ULTA Grin & Berry It

Last Christmas I went out with my mum to Ulta, and picked up this sassy bottle of Ulta's Grin & Berry It.

It's much pinker in the photos than it is in real life, but this was a truly jewel toned berry. Although it complemented my skin tone, it did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't like it at all, which is kindof sad. :( Don't get me wrong, I think its really pretty, but it's not my style.

The "check engine" light went on in my car this morning, which is a pain. It did this last summer and it ended up being because my gas was evaporating slightly in the heat. Hopefully that's what the problem is now. I'm going to take it over to the car place later today to see if they can run a diagnostics on it. Keep your fingers crossed for me that it's nothing expensive! :/

Happy Friday!

Cocktails Anyone?

It appears that the laziness I acquired over spring break hasn't dissipated yet. I'm still struggling to get motivated, and we only have 3.5 weeks left of school as of today. SCARY!!

Last Friday I painted my nails, and was a bad nail blogger and didn't take (really bad) photos until Monday. So all I have to show you are not fab photos of a not so great manicure. BUT the color was pretty :)

This is ULTA's Cocktails Anyone? Its a deep, vampy purple, and i loved the formula.  However, the color was really dark, almost black in normal light, and I'm not sure that I like that on me. I caught the reflection of my nails in the rearview mirror on the bus this morning, and it just looked almost too dark. This photo however was taken with a flash, and it really shows the blue-purple base of the color.

As much as i wasn't super excited about the color ON me, it looked fabulous in the bottle, haha. Sorry about the smudgy-fingerprints. I'm a slob. pah.

Tonight I'm making pie. It will be delicious, but I'm not sure which type to make yet. I love love love cherry pie, so that's a thought. I made muffins the other day too, which were incredible even though I didn't put them in paper muffin cups and should have. (The tops were ripped off when I took them out of the pan...woops). I used strawberries, walnuts, and cinnamon, and they were perfect for breakfast.

As I have a test in two days, so I'm going to go study, and hopefully I'll do well. Wish me luck!

The Jungle Look

Two posts in one week! I'm on a roll here.

I replaced Sweetheart Pink with another polish from ULTA. The Jungle Look, which can be described as chalkboard green. There isn't a lot of depth to this color and it looked flat whenever I would glance down at my hands. This photograph is from a few days after application and you can see some tip wear and I should have touched up my top coat, which is probably why it looks flat.  However, I really did like it.

The polish flowed relatively well, and application was a breeze in two easy coats, which is what I've come to find with most of the polishes I've tried. However there is a particular Revlon color that requires 4 coats, and will remain nameless for it's own protection.

Random question, have you ever tried oolong tea? No? Well get yourself to your grocery store or local asian foods market and buy yourself some, and none of that pansy fake oolong. Buy the authentic, real oolong; you won't be disappointed. Seriously, I can't advertise this tea enough. I'm practically living on it right now, which is bad because the (small!!) box costs $5.99 at King Soopers and I'm almost out already. I'm not sure as to the caffeine content since the label is in Chinese, but I'd assume it has some. So if that's something you look out for, I'd take note of that.


P.S. That Revlon I mentioned? I'm being a total jerk about it. It says "Sheer" on the bottle, so I shouldn't be surprised that it took four coats until it was opaque.

Sweetheart Pink

As I may or may not have said in my last post, me and the BF had tickets to the Colorado Ballet's performance of Romeo and Juliet. And may I say, it was absolutely beautiful. The dancers were phenomenal, and Juliet's dancing was perfect. Tybalt was probably my favorite character, just because he was so antagonizing. The BF and I didn't eat before the performance though, which was a huge mistake. The intermissions (there were 2) were ridiculously long, and I found myself focusing less on the ballet and more on my shriveled stomach. I said I bought a cute LBD and pumps for the occasion, and here they are!

Just disregard the crooked pictures on the back wall, and my ridiculously messy room.

But on to the polish:
I put ULTA's Sweetheart Pink on my tips for the ballet (which in hindsight, wasn't a great idea because I REALLY wanted to put Essie's Sag Harbor on instead.) And here she is.





















Please excuse my ravaged fingers, the weather all of a sudden got crappy these past few days, and my cuticles are suffering.

This is a lovely bubblegum/coral pink. The formula was nice, and I haven't had any major chipping since I put it on Saturday night. I'm not super happy about it though, and would much rather see it on my toenails than my fingers. I think I'm going to take it off tonight and replace it with another ULTA or maybe an Essie (wink wink!) It doesn't look bad on my hands though:


















It actually looks fine, I'm just not a huge fan of pink. What do you think?

So, tomorrow is the start of Lent, and I haven't thought about what to give up at all. I considered giving up nail polish, but this blog would suffer marvelously. Plus, I'm not buying huge amounts of polish anyways, ever since the BF forbade me to buy anymore until I tried out the new ones I already had. But this was a fantastic idea of his, so I'm not sore about it.

So maybe I should give up a habit, or behavior instead, like my impressive procrastination. We'll see. I'll think about it tonight as I'm splurging on Fat Tuesday.

P.S. Is there some sort of addictive substance that those cheeky Girl Scouts add to their cookies? I ate 2/3rds of a box of Carmel Delights (or Samoas) within a day of buying it. Woops.

Chinese New Year

So...apparently it's the start of the Chinese New Year today, which I didn't realize until around 11 last night. Year of the Rabbit!
Ironically enough I had already painted my nails red, which was a funny coincidence, since red symbolizes prosperity and luck in the Chinese culture (all my Chinese friends...you should correct me on this lol) and I had chosen red for luck, and didn't make the connection until later lol.

I haven't been to a real Chinese new year celebration for a very long time, and I always enjoyed them. I would have dinner at my good friend's house with her family, and it was always warm, happy, and inviting.

So, red. This is a deviation from the Christmas haul series...which I'm noticing had a lot of blues and greens and not a lot of red tones. I'm not really a red or pink person, but I'm a sucker for an absolute true red.


Sorry about my stained pink fingers,
cleanup was tough on this baby

This is ULTA Red Bows which I think was a Christmas color, like, 5 years ago. I picked it up with my mom once before I got obsessed with nail polish, and only realized it's amazing-ness recently.

This is a red creme, with some pink aftertones from cleanup, but it leans to the middle so well I would call it a true red. This is one of the best polishes I own, aside from Concrete Jungle from RBL. The brush was great and flexible, it levels beautifully, dries in a reasonably short amount of time, and dries to a glossy sheen. This is shown with a top coat, but trust me, there was little difference between the polish and my Seche Vite top coat. I would also consider it to be a one coat wonder.  No weird undertones of pink or orange, it was pigmented perfectly. I put on two coats here because it's habit, but I definitely could have gone with one and you wouldn't know the difference. 

I feel like I can't rave about this more, it's just AWESOME-SAUCE. In a bottle. Major love happening right now. If I were to name a red polish, I would call it Major Love*. And it would be fantastic, but it probably couldn't ever top this one. 

I'm in love. Good luck indeed!!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone :)

*If a red comes out anytime soon and it's named Major Love, I TOTALLY CALLED THAT.

Haulage!

This is pretty late coming, so here it is finally!

The lacquer haul from over Christmas break (and some from before Christmas):

China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway, Sun Worshipper, and For Audrey

Essie Sag Harbor and Lapis of Luxury

Package Irony, Lapis of Luxury was in the big pack,
and Sag Harbor  was in the tiny one. So weird

From OPI's Shrek Forever After Collection,
 Who the Shrek are You?and What's with the Cattitude?

Sally Hansen's  Grey by Grey, which was a consolation
for not being able to buy MAC's Blue India, but I love it
just on its own.

ULTA polishes, from left to right: Grin and Berry It,
 Sweetheart Pink, Vintage Violet, and The Jungle Look

Christmas presents from my wonderful roommate:
Finger Paints Silver Sculpture, Orly Girly,
 and China Glaze Frostbite

I'm pretty stoked about Frostbite, The Jungle Look, and Lapis of Luxury, which I haven't tried yet. I've worn a good number of them, but forgot to take photos, so I will have to swatch them again for you :) I'm going to do a series from this haul, starting yesterday with Who the Shrek are You? so keep posted!

What about you, any of these strike your fancy?