Mani Monday-January 23, 2012

Hey lovelies! Happy Monday to you ladies! Hope you had a great weekend.
Posting two days in a row-that's a good sign! I have for you this week's manicure featuring Zoya Erika.

Zoya Erika is a baby pink with gold shimmer. It goes on pretty sure and it took me 4 coats to achieve the opacity that you see here.

This is directly under a lamp

This is with a flash...from my iPhone camera, which takes pretty decent picture.  In these shots, you can see VNL (visible nail line) so just ignore that.

I wanted to do something fun this week so I got out some scotch tape and went to it.

Scotch tape manis are great...so easy to do!! Just make sure that you stick the tape to your palm a couple of times to get some of the sticky off. I didn't de-stick mine enough and look what happened to my middle finger :(

For the black triangles, I just used Art Deco Black nail art polish with brush.

Like my pjs? I love Chandeliers! I think it goes along with my damask print obssession.

My sister, Ashley, is also hopping on the nail polish train and I'm definitely rubbing off on her. She did a fun little mani last weekend. Here's what it looks like:

And here's what she told me about it:

I used Ulta Mango as my base and Zoya Ashley for the tip. Ulta's Mango has a subtle gold shimmer which I liked, even though I am not a big fan of gold. This color, from Ulta's Salon Formula Nail Lacquer line, went on very easily and smoothly with no globs. I have found any color from this line goes on as such, hence why I'm a big fan of it. Most of my nail polish collection is from Ulta's line.. Zoya's Ashley is beautiful just like me >:)

(and like the person who bought it for her...ME!)It's best described as a lovely berry color and it complimented Ulta's Mango quite nicely. Me gusta. This color combination would be awesome in the summertime. Although I stumbled upon it in mid-January, it was still very pretty--just perfect to brighten up the dull winter outside.

I'm so proud of her :')

That's all from here. Hope you have a great day!!

xo, ali

Mani Monday-Jan 16, 2011

hello, my lovelies!! I hope you all had a relaxing weekend and that the beginning of your week went smoothly :)

Mine sure was. My sister and I work for banks so we benefit from government holidays, so that meant Ashley was able to come home for a long weekend which, coincidentally, was my mom's birthday weekend! Lots of fun was had.

We finally got our first big snowfall in the Buffalo area on Friday morning, but luckily it stopped by afternoon and Ashley was able to drive up that evening and there was lots of Sex & the City watching. 

Saturday was a big day...I got my dad tickets to see Van Halen for an early birthday present. They're coming in March and I am so excited! Ashley and I went to go see Beauty & the Beast in 3D and it was just like when we were kids, seeing it in the theaters for the first time. I love that movie so much :')

Volunteering Saturday night was a blast. I helped get my first cat adopted, a sweet little girl named Amber and we also got in a litter of 5 2-month old kittens. I can almost guarantee they will be gone by the time I go back next Saturday :(

Sunday was my mom's actual birthday and we celebrated by following a family tradition of going to Mass followed by breakfast at our favorite local diner. Later in the day, we went to dinner where I had AMAZING grilled salmon with herb butter. Om nom nom.

Ashley went back this afternoon and I miss her terribly already :( but we will most likely Skype soon and see each other on the next bank holiday. (Hi Ashley!)

I ordered my iPhone this weekend and it should be here tomorrow. I'm super super excite and can't wait to play with it. As much as I hate to say this, the first app I will probably download is Instagram because I am a closet hipster haha. Enough of that. Onto the nails!!

This week's mani is brought to you by Zoya LC and OPI Save Me from the Nicki Minaj collection.

This is 2 coats with Gelous base coat and one coat of Essie No Chips Ahead. I was very happy with how smoothly it applied...no streaks or globs or bald spots. And opaque in one coat! I am in love with the color, too...such a bright coral red creme and it wears really well, too.

But, of course, I got bored and anxious to try out some of my new polishes that I picked up this weekend, so I added an accent nail.

One coat of Save Me with Essie No Chips Ahead

Save me is a holo glitter with both flecks and bar glitter in turquoise and silver. LOVE.

My mom asked me why I only had one nail painted like that so I had to explain the purpose of   an accent nail. She told me that my grandma used to forget to paint a nail and that was her accent nail. Then, she noticed that Hanna had an accent nail on Pretty Little Liars and pointed that out to me. I love my mom.

I do not love that I have to go to work tomorrow :( 

How was your weekend? What's on your nails right now? Talk to me :)

Happy New Year!! and Wear-It Wednesday

Hello lovelies!! So sorry I've been absent. The holidays were great and I hope yours were too. My sisters came to visit--Ashley from Erie and Aimee from Charlotte. Ashley could only stay for the long weekend, but Aimee was here for a week. We all spent Christmas together and went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I received so many great gifts including a nail dryer for my Sunday night manicure. :)

That brings me to my next topic! I have some exciting things planned for my blog--a couple theme days to start. Mondays will be Manicure Monday (which is pretty self-explanatory) and something I'll be highlighting today--Wear-It Wednesday where I'll share my favorite runway looks and trends. That will come a little later in the post.

I also wanted to talk about resolutions. They are so hard to keep. Why is that? And why do we insist on making the same ones if we knew they didn't work last year? I guess all we can do is try to do and be better. Which is where some of my resolutions come from. Over the past year, I actually changed my eating habits and started walking almost everyday and I lost 30 pounds. One of my resolutions is to keep that going and drop more weight. I don't set a goal so I am not disappointed when I don't reach it, but am happy when I see the scale go down. It helps that I got new walking sneakers for Christmas and picked up Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred.

The next resolution I made is extremely relevant--to blog more!! I really enjoy it and definitely need to make it a more regular thing. 

And finally, I have resolved to not let people take advantage of me or take me for granted. This may be the hardest one to keep as  I am definitely a people pleaser and never want to ruffle any feathers. It comes with the territory of being a middle child.

Anyways. I'm going to work hard at all of these and they will definitely give me something to talk about here.

On to Wear-It Wednesday!

This winter, I am loving a lot of things but today, I want to spotlight peplum! For those that don't really know what peplums are, it's pretty much a ruffle or flounce attached to a skirt. They definitely recall those days when ladies were ladies and wore gloves and hats. A lot of designers showcased that on the runways in a lot of different ways.

Jason Wu-Spring 2012

He's doing a line for Target that debuts in February--so excited!

more Jason Wu.

Peplum shirt from asos.com

and a little twist to the peplum trend from Dries Van Noten!

What are your thoughts on the peplum trend? It's definitely something I want to try out for spring. I absolutely LOVE anything retro.

(I just told my mom I'll be getting a peplum skirt from Torrid and she told me I don't need anymore flounce. Oh, mom!)