happy halloween!

Happy Halloween Y'all!!

So The Man and I were pretty lame this year.  No costumes, no pumpkin carving, no maize maze,

and to all that I mutter a sad little "boo."

Since we went completely under-board with decoration and celebration I decided to double up on the nail art.

First set - Frankensteins and Pumpkin Faces

Second set (and my personal fav) - Skulls!

SPOOOKY!!

I hope you all had a scary and sugar-filled night!!

flocky flocky

Want to see my nails?! I know you do!
I recently purchased this nail kit from Sephora:

It's called ciaté and it's a velvet manicure.  I wanted to try it out for the wedding in September but it did not work at all.  It just looked like my nails were strangely dirty.  So last week I decided to give it another go and it turned out really cool:

In the kit they give you nail polish, a bottle of "crushed velvet powder" (so basically flocking) and a little brush.  The directions tell you to paint one coat let it dry and then, one nail at a time, paint another coat and sprinkle on the velvet.  That's what I tried the first time when I got the dirty mange look, so the second time instead of sprinkling it I poured a bunch out into the plastic tray they give you and smashed my wet-nail-polished-finger straight into the velvet so it was totally covered.  

The powder comes out of the bottle so slow that your nail dries to quickly for it to stick, and you need a little pressure so the powder really gets in the polish, so the smashing method works really well.

The flocked nail look was fun for a while but it starts to feel weird after a bit, like when you run your fingers through your hair, or when you eat french fries like a slob and get ketchup all over your finger tips (licking ketchup off velvet just feels unnatural).  So try it out for an event . . . but maybe take it off before you start cooking :)

maria's bride kit

Hello readers! That is, if there's anyone left still reading after a month and a half without any posts.  I am finally able to get pictures off my camera, and there are tons of things I can't wait to show you.  So here is a post I started writing a few months ago, before our friends' wedding.  Now their honeymoon has come and gone so I changed the tense, added the pictures and here you go! ...

I'm at that age, where everyone I know is suddenly getting engaged.  There are many weddings on the horizon, but there is one in particular The Man and I are were looking forward to (don't worry daddy, I'm not talking about ours!).  Ours friends Maria and Daily got married on September 9th and a few months ago her bridesmaids threw her a bachelorette party.

As for the party itself I'll just say, we had a good time, and leave it at that.  What I'm really here to tell you about is what I gave as a bachelorette gift.

 (bride kit from Oh Happy Day!)

I saw this DIY bride kit on Oh Happy Day! and thought it was a wonderful gift. She made a sweet box and included lotion, mints, bobby pins, nail polish, and other practical helpful bits and bobs. I loved the idea but wanted to make a tad more personal, so I kept the color scheme and added a few details:

I didn't have tattoo paper or a fancy color printer, so I used the old stand-by transfer method from grade school: I printed out the designs I wanted to use, scribbled all over the back of the paper with a pencil so that graphite was covering the paper, then placed my image on the box where I wanted it (drawing side up) and drew back over the lines of the image so when I lifted the paper my drawing was on the box in graphite. Easy-peasy-mac-and-cheesy!

Then I took a regular blue pen from work and filled in the lines on the box by hand. The box itself is from JoAnn's (the same one used in the Oh Happy Day! tutorial), and I just grabbed some cheap-o acrylic paint to paint it blue.

My favorite part of the kit was what I put inside.  I wanted it to be a little practical but also personal and funny, so I started thinking of various wedding traditions and superstitions, like "cold-feet" and shoving cake in each others faces.  I got together a few trinkets and printed little clues for each one on simple gift tags.
This is what I came up with:

 Once I got everything wrapped they barely fit in the box, but with a little smushing it closed right up!

This project was so much fun to do, I highly suggest it for a lovely bride-to-be in your life.  I recently found out my best friend in the whole wide world is engaged and I can't wait to think up some fun personal treats for her bride kit!

p.s. Fun Story: The clue for the condoms (though obvious) was my favorite.  When Maria and Daily got engaged, Andrew (aka The Man) and I were waiting with bated breath to hear the news.  We knew it was going to happen because Daily had called us the day before to ask if we could tell Maria that the party we invited her to was cancelled because it was getting in the way of his proposal plans.  The Man was pacing the whole day, one of his best friends was getting engaged, he couldn't handle it!  When the call finally came later that night one of the first things The Man said to Maria was "You're not allowed to have any babies for at least 2 years!"  This was of course after "congratulations" and "I'm so happy for you" but it was hilarious, the engagement was too much change for him and so he made Maria promise "no babies for 2 years." She's kept her promise so far . . . just one year to go :)!