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.