Phases.

Hello everyone!

I don't know about all of you, but I am not a consistent person. There are times when I get alllll motivated and excited to start a new routine or venture. The first couple of days or weeks are awesome and go well and then I just.... regress back to my lazy normal routine. Let me give you a few examples:

1. Running: I hate running. Hate it. I find it boring and I can't run very far without feeling like I'm going to die and generally it is not my idea of a good time. I have heard so many times that everyone hates running at first and you just have to suck it up and get into a routine, and eventually the enjoyment will come. Well let me tell you, I have tried. My most recent foray lasted three weeks, where I ran three times a week for about 20 minutes at a time. I did notice some improvement in my endurance, but GOD I hated it. Maybe I just need a running partner for motivation but ugh. I hate running.

2. This blog: Ever since I was little I have kept a journal intermittently. I would get a shiny new one and couldn't wait to fill its pages, but then I would get overwhelmed because I would feel like I needed to write down literally everything that happened to me. So I would write for a couple of weeks and then eventually just forget about it again. Every once in a while I would get inspiration to start again but the cycle would always continue. I guess it has been the same with this blog. This is a cycle that I would very much like to break!

3. Guitar: I have had my guitar for a few years now. She's a beaut, I tell you. My lefty acoustic with gorgeous warm tones. Anyway. I took lessons for quite a few months and learned a lot, but had to stop when I went to live with the man in NC last year. Well.... it kind of fell by the wayside. Every now and again I pick it up but not as often as I should. All of my calluses are gone!

On the brighter side of my failures, there are some things that I have tried and actually stuck with. The biggest ones I can think of now are budgeting and drinking more water. The budgeting was really tough for me at first. I am an emotional and compulsive person (which is why I jump into things headfirst and then give them up!) so I would tend to buy a lot of things just because. I'm not saying I'm perfect now by any means, but I am much much better at saving my money and pinching my pennies when they need pinching. As for the water drinking, it all started a few blood donations ago. My blood was flowing so slowly, it was like molasses! Strangest thing. It was suggested to me that I may be a little dehydrated and that I should drink more water, so I vowed that I would try to drink at least a litre of water per day. While I haven't succeeded every day, I have definitely been consuming more and my last blood donation was smooth like butta. I even find myself craving water now! Crazy stuff.

Gosh, this has been a wall of text hasn't it? Here is a gross bruise picture from three days after my blood donation to break it up a bit.

Mmmm bruisey goodness. Yep, that's my right elbow.
Thanks nurse lady for blowing out my vein!

So, having said all of this, I want to make a new goal for myself. My blood pressure has been scarily high for any 26 year old girl and this is because I do not work out and am in the most terrible shape. Pro tip: just because someone is thin does not mean they are in good condition! Anyway, my goal is to find SOME form of physical activity that I enjoy, because at this rate I will die when I am 40 due to heart attack from high blood pressure and my unfortunate but delicious salt addiction.

What are some things that you have tried and failed at in the past? Or tried and succeeded at with flying colours?

-Allanah

Productive day off!

Helloooo!

Today I had the day off work, yay!

As much as I always feel I am going to be super productive on my days off, it rarely happens. I started off with grand ambitions to clean my entire room today (despite having a heavily bruised elbow... donate blood, folks! Other people need it more than you do!), but that just has not yet happened.

However!

The day has not been completely fruitless. I will write more on this later, but I am going through a huge cleanse of my belongings right now as I will be moving countries in the new year. Today I tackled some random boxes of stuff in our basement. I started with about five boxes and have gotten my "keeps" down to one box! Hooray! In addition, I have cleaned off an entire horizontal surface of my room! A right good start, if I don't say so myself. I may even accomplish one or two more by the end of the day if I'm lucky!

A crappy phone picture of my clean horizontal surface!

This may not seem like a big deal to some, but I have a rather small room with sloped ceilings and very very little storage (it even cuts into my already tiny closet, ugh). So, while I don't have that much stuff, it is very easy for the amount I do have to get all cluttered up.

Anyway. I used to have a night stand, but I got a bigger bed and it no longer fit. For a while I used a wobbly little table but even that barely fit and I got frustrated with it. Now I just use the end of the toy chest my great uncle built for me when I was a baby. I wanted my lamp jacked up a bit for optimum reading light so I piled up my bridal magazines and there you have it!

Speaking of bridal magazines, how do girls who are getting married not go out and buy literally all of them?? They are so addictive and fun to flick through and they leave me all starry eyed. I can't wait to get married, ahhh :)

Hello!

Hi guys!

So, it's been like five months. I wholeheartedly apologize. I have still accumulated massive amounts of polish, but there are a few reasons I just haven't been feeling the blogosphere lately:

1.  For my first engagement party in North Carolina, I got... acrylics. Gasp! One of my own nails had just broken right off and I wanted pretty nails for my engagement party. Everyone is looking at your hands, you know! Anyway, as a result my nails were completely de-stroyed. They've just now grown out all the way but they are still tiny little nubbins!

2. For a few months I was working two jobs, 60+ hours a week. When you have to wake up early to go to work, then get home from work and have to go to bed early so you can get up early and go to work again... well. Not only does time not permit blogging, but that doesn't exactly get the creative juices flowing, either.

3. I feel a little overwhelmed. While I try to keep somewhat current as to my collection, by the time I pick up a colour I feel like there are already a million other swatches of it out there with more beautiful photos than I could ever take. I really need to get over that. Even if it is an older colour, I could perhaps offer up an opinion that hasn't been considered before!

Also, I don't want this blog just to be about nail polish anymore. It was fun to start out that way, but it also became a chore. I want this to be a collection of all the small little facets of my life that amalgamate into one big shiny blog diamond. Of course I will still post nail polish related things, I have accumulated so many by now that I'm going to need a second Helmer!

But I'm also getting married and have a new job and there are lots of little things that catch my fancy and give me ideas and inspiration, and I want to share them with you. And with future me!

Anyway, I just wanted to say that my silence has come from feeling not good enough, but I've had just about enough of that feeling!

There is definitely more to come from me!

Revlon Selects - Nail Art Expressionist in Vincent Van Gold swatches and review!

Hey guys! Before I get into my review I just wanted to say I'm sorry I've been absent for so long! It was a crazy month at work and then it was Christmas and my boyfriend was here... and, well, let's just say he's not my boyfriend anymore! ;)

Needless to say, it's been a crazy whirlwind and now it's January and all settled down.

Anyway, on to the polish! Today I have another product to review from the Revlon Selects program! The Nail Art Expressionist collection is another double ended polish collection. One end is a regular polish and the other end has a very thin brush so you can do nail art with it. The colour I received is Vincent Van Gold, a purple shimmer polish and a warm yellow gold nail art polish.

First of all, can I just say how much I love purple and gold together? It's so royal and posh!

Okay, so we'll start with the polish end. It has a pink toned purple base which is jam packed with purple shimmer that has a blue flash to it. It's fairly pretty, but I'm not the biggest fan of the formula. While it is not too thick or thin and clean application was not an issue, it was very patchy and left bald spots. A thicker second coat left some bubbles upon drying (you can see these most on my ring finger). It is quite possible to make this work, but it takes a little more patience to get it right!

The gold nail art side was very nice. I tried out different nail art on each of my nails and I am pleasantly surprised at how pigmented and easily controllable this gold is! I am generally awful at nail art and I find that this makes it basic pretty simple and foolproof. As you can see, it's not the best for polka dots, but that's why we have dotting tools! My only gripe with this is that it has that sort of marbled metallic effect that some metallic polishes have. This is most evident on my ring finger where I attempted to do a half moon. Because of this I will probably stick to a french or stripe, something that doesn't require a lot of colouring in.

My overall opinion of this polish is good! I love the colour combination of the gold and purple. I love love love the gold nail art polish and how it is so pigmented and easy to use. The purple polish on the other end is so so pretty and, while it takes a little more patience to apply, it is worth it!

Would I buy this? Yes! Though the regular polish left something to be desired for me, I absolutely love the colour combo and the pigmentation of the gold. Please put out a line of solo nail art polishes, Revlon!

xo

This product was provided to me for review and I have given my 100% honest opinion! :)

Revlon Selects - Nail Art Moon Candy in Orbit swatches and review

Hey guys! Today it was sunny and I was like "Sweet, I'm totally going to have a swatching day!" So I get all my stuff ready and before I even get the first coat of the first polish put on... clouds. Honestly.

Anyway, today I have for you one of the polishes Revlon Canada kindly sent me for the Revlon Selects program! The Moon Candy collection is a series of double ended polishes. One end is a creme polish and the other end is an irregular shaped mylar flake in a coordinated colour. The one I have for you today is Orbit, a purple duo.

The creme side of Orbit is a deep, blue toned purple. It's a stereotypical grape purple, if that makes sense. Application of the creme side was nice. It was a little thin but nothing that couldn't be handled with careful application. The opacity was great; it was fully opaque in one coat! However, because this polish is so thin, it showed every ridge and imperfection in my nail. I would either use a ridge filler or more than one coat with this polish.

The flakie side of this polish is interesting. It's shards of mylar that flash blue and purple in a purple tinted clear base. I have seen mixed reviews of this, mostly leaning toward the negative, so I was anxious to try it out for myself. The flakes are sparse, that is for sure, but I like it. It is not too difficult to fish around in the bottle for more and place them where you want, which allows you to control the look of your manicure. The only thing I can say about this is that I would definitely put more than one coat of the creme under the flakie coat, because I had issues with some of the creme becoming patchy. The flakes also dry with a lot of texture. This doesn't bother me too much but if you need your nails to be smooth, you will need to use a thicker top coat. In these pictures I have the flakies on my index and middle finger, and just the creme on my ring finger and pinkie. One coat of each!

Oh my goodness I didn't realise how dry my hands were until after. Sorry guys!

I like this combination together, I think the blue flash of the mylar brings out the blue tone of the creme underneath. It is nice for this time of year when I tend to gravitate toward darker colours, but it is also nice that I can add a little sparkle too! I am definitely a sparkly girl.

Now I will speak to the bottle shape issue. Some people find the bottle top heavy while they are using a colour. It is obviously heavier than a regular polish cap because you are holding another entire bottle of polish, but I quickly got used to it and had no problems with application. All you need is a little patience and practice!

Overall? I think this is a very awesome idea that was mostly very well executed. I wish that the creme were just a little bit thicker so I could use just one coat and still have my nail ridges and imperfections hidden. I also wish that the flakie sizes were just a liiiiittle bit smaller. I think that if they were smaller, they would curve to the nail a little more and maybe wouldn't leave so much texture. I also think a more uniform size of flakie would look neater. The big pieces just look messy or sloppy to me.

Would I buy one of these independently? Well... yes and no. It would be price dependent. I like most of the other colour combinations that Moon Candy comes in, I just am not the biggest fan of slightly sloppy look of the mylar top coat.

Thank you again Revlon Canada! I'm having so much fun doing this!

Bonus: My girl kitty Molly wanted to be in a picture! Here she is!

xo

*This product was provided for review. I have given my 100% honest opinion! :)

Color Club Halo-Graphic!!!!

Hey guys! Only two weeks until Christmas! I'm so excited because my boyfriend will be coming and staying for a whole week!! I'm counting down the days for sure.

So today I have Halo-Graphic for you from Color Club's 2012 Halo-Graphic collection! I actually received this a few weeks ago and have been dying to post it, but I wanted some sun to take some proper pictures of the holo. I waited and waited and it has just been cloudy. Sooo I tried to improvise as much as possible with my camera flash. Here we go!

Halo-Graphic is a pale pink with a very strong linear holo. The formula is just excellent! Not too thick or thin and not at all patchy! I used two coats with no top coat, because I have heard that most top coats dull the holo effect.

Here it is in the bottle and then a swatch just in some normal cloudy daylight! It's pretty and feminine, and you can just see a wink of the holo.

And here it is with flash (aka pretend sunlight)! It's so crazy! The first time I put it on I just kept staring at my nails all day!

So obviously I love this! This is my first holo polish. I had seen so many on other blogs where it was said that application was a nightmare and they show every nail imperfection. If that was true then Color Club really reinvented the wheel, because this is awesome!

In other news, I received my Revlon Selects package the other day! I am super excited to try out all the lovely things in there! Keep your eyes peeled for some reviews of that stuff, plus I may or may not have a couple more holo polishes in the sidelines... ;)

xo

Quick NOTD and some exciting news!

Hey guys!  Today is my mom's work Christmas party and I'm her date! Free dinner and drinks, yesss! I wanted to do something a little festive on my nails, so I chose to use OPI's Danke Shiny Red from the Germany collection earlier this year with OPI's Goldeneye from the Skyfall collection as my accent nail. I really love this combo, it is so glowy and nice! This picture was taken with my phone as it is dark out now and my camera has an aneurysm in low light. Anyway!

Now for the exciting news! A couple of posts back I mentioned the Revlon Canada Selects program. I applied and crossed my fingers, and earlier today I received an email saying I had been chosen! I am so so excited! They will be sending a package soon and then I will have awesome new goodies to review for you all. Thank you so much Revlon Canada!

Have a great weekend guys! I'm off to stuff myself with prime rib. Mmmm.