spend your bday money on that instead ..." She looked at me with eyes that showed the wheels churning in her head. "But it's going to hurt!" she said. "It's only a quick pinch, baby. I bet it hurts less than when I snag a tangle combing your hair," I replied. She said "Nah, " and shook her head.

THEN, Nanny came in the store (she had been at Hallmark). When she heard that I had suggested M get her ears pierced, she shrieked "M, baby, if you get your ears pierced tonight, I'll buy you any pair of earrings you want ..." I then said "I bet they have your birthstone ..."

I think we convinced her!

Click to enlarge to see her pretty purple tourmaline earrings! They didn't have pearl, her true birthstone, tourmaline is the alternate I guess. Once they heal enough to switch out the earrings, I'll get her pearls.


She didn't cry at all. The first ear, she had tears well up in her eyes, but I think it was more nerves than pain. The 2nd ear was easy peasy because she knew exactly what to expect. Within 2 minutes, she was skipping through the mall singing "It doesn't even hurt one bit!" That's my girl ...

Dollar Tree find: Maybelline Boot Leg

I'm kind of embarrassed to show these pictures because I've had this polish on since Saturday (so, as of today, 5 days), and it still looked pretty good this morning ... however, throughout the day, I got a ton of chips on my picture hand, lol! So I took some cruddy right hand pics tonight. *shrug*


So, this is one of the colors polish addicts have been scouring their dollar stores for, and I was lucky enough to find it last week! Woot!


True color was hard to capture on this one, at least under artificial light (I think it's just the nature of the purpley blue though, I haven't seen any color accurate pics elsewhere ...). Imagine a deep dusty blue with a vibrant purple flash loaded with silver shimmer ...



This one shows the purple off a little, aaand shows off my crooked middle finger. It was an owwie break. I'm working through it.


Can you tell I chew my thumbnail a little as a nervous habit? LOL



Ugh, hands are icky. Handwashing dishes + allergic to most lotions = dryyyyyy LOL! But let's talk about the polish. I used this over 2 coats of Essie Fill the Gap (don't want any stains! My niece's wedding is SATURDAY and she expects her bridesmaids to have sheer tips. Her auntie will comply even though it hurts ...), and topped it off with Seche Vite. So, what you see is 2 coats base, 2 coats color and 1 coat top. Boot Cut was THICK, but relatively easy to control. I had some glumpiness issues on the 2nd coat, and it was tricky wrapping my tips, but I managed. This wasn't going to dry all that well on it's own. You know how you can just TELL? Yeah. It was like that. However, after I added a thick coat of SV, it dried hard as a rock. Killer! All of these pics were taken on the FIFTH day of wear, and my 'hard on my nails' days are Sunday through Tuesday, so they took a beating. I am happy happy happy with the performance of this mani. I will definitely be scooping up a few more from this line (they had some bronzes I would have liked to have, just didn't have the muneez at the moment, so I'm going to go in with crossed fingers that the ones I wanted are still there tomorrow afternoon) if I can!

Anyway. It's 2:30 in the morning ... I just got finished baking The Divine Miss M's cupcakes because she was born this day at 6:54 PM 7 long years ago. *sheds tear* Tomorrow I'll have to devote a post to her to show you what I scored for the little lady off of FreeCycle tonight and what I found on my camera several weeks ago when I came home from work one night. It's so stinkin' cute, I guarantee you'll squee!

Night!