A friend passed on a picture of some nail art titled "Dippin' Dot Manicure" and I decided that it would be the perfect manicure to do in honor of the Color Run. I started by painting my nails white with the Essie polish. Then I proceeded to make colored dots all over my nails using many different polishes and the dotting tool I bought from Sally's Beauty. I did one color at a time, putting a few dots on each of my nails. By the end I had quite the artist's palette of colors on my paper plate, and a beautiful white nail with multi-colored dots. Super fun to do and super easy as well (even using my left hand)! 

Try it out :) 

Last weekend I decided to take my first crack at a 5K. I must first point out that I am not a big runner. I would much rather bike or Zumba for exercise or pretty much anything else. I don't necessarily hate running, just wouldn't be my first choice. But when my friend mentioned The Color Run to me a month ago, it sounded like a blast! It took me awhile to finally get the push and courage to sign up- but I am so glad I did.


If you don't know what the Color Run is, feel free to check out their website thecolorrun.com. Basically what it is, everyone starts out with a white t-shirt. As you run through the course, there are 4 different color stations where volunteers throw color at you. It's a chalky, powdery substance that splats on your shirt and powders up in the air. It was a blast!

Before the Run

What was really awesome about it, the color stations throughout the course were such a motivator to keep running! It was a super relaxed 5k- lots of people were just walking the entire thing. But my group decided that we wanted to run as much as we could. We took brief walking breaks if needed, but for the most part we ran! [I was super proud of myself for this, not being a huge runner!] Seeing the clouds of color up ahead, indicating that we were about to reach another opportunity to get covered with color, gave us the push we needed to keep running! Last but not least, once you reach the finish line- this is not the end of your color. When you register for the event, you receive a color packet that you are told to save for the end. At the finish line, everyone gathers in a massive group of color runners and on the count of 10 each person throws their color packet into the air creating a beautiful cloud of color! So if you possibly come out of the run without much color, no need to worry, you will be coated after the color cloud.

It was an awesome time, totally family friendly, so anyone can do it. I can't wait to do this again in the future! Be sure to check The Color Run website to see if it is coming to a city near you!


Go. Do the Color Run.

Here is my first use of the awesome Stripe Rite nail polish that I got from my friend a couple weeks ago.  There are so many fun ideas on the internet; so after a bit of searching I decided to try out the Zebra Nail.  It was a lot of fun to do and actually pretty easy!  I even managed to do my right hand as well, and it didn't look too shabby!  Lots of fun to do and got lots of compliments too.  

Enjoy.  

Here are the polishes that I used.  The Stripe Rite has a thin
brush that works really well for striping!

This is the best Top Coat!  It dries super fast, makes your nails feel
strong, and gives it a nice glossy finish.  Found at Sally's Beauty.

My Zebra Nails :)

Tissue paper flowers

Crafted these pretty tissue paper flowers for my friend's wedding reception coming up.  They were pretty easy to make, and I like the way they turned out.  

Lately I have been on a nail art kick, as you can see from my new Nail Art tab on my blog.  For my birthday, my friend Audra gave me a bag full of nail polishes!  She gave me a bunch of fun colors, and two nail stripe bottles- that are just awesome and allow me to be more creative with stripes and like in the image below, I can make bows, etc.  I was totally stoked and of course had to paint my nails almost immediately.  I tried out a zebra stripe look, (which I will show you in another post) and then I tried this manicure that I found on Pinterest. It was from a tutorial featured on thebeautydepartment.com.  It is actually a pretty sweet site, put on by Lauren Conrad and a few other ladies.  It has a bunch of hair tutorials, nail tutorials, and just really great fashion sort of stuff.  I love the site.  Anyways, thanks to their tutorial, I gave this manicure a try on my sister's nails.  It took a little while, with all the colors and layers, etc.  But I think the result was pretty cute!  

Enjoy!  

One of the projects that I have been working on was crocheting a baby blanket for a friend of mine. I knew I wanted to do a Granny Square pattern, but wasn't sure whether I wanted to do patchwork granny squares where you weave them together or a giant Granny Square blanket. As you will see in the pictures, I decided to go with the giant Granny Square blanket. I picked out yarn colors that I wanted, watched a few youtube videos on how to start the granny square and went from there. I had a rough pattern in mind, drew it out on paper, and pretty much winged it! I am really happy with how it turned out. It is about 32" which is hopefully a good size for a baby? I can't wait to hear how my friend likes the blanket. Word on the street is she already received a few homemade baby blankets :/ but what can you do. I made it with love and will hope that it gets some use!

Now I must come up with another crochet project. Have any new ideas of what I could do for a project? Comment and let me know!!

Cheers.

St. Patrick's Day Nails

My nail color happened to match my purse perfectly.

Grey French Manicure

Heart Nails

Painted my sister's nails from a little Pinterest inspiration.