Julep Kelly

Good morning and happy Caturday!  Some dudes behind me in the customer service line yesterday were speaking in what I could only assume were gaming terms, and Caturday came up, so I thought I'd google it.  Turns out it has nothing to do with gaming.  It means you get to post all manner of cute and/or funny cat pictures to an image board I've never heard of.  Maybe these dudes are way into cats, which in that case, rock on!  I shall post some cat spam at the end.  But first...

Today is Pink day and marks the last day in Bec's Rainbow Favorites challenge.  It's been a blast getting to know some new polish friends, and yes, a challenge just to get a post up every day for a week, and one I'd totally do again.  Pink is one of my favorite colors to wear, and while it's hard to call this one my favorite, I really like it and I've been looking for a good excuse to bring it out again.  Here's Julep Kelly, the very palest of pink cremes.

This is a fun color.  It's slightly discordant with my skin tone, which makes wearing it a bit of an adventure, like something haute couture might be if I ever got the chance to wear such a piece.  Neutrals lighter than skin tone, including whites, look terribly chic to me.  I used three coats, but could have done with four.  You can see it's a little patchy and streaky.  Julep's cremes aren't the most fun things in the world for me to work with.  When I first got Kelly, it was kind of all over the place, but a couple months has thickened it up and if I wanted a snowball's chance of this manicure lasting more than a couple hours (Juleps chip, like, while I sleep) I thought I'd better keep the layers as thin as possible.  I'll be cleaning the house in this beaut, so we'll see how it fares. ;)

 As promised, here's Baby Beau.  He likes to bite things.

Sally, my little girl cat who wasn't feeling well, is good as new after a round of antibiotics, and playing like she hasn't since she was an only child.  I didn't want to trouble her for a picture this morning. ;)

Thank you for reading, and have a swell weekend. :)

Oh sheesh, I almost forgot.

~on beauty stuff and what else’s...~

9ml Universe

atlcatsmeow

Captivating Claws

Fancy Phalanges

Fe’s Nails

Follow the Yellow Polish Road

Football and Fingernails

Fresh Air & Fashion

Happy Nails

 iHeartPrettyPolish

Kelly’s Kolors!

Lacquer Dreams

Liesl Loves Pretty Things

Light Your Nails!

Manicurity

My Life in Polish

Nail Polish Lane

Nailpolish is Alive

Nubbin Nails

Of Color n Music...

Polish and Such 

Sincerely, Obsessed With Polish

So You Think You Can Paint

The Rantings of a Nailpolish Hoarder

Now go find yourselves some more lemmings. ;)

MORE OPI Ballet Collection!

Once again... the cool thing about taking not-so-great photos is getting to do the WHOLE THING OVER!!  The Baby Beau cat took a nick out of my middle finger the first time around, and I somewhat successfully attempted to photoshop it out.  I absolutely love the OPI Ballet collection and at this point, I'm thinking I should get backups of at least two of them, one of which is You Callin' Me a Lyre?.  (I'm seriously NOT a fan of the names. lol.)  Also... thank you gals so very much for the prayers and good thoughts for my Sal Pal yesterday.  More on that (and cat spam) after the polish. :)

I've got nothing new to add to what I've already said.  I love it.  Sheer, shiny, peachy pink perfection in three coats.  And it's so smooth!  My DH kept rubbing my nails as he was holding my hand after this dried. :) 

Anyway, you know that yesterday evening I took Sally to the vet, which was an experience in itself.  Getting her there was fine, but once in the exam room, it took me holding her by her scruff and the vet tech basically dumping her out of the carrier to get her onto the exam table.  Sal is a very high strung cat and does not like new people at all; so when the vet came in to look at her she became very aggressive, backing away, hissing and growling, big eyes, ears back, the whole nine yards.  The vet had to call another tech in, this one clad in those elbow length heavy duty reinforced gloves and bearing a towel to throw over my naughty little cat so she could be examined without hurting someone.  Even so, the vet would not go near Sal's head or face and refused to take a blood sample without sedating her first, and could barely get an accurate heart sound because of her nonstop growling.  "At this point," the vet said to me, "this will be a short visit."  Fair enough.  She did gather that everything sounded and felt normal inside, and sent us home with some antibiotics and some advice for lessening stressors around the house.  She also appears to have had an allergic reaction to a flea treatment and might need to go on steroids, but we'll deal with that after we resolve her tummy issues.  So now I get to collect a poo sample (YAY!)  before we can rule out anything major, and take her back after the antibiotics are finished. 

Baby cat.  The next couple weeks will be filled with lots of monitoring and documentation, but I feel better just knowing we're on the road to helping her feel better, one way or the other. <3  Thanks for reading and thanks again for all your kindnesses. <3

Zoya Charla

So I was sitting around, waiting impatiently for the Zoya Surf collection to show up at my Ulta, and cruising Zoya's website for other colors I can't possibly do without in the meantime.  And what do you know, Charla was one of them.  Ask any number of pixies (Zoya's pet name for their fans) which blues in the lineup are must-have, and Charla will invariably top the list.  Um, yeah!  It's gorgeous! **pic heavy** **cat spam**

I also thought it matched this pendant I've been wanting to wear quite nicely.

Charla is amazing, like a magical something from the sea, gorgeous and shimmering with aqua goodness.  I'll be sad to take it off tomorrow in favor of something to match my Cinco de Mayo outfit.  This is two coats, and typically awesome Zoya formula.

While we're not on the subject, the cats were so very peaceful in their favorite places to hang out yesterday.

Sally on my snuggie on the bed...

 ... and Beau chilling by a window in the garage.  Doesn't he look like the coolest little dude. :)

Nicole by OPI Fresh Squeezed

April is Prevention of Cruelty to Animals month, so this post is dedicated to the cause, and the furry friends that are so near and dear to my heart.  The ASPCA is a national non-profit and the first humane society established in the US, and orange is their color.  I only have one orange in my stash at present, usually reserved for the years my NBA team makes the playoffs, but this month presents another lovely opportunity (and it's questionable if I'll be wearing it for my team at this point....)  This post is pic heavy with some cat spam at the end.  You have been warned.

Nicole by OPI Fresh Squeezed is kind of a red-orange, made so by fuschia sparkles the camera has a hard time capturing.  The third pic is as close as I could get.  If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can very faintly see them.  It's a lovely, vibrant color with orange, silver, and gold sparkles, as well.  The brush is on the small side, but the formula's fantastic, albeit a little sheer-- this is three coats with a slightly visible nail line, so if that bothers you, steer clear.

This post wouldn't be complete without appearances by my little furbabies, so here they are. :)  This one is my baby Beau, a dapper one-year-old little boy C and I adopted from our local Humane Society (where I volunteer; I fell in love with this little guy's sweet and playful nature one afternoon, and the rest is history!)

This is my little girl cat, Sally.  She won't look at the camera for anything and growled at me every time I turned it on her, so this is the best pic I could get out of her. lol.  She is seven.  C adopted her from one of his coworkers a month after we were married.  She's feisty and independent, but so sweet and lovey when she wants to be.

Here are links to the ASPCA and my local humane society.  If you're interested, please take a moment to check them out!

http://www.aspca.org/

http://willamettehumane.org/