Summer Confetti Nails! (Tutorial w/pics)

Today I'm going to do a post that shows how to do a cute, easy and summery dotted manicure. I call it "Confetti Nails" (hopefully for obvious reasons):

This is the finished product! (Taken the last time I did this mani, last summer.)

But first:

Rumour has it that you can even use straight acetone from a
hardware store, but I've never been that desperate...

An important message about nail polish remover:

Acetone is your friend. It is the single most important thing to consider in a remover. If you don't have a good, acetone-based remover, doing your nails will be a painful and heartbreaking chore.

This is a picture of the remover I use, which I love sooo much that I bought a big 5-gallon jug of it, and just refill this little bottle when needed. You can only get it at Sally Beauty, and the big jug is about $27.

I have tried many drug store brands and, for me, they were all crap. If you find nail polish difficult to remove, and/or your fingers are stained afterwards, you are probably using Sally Hansen or Quo from Shoppers, and you are causing yourself a world of unnecessary pain. Good remover makes all the difference. Seriously.


Now for the NAILS!

What you will need:

Obviously, you are free to use whatever the hell colours you want!

• Orly Au Champagne: a nice pearl-ized white with a bit of shimmer
• Essie Mod Square (pink)
• Sally Hansen Lightening (yellow)
• Essie Bazooka (orange)
• Seche basecoat
• Essie Good-to-Go topcoat
• Dotting tool set
• Cotton balls and remover to clean dotting tools between uses
• Wax paper: palette for polishes

If you don't have a dotting tool set yet, be sure to check this out:

Super deal tool set, wish I needed this so I could buy it... 

$16, ships free within Canada. This site is my  number one place for polish and supplies, can't recommend them enough...

Sorry to anyone whose aesthetic senses are offended by my lack of fastidiousness.

STEP ONE:

Apply quick dry base, then 2 or 3 coats of the Orly.

Note my lack of cuticle concern. Know what my secret to cleaning them is? I DON'T! Just leave it be for 12-24 hours, and you can pick, peel, or let the edges fall off naturally. 

Less is more: a lesson I continue to struggle with.

STEP TWO:

Add pink dots! You should probably do one or two fewer dots of each colour than I did. I would have preferred the final product to be a little less crowded...but I'm not picky enough to go back and redo it.

The secret is to try to control yourself. I have problems with this often. :S

STEP THREE:

Add orange dots. For each colour, I used 3 sizes of dotting tool. I did the big ones first on all 10 fingers, then went back and did the medium ones, followed by the tiny ones last.

STEP FOUR: 

You guessed it! Add yellow dots!!!

Finish it off with 2 coats of a quick-dry topcoat, and you're DONE!

Yeah, so 4 hours after originally posting this to the blog, I realize
that this is actually the same picture that is beside Step 4 up there. :/

TA - DAAAA!!!

...and don't let those messy cuticles get you down, they'll be gone soon enough.

Now get pickin'!

Do you have a favourite manicure tool? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading!! xoxo

Ambrosia Salad! (w/ pics!)

Yesterday was the year-end department party, a family swimming and BBQ event hosted by Harry and Lisa at their awesome house.

Everybody signed up to bring something to the event. I chose to make the easiest, most delicious, and healthiest (erm...) salad: AMBROSIA!

If you have never had it, ambrosia salad is a dessert fruit salad created by simply mashing a pile of sweet things into a bowl, then freezing it overnight. Despite its Ancient Greek name, it did not appear in American cookbooks until the late 19th century, possibly due to the rise in popularity of coconut at this time. (Seriously, I looked that up. Apparently coconut was big with the Industrial Revolution crowd. Who knew?) It seems like a kind of retro-dessert now, one that would fit right in on a table alongside Jello molds and celery with Cheez-Wiz. That's what I like best about it! (Also that it is yum x10).

Here is how to make the best salad ever:

Take about half a thing of Cool Whip...

(Mmmm...oily!)











Mix it with about half a cup of sour cream...

(Mmmm...creamy!)

Add in a can of drained tiny mandarins...

(Exotic Far East!)

Followed by a can of drained, crushed pineapple...

(Tropical!)









...and a bag of coconut. (Double tropical!)







Mix that all together, then fold in...


...a bag of marshmallows! (I like the rainbow kind.)







To finish off the perfect salad, garnish with pretty maraschino cherries!

Finally, stick the whole thing in the fridge for 6+ hours (overnight is ideal), and everyone will go mental for your awesome salad.




Here's the finished product:

Ta Daaaa! Delicious and (not really) nutritious!

I actually saw a recipe where the person who posted it claimed it was a good way to get children to eat fruit. Seriously.

What is your favourite thing to bring to a BBQ pot-luck? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading!! xoxo 

Deck Planters: Then and Now w/pics

Deck Planters - 6-week Update w/pics

Okay! Today I want to do a blog where I compare what my plants and flowers look like now, as compared to when I put them in on Saturday, May 4, a mere 6 1/2 weeks ago. I just love to look at then-and-now pics, especially when the then is so close to the now, and the results are sooo drastic!

Heeman's: The best nursery and strawberry farm!

We had a really early run of super-nice weather, so Dyl and I took a trip out to Heeman's, and spent about $60 for our annual plants and flowers. Usually I wouldn't plant them till closer to the end of May, and there were 4 nights when I had to haul them inside so the frost would not bite. Anyway, let's start on the downstairs deck:

NB: I forgot how to watermark, despite the fact that I did it like 3 days ago! Ugh. I just spent about half an hour trying to figure it out again, but I can't find the helpful web page I used before. :(  If anybody knows of a way to save a watermark, and easily click it onto each photo, using any app that runs on Chrome, PLEASE fill me in via the comments...I am LAZY, don't like to have to do each photo on its own. [Infomercial voice] There's *got* to be a better way! Let's be honest, though: NOBODY is stealing my plant pics. I can deal with that.

First up: SAGE!

This is what it looked like when I planted it. I've learned that even though things look sparse, if you overplant they will eventually explode and look disgusting.

And here it is today! Healthy and pretty (just like Rocky). It looks like it won't overspill the planter, unlike some of its compadres, which I will post below...








Secondly, my favourite herb planter!

My friend Valorie gave me this planter. I have no idea where to get one, so please stop asking. Valorie retired a couple of years ago, and she is a true gardening wizard (no, that doesn't mean she works at Garden Hogwarts, but I wish...)

Here it is today!! The basil on top seems healthy, despite a touch-and-go period when I made it stay outside on a frost warning evening. You can see that the cilantro, so tiny in the lower right-side well above, is making a play for planter-world dominance. It might have a pretty good chance, too, except that Dylan is a cilantro-phile, and is raiding it nightly.



Okay, I'm going to play around with some collage apps for the next few. Sorry for the inconsistency in design. Let's just say the blog is still in Beta, so I can get away with this. Someday I might find it embarrassing...

Valorie loves to order me fancy plants from the internet! Did I mention she's the best former-boss ever? This is a Lesbos Basil that she gave me 2 years ago. It stays out all summer, then comes onto the kitchen window sill for the winter. I can make new basils from it by cutting bits off and putting them in water til they sprout roots. I made a baby from it that is featured below.

This poor sucker got caught outside during a storm, and started growing sideways for some reason. Its will to live is extraordinary, I guess, cause those leaves are coming in bright and robust.

MMMmmmmm...I've been up here on the deck for almost 2 hours! Getting a little drunk off these white wine spritzers...

Basil and Cilantro are Friends!

On the left is the baby basil that I made from the original above. It actually seems to be in better health than its mom. Guess I neglected to get an early pic of these two crazy pals, but they are almost my favourite herbs on the deck, so they still get a pic!

I don't know what kind of flowers these are, but look how pretty they growed up! I like that they're all different colours, but also all pretty colours, no effing beige ones. Those are the worst.



















The next batch is various planters on the upstairs deck, where the sun shines hot allllll day! These are all decorative annuals, but effed if I know what any of them actually are:

These ones I always over-plant. They just look so sparse and lonely at first! BUT... they turn into...

Whoa! Look how big they got!!!

I sure hope they don't gain sentience before the frost sets in!


















I've saved my two favourites for last.

These are peppers and tomatoes. Look how small and cute they are!

Not quite as small, but still pretty cute 48 days later!



Tons of flowers and fruit coming in, too...

This planter is my favourite. I always give it the nicest, sunniest spot, on the prettiest part of the deck, with the best view of the ravine. I put the healthiest specimens of tomatoes in it, and...

...it just grows and grows and grows...tons of tomatoes, lots of love to share.

This one is sucking up a ton of water each night, too, probably about a liter+ every day.

Well, that's my garden blog entry! What are you planting this year, and how is it growing so far? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading!! xoxo

Summer Stripes Nails II

This is my attempt at a stripey-neon mani, first posted by the Sally Beauty Nail Blog found here:

Sally Beauty Blog

It came out a little messier than I'd really like, but you only notice that in close-up, like for pictures on blogs etc. (Ugh.) Just looking at them from a foot or two away, it looks pretty cool.

This is a pretty easy mani. The hardest part about it was putting the watermark on the pic. I will get better at that, hopefully. I am just not that much of a perfectionist to go back and re-watermark an original copy. I think it looks okay, right?

Here are the steps to achieve this look:

1. Base coat (I like Seche Vite Base).
2. Paint each nail to opaque with a variety of fun colours: remember that neons can sometimes take up to 4 coats to get rid of that pesky white nail line! *hint: do not go right to the cuticle or edge with these colours, or they might show through after you put the white coat on.
3. Top coat! I like Sally Hansen Good-to-Go for mid-mani top-coats: it is thin and dries super-fast.
4. After about an hour, once you've let that top coat get good and hard, get out your striping tape! Using sharp scissors to cut and tweezers for positioning, lay the tape in a design you like over the first nail.
5. Once the tape is positioned, use a nice thick white polish to cover up the nail and tape. Make sure the white is thick enough so you don't see the colour beneath it.
6. Using your trusty tweezers, quickly remove the tape at a 90 degree angle to your nail. Fast and smooth and straight up, while the white is still fresh and wet.
7. Carefully move on and do the same for each remaining nail. Plop on a big ol' layer of Seche Vite or Poshe quick-dry top coat, being careful not to put too much pressure and smudge the white. (I waited ~ 30 minutes between hands to avoid ruining the one I did first.)
8. Do one more top coat if you want your nails to feel smooth instead of lumpy! If you like lumpy nails, that's your thing, I guess. Personally, lumpy nails are my nails on a chalkboard. *ick*

* Aesthetic consideration: I made all the stripes diagonal, and tried to focus/anchor them on the top 1/3 of the nail bed. Hopefully this creates some level of continuity in an otherwise varied design.

What's on your nails this week? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading!! xoxo