On Fridays We Wear Army Nails and Flip Flops

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeen! Thumbs up to the universe for allowing October 31 to fall on a Friday this year - that works out nicely, hmm? 

You probably don't remember this, but for the last 2 years I've been wallowing in self pity on Halloween rather than doing something awesome and costume-related with my buds. My friend Jrod throws an annual Halloween party in Boston, but having been in Vancouver for the last couple of years, I've been missing out. #FOMOnightmare.

SO you can imagine my delight that I'm able to attend this year :)

My costume is going to be a mish-mash of Mean Girls references - army pants and flip flops, and a tank top with the boobs cut out. Sidebar - cutting the boobs out of a shirt is a more daunting task than you might think. Go ahead and try it if you don't believe me. Symmetry is a cruel mistress.

Anyway, to go with my army pants, and to incorporate the Plastics' love of pink, here are the nails I'll be rocking tonight:

I kiiiiiind of love 'em! This was my first time trying an army print, so I looked up a few Pinterest pictures and YouTube tutorials before launching into the project. This is the tutorial I relied upon most heavily in the end.

Starting off, I painted my pointer, middle and pinky nails two coats of Sinful Colors Pink Forever.

Next, I applied one coat of Essie's Case Study (also used recently in this leopard print mani) to my thumb and ring finger and allowed it to dry. Then, one by one, I applied the following polishes by stippling them into random overlapping squiggles with my dotting tool, allowing each to dry a bit between colors:

• Essie Sew Psyched (muted green)
• Revlon Parfumerie Balsam Fir (dark green)
• Forever21 Love & Beauty Hunter Green (bright green)
• Revlon Stiletto (black)

I love when relatively easy nail art looks really detailed or difficult - like this army print, or leopard print, or even polka dots. People - these army nails are literally just a bunch of different randomly sized squiggles of different colors. You could use a toothpick to stipple them on, if you don't have a dotting tool. Or you could even go directly from the nail polish bottles and just use the regular brushes. You can do eeeet.

Completely random sidebar, this video made my day yesterday when I saw it. I watched it several times and laughed out loud each time:

Anyone else love Flula and Mamrie and Grace Helbig and Miranda Sings and that whole gang of YouTube misfits? Who honestly needs cable these days? WHO?

Alright now I obviously want to know if you're dressing up for a costume party this weekend and what your costume is! Will you be handing out candy to trick-or-treaters? Tell me everything.

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5 Fall Nail Designs

Yesterday I did my nails twice, and each time the outcome displeased me so much that I removed the polish in a fit of rage. (Just kidding about the rage; it wasn't that serious.) Normally I pride myself on my color combinations, but the choices I made yesterday have me questioning all of that. Ah well, it's back to the drawing board for me. But in the meantime, here are five other fall nail designs that you can feast your eyes upon:

These mustard and navy nails are a great way to incorporate the seasonal mustard yellow without having to commit to an entire garment in the bold color:

Use a dotting tool to create abstract autumn leaves against a blue sky:

Everyone loves jewel tones in the fall! These jewel toned nails of emerald, sapphire and topaz were inspired by a fashion blogger's outfit:

Halloween nails! This nail design was inspired by witches and was a fun departure from the typical "orange and black" Halloween color scheme:

Candy corn nails are a great excuse to bust out the makeup sponge and do a gradient this season! Click through for the how-to: 

Tonight I am going to The Paint Bar on Newbury Street with my friends Steph and Kara. The Paint Bar is a super fun thing to do with your friends - it's a painting class where you can "paint, drink and be merry" (so sayeth their website). I've been to The Paint Bar in Newtonville, MA before, where we painted a really cool Boston nighttime skyline. Tonight's picture is a beautiful autumn-inspired painting of the Charles River - you can see the picture here. Everyone in the class paints the same picture, but each person's comes out a little bit differently. I'll absolutely be bringing my camera and will blog in the near future about the good times that are had!

What do you have going on this weekend?
Have you spotted any cool fall or Halloween nail designs yet?
Do you have something like a Paint Bar in your city?

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Neon Jeans, Neon Nails

What? You don't have a bright neon yellow pair of jeans? I DO.

Last year Dave and I went to a Thrift Shop Party - a party where all the attendees were to show up wearing their most ridiculous thrift shop finds. At my local Salvation Army I happened to have found a pair of neon yellow H&M jeans that still had their original tags on them. Check out my thrift shop outfit from the party last year:

.  you want my neon argyle  .
.  but you can't have it  .

Yesterday was Halloween, as you know, and I had tentative plans with Dave to head out to a Halloween party. But just my luck, I woke up with a stomach ache that lingered for most of the day and even though dressing up and attending a costume party is on my Fall To-Do List, we ended up skipping this particular party. Had we gone, I would have dressed up in all neon, head-to-toe.  (You can see my neon costume from Halloween 2011 here.)  In addition to my neon yellow jeans, I have a fabulous neon pink shirt that I was planning on wearing.

Why am I telling you about what I didn't end up wearing last night? Because I painted my nails yesterday afternoon, just in case we did go to the party. So there's some serious neon on my nails right now. THAT'S WHERE YOU COME IN. Because you're here for nails, right?

.  bam  .

Have you ever seen Orly's Glowstick polish?? I've been enthralled by the idea of owning it for a couple of years now. I thought that my inexpensive Claire's brand of neon yellow nail polish was sufficing, but now that I've tried Glowstick, the Claire's neon might as well go into the garbage.  Glowstick is sooo much more pigmented, and I almost didn't even need a second coat to be opaque over a white base.  But I gave it one anyway :)

First I applied a base coat and a single coat of a white polish to all of my nails. The white base is a must when you are using neons - it makes the colors pop like whoa! For my left hand, I used Glowstick on my pointer, middle and pinky nails. On my thumb I used two coats of Orly's Truly Tangerine, and on my ring finger I used two coats of Love & Beauty's neon green.

Sidebar:  Don't mind my wonky middle finger nail in the above pics. When I file my nails squarely, the corners always weaken first and snap off at an angle like that. It's especially dreadful when it happens the day before my weekly nail polish post. Womp womp.

On my right hand, I switched things up a bit and used the Truly Tangerine on my pinky, middle and pointer; Glowstick on my ring finger; and neon green on my thumb. Truly Tangerine is seriously bright, isn't it? It's like traffic-cone bright.

And OH yeah - here are my neon nails posing with their neon jeans! 

Damn ladies!! Looking fresh 'n poppin!

I'm not ruling out the possibility of something Halloween-related happening this weekend, so there's still potential for the entire neon outfit to come together somewhere, somehow. Whatever happens, my neon nails will be ready.

Did you dress up and get buckwild last night? Tweet me your costume pics @akaBailey!

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{Linking up with Friday's Fab Favorites, The Nail Files,  Halloween Link-Up, and What I'm Loving Fridays} 

Witch-Inspired Halloween Nails

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Goodness this week flew by! I can't believe it's Friday already, but I'm so excited for the weekend. Tonight I'm going to dinner in Vancouver with a handful of fabulous ladies that I met at the #blogvancity event last month. I'm really looking forward to dressing up a bit and heading out for a girls' night!

Today I have some more Halloween-ish nails for you. These colors remind me of a witch's outfit - black and purple with a few pops of gold and green.

A few weeks ago I picked up this really cool nail polish from Forever21's Love & Beauty line - it's a clear base jam-packed with tonnnnns of gold and green foil flakes inside. The flakes actually remind me of the gold flakes that are found in bottles of Goldschläger, #AMIRIGHT? The polish seemed like something that would work well for both holiday nails and Halloween nails, so I scooped it up to add it to my collecksh. (That's short for collection. Sound it out.)

After first checking out how the gold and green flake polish looked over a white polish base (it looks fine, by the way), I decided that it needed to go over a black polish next, for a Halloween look. I love the witchy color combo of black and purple, so that's why I went with purple for the accent.

.  gold/green by love & beauty, stiletto by revlon colorstay, amethyst by sinful colors  .

This purple polish - Amethyst by Sinful Colors - is the perfect Halloween purple! 

Did you even know there was such a thing??

As a parting sidebar, the brush on the Revlon Colorstay Stiletto polish was awesome - wide with a round, tapered tip, which made for really easy application.

Do you have a Halloween costume picked out already? Are you going to do your nails along with the rest of your costume? I'd seriously love to hear how you're going to be dressing up!

{Linking up at The Nail Files, Tell Us Tuesday, Friday's Fab Favorites,   What I'm Loving Fridays, and Friday's Five} 

Candy Corn Nails!

Ah, candy corns. Tiny little tri-colored pyramids of waxy sugar. You're alright with me. Time to put you on my nails!

This is a really easy Halloween-inspired nail look, and all you need are a few polishes and an inexpensive makeup sponge.

You can see on the card below that I was doing some swatches to choose a color, because I had a couple different oranges and a couple of different yellows that I was trying to decide between. I ended up using Fuzzy Navel by Ruby Kisses, Lightening by Sally Hanson Insta-Dri, and Snow Me White by Sinful Colors.

First I painted all of my nails one thick coat of Snow Me White and let it dry. Then I took my makeup sponge and applied my yellow, orange, and white polishes to the sponge in stripes, as you see above. While the polish is still wet on the sponge, line it up against your nail and in a rocking motion roll the colors over your nail. It might be tricky to get the lines straight, but just keep working at it. 

Try not to dab too much, as you would if you trying to do an ombre effect. You don't really want these colors to blend together much.

And look - I was even able to re-use the same sponge I used to do my purple ombre nails from back in May! #WasteNot.

What do you have on your nails today? Anything Halloween-inspired?

P.S. My Revlon 3D Nail Appliques post is featured today over on Coffee Beans & Bobby Pins!

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{Linking up with Tell Us Tuesday, The Nail Files, Friday's Fab Favorites,  What I'm Loving Fridays, and Friday's Five}   

My Fall To-Do List

I've seen a few bloggers writing up "Fall to-do lists" for themselves and it seemed like a fun way to set some goals for this season. We could all use some practice in setting goals and achieving them, right? Well I sure do anyway. I'm generally wretched at it.

Here's what I'm hoping to get done before winter hits:

Attend a Halloween party:  I missed out on Halloween fun BIG TIME last year. I can't let that happen again.

Buy The Nightmare Before Christmas:  Each year I'm increasingly agitated by the disappearing movie rental stores because I now have nowhere to go to rent this movie. No more Blockbusters or Hollywood Videos, and Redbox doesn't have seasonal classics like this one. Time for me to take matters into my own hands and buy the damn thing!

Paint some pumpkins: The market next to my house started selling small pumpkins a couple weeks ago, and I've got a real hankering to buy a bunch of them and paint them white, silver, pewter - WHATEVER. Painting polka dots doesn't have to just be relegated to my nails, right?

Buy new boots:  Guys... I cannnnnot find the right pair of rain- AND fashion-friendly boots. I have Sorels, and they're fabulous in the rain... unless I'm trying to look cute. Not only are the Sorels kind of butch-looking, but on top of that I can't wear skinny jeans with them because I can't tuck my jeans into them. But those tall knee-high and riding-style boots that everyone else wears are just not my style, so I have no desire to buy those.  WHAT IS A GIRL TO DO?? I need some boots that are sensible for rain and capable of having a pair of jeans tucked into them OR layered over them... and with just a touch of swag. Is that so much to ask?

Go through my closet and do a purge: I need to figure out what I haven't worn in the last year or so and pull out/donate the surplus. It's also not a bad time to try on all of my jeans (I seem to have a ton of them) and get serious about which ones I love and which ones I've become too old to wear. (Can you tell I'm turning 29 in a month? #LateTwentiesCrisis.)

Find a place to take a hayride OR pick apples:  Little bit of a back story... When I was in elementary school, my older sister Mallory and I used to have joint birthday parties because our birthdays are only about 3 weeks apart. We had an annual birthday party tradition of enlisting the help of an old man down the street from us who gave hayrides on the back of his big flatbed truck. All of our friends would meet at his house, we'd all pile onto the back of his hay-covered truck, and he'd drive us about a mile away to the Pittsfield State Forest. There, we'd get off the truck, have a party for a couple of hours (cake, presents, running amok, etc.), then pile back onto the truck and hayride it back to his house for all our friends to be picked up again. These annual hayrides are some of my absolute favorite memories from childhood, and probably a big reason as to why I'm almost 29 years old and still obsessed with hayrides. So, that said... I need to find a place to partake in that kind of thing around here! Apple picking is also acceptable, as long as cider donuts are also involved.

So those are some of the things I hope to be able to get done this fall - nothing earth-shatteringly important... except for that Nightmare Before Christmas situation. That one is life or death.

Do you have any to-do's this season? Have I inspired you to form some? DO ALL THE FALL THINGS!

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{Linking up at Miscellany Monday and Tell Us Tuesday} 

Solo in the City + The Halloween That Wasn't

It's been kind of a dull couple of weeks with Dave away. We are pretty good at going off on mini-adventures together - even if it's just to spend an afternoon walking all over the city. Without him around, I still love going on walks... but solo walks tend to end up being a bit shorter due to a combination of boredom and my desire to not walk alone in the dark. It stays pretty dark here in the mornings until almost 8am and then gets dark again around 6pm, so my window for walking after work isn't huge!

.  fall things, things fall .

On top of that it's been very rainy (duh), which also makes walking less appealing. Going on drives out of the city hasn't really been on the agenda either since our car window was smashed. I haven't been able to get it repaired yet because it's not my car and I'm not sure how insurance will work up here in Canada, as we haven't gotten Canadian car insurance yet. Dave will be coming home tomorrow (whoop!!) and we'll have to deal with it then. In the meantime I did an ultra ghetto patch-up job of duct taping a black garbage bag over the gaping hole in the door. It's funny b/c the guy with the truck beside ours (whose truck window was also smashed) has a very nice, clear plastic temporary seal on his window that looks like a professional did it, and ours looks like Oscar the Grouch stopped by to help out with the repair.

I did manage to take the car to a gas station yesterday in the pouring rain and spent some time vacuuming the glass up out of the backseat (and trunk and front seat and window pockets and under the rugs and inside the center console and seatback pockets and and and and GEEZUS THERE'S A TON OF BROKEN GLASS HERE!!). As soon as I started driving away from the gas station, though, a fresh cascade of broken glass fell out of the window frame and left a new pile on the floor in the back of the car. Awesome. Dave very helpfully pointed out to me last night that, "Car glass will not stay together broken. It will just keep crumbling." Now you tell me!

You might be asking why I opted to do all that in the pouring rain, and to that I say: a) Hey, it's always raining here. What, am I going to wait for a sunny day to vacuum? b) It was something that was hanging over my head and I just wanted to be done with it.  c) ... I actually just didn't notice it was raining before I left my apartment to undertake this project. I didn't bring an umbrella or wear rain-appropriate footwear either. When I returned home a half hour later, drenched from head to toe, the 20-year-old in the elevator with me timidly suggested that I ought to get myself an umbrella. So I stabbed him. #jk

What else is going on this week? Halloween. I took turns emotionally dressing up as both Debbie Downer and a sad panda this past weekend as Facebook was flooded with pics of people dressed up in ridiculous costumes and partying with their buds. I absolutely love Halloween and I always have. When we were younger, my sister Mallory and I used to start planning our Halloween costumes in November practically. My mother used to frequent fabric shops like JoAnn Fabrics (#whatupPittsfield?) and there was always an entire section of pattern books in the back of the store. Mallory and I would pore over these books looking at Halloween costume ideas, literally any time of the year. Fast forward to 2012 and I am still planning my Halloween costumes nearly years in advance. I even started setting calendar reminders for myself in my phone - i.e Early last year I actually set "South park character halloween costume" as a reminder for myself in my calendar for October 1, 2011. No jokes.

This year was the first year probably in my entire life that I didn't dress up for Halloween. I had no one to spend it with and no house party to attend!! WAH WAHHHH. Dave said that we could watch Halloween movies together when he gets home but we'll just see how that pans out. Mostly because there is no such thing as a movie store anymore and I'm pretty sure Redbox is fresh out of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus. Netflix, I'm not even going to bother with your streaming library. I know you don't have what I need.

In the absence of current costumes, here is a look back at some awesome Halloweens past:

.  2003 halloween at umass - i'm in the middle as bedtime bear . 

.   halloween 2004 at umass.  super troopers were the costume to beat that year, chuggin' ron roberto out of syrup bottles  .

.  2006 halloween at umass - bonnie and an apparently deceased clyde. whateva  .

.  halloween 2009 boston - all black everything .

.  with princess leia and smurfette, photobomb courtesy of a wild thing . 

.  halloween 2010 boston - another year, another carebear. apparently everyone wanted to be childhood toys this year . 

.  we are laughinnnnnnnng .

.  halloween boston 2011 - mr. and mrs. potatohead and me as neon. so on trend .

I might not have dressed up in a costume this year but I sure have been eating as if I went trick-or-treating. Not sure where all this candy came from or why I'm trying so hard to give myself Type 2 diabetes but... Dave might come home to find that I've turned into a Rocket or a chocolate-creme cookie.

Hey here's something totally unrelated - Taylor Swift, the little angel-faced sweetheart, has a new album out that everyone is going nuts about because it has sold over 1 million copies in its first week. This isn't the important part. The important part is that this is putting good old 'NSync back in the news because they hold the all-time record for albums sold in one week, with 2.4 million sold. What up No Strings Attached and the year 2000?! If you knew me during high school, or paid any attention to my life at all, you would know that I was obsessed with 'NSync from at least the years 1999-2003. How obsessed? So obsessed that I knew without Googling it that No Strings Attached was released on March 21, 2000.

On that note, watch this:


And hell, watch this too:


Oh those boys, with their music video hijinks and puppet metaphors!

What did you dress up as for Halloween? Did you hand out candy? What was your favorite costume that you saw this year?