Birthdays

Y'all know what I did today? I cleaned. Whoa. That is something right there. My roommate and I are extremely good at being the opposite of clean, so even though we clean roughly once a week, it's still a disaster area by the weekend.

In other news, it's gorgeous in San Antonio (80 degrees today!) and I spent the afternoon outside pretending to do homework. :)

Last night was my friend Alex's birthday, and since his roommate Michael's birthday is this coming Saturday, we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate. We went to a place in the Quarry that was ok, not the greatest food ever, but we had fun. Plus I got free cake when the waiter spilled water on me. ;)

Here are the birthday boys... this pretty much sums up their roommate relationship.

And here are Alli and I being adorable matchy roommates. That was unplanned, by the way. We are just cute like that.

Today is also my sister's 17th birthday - hooray for birthdays! She's mainly excited that she can buy M rated games without Mama in the store, haha.

Back, and with a glitter

Hallo dolls, sorry it took me so long to get accustomed to school again. :) I am now safely ensconced in my dorm room and getting adjusted to my new classes/schedule (can I just say that I'm in a Chaucer seminar and it is possibly the most awesome thing ever? I love my major).

I've got a glitter for y'all today! This is one of the glitters Revlon put out recently, Galaxy. It consists of hexagonal holographic glitter amid tons of little tiny holo and black glitter, all in a clear base. So cool. Holo and glitter are two amazing things, and when you put them together you get a happy Faithy.

Galaxy is definitely better for layering than for wearing alone, but it is most assuredly possible to wear it alone like I did here - you'll just need at least 4 coats, haha. I was mesmerized by my nails the entire time I wore this... holo will do that to me.

For a glitter, the wear and tear time wasn't too bad. I think I got a good 3 days out of it before it chipped? That's a pretty long time for a glitter, since a lot of them will chip on me after a single day. I'm upset I didn't buy more of these when they were on sale at CVS... are they still selling them, do you know?

P.S. If this post seems a little sleepy and disjointed to you, my apologies. Every single one of my muscles is sore after an exhausting workout at my Body Pump class today. Somehow my suite convinced me that it would be a good idea to take this awful Body Pump thing, and all I know is that life is pain because of it. I hope someday it won't hurt to raise my arms to wash my hair...

Belated Christmas Post

Well, now that Christmas break is very nearly over, I am finally getting my act together to post a Christmas post. I thought I'd put up a couple of my favorite pictures of break - don't worry, I won't overload you with boring pictures.

Here is our Christmas tree newly chopped down, and the family to go along with it. :) Note how my siblings and I are all the same height now - it's quite odd for my little siblings to be the same height as me... and they are threatening to overtake me. I'm going to be the shortest sibling at 5'6"!
This is Jessica and I all dolled up for our annual Christmas Tea. We decorate a gingerbread nativity scene, carol, and drink tea. It's quite fun.
Every year Grandma comes over and helps us make lebcuchen, a traditional German cookie. The recipe makes 12 dozen, and this is us frosting all 144 cookies. I'd post the recipe, but it's a really long arduous process to make the cookies, and most non-German people don't like lebcuchen because of the anise in the frosting. Also I think our particular recipe is secret? Not sure.
Finally, I really like this picture of Jessica and I on Christmas Day. Mama got us semi-matching pajamas. She's really into us wearing "pretty" nightclothes, and whenever I come home from college wearing my ratty t-shirts and sweatpants to bed, she's appalled and rushes out to the store.

So there you have a tiny synopsis of my Christmas. I go back to school tomorrow, and I am excited for another wonderful semester! Do not fear, I will do my very best to keep posting somewhat regularly! I like blogging again.

Lippmann Across the Universe

Behold, my lovelies, some of the most wonderful nail polish known to mankind. Whenever I wear this I cannot stop staring at my nails. It's just too pretty. What is this fabulousness, you say? It is Lippmann's Across the Universe (from the Fall 2010 collection), of course! As soon as I saw this on ALU, I knew it had to be mine. Unfortunately, as a poor college student I couldn't really afford the $18 price tag, so I put it in my mental pile of polishes I someday long to own, and had to content myself with lusting after it from afar. But then, lo and behold, my beautiful suitemate bought it for me for my birthday! I know, world's best suitemate, yeah?
Just stare into the depths of this beautiful blue-based glitter, and you'll start to think you are a mermaid... The glitter in Across the Universe is quite heavy, and is hexagonal and about equal parts green and blue, with mini blue flecks interspersed in there as well. The base blue is a darker, neither-navy-nor-cerulean blue and is my favorite texture of all, jelly. I use about 3 coats for maximum glittery awesomeness (and in order to get rid of any stray streaks). Wear is not the best, but allowances must be made for it being a glitter. We all know that glitters chip like crazy. However, I think because of the jelly base, Across the Universe is not so brittle-feeling as some other glitters, and lasts about 3 days before chips, which is actually quite good for a glitter (Dorothy Who? chips on me after one day ever single time).
Ciao, belle.

Beach Please!

Dearest readers,

Lately I have been completely done with winter. As in, I am ready for the beach now. Because there is no hope of me being able to run off to the Caribbean anytime soon, I am having to content myself with the oh-so-terrible winter in Texas (it's all of 50 degrees outside right now). Here are some images of the Resort 2011 collections that I am currently in love with. Enjoy!

Dreamily yours, Faith

OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous

(my apologies for the poor clean-up)

Here, at last, is the other polish I bought from the OPI Swiss collection, Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous (can we please have a collective groan for that name?). Its punny name aside, LLM is a beautiful silvery dark gray shimmer/foil. I don't think it quite qualifies as a foil, as the shimmer isn't as overwhelming as a foil tends to be.

This color is both celebratory and quiet, and makes me think of downtown Christmas lights reflected in sidewalk puddles. I think it would work marvelously for occasions that need something sophisticated and yet it also works for something that you would wear holographic glitter eyeliner to.

LLM doesn't have super great wear, but it doesn't do terribly either. I believe I got around 2 or 3 days before any chipping, so it doesn't wear like a glitter or anything. All in all, I've been liking this quite a lot for winter, and want to pair it with black tights and sweaters. I'm also contemplating it for my New Year's manicure, although I think I might want something a bit more over-the-top.

I'm Back

(The Bradham Christmas tree)

My dear friends,

Hello.

I have finally gotten the blogging bug again! Let's hope it stays. :) As y'all probably guessed, I have been completely uninspired to blog for the past couple of months. However, I think I have gotten over that, and am ready to blog once more. I am going to shoot for once or twice a week, but please don't murder me if I renege occasionally.

Part of the reason that I took a little hiatus is that I'm a bit bored with straight-up polish blogging, especially because I am too poor to buy many new polishes anymore. So I'm thinking that I will mix traditional narcissistic blogging about me with my usual polish posts, plus whatever else I feel like, and we'll see how it goes from there. But don't hold me to any of this - I have a history of fickleness. ;)

It would seem that I did not blog for a full semester, meaning that y'all missed a bit of what was happening in my life. In these last three months, I...

1. Declared English! I am now officially an English major at Trinity, giving me the perfect excuse to do nothing but read. Happiness.

2. Joined the Trinity Review in an effort to become more involved. The Review is our campus' literary magazine, published yearly. I am on the PR team, meaning that I get to do fun things like chalk quotes all over campus to promote our events and/or the Review itself. Everyone on the magazine staff also votes on all of the submissions. I've got 202 submissions right now sitting in my Dropbox waiting for me....

3. Started work in Special Collections at the campus library. I worked in the Costume Studio last year making costumes for our mainstage productions, but while I loved the actual work, my boss was hell to work with. She just didn't like happy people. But I absolutely love Special Collections, and actually look forward to going to work instead of dreading it. It also helps that I generally have time to do some homework while I'm there.

4. Became the loving owner of 5 high-end nail polishes. (There's the polish reference you've been waiting for. ;) ) I now own 3 RBLs, 1 Lippmann, and 1 NARS. Photo evidence below.

(l-r, Across the Universe, Drifter, Sheer Red, Dead Calm, Zulu)

And yes. That is NARS Zulu. So gorgeous. I will have reviews of them up soon, I promise. :)

I'm leaving quite a lot out, but suffice it to say that I both kept my old friends and made new ones, maintained my grades, and had lots of fun. I hope college never ends...

I hope that y'all had a very merry Christmas indeed, and that your New Years are looking to be fantastical as well!

Love, Faith