Boston Snow, Pretty Valentine's Nails... and Annie Lennox

Happy Friday the 13th y'alllllllllll!

Don't mind my lack of posts this week. I'm somehow going to blame it on the snow. We've got lots of that up here in Boston these days. Apparently it's a record amount of snowfall in a 30-day period, and the city is kind of losing its shit. They don't know where to put all this snow, so streets have become narrower, snowbanks have gotten higher, and malcontent has juuuuust about reached its saturation point. Personally, I take my life into my hands each time I creep my car - inch by inch - out of my building's parking lot, because the snowbanks are so high that there's absolutely no way to know if there's a car coming or not. It's a real gamble every time - one that may soon cause me to experience either a car accident or a heart attack. I'm hoping for neither... wish me luck.

Obligatory weather-talk aside, guess what else I've been doing like a champ this week that's kept me from blogging...

Working out! HEYO! #BetterFasterStronger.

It's been so long since I've been able to have a normal-ish gym routine, thanks to the many aches, pains, ailments, troubles, et ceteras that I've been bitching about since the summer. With physical therapy now in my rear view and the numbness gone from my arm, I'm back to taking advantage of my Gold's Gym membership. It feels amazing, and I can't wait to see myself tone up again! It's been hard to eat whatever the hell I want and maintain my girlish figure at the same time these last few months. ;)

Anycrap. [Insert normal segue.] I know last week's nail polish blog was rife with grumpiness about Valentine's Day, but something inside me insisted upon an official VDay mani after all. Whatever. Shut up. Here it is:

No hearts though. Eff that.

The red is A List from Essie, silver is Diamond Texture from Revlon, and the middle finger is Snow Me White by Sinful Colors topped with Clearly Spotted from Maybelline.

The red nails all required 3 coats, and they're still not totally opaque. The formula of A List is really beautiful... but it's thin. Much like Giuliana Rancic.

Speaking of her and that (hey look, a relevant segue!), I didn't watch the Grammys last week because I don't have cable, but I have watched some of the highlights online. Two damn words y'all:  Annie. Lennox. Two more words: SHE TOOK ME TO CHURCH 'N PUT A SPELL ON ME, FOR REALSIES. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please behold:

Mmmmmmhmm. Spectacular.

This weekend I'm going home to Pittsfield to visit my family - seemed like a nice way to spend Valentine's Day, plus it's my little sister's 23rd birthday. Yeah, my baby sister is turning 23. Time, AMIRIGHT? Shit marches on.

Wish me luck in my travels this weekend because there is another round of snow/blizzard coming our way. I have a feeling the 2.5-hour drive from Pittsfield back to Boston may be closer to a 5-hour drive through the snow on Sunday! Eesh.

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Call Them Valentine's Nails If You Want To... (and Highlights from the Week)

Yesterday I spent time scrolling through Instagram looking at the #valentinesnails hashtag, cultivating some ideas for a heart-filled mani today. I even went so far as to decide on a theme and pull out a bunch of cute pastel polishes with which I was going to paint lots of small, dainty hearts onto my nails.

But then I realized I don't want to do any effing Valentine's Day nails this year. DO I SEEM IN THE MOOD FOR VALENTINE'S NAILS???

Sorry for yelling at you.

After abandoning most of my pastels and telling my heart-making dotting tool to go eff itself, I settled on another look entirely... a look which still ended up being semi-Valentinesy, much to my chagrin. The pink polishes used might give off a V-day vibe, but this was really just a way for me to use a Deborah Lippmann polish that I received as a 100-point VIB gift from Sephora a couple months ago. The polish, absolutely adorably called 99 Luftballons, has a sheer fuchsia base that's glitter-packed with multi-colored rounds and hexes.

My nails each have 3 coats of Sally Hansen's Pink Blink, and my thumb and ring fingernails each also got 2 coats of 99 Luftballons. Pink Blink is such a streaky bitch of a polish, but it's still a pretty color!

I didn't realize the base color of 99 Luftballons was going to be so colorful until I applied it over the top of Pink Blink. The fuchsia color surprised me, since the polish is so packed with glitter in the bottle that you can't really discern a color in the base. I thought it was going to be clear!

This has been another snowy week in Boston, and we are due to get another 3-day storm in the coming days. I'm not going to say that I hate the snow... but it's taking some getting used to, after enjoying balmy Pacific Northwest winters the last few years. Honestly, I'd much rather have rainy winters filled with lush green grass and trees than snowy winters where everything looks dead and depressing. Maybe a pretty strong sign that the Pac-NW was a good place for me... #LifeDecisions.

Despite the snow, I've been trying to not be a hermit. On Tuesday evening I took the T into downtown Boston to meet my friend Kara in the Back Bay for a post-work drink. We intended to go to a regular bar but Kara inadvertently discovered a freaking CHOCOLATE bar, which you may have seen me RAVING about on Instagram:

Max Brenner is a chocolate bar, restaurant, and all-over goddamn EXPERIENCE, people. Hot chocolates, choctails, milkshakes, desserts, crepes, waffles, and a full restaurant menu as well... I mean, it was like Willy Wonka opened a classier place for adults. I got a salted caramel milkshake (right) and Kara got a Mudslide milkshake (left). We both felt pretty good about ourselves afterwards. And by that I mean... I think we both skipped dinner that night.

On Wednesday afternoon I was on my way to a doctor's appointment (a follow-up orthopedic appointment about my neck/shoulder problems) when my entire car started to shake on the highway. Thinking I'd gotten a flat, I immediately pulled over on a super shitty part of I-93 - right at an off-ramp - and risked my life to check all four tires, which were all perfectly plump with air. Getting back into my car and driving off, the damn thing starts shaking again. Obviously worried, I pulled off at the next exit, parked in a bank lot, got out and looked underneath my car...

... where I saw something very metal and very important-looking dangling, half-attached, from the underbelly of my poor Toyota Yaris. "What the actual fuck?" I wondered to myself. Getting AAA on the phone was a 25-minute process in itself (busy day in Boston, thanks to all the snow), and then I was told that a tow truck would be out to help me by 5:45pm. I looked at the clock. It was just before 3pm. Fahk. Cue waiting in the cold car for nearly 3 hours with a dying iPhone, using bubble wrap as a blanket:

At 5:45 on the dot, the tow truck rolled into the lot. I described my problem to the driver, who looked under my car, identified the dangling atrocity as my heat shield, and told me it was no biggie and that I could very safely drive the car to a repair place myself. No tow needed.

....

YEAH. Really fantastic way for me to spend 3 hours. I even had to cancel my doctor's appointment. On the bright side, the heat shield is so unimportant (apparently) that the guy at the Monro Muffler place simply removed it for me, no charge! Thanks, Monro Man. I'm sorry I didn't get your name.

Last night I went to dinner at (Boston's famous) Regina's Pizza with Jenna and had a fantastic evening of catching up and eating carbs. Tonight I've got a sushi dinner date with Steph and her friend Cris at Sei Bar in Medford. Friends and food seem to be my big themes of the week :)

Hey, how the heck has YOUR week been going?
Did you eat anything super yummy this week?
How is your car holding up through your winter season?

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Where Surf Meets Snow: Revere Beach in the Winter

A beach under a layer of winter snow is probably not something that you see very often. Maybe you don't live near a beach... Maybe you don't live where it snows... Maybe you live near a beach in a place where it does snow... but never thought to take a venture down to the water's edge during a snowstorm to check it out.

Well I have, and it's pretty cool. 

Revere Beach is a short enough drive from my apartment that it's straight up silly that I haven't been there yet. To remedy this, I decided a couple of weekends ago to head there with my camera to take some pictures and see what the shore is like.

I awoke that Saturday morning to heavily falling snow, but rather than letting that deter me from my plans, I just became even more excited to photograph the wintery beach.

I drove straight out to the coast, then headed north alongside the beach on Revere Beach Boulevard, where I eventually pulled over to the side of the road and parked. Battling the fierce wind and whipping snow, I climbed over the seawall and trudged through the snow to the shore.

The line where the surf meets the snow always makes for terrific pictures, if you ask me. And the higher the snow level, the cooler it looks. (At the end of this blog, there's a 2010 photo of a beach on Cape Cod, with about 2-feet of snow at the shoreline!)

Not surprisingly, I was the only one on the beach that day... except for these three beach bums:

This guy.

When David and I lived in Cape Cod, back in 2009-2011, we lived within walking distance of Falmouth Heights Beach. Here it is under 2 feet of snow, which proves my point about wintery beaches looking even cooler when the snow is higher:

.  don't mind the blurry photo quality; digital cameras have improved tremendously since 2010  .

Have you ever seen a snowy beach?

Want to come build a snowman family on the beach with me?

Let's go! Bring your green hat!

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Super Bowl Nails: New England Patriots!

WELL WELL WELL, if it isn't Super Bowl weekend! It's been a dreary, stay-at-home, snow-filled week here in the Boston area - and it started snowing again this morning - so the game on Sunday is a perfect thing to be able to look forward to. Naturally, as a Massachusetts girl, I felt compelled to do some Patriots-inspired nail art this week - and I actually busted out my practice rounds and toothpicks for the occasion.

Colors used:

• Ruby Ruby by Sinful Colors
• Blue It by Sally Hansen
• Diamond Texture by Revlon
• Posh by Revlon
• Snow Me White by Sinful Colors
• Also used a couple of white star nail decals from Inspired Nails

My thumbnail has two coats of Ruby Ruby, pointer and pinky have two coats of Blue It, middle finger has two coats of Diamond Texture, and ring finger has two coats of Posh. I put a few drops of Snow Me White onto a piece of scrap paper and used a stippling motion with a toothpick to dab on the 50-yard line. Usually stippling is your best friend when using a toothpick, but it obviously left my numbers a little bumpy. But, as they say in eastern Massachusetts, "WHATEVAH."

I carefully placed the white star decals on the center of my pointer nails and then topped everything with a coat of Seche Vite. (Is it uncouth to name-drop a top coat? Just let me know.) The star decals are holding up surprisingly well so far - no peeling or budging, despite several hand washes and showers.

In other big weekend news, there's a new roommate moving into my apartment tomorrow! It's a guy named Nick who is moving here from NYC and who seems entirely normal. Fingers crossed for me that everything goes smoothly. Please. Please!!!!!!!!

I hope you have a fun weekend planned. Will you be watching ZEE SEWPER BEWL? Did you do any football nails this week?

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A Few Good Things

DAT PRICE OF GAS DOE. Guys - I paid $1.95/gallon the other day. It's costing me less than $25 to fill my gas tank these days. Unheard of! And by that I mean.... not heard of since I was in college!

.  excuse me while i go swim in a pool of all my extra money  .

For my part in backing the Teachers Lounge webseries Kickstarter project, I recently received a cute t-shirt in the mail. Go watch the series on the Thundershorts YouTube channel now, if you haven't seen it already, or if you - like me - just want to watch it again. It's jam-packed with cameos from some fabulous comedians, and I believe they are trying to produce even more episodes now.

And on a note related to the above photo, I've been loooooving the Revlon Kissable Balm Stains lately. They were an old favorite but I started playing around with them again this past month. My current favorite colors are Honey (a natural, rosy pink) and Smitten (a beautifully bright, blue-toned berry). In the above photo I'm wearing a combo of Smitten and a Revlon ColorBurst Lacquer Balm in the color Flirtatious Charmeuse.

.  smitten and honey  .

What are some good things going on in your life these days?
Have you tried the Kissable Balm Stains?

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My Current Favorite Instagram Accounts

As someone who tends to thrive on being visually stimulated (do with that sentence-starter what you will), Instagram is my favorite app for killing time. Nevermind the fact that it's pretty much the only app I use. Just never-you-mind that.

I compiled a list of my current favorite Instagram accounts and consequently determined that they can be divided into three categories: pretty, funny, and Vancouver/Boston. Ask me if I care that Vancouver and Boston have no business being in one single category. GO ON, ASK ME. No, I don't care.

The pretties are accounts celebrating things like visual design or hair/beauty, the funnies are accounts that serve no purpose other than making people laugh, and the Vancouver/Boston accounts feature beautiful cityscapes that stoke my longing for the Pacific Northwest while also helping me better appreciate my current East Coast home.

Ready? LEGGO.

* P R E T T Y *

blushshop
Pretty things in soft, pretty pastels. A soothing and inspiring account!

.  source  .

sheinside official

So many good outfits, posted in bursts. Love it!

.  source  .

D E S I G N L O V E F E S T

One of my favorite blogs and favorite Instagram accounts.

.  source  .

 
instabraid

Has me immediately "longing" for my long hair again.

.  source  .

* F U N N Y *

fuckjerry

Just a ton of laughable posts - it was hard to choose one to feature here.

.  source  .

thefatjewish

This account is nothing but constant gems. I legitimately scroll through his feed and just laugh out loud at almost all of them. His captions usually make the pics even better.

.  source  .

betches

Not quite as hysterical as thefatjewish or fuckjerry, but still good for a chuckle

.  source  .

* V A N C O U V E R / B O S T O N *

instagramvancouver

Some of the most beautiful photography of Vancouver, by photographer Patrick King. He captures so many different aspects of Vancouver - you'll love it!

.  source  .

inside_vancouver
Beautiful pictures of Vancouver compiled from other Instagram accounts.

.  source  .

VIAwesome

Another account that shares pictures from others. There's a really wide variety of photography styles and Vancouver-related subject matter.

.  source  .

burnsobright11

This is actually an account run by the twin brother of my friend Kara's boyfriend. Cory takes beautiful pictures around Boston and is so far my favorite Boston Instagrammer!

.  source  .

Now I obviously must know what your favorite Instagram accounts are. Are you following me yet? Find me at akabaileyblog, and leave a comment below with your account name so I can follow you too!

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Blueberry Gumdrops and Mint Apple Nails

My mani sounds way more scrumptious than yours does. SAWRY LOLOLOL JK NO I'M NOT. #nomnomnom

Using Mint Apple by Sinful Colors and Blue-Berry Sweet on You from the Nicole by OPI Gumdrops collection, I whipped up this look featuring a polka dot accent nail. Too many months without a polka dot mani makes one weak... I always say. (Yes, always.) And it's been way too long since I last dotted my nails, so I was feeling pretty weak. Yep, I'm blaming my weakness on the lack of polka dots and not on the lack of workouts. LAY OFF ME, I'M INJURED.

Anycrap! For these nails, I did 3 coats of Blue-Berry Sweet on You on my pinky, pointer and thumb nails, and 3 coats of Mint Apple on my middle finger. I used 2 coats of Snow Me White (Sinful Colors) on my ring finger, topped with Mint Apple polka dots.

As usual (and especially since it'd been so long since my last polka dot mani), I did some practice polka dots on a piece of scrap paper before going to my nails with my dotting tool. If you want to step up your polka-dotting game, here's an entire blog full of my favorite tips for making perfect polka dots on your nails. You can also browse through all of my polka dot manis here.

Elsewhere in my life, there are a few other things going on...

1. I'm still looking for a roommate... yeah, a roommate for February 1. Like, a week from now. I seriously thought it would be easy to find a roommate, but joke's on me! I've listed my place on Craigslist, HotPads, PadMapper... so far no great leads. Um, know anyone cool who needs a place to live near Boston? I'm about to have to pay for the entire month of February by myself, soooo........ send me your freshest homeless friends. Please 'n thanks.

2. Deflategate. I mean, geezus people. Can we say buzzkill? I don't have an explanation for this shit, but I'm not making any excuses either. It just sucks for last weekend's amazing game/win to be tainted by all of it, and it makes me feel a bit more sheepish about broadcasting how excited I am that the Patriots are in the Super Bowl. (But really though....... WHOOHOOOO!!!!!!!!! PATRIOTS FTW!!)

3. GUYSSSSSS - I'm hosting Craft Club #4 this weekend! It's happening a little late in January, but we're squeezing one in nonetheless! Sunday's craft is going to be collaging, so I'm excited to host my friends and show them my techniques for making collages. I actually haven't really had anyone over at my place at all yet since I've lived here, so this is kind of like breaking-in my apartment in some way. Better late than never! And it seemed like a good idea to host Craft Club here while I've still got the entire apartment to myself :) You can, of course, expect a recap and some pictures of our crafting adventures here in a week or two, if you're into that sort of thing. Note: You oughtta be into that sort of thing.

What do you have going on this weekend?
Have any polka dots on your nails or homeless-but-employed friends to send me?

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