Yippee Kayak, Other Buckets!

Regrettably can’t claim that one for myself – that’s a Die Hard joke from Brooklyn 9-9, a snappy – but wholly inaccurate – rejoinder uttered by devoted foodie weirdo, Charles Boyle, after he heroically saves his friends from a Christmas Eve robbery.

Ah, so here we are, on the eve that Nakatomi Tower is descended upon by Alan Rickman and his band of well mannered, ballet-dancing terrorists (true story – one of the Gunters, the guy with the long, white blonde hair, was a ballet dancer first, stuntman second.)  Or it’s simply Christmas Eve, if you’re looking for a slightly more traditional interpretation of the season. 😉

Okay, so it’s been nearly a month since I touched fingertips to keyboard, and you may be curious as to where the hell I’ve been.  I’ve certainly wondered a time or two myself!

Well, we moved! From our two-bedroom condo to a four-bedroom house.  You’re right if you think we’ve possibly lost our minds – sometimes I think we certainly have!  Here’s a pic of the new homestead:

So as of late, my life has been something of an insane goat rodeo of packing and moving and schlepping, and then it was immediately CHRISTMAS!!!  So thank goodness I had my priorities wildly in order, and had this white artificial tree set up and all aglow in our new family room the day after we had officially moved in.  Bed not delivered, you say?  Pfft, who needs a bed when you’ve got a Christmas tree?!

I even managed to squeeze in the first bit of nail art I’ve done in well over a month.  Such wild productivity!  Actually, I should cut myself some friggin’ slack – life has somehow been both a sprint AND a slog for about two solid months now, and I’m ready for a bit of holiday downtime.

I have so much more I want to share with you about the sale of our condo, the purchase of this house, our move and our lives, but now is not the time.  Now it’s time to get our holiday on, and bask in the love of our nearest and dearest, and oh dear lord, run out to the mall RIGHT FRIGGIN’ NOW! because the shops close in five hours!  Merry Christmas, and happiest of holidays, peeps.  See you on the other side. 🙂

Polar Vortex

Are we still in one?  I really wouldn’t know, seeing as none of my limbs have been warm in about three weeks, and my eyeballs may have frozen over.  HOW WILL WE KNOW WHEN WE’VE EXITED THE VORTEX???  Also, do you suppose this is how Jack Torrence felt before he went all Jack Torrence?  Best keep me away from any abandoned hotels – all freezing and no heat makes Sandra something-something. 😦

They say you write what you know, and the same holds true, apparently, for nail art – all I know is cold these days, so more frozen nail art it is.  Here I painted a smattering of delicate, lacy snowflakes over OPI’s colour-shifting Northern Lights before frosting the entire thing in Enchanted Polish’s Rainbow Juice (With Pulp.)   I like this polish’s mix of holographic shimmer, glitter and tiny, jagged shards – it makes everything it touches look like its been haphazardly dusted with sparkling snow.  Pretty, and ever so fitting given the present weather conditions (see above, re: cold and miserable.)

 

Frosty Freeze

That’s me!  Or rather, I’m frosty and freezing.  To paraphrase Captain Raymond Holt of Brooklyn 9-9, where I live (Eastern Ontario, Canada) it is colder than Cocytus, the frozen lake of Hell.  And has been that way – resolutely, aggravatingly so – all. week. long.  We’re talking temps that dip into the mid-20s (NEGATIVE 20 DEGREES) but owing to BS metrics like windchill, actually feel like they’re in the -30s.  I haven’t been warm all week.

Anyhow, all that to explain how these nails, which started out in a tropical place, wound up looking more like frosted snowflakes.  Because everything in my life is frosted in snowflakes these days, so why not also my manicures?!  Also because the glittery purple polish I chose, a nameless stocking stuffer I received last year, is itself just frosty enough to make what started out life as floral fronds into ice cold lace daggers.  Or sorry, as you may know it, snow.  Because there’s also been a ton of that this week as well, inexplicably – it’s really not supposed to snow when it gets this cold, but somehow, it’s managed BOTH at the same time!  As have I with these nails. 😉

Glam (Polish) Snowflakes

Here’s another one for the pretty ‘n’ glittery mani files, this time a semi-successful pastel snowflake design atop a holographic gradient using a Glam Polish lacquer that always reminds me of round, glittery Christmas ornaments.  Actually, save the base polish (lakur’s beautiful purple-grey Opal) and the bright turquoise creme on my index and pinkie fingers (A England’s Whispering Waves) I used three Glam Polish colours here, glittery, ornament-y You’re Entirely BONKERS, dusky pink Hey Mama and sea foam Ladies Choice.

I’m not sure how successful I was with the design on my two middle fingers – it looks more like coral or some sort of hanging flower than a snowflake.  I suppose that’s a function of the colours I chose here – there really aren’t that many pink and blue snowflakes out there.  And if there are…well, that probably can’t be good. 😉

Sunset Snowflakes

I think this could be a refrain sung right ’round the world these days, but here in the Ottawa Valley, we have been experiencing some very odd weather as of late.  Way early snow (we always get it, but it rarely sticks this fast), sub-sub-freezing temps and mini blizzards alongside the winter’s setting sun.  So inspired was I by this latter event (pretty for the grand total of about 30 seconds before the endless frozen precipitation obliterated the sunset’s gorgeous pastel hues) I did some nails!  Anything to cheer m’self up weather-wise, ’cause it’s only November, and we Canadians in this for the long haul.

Glowflakes

Supposed to be lots of this stuff coming down over the next couple of days.  Snow, that is, of the regular, old fashioned variety, not multi-chromatic flakes.  Which I would think would be incredibly dangerous, if only because a bunch of Instagramming nimrods would immediately get out of their cars and begin vlogging the #unicorndiscosnowstorm from the middle of the road.  I say that as someone who would completely stop to take photos of such an event (I did take 1,779 photos over six days at Disney.)  I just like to think I’d pull over to the side of the road first. 🙂

As for the technical details, these nails were brought to you by a basic black creme topped with a long since discontinued glitter, Ozotic’s inelegantly named 528, to which I added some free-handed snowflakes in Polish Me Silly’s Paradise, a purple-to-teal-to-blue-to-green multi-chrome that gives everything it touches #thatunicornlife.

Delicate Drifts

It might be a little early in the cold weather season for my mitts to be looking quite so chapped, but the condition of my hands, as well as the inspiration for these nails, is perfectly in keeping with the crazy (and crazy cold) weather we’ve had lately.  Drifting snow, freezing rain, bitterly cold temperatures, maybe a bit of hail – we’ve had it all, and somehow all at once. It’s a horrible weather miracle!

I think this manicure is really pretty, particularly the flakes on my index and pinkie fingers, which I created using the pond manicure technique, which is when you free-hand a nail art design between layers of a super sheer jelly polish.  It a cool technique that makes everything look soft and diffuse, perfect for designs of fluffy, sparkly snow gently piling up on the windowsill.

Pastel Holidays

Who needs traditional red, green and white decorations when you can have their far superior pastel cousins in unexpectedly seasonal shades of pink, turquoise and cream? Pink and pale, bluey-green is my very favourite colour combination, so it’s not surprising that I’d be attracted to holiday decorations that lie outside the Christmastime usual, but on a jaunt to the craft store today, I did notice tons of decorations in the most stunning assortment of hot pinks, jade greens, peacock blues and golds – simply gorgeous.  Looks like I’m far from the only one decorating her home with some slightly unexpected hues this holiday season – or her nails!

Snow, Snow Everywhere

And not a plow to be found.  Actually, that’s not true.  I think my city handled its recent record-breaking dump of 50 centimeters of snow quite well.  Who’s not handling the snow so well is me, simply because, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’m caring for a friend’s home while they’re on vacation, and that includes their double-wide monstrosity of a driveway.  I’ve been by three times over the past 24 hours for hour-long shoveling binges – any longer and I lose all feeling in my forearms.  There’s still at least half the driveway to be shoveled out before this weekend, when it will warm up just enough to begin freezing rain.  This winter sucks.

But if you’re stuck shoveling your way out of thigh-deep snow (seriously, at one point as I was swimming my way up to my friend’s front door, I thought about how uncomfortably close the snow was coming to MY northern climes, if you catch my drift) you should absolutely have a fly, seasonally appropriate manicure like this one, featuring KB Shimmer’s Snow Much Fun.  I love these kind of polishes because they get the thematic job done without the need to break out a bunch of intensive nail art supplies.  Not that I could have done that in the first place – everything below my elbows ACHES, and I don’t think I could hold a detail brush steady enough to eek out any kind of design.  I reiterate: This winter sucks!

Gingerbread

With extra gumdrops.  Lots and lots of extra gumdrops.

This is also the final Demeter fragrance-inspired post.  Tomorrow, an explanation for all the perfume patter.