This is my favorite summer color this year, Essie Chubby Cheeks:
Full sun
It’s a creamy jelly or a jelly-ish cream. You can see plenty of VNL at two coats here, but I still love it. Different lighting will shift the color toward pink, but it always looks yummy. <3
Ginger Fried Rice from Smitten Kitchen
Lunch today! I followed the recipe exactly and had this done in 30 minutes before my study sesh. ;)
Okay folks, you may have heard about the green smoothie craze. I don’t know who started it, but it’s popular among raw food vegans, which may give omnivores pause. Don’t worry! This thing actually tastes good and it sure helps to clean out the fridge.
Fresh Ginger Green
This sweet baby has a little ginger kick to it!
Ginger Green Smoothie:
1 cup baby spinach
1 cup orange juice
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled
1/2 cup plain or fruity frozen yogurt
Combine and blend until smooth and frothy. For more froth (and cold) add ice.
Do you have some wilty fruit in the fridge? Toss that in. Red berries will change the color of the drink, but it’ll still taste good. This ratio of baby spinach to other stuff does not taste like spinach at all to me, and I pair it with a tall cup of green tea for an afternoon pick me up.
If that’s not enough greens for you, try this next one:
Banana Green Smoothie (also good for beginners!)
1 medium banana
2 cups spinach
1/2 cup greek nonfat yogurt
1/2 berries (good frozen! Chills the drink and they’re ripe out of season.)
Blend until thick and smooth.
This one is good for using up really ripe bananas; it usually means you won’t have to add sweetener. I have this one instead of a meal since it tends to be thicker.
Experiment with your own! People report using all kinds of greens (kale, chard, collard, “adult” spinach) but I prefer to eat those for dinner since they have more tooth than baby spinach. Also, the one time I used regular spinach in a smoothie even banana couldn’t cover the taste.
That’s it for now! So many life changes, you don’t even know. I will be trying to get back into blogging since I have lots of homework to procrastinate on. I expect to get you recipes, garden pictures, perhaps a few dog photos and maybe some diy. Oh, nail polish? If I pick up a new one. Not only have I moved far away from my usual convenient nail polish retailers, I have just been loving to wear the collection I have! I know, crazy. Good night and good luck!
I’ve been lemming this Essie ever since kittytokaren’s hunt for the perfect red. On to the photo:
indoors
My photo is nothing compared to hers, please go click that link. This is a brown-toned jelly red that glows. Can something glow darkly? I think this does. It’s extremely glossy and a pain to apply, but so so worth it. I like this one so much that I’m having a hard time putting on anything else.
On the other hand, jellies seem to have to shortest wear time on me. Wear time is like this: Good glitters>Cremes>chippy glitters>jellies. Anyone else?
China Glaze produced this lovely Tiffany-inspired blue and called it For Audrey (as in Hepburn – Breakfast at Tiffany’s) I picked it up since it seems to be a staple.
indoors
Scrangie says it’s one of her favorite teals and it certainly looks lovely on her. On me? I don’t think it’s too flattering. It probably doesn’t help that the formula was a little gummy. What do you think? Is it just too stark for me?
America’s Thanksgiving was yesterday and I had a great one. (Did you know Canada’s Thanksgiving is in October?)
I turned these:
Rome Beauty & Jonathan apples
into this thing:
pie!
It was hard to get pictures since November is reliably gloomy and cold. Most delicious holiday of the year! I hope you have a great weekend!
I picked up a couple more Zoya colors thanks to Zoya’s excellent Halloween Treat (do yourself a favor and follow them on Twitter – you will get lots of deals this way!)
Zoya Jem! This is a beauty. Two smooth coats of velvety, glittery color. The duochrome flash is stronger in the bottle, but you’ll experience it on the nail as either a nice plummy purple:
indoors
Or as a reddish color with gold highlights:
sun
In the bottle there you can see it chrome-ing its way to a bright yellow but it never gets there on my nails. I love this color wholeheartedly. It’s a gorgeous color in the reliable Zoya formula. Could not be happier.
It’s been really hard to get passably decent pictures since all my daylight hours are spent at work – but I will keep trying! If you want another shot of a particular polish, please let me know!
Need a break from glitter? Step into the serene embrace of Essie’s Lapis of Luxury:
lamp light
I had to take these in the dark so they are funky. Blue/purple is hard to photograph true to color anyway. This one is my perfect periwinkle. It’s soft and dusty, but I can’t decide whether it’s purple or blue. Perfect.
white balance!
Here’s another view with a different white balance. On my screen, this shot makes it look totally blue, but it’s definitely periwinkle. This is a 3-coater, but the coats dry glossy and smooth. This is one of those Essies that has a translucent finish, not see-through, but deep-looking? It has to be seen to be believed, and it’s my favorite thing about Essie.
I thought I’d try something new for me… a funky french!
Funkity
This is my very first attempt at freehanding tips. It came out okay… perhaps it’s worth trying again! By the way, this color is part of Essie’s retail line, so you should be able to find it at CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart, Target, etc. I love it when they are easy to get. :D
This one is a winner! Not only do I love this color, it got exclamatory compliments on the bus.
indirect light
Two coats will do it, and this baby wore like iron. See how green it looks on me? I had the impression that this was a yellow polish, but not on me. Chartreuse, maybe. With gold shimmer. Which is a gorgeous combination… *sigh*
When you get it into low light, say, moody overhead lighting in fancier restaurants? A reddish microshimmer shows up, almost like a duochrome. The waiter must have questioned my sanity, but I wasn’t able to capture the shimmer. Here’s another photo anyway!
sun
What do you think?
I picked this Orly mini up on a whim at the drugstore… but I was happy I did!
dusk
Seen here posed with my favorite matte lipstick, Nars Funny Face. I have to say I love the rubbery packaging, it holds up pretty well to my purse.
Rockette is a raspberry color with a ton of gold or bronze shimmer. The glitter really tones down the berry shade and the final effect is a dark red. I love it for winter. Two coats. The first coat will freak you out with a bright berry look, but the second coat and all subsequent look like this.
another angle
What I really like it for is a pedi. It’s a great coordinating color for those toes. I don’t know about you, but I get way less interested in toe polish in the winter, so it’s nice to have a color like this to fall back on.
