This weeks manicure and the best UV top coat I have found so far.

I have found a fantastic way to make your regular nail polish last and last. I have recently purchased a bottle of gel top coat from Walmart that is so wonderful that I just had to share with the world. Or at least the small bit of the world that reads this blog.



 

 

 

 And here it is PRO-FX gel base and top coat , this stuff is amazing. Amazing I say. Its a little tricky to use at first, but once you get used to the consistency and the amount to use, it leaves me speechless.

 

 For example the picture above was taken six days after application. Almost a full week and as you can see there is a small amount of wear on the tips there are no major chips or missing color. Fantastic!

For this subtle yet fun manicure I used two coats of China Glaze in Street Chic, stamped with Delight, also China Glaze. I used my m57 Konad plate.
Its a somewhat time consuming process. Each coat of nail polish has to dry 5 minutes under the light. The stamping, which has little to no drying time and then the top coat, which takes 2 to 3 minutes. Finish with a cotton ball dipped in alcohol to remove the dispersion layer and voila. But that's just for one hand, I think in total it took me an entire hour to achieve this look.

 One more look at the design. You like? The only down fall to this fabulous top coat is the fact that you have to use a UV curing light

Strep throat sucks

Not only did I bring home some souvenirs from my vacation I also brought home a lovely case of strep throat. YAY. No not yay, I feel like crap. It came on quickly. Wednesday morning I woke up with a scratchy throat, no big deal at the time. As the day wore on I started to feel a little worse but still OK. So I took a nap, a three hour nap. I though to myself oh what have I done I'm never going to sleep tonight.

We took the princess out to eat for her birthday and I started feeling really bad and quick. When we got home from our evening I had a temp of 101. I took some NyQuil (because of the nap) and snored the night away. When I awoke the next morning I felt so bad. I guess I'm a mega wuss because I never get sick, it was just extra bad. I milled around the house. Took another nap this time only two hours and finally admitted that I was sick.

About 90% of the time I hate living in this small little podunk town, Thursday was not one of them. I called the clinic at 2:45 at which point my fever had reached 103 and I couldn't remember my name, no joke I could not remember my name. Got an appointment at 3:30, and was out of there tests shots and all by 4:00. And it only cost me $145.00 Yeah I was happy about that. The princess had high school orientation that night and her daddy had to take her, he was going anyway but I had to skip. So I had almost 4 hours all to myself just me and the dog.

 I took another dose of NyQuil and was off the bed.......or so I thought. Apparently the NyQuil made my sleep walk and subsequently sleep strip.

So that leaves us with today. I woke up feeling much better but no where near well and naked. My throat is on fire. It was like waking up from a bad drunk. I knew where I was but I had no idea where my clothes were. I was informed about the sleep walking incident where I went in the kitchen and told everyone that I was sick, mumbled something else and then went back to bed. I had clothes on at that point. I did eventually find my sleep shirt. It was rolled up neatly and placed in a laundry basket. I guess that happened during the sleep walking. I hate when that happens. Not too sure I'm going to be partaking in  the NyQuil tonight. So my neck hurts and my throat hurt and my head hurt when i bend over. I'm not delirious any longer and I think I should be OK in a couple days. Or at least I hope I am because I'm starving and everything I eat or drink hurts.

Maybe some day I'll get around to posting those birthday party pictures. But right now I think I'm going to go do my nails.

My review of the Ramada in Ruidoso NM

I was going to write a very detailed negative review on the Ramada in Ruidoso New Mexico. But I'm not, all I can say is DONT stay there. Just dont. Trust me on this one.

Greetings from New Mexico!

Today is day three of our five day four night trip to the lovely pines in Ruidoso New Mexico. Its raining at the moment so we are in the room relaxing and well doing nothing. But that's OK because it sure beats home. So far in the past three days we have walked, walked and the then we walked some more. I sure do regret getting off of that treadmill several months back, this is what I was training for.

 

We started our stay in the Ramada. My next post will be a review on that hotel but a quick preview will tell you that I give it one star. I know that I have a tendency to be a bit negative sometimes but thrust me on this one. We have since moved to the Hotel Ruidoso. Which is much better in both price location and amenities (and by amenities I mean breakfast)

 

Lets see, day one.

1. Got our room
2. Walked around
3. Took some pictures
4. We made and exciting discovery. A real Slush Puppy machine! I thought I was going to hyper ventilate I was so excited. I got one in pina colada, my favorite flavor from childhood.
5. Took a nap. And that's about it.

Day two

1. Walked around
2. Walked around
3. Had the best burger that I have ever eaten, hands down, no questions ask!!!
4. Took a nap
5. Took a drive in the mountains. That was a sad sight. Due to the recent forest fires the mountains are no longer lush and green but black and scorched. I was so saddened to see that. We were on our way to the lake but the road was closed. No hiking for us that day.
6. Did some antiquing
7. More walking
8. and then ate again. This time at K-Bobs. They have a fantastic salad bar.

Day three and counting

1. Did some more antiquing.
2. Changed hotels
3. took a nap, and that leaves us here where we are right now. Sitting in the room listening to the thunder and the rain outside. Maybe it will let up soon so we can go walk around more and do some trinket shopping.

This trip is all about restraint for me. I have been purging the house of all of the things that we do not need or want for the last several weeks, so the last thing I need now is to buy a bunch of tacky junk to fill those empty spaces. And I'm here to tell you that its hard for me to do that. I'm a sucker for tacky knickknacks and Indian jewelry. It will take up residence in jewelry box only to see the light of day when I open it to get something else out. That's a very sad existence for Indian jewelry. So far ,the only thing that I have acquired is a poncho, yes tacky I know but I have been wanting one since I was 15. Twenty years is a long wait. And a piggy bank for my pig collection. I had my eyes on a pair of earrings that would perfectly match my favorite western shirt but I still haven't made up my mind on those yet.

 

That rains still coming down.

 

Tomorrow we are planning a trip to the stables for some mountain horse back riding. Another nap, and of course more walking. Maybe some bowling or other activity if we don't do that tonight.

 

Well I'm off to write that review on the Ramada, be sure to read that if you are planning on heading this way and your not sure of a hotel.

 

Cheesing outside the hotel

 

Carved bears everywhere.

 

The last known Slush Puppy machine know in existence. Located at the Shamrock station next to the La Quinta in Ruidoso NM

 

Ah, choices choices, which one to pick

I have recently been presented with a new lap top computer and now I have a choice to make. To skin or not to skin. I found several I like on Skinit.com. For $29.99 each. Is that a good price?

Cow

Leather

Peach Ostrich

Bucking Bronc

These are the four ,so far, that best fit my personality and lifestyle. I'm leaning more toward the cow. What do you think?

The party is almost upon us.

One day left until my only daughters 16th birthday party and I have the most stressful part taken care of. The cake. It doesn't look anything like the picture that inspired it but I think it looks pretty darn cute. I just hope the inside looks like its supposed to. I'm so nervous about that and I wont know until about seven o clock tomorrow night, fingers crossed, fingers crossed.

Party inviations. Making Something cheap look not so cheap.

So as I have said before I'm planning a 16th birthday party for the princess, and we decided that she should go with zebra print and pink. The most over done party theme of the year, yes I know. Actually after some debate and deliberation we decide to go with zebra and turquoise to change things up a bit and to be a little less cliche. After some searching and price comparisons we decided that Walmart had the best prices on invitations plates napkins etc.

Step two in any great party, after choosing a theme is invitations. These were $0.98 for a package of 8 which happened to be the number we needed. Perfect!

Invitations before. Before crafty mom (that's me) decided that she was not going to send out these cheap looking things out, not even to teenagers.  So the first step was to find a border, so I yahoo searched zebra border and this is what I found. At this point in time we were still going with pink. And wouldn't you know it I cant find the link to the border I used.

OK with border found and downloaded next step was to re size and format the inserts. This took a little time. I measured the invitations and discovered that they are slightly smaller than a 4x6 note card. Again perfect because I just so happened to have not only one but two packages of blank note card. Ha. I used the Microsoft works word processor for the next steps. Which I'm not going into unless someone requests it. Some double stick tape and.....

voila this is what the finished product looks like.  Now let me tell you what I did wrong. I'm so self critical. The invitation its self was formatted in portrait but I made the inserts in landscape, I didn't realize the error until I had printed out 16 cards.  I forgot to put Saturday before the date. Ive already had one kid ask me if it was on a Monday. And I wasn't clear on what water games were. In this case its water balloons. I have had every kid that was invited ask "whats water games?"

Oh and BTW this is an original idea that came straight from my noggin and not pinterest or another blog, yay me. You should be proud!! Feel free to copy the idea, I don't mind.

The very best scene from Lonesome Dove

This was on again tonight and I was privileged to catch the ending scene, which I think is the best scene of the entire mini series. It makes me cry every time I see it and now I share it with you...........

To the rescue......

If you have been in the country and been around quails you know that they are beautiful, graceful, family oriented birds that will fly out and scare the crap out of you. Today while the princess and I were spraying weeds we seen a family of quail a mother and two babies. Usually there are more and this is the wrong time of the year for babies. We sat and watched them run away into the brush and ooohed and ahhhed over how cute the little ones were and then got back to work. Well a few rounds later we discovered that one of the little ones had been left behind. I don't know if the mother had intended to or if she was coming back for it but I couldn't just leave it there because I would have ran right over it if I had. So we caught it took a picture and released it out of harms way. I really hope it found its mother and it lives after we picked it up. So many wild little things die after being handled. For what ever reason I don't know. These are my tiny little woman hands, if that gives you an idea of how small it was.

Sore sore sore

Hello all you out there that are actually reading this blog. Since the title is A day in the life of a farm girl, I thought I would post a little something about the farm.

Well basically for the last three days the princess and I have been spraying weeds. Vile hideous weeds. Because, well there isn't a crop again this year. But unlike last year where we didn't  have the rain to grow anything, this year we have had a few showers that brought ever weed from this year and the last to life. Its a daunting and somewhat overwhelming task in front of us. But I cant complain just because we had an entire summer off last year doesn't mean we have it this year. But I must admit last summer made me soft, this heat is rough. My back is sore, my front is sore, my arms and legs... sore.

On a brighter note we are planning a birthday party for the Princess and the invitations go out tomorrow. 16 what a big year. I hope its a fun time for all and of course I will have pictures of both the decorations and the party itself. I have some original ideas as well as a ton of ideas from pinterest. I'll have to title the post "Party by Pinterest" Lets all pray it goes well and they all get along. We all know how teenagers can be. I don't know if I'm brave or crazy.

Well its after 11pm and the day starts early, sorry for the cranky mood.

Circle zip earbud pouch.

This was an easy easy project. That's I had to do three times to get right lol, there are some steps in the original tutorial seen here that I removed and it worked like a dream..... after the third try.

ROUND 1: I used a Solo cup. (A red Solo cup I believe hahaha.) As the circle pattern for the first and second go rounds. I soon discovered that the Solo cup is about 1/4 inch too small. But practice makes perfect, right. In the original post and tutorial I'm not sure why  batting was used. Maybe the original poster used a bigger circle I don't know, but what I do know is the batting made it almost impossible to work with. And this lumpy mess is what resulted.

 ROUND 2: This one turned out much better. I skipped the batting and used a duck fabric with a thin cotton fabric for the liner. The edges are not as smooth as I would have liked but its usable and I'm the only one that will notice. It measures 3 inches

ROUND 3: This was my best of three. I used a small cereal bowl for the circle and the edges came out quite nice and smooth. I used this one to carry my tanning stickers. It measures 4 inches

Can you say YEE HAW?!!!!!

Look at the bargain I brought home today. I'm so excited because I've had my eye on this belt for quite a while now. OK maybe not the belt its ugly but the buckle its purdy.... Originally priced $49.99 and I nabbed it today for right at $18.00.  Not to mention I can put the pretty buckle on the belt I already own. Yay.

UPDATED: Cleaning the bathtub and shower.

This is a trick that I learned from several different websites, its on Pinterest also if you search bathtub cleaning you ll find it. Honestly I'm not sure that it worked and I'll tell you why. My bathtub was clean when I tried it. I live in a house that was built in the late 60s and the bathtubs are original to the house. The reason I tried this particular method of cleaning is because there is a scale in the bottom center of my tub. The sides are smooth but the bottom is rough, its almost like a hard water buildup. I've tried everything under the sun to try to remove it and its still there. This cleaning method didn't work either. But I have to admit it took some of the staining away. I don't have a link or before and after pictures so I'll have to wing it.

First we start with the cleaning supplies, you'll need a spray bottle or squeeze bottle, equal parts vinegar and Dawn dish soap. The instructions that I followed said to heat the vinegar in the microwave for 60 seconds, pour in spray bottle, add Dawn and mix gently. While still warm spray on entire shower or bathtub, wait 2 hours and rinse away. Sounds easy enough right. And this is what I did on my first go round one the shower enclosure. I nearly died, the "fumes" were unbearable. I think it was a result of the spray bottle and the fine mist that it created. The waiting is almost as bad. Two hours of stink. Super stink!! After 2 hours I scrubbed with a magic eraser and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. After that I really couldn't tell if it did very much. But like I already said, it was clean to begin with.

OK day two, second try, the bathtub. I really wanted that scale buildup out of there so even after the stink of the shower I was willing to try. This time I decided to try a different application approach. I bought some squeeze bottles that are used for salad dressing at Walmart just for this occasion. I microwaved the vinegar added the Dawn to the measuring cup and poured it into the bottle. I applied the solution to the tub and swiped it with a sponge to insure even coverage. Much better. But then there was the 2 hours of stench. Yuck. After the 2 hours were up i used a Scotch Brite pad and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Guess what this does not take 40 years of lime scale build up off. (Limeaway and CLR don't either) It did take some of the dingy staining away and there wasn't any soap scum to speak of so I guess all I can tell you about this method is try it if it suits you. But remember it stinks and you will rinse about ten full times to get all the dish soap washed away.

UPDATE:
OK so we went on a 3 day trip last week and I guess this cleaning method worked better than I had originally thought. I guess I just needed fresh eyes to see it, because when we got home and I pulled the lacy curtain back to put my shampoo away I thought WHOA what happened here. Well I guess I was wrong on this one

Matching dyi flip flops

Yesterday was super busy so I didn't have time to post the flip flop tutorial that I promised. Click here for the original posting with instructions. This was what I would call a semi-fail. I wore the shoes out on the town and man did my feet hurt afterwards. The knots in the bottom are too big and they felt like I was walking with a rock stuck to the bottom of my thin flip flop. Also it was a little stressful cutting up a brand new pair of shoes in the name of crafts and fashions. So here is my version of the Knot so hard flip flop.

 The finished product

 As you can see in the above photo I didn't use knots like the original tutorial instructed. I tied knots in the fabric over and over and couldn't get them in the right place so I opted for a little band made of scrap fabric and hand sewn on the back side.

 The knots on the bottom side were too big and uncomfortable, they are fine for wearing on carpeted floors but hurt on concrete. I think they would be OK for short term wear, like say to church on a casual morning.

And in case your wondering about the fabulous nail polish I'm wearing its Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in Heart of Stone. I purchased it at Walmart for I don't remember how much. But its a fantastic color that reminds me of taffy, and two coats is all it takes.

Tank top dress.

So here goes on my first post in my as seen on Pinterest series. Its a lovely little dress that was so insanely easy that anyone could do it, and it was very inexpensive. Here the link to the original posting. I made flip flops to match, which will be tomorrows post.  Disclaimer!! These pictures are awful, So remember to look at the dress and not the model, my daughter was making me laugh.

Of course the fit isn't the nearly the same as in the tutorial and I think I may have gotten the waist a little high but all in all I'm very pleased with this dress and it only took me an afternoon to finish. It would make a really cute mid-pregnancy maternity dress.

My sewing/craft room

First of all I would like to introduce all of you to my sewing room, or as my boyfriend calls it the old lady room.   Take a good look because the only time its is this clean is when company is coming over.

 The view as you walk into the room

 The treadmill that I'm supposed to walk on ever morning but never do. Oops

 The lovely dresser with the silver toned candle sticks, one more project in a long list of projects.

My sewing table, which was an awesome thrift store find. $15 

These Christmas cookie tins are were I keep all my notions and findings. Yet another project.



This is where it all happens, all the clothing is made, all the glitter is glued, all the plans are hatched. This is my crafty space.

As seen on Pinterest is born

So this is what I get for staying away so long. I came back and everything has changed. This new blogger layout is going to take a little getting used to, to say the least.
OK, so in my last post I said I was going to start posting more often. That was 3 months ago and I have no idea what happened other than the fact that I'm all out lazy. So today (yes today) I'm starting a new series that I'm calling "AS SEEN ON PINTEREST". And its going to be just that, things I've seen on Pinterest and tried. Event if its an utter fail I'll still post the results.
This time I'll try try try to keep up with my blogging and stop with the laziness.

So here goes.......

Absents makes the heart grow fonder

So Ive been seriously absent for the last.... I don't know 4, 5 months. And let me tell you, honestly you didn't miss much because besides the stock show in January and getting pigs sold off and butchered nothing has happened.

Ive started sewing again and I have some things to share. So starting tomorrow I will be posting some of my sewing and baking again.

Todays tip, making a straight centered crease in your jeans every time.

I thought that since my blog was fairly new I would start adding "Tip of the Week" but then I realized that I don't know or have that many tips, so I decided to go with tip of the month. So with out further ado here is January's Tip of the Month

I don't know about you but sometimes I have a real problem getting my jeans to cooperate when I'm ironing them. I discovered this tip about 10 years ago when I was ironing a pair of jeans and it just so happen that I was working on sewing a dress at the same time. My pin cushion was near by that I had a thought.

I like using quilting pin because they are longer and have flat heads. You can use any kind of pins that you like.

Find the seams and line them up.

Pin in place (the mauve nail polish came back as you can see)












Line the seams at the top and pin in place. Then place pins down the length of the pant leg, I used 5 pins












Then iron as usual. And you'll have a straight centered crease every time.

Music video of the week.

One of my Facebook friends posted this, its not really my style but I really like it.

The search for the missing shoe.

I like to keep all of my workout gear, shoes, workout clothes, a clean pair of socks etc. in a basket under my vanity for the next mornings use. So as I was gathering my goods for tomorrows treadmill session and I can only find one shoe. One? Ok we're all adults in this house its not like I'm looking for a three year olds shoe. I look in the closet.... nothing the closet is clean, I'm somewhat impressed with myself. Ok under the bed..... nothing, wow there is literally nothing under my bed. Again I'm impressed but I must stick to the task at hand. Where is my darn shoe? I looked in the hamper..... nothing. I took another look in the hamper and then sorted all the laundry. I'm getting side tracked again. I ask the Girl and she just laughed at me for loosing a shoe at my age. I looked in the office.... found my work boots, but I knew those were there, put them in the closet. Looked under the bed again, wow there's really nothing under there. Looked in the living room, nothing. Looked in the den, nothing. I finally found it. It was in a basket of clothes that was in the bottom of my daughters closet. Your guess is only as good as mine as to how it got there. Oh well at least I got most of the laundry sorted for tomorrow.

Final pictures from the stock show