25 weeks - March 16, 2012

I'm still a little behind in my blog posts.  Sorry all.  Today I thought I'd post a quick update on my pregnancy.

I went for my routine OB checkup on March 16, 2012 which put me at approximately 25 weeks.  Doctor said I was doing well and still tiny, although I told him I was feeling huge and like baby was going to bust out LOL.  It seems I'm growing more and more every day.  Devereux's heart rate that day was 139 bpm and doc said it was perfect, as was mine.  Here's a self portrait I took in the bathroom mirror before my doctor's appointment that morning.

According to my iphone app, Devi is approximately the size of a cucumber now (15 inches, 2.2 lbs.).  As I'm a little behind on my posts, I am actually currently 26 weeks and 4 days along.  Apparently at this stage Devi's auditory development is progressing and although the sounds he hears are muffled, he may recognize both mine and Dorian's voices now :).  And even cooler, it may actually be possible for Dorian to hear Devi's heartbeat now just by him pressing his ear to my belly.  We'll have to try it later when there's no noise of dogs or anything.

That's all for tonight folks.  I actually have developed a cold so I think I'm going to have a soak in the tub with my eucalyptus salts and relax a little before heading to bed early tonight.

Aquadelic & Waves

This is a manicure I did a couple weeks ago.  One of my absolute favorites to date!!  It turned out so well and the color was fabulous I thought!!!  I got so many compliments on it AND it was my first attempt at a cloud mani :)

I started off with 2 coats of China Glaze Aquadelic on all fingers except for my ring finger and thumb.  On my ring finger and thumb I did the cloud technique using Gosh Miss Minty, China Glaze Electric Beat and China Glaze Aquadelic.  On the fingers that had solid Aquadelic I put two thin coats of of HITS Jazz flakies over top and VOILA!!!

China Glaze's Aquadelic is a super fantastic color.  The most perfect turquoise polish I can think of!!  The formula was wonderful and lovely to apply and it was pretty much opaque after one coat but I applied two coats just to make sure I had good coverage before applying the flakes.

The HITS flake top coat I used I came across from viewing the PolishAholic's blog entry of a review she did on HITS Jazz - you can check it out here http://www.thepolishaholic.com/2011/12/hits-jazz.html.  I instantly fell in love!  Not just because I was obsessed with flake polishes at the time, as were so many others and as was the rage (and still is!) but because it was different from most of the flakes I had seen and that were readily available in the stores and on the websites that shipped to Canada.  This wasn't just the standard goldy/orangey/iridescent flake.  This is a clear jelly base loaded with what look like goldy flakes in the bottle but when you apply them they are gorgeous bright green and blue flakes!!  Flake heaven!!!  I thought it looked perfect over the Aquadelic and made it look like water and the cloud mani with the colors I used kind of turned into waves.  I will certainly repeat this look at some point I'm sure.  If you're curious about where to get HITS, I purchased mind off of http://shop.llarowe.com/.

As always, please feel free to add a comment or ask me any questions.  And remember to contact me if you are in the Edmonton, Alberta area and book a cheap manicure or pedi :)

23 Weeks

So a few weeks ago I reached the 23 week mark in my pregnancy.  I know 23 weeks is a funny number to make a big deal out of but it just so happened that that was the point when baby Devi really started to make himself known and show himself off and I could feel him all the time.  I had got some new tops as well at that point that looked really cute with a baby belly and accentuated it in just the right ways.  I also realized at that point that I did not have any pictures of my pregnancy so far.  With it being my very first pregnancy I wanted to make sure I had at least a few pictures of it because who knows if we'll have another child after and everyone was always starting to compliment me on how great I looked and how cute my belly was.  So I took it upon myself one day to take a self portrait in the bathroom mirror and thus obtained my very first pregnancy picture and the very first picture of me and Devereux :) - which is the pic above.

Whimsical

So in case you aren't aware, there is a super popular Deborah Lippman polish color out there called Glitter in the Air.  But as any of you who are familiar with Deborah Lippman polishes know, they come at a price (regardless of the quality - although I do believe you get what you pay for).  However, I caught wind of an exact dupe for much less money (quality may be compromised a bit) from the lovely nail girls I follow on InstaGram.  The dupe is Revlon Whimsical 430.  Yes, you heard me correctly, I said REVLON!  It seems though that this information was very well known by the masses and try as I might I could not find it anywhere :(  As luck should have it though, a lovely woman (and fellow Albertan I might add) that I befriended on InstaGram happened to come across a couple bottles of Revlon Whimsical 430 in her travels and bought more than one and offered to send me one of them since she knew I was in desperate search of one.  I cannot tell you how excited I was the day it arrived and I did an immediate mani change that day so I could try the Revlon Whimsical right away!!

The base is a very sheer pale pale blue jelly and it has random pink and blue hex glitters with some blue micro glitter throughout.  Due to how sheer and pale the base was it was suggested that it be used mostly for a layering polish.  I didn't want to take away too much from the pale blueness of it and did not want to make it bluer so I layered it over white.  Unfortunately, the only white I had was a Barielle and it's cheap and crap and super runny.  My base of white took two coats to get opaque enough because it was so runny and it was a mess and ran everywhere.  But I thought I could clean it up enough and then the Whimsical would camouflage any grossness.  I put two coats of Revlon Whimsical over the white base and this is what I ended up with.

I also used some pale pink nail stickers I got at Dollarama to fill in some of the larger gaps of glitter as the glitter is very randomly disbursed and there were some "holes" that were just too large for my liking.  However, when the stickers were all said and done, I think it actually ended up being over done in my opinion.

I liked how the white base kept the overall color nice and bright and didn't make it super blue but rather accented the little bit of pale blue in the jelly base itself, however I could not get over how messy the white was underneath and I couldn't look past it and the white pretty much ruined my entire first experience with this lovely Whimsical polish :(

However, the next day, with a fresh mind set and being much more creative, I removed all the polish and stickers and redid my Whimsical mani and it was much improved and I love love LOVED it and got so many compliments on it all the time and it remains one of my favourite manis to date.

As you can see, I did a simple french tip manicure (using Essie Lilacism) and then used the Revlon Whimsical over top the whole nail.  The glitter actually showed up much better on the bare nail I found and the colors matched perfectly with the Lilacism.  Made the Lilacism a bit bluer than it actually is but that is quite alright and actually worked out for the best.

As always, I welcome any comments or questions you might have and if you are in the Edmonton, Alberta Canada area, please feel free to ask me about getting a cheap mani or pedi done at my home! :)

No More Waity Katie

So I am still trying to get through my untried polishes and I was very excited to try all my Butter London polishes I got a little bit ago (see previous post of new treasures).  Next on my list to try out was Butter London No More Waity Katie.  This is a very unique color, a sort of purpley grey jelly base jam packed with lavender glitter.  I had heard that the formula was kind of a pain in the patootie but that the overall look was well worth it and very unique.  Well all of that was true.  The formula was really thick and super goopey.  It was hard to get a real nice clean edge and I needed 3 coats to get it nice and opaque.  It dried with a rougher kind of gritty finish so it definitely needed a good clear coat over top.  But I love this color and would put up with the muss and fuss any day.  It's like no polish I've ever seen before and super classy and simple but glitzy and unique all at the same time!

The next day I decided to add something a little special to it and something I had never tried before.  I was still reeling from the Gosh Silver I used on Grammy Helen a little bit before so I did a quick tape mani accent over top of the No More Waity Katie using the Gosh Silver.  I was going to do just diagonal stripes but half way through applying the tape changed my mind and did a different type of chevron stripe, I call it a giant or massive chevron as the chevron spreads across all the nails rather than an individual chevron on each nail.  You will see what I mean below.

As always, please feel free to leave any comments or questions and if you are in the Edmonton, Alberta, Canada area, please please please feel free to contact me about getting a mani done.  I do them out of my house for cheap for practice as I plan to take some courses during my mat leave.  $5.00 for a straight and basic polish change, $10.00 for a full on manicure with massage and cuticle clean up or for more complicated nail art.

Stunning Silver

So I have still been doing manicures like usual and I have lots of mani posts to catch up on.  Let's begin!

So my Grammy Helen still loves getting her nails done all the time!  I had not yet tried my Gosh Silver foil polish yet and Grammy took to it right away when she saw it.  I paired it with a few black and silver nail stickers from Dollarama on some accent nails and then on the other nails I added just a tip of Essie Luxeffects Set in Stone.  The result I think was stunning, shiny, and the Set in Stone almost looked like diamonds encrusted in the Gosh Silver.  SPECTACULAR!

No flash

With flash

Sorry for the absence, let's catch up!

Hello my lovely followers :)  I apologize for my disappearing act.  Everything is fine I've just been quite exhausted as of late and Dorian was out of town a lot a few weeks ago so I was even more exhausted.  But I'm back now and I apologize if you get spammed with new blog posts tonight.  I have a lot of things to catch up on for posts but not sure how far I'll get tonight.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was at home from work because of those massive growing pains in my tummy from baby Devi, and then Daniel got sick the following day, and then we had all that snow?????  That was a tough few days and weekend.  Dorian was working out of town and wasn't able to come home until the end of the weekend basically and Daniel and I were cooped up inside the house for 4 days and had total cabin fever.  We were going insane!!!  We had so much snow and I couldn't shovel it so we were literally snowed in.  Ugh!!!  However, we persevered and Dorian made it home for supper on the Sunday.  In the meantime, Daniel had some bath time fun and we had some snuggles for bedtime and I got lots of quality snuggle time on the chaise lounge with the dogs, all of which you can see below:

I don't know why it's uploading sideways.  I can't get it to rotate, sorry

Chloe & Karl

For some reason Chloe likes to sleep/rest with the face buried.  Silly puppy :)

The creature that guards the stairs...aka Karl :)