Weekend Escapades.

Monday, 16 July 2012

Oh Monday, we meet again. This Monday is much more of a pain because I had one of those really great weekends that you never want to end. I'll get over it though, we're just that much closer to my birthday festivities that will be going down in less than 2 weeks!

Anyways, more on that later. Our weekend... let's take a look, shall we?

Friday night that charming boyfriend of mine took me out for dinner and drinks. I got all fancified for the first time in, what feels like, forever. 

By the way, check out the lashes. MAC's new False Extreme = the bombdotcom. More on that later this week. Really, it deserves it's own post.

Le boyfriend and myself getting our Friday night drink on.

These would be pitchers, yes I said pitchers - with straws in them, full of peach sangria. They were 2-4-1 and they were fantastic. Fabulous start to our weekend, if I do say so myself.

After dinner we were a total old person couple and went home. In our defense we did drink a little more and we played some good ol' Phase 10. If you've never played let me just tell you that it is a total blast and that does not make us old, thankyouverymuch. (no, I'm not at all testy that my quarter of a century birthday is near...)

Ella's way serious about hiding her cards from everyone.

See? Promise we had fun. ;)

My weekend nails, compliments of Make Up Store - Greta and the new Bundle Monster plates. The crazy holo effects of this polish is to dieeeee for.

Saturday was a really bright and sunny Florida day so we decided to make a pool day out of it.

We hung by the pool for a few hours and sipped on some cold brewskis. It was really relaxing and even better because my SPF 30 kept your girl free of sunburn, and free of wrinkles, duh. 

Brew and nails. I couldn't help myself. Bright sun and holo go together like brews at the pool.

Finally, yesterday we made our way downtown to the Farmers Market. I went for one reason and that reason is this bread.

This loaf of deliciousness would be blue cheese and garlic bread and my lawdddd it is heaven in a bag. If you ever go to the Downtown Orlando Farmers Market you need to find the vendor and get enough of this bread to make sandwiches for the rest of your life. Seriously though.

I'm ending this soon, I promise. Before I do, I need to give a big shout out to that phenomenal boyfriend of mine. Yes, it's time for me to go ham on this bad boy.

I have been on the hunt for the new Girl Scout cookie Crunch bars for a little over a week and after about 13 failed attempts at finding them, I found the last bar at a CVS. They only had one. Seriously, my luck. (it was delicious, ps) Ok, so back to the boyfriend. 

He came home with a bag full of all 3 flavors and legit made it rain Girl Scout candy bars on me. 

Ah-freak-ing-ma-zing. You ladies with your flower pictures got nothing on my candy bar picture, ya heard?  

Props to you amazingly fantastical boyfriend of mine, you are the epitome of "a keeper" in my book.

comments | | Read More...

How I Did It - Nail Stamping Tutorial

Friday, 13 July 2012

I posted my latest manicure on Instagram yesterday and got a lot of feedback, mostly wondering how I did it! I am a polish lover who thinks everyone should be too, so I figured I'd do a little tutorial so those of you who are interested can try it out.

Tools needed: 

Nail plates (I used plate 322 from Bundle Monster's newest plate set) 

Polish fit for stamping. I used Konad Special White 

Note: not all polishes will stamp correctly. 

Stamper & scraper. Mine are Konad brand.

Nail polish for base coat. I used 2 coats of China Glaze 'Turned Up Turquoise'.

Brush & polish remover for clean up.

Top coat. I used Seche Vite.

How to:

1. Paint all of your nails with your desired base color polish. Let this coat dry very well. You can even put a fast drying top coat over it if you are impatient. 

2. Paint a thin layer of your stamping polish over the image you've selected to stamp with.

3. Scrape off excess polish from plate and gently roll (think one-way rocking motion... only one way, don't actually rock it) your stamper over it. You will see the design on your stamper. If it didn't transfer how you were hoping, clean it off with remover and start over. It will stamp nearly identical to what you see on your rubber stamper.

If you are having trouble with too much polish scraping out of your image try scraping it from a different direction.

4. Just as you rolled your stamper on the plate roll it over your nail. It will get a little messy on your skin, don't worry!

5. Clean up! Use some remover or acetone and a brush or Q-tip to clean up the extra polish you stamped on your skin.

6. Finish with a top coat and enjoy your gorgeous new manicure!

comments | | Read More...

Weekend Escapades.

Monday, 9 July 2012

Happy Monday! Yes, I'm overly cheerful this morning. Mostly because the boyfriend and I went to bed ridiculously early last night - I'm talking grey hair status. We needed it after our weekend, which turned out to be a little more eventful than usual. In a good way!

Saturday morning was a hot one. Seriously though, I melted.

We had to take a little road trip to Gainesville to turn in the boy's old apartment keys and, of course, wave goodbye to his old bachelor pad. I got the pleasure of tossing out some scrumptious looking frozen meals, one that comes to mind is spaghetti and meatballs. Mmm... so. appetizing. Really though men, how hard is it to boil noodles and dump sauce on top?

[Color Club - Modern Pink stamped with Wet n' Wild - Black Creme]

Shocking enough, I rocked these rose nails all weekend and am still rocking them today. Bundle Monster really knocked it out of the park with these last plates!

Saturday, when we got back from our mini road trip we had a little dateski night. First up was a little nosh and vino at Wine Room. I savored it because soon after I found myself in a sports bar watching men beat the shiz out of each other. Girlfriend points, fo sho. At least it was a place where it's socially acceptable to drink multiple whiskey cocktails, yeah?

Sunday I had a little lunch and retail therapy session with one of my besties. I picked up this fantastic bow ring from, where else, Forever 21. Leopard, bows, awesomeness.

We spent the latter end of last night hanging out on our front porch grilling and having some brews. That boy of mine made some OMGKILLER boneless BBQ ribs on the grill. He's going to wish he never sprung those little bits of heaven on me because I'm going to be requesting them on the reg now.

Me and my girly hanging out, watching the grill master at work.

[Urban Outfitters - Smush, Urban Outfitters - Sea Dust, Love & Beauty - Fuscia, Lush Lacquer - Birthday Cake, Party Rockin, Lite Brite, Models Own - Purple Blue, Aqua Violet Beetle Juice, Golden Green Beetle Juice]

Lastly, I figured I'd share my weekend polish haul. Mostly because the last 6 bottles in this photo make me incredibly happy. I've been so obsessed with Lush Lacquer lately and these are my newest additions to my LL collection. I found the Models Own polishes at Urban Outfitters for $4.99 a piece, which is a total steal considering they're normally $10 a bottle. Score! 

I hope everyone has the least Monday-like Monday possible!

Find me on Instagram:

whitneyellen

comments | | Read More...

America!

Friday, 6 July 2012

Happy Friday, even if it doesn't feel like Friday and more like MonWedSun$%*)#day!!

Having 4th of July in the middle of the week screwed with me and, from the looks of my (8,000) different social media feeds, everyone else too. It also messed with planning anything too exciting because, well, good ol' work isn't really keen on giving 3 days in a row off during peak season. Go figure. So, a day of le boyfriend and myself keeping ourselves entertained on a cloudy Wednesday it was. Don't be fooled by the nonchalant explanation, I was in mucho amounts of pain at work yesterday. I'm no young 19, uhem I mean, 21 year old anymore, you feel me?

Anyways, I ended up doing two different festive manicures for the occasion, mostly because I wasn't in love with the first mani I put together.

The first mani I'm sharing with you is the one I actually wore on Wednesday to celebrate the birth of my beloved country. Aside from my love for Julep getting creative and thinking out of the box with America, I got to try out my new Nails Inc. polish, Baker Street - which I immediately fell in LOVE with. Such a beautiful, VIBRANT polish. A blue every polish collector must have.

And here, low and behold, is the not-so-love, mani I did. I need to get better at stripes. and patience, probably. Seche Vite has me way too spoiled to properly wait the allotted time I should to removed tape from my manis. Oops. Oh well! 

One last one of my 4th of July crew.

I hope all of my fellow Americans had a lovely holiday! 

Enjoy your weekend. :)

comments | | Read More...