Got It. Didn't Like It.

Good morning, Kitschies!  It's Friday AND it's Veteran's Day - both good things.  It's been an insanely busy week and I finally have a few moments to do another post for you.

A while back, I took a coworker with me to Sally Beauty to take a gander at all the pretty polishes.  She was amazed at how she could pick up any number of polishes and name them without even thinking about it.  It's that whole got-it-got-it-got-it-need-it-got-it gag from The Big Bang Theory. 




I loves me some BBT!!  Anyway...this was one of two she picked up, and of course I had to borrow it from her.

This is ChG Tempest - a really, really pretty purple/blue duochrome.  The blue shift is so strong in this one, it's easily more blue than purple.

I did this mani just before I left for work one morning and I didn't have time to add nail art.  But, I did have a bottle of Revlon Grape Fizz I hadn't used yet, so I slapped on a couple coats on my ring finger and thumb.  I love the color of this polish - a purple jelly base with purple, pink and blue shimmer.  Sounds awesome, right?

The color *is* awesome.  However...Grape Fizz is scented and it is WAAAAY too sweet for my liking.  I hated to do it, but I had to take the polish off soon after I got to work.  This mani didn't last more than 3 hours because the sweetness of Grape Fizz was sickening.  I want to love that polish, so much, but I just can't.

Did you pick up any of the scented Revlons?  Were you able to tolerate the scent or am I just being too sensitive?

Have a great weekend!!  I've got more posts up my sleeve for next week. 

Awesomeness *pic heavy*

Good morning, Kitschies!!!  I'm baaaaaack...for reals this time.  LOL  My bestie's hubs un-exploded (read: fixed) my computer and now I have access to the internets at home again!  And now I can get back to blogging.  Yay!  I can't believe it's been so long since I actually posted - my, how time flies.  I have sooo many manis and recipes to share with you - it was hard to pick what I'd come back with!

I have a gorgeous polish to share with you today.  I picked this beauty up at Dollar Tree a YEAR ago and it sat in my Helmer until about August.  After wearing it, I do NOT know how I let it sit there that long.  It. is. awesomeness.  And though I wore it in the dog days of Summer, it really reminds me of Fall.

It looks like your basic red shimmer in this flash pic, but let me assure you, it is nowhere near basic.

This, my friends, is SH Nail Prisms in Amber Ruby.  It is a duochrome (multichrome?) that starts off red, then flashes amber.

Just an FYI: I did not manipulate the colors in these pics at all.  The only thing I did was crop them a bit and slapped on the blog name.  This is just how full of awesomeness this polish truly is.  This (and the previous pic) was taken in indirect sunlight.

In bright sunlight, the red comes through more than the gold, but you can still see a hint of the amber shining through.

At the right angle, you can get the amber to just glow when it's in bright, direct sunlight.  No matter what color you see, it's awesomeness.  I'm sorry...did I just say that again?

 Clouded sunlight.  LOVE this polish.  I seriously don't know why I waited so long.  I can tell you that the bottle has not been shoved back in to my Helmer - it's been sitting on my computer desk to remind me of it's awesomeness.

I know this pic is a little blurry, but I liked how it shows both the amber and a touch of the ruby, more of a bronzed ruby, really.

This is easily the best find I've made at Dollar Tree.  AND...it came in a pack with another polish, so really, this only cost me 50-cents!  SCORE!!!  Have you had any great finds like this at Dollar Tree?

Like I said, I'm WAY behind in prepping pics and posting.  If there's a color you'd like to see next, please, let me know.  I think I have a bit of everything waiting patiently for me.

Butterfly Kisses

Good morning, Kitschies!  I'm baaaaack.  I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to visit the fam in Cali.  We made the trip in almost record time on Saturday.  It was a very uneventful trip (which is a good thing) and we even took a little break in Flagstaff, AZ for a quick sandwich break!  We got home safe and sound and we spent Father's Day getting caught up on laundry and various chores around the house.  The hubs didn't have much of a Father's Day since we spent the week away.  He was lucky (and appreciative) to get a 6-pack of beer and a good flashlight.  It's the little things.  LOL

You'll get a post full of highlights from the trip, but I haven't had time to sort through all the pics, so today I'm sharing one of my favorite manis from the last couple months.  I don't remember exactly when I wore this, but I can tell you it was probably in May.

I saw this nail art on Lacquerized once upon a time, but when I went back to use it for reference, I couldn't find the image to save my life.  Oh, and BTW, I hate that Lacquerized is no longer posting.  She was the best, in my opinion.  Does anybody know where she went?  Or why she went?  Anyway...I started off with 3 coats of OPI The Show Must Go On, a gorgeous magenta glass-flecked sorta duochrome.  Then I grabbed my black striping polish and drew on the butterfly wing.  I finished it off with various dots using OPI Alpine Snow and a medium dotting tool.

Oops!  This one is a little blurry, but you can see the purple-ish shimmer that shows up in TSMGO.  So sparkly.  So pretty.

Outdoors, indirect light.  You can really see the golden shimmer in this pic.  I love this polish because it changes depending on the light.  It's not quite as awesome as her sister MAC polish, but I'm not about to drop that much money when I can spend less than $10 on a polish that's close enough to me to be a dupe. 

One more pic for good measure.  This is one of my favorite OPI polishes.  You give me raspberry/magenta and add some shimmer and you've pretty much got me hooked!!

Well, it's back to the grind for me.  It's been pretty busy today at the clinic, but not insane busy like it can be.  The boys were pretty happy to get back to daycare today - they're probably going to be exhausted when I pick them up tonight!  I hope you survive the rest of your Monday.

Digging in the Dirt

Good morning, Kitschies!  I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day.  I got a super awesome card from Nate and then we went to the park to spend some quality family time together.  After we got home and Mason woke up from his nap, the boys played outside while I washed our stoopid dogs.  The boys were so good about not getting in to the water so as a special treat, I stripped 'em down and let them play in the mud!  I had so much fun watching them - it took Mason a little while to really get in to it, but once he saw his brother playing, he played, too.

So. much. fun!  They played in the mud for a good 30 minutes.  They were SUCH a mess when they came in the house, but they had fun and that's what matters.

Back in June last year, I participated in my first Zoya exchange and one of the first colors I grabbed was Ki.  I know you've seen it all over the blogs, including mine once upon a time, but my picture taking skills have improved, so I thought I'd share it with you again.

This picture was taken in indirect sunlight. You can see that it's mostly grape purple with a hint of green/grey on the edges.  Such a beautiful, interesting color.

Now the duochrome shows more.  I love the green and the purple together.

Another indirect sunlight pic.  I really, really like how this changes colors depending on the angle.

These are both direct, bright sun.  The purple gets darker and the green turns more of a silver olive color.  Either way, so cool!

I participated in the exchange again this year, but I haven't prepped my pics yet.  I can tell you that, between the bestie and I, we bought about 20 bottles!  YIKES!

Hope you're enjoying your Tuesday.  It's been much less chaotic here now that my co-worker is back from her vacation.  I leave you today with Peter Gabriel's Digging in the Dirt - rather appropriate for my boys today.  The video quality isn't great, but you can hear the song loud and clear.  Happy Tuesday!

Space Oddity

Ahhh...Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust days.  Gotta love the late 60's.  Awesome!!  ANYhoo...another wonderful day in the neighborhood today.  Work was busy (what else is new) and the boys were back with their grandma, so it really was business as usual.  I'm pretty tired tonight, so this post will be pretty short.

I know you've seen this beautiful color swatched.  And swatched.  And swatched, again.  But not by me!  LOL  So, you get to see it again...for the first time.  As soon as I started seeing bloggers swatching the Orly Cosmic FX collection, they all ended up at the top of my lemming list.  I got my Sally Beauty Supply flier and they were advertised in there...but I got the flier in August, so that meant I had to WAIT til September to get them.  Oh, the horror!  Last week I decided I just could not wait any longer.  I buzzed over to SBS on my lunch break and grabbed what I could.  I even had to ask if they had an extra Galaxy Girl in the back because they only had one and my bestie put in her request for one.  Luckily (for the bestie), they had one!  I also picked up Lunar Eclipse for her (and now I'm gonna have to go back and get one for myself because I underestimated her beauty).  The other color I grabbed two of (I'm surprised they had any at all, actually) was Space Cadet.

Orly Space Cadet is multichrome purple/green/gold shimmer in a transparent green base.  Yep.  Green base.  To say this is pretty is an understatement!  I couldn't stop staring at my fingers when I had this on.

*sigh*  Look how pretty this is!  Both the previous two pictures were taken outdoors in direct sunlight.  I got so many compliments with this mani - and it didn't even have any art on it! *gasp*  The removal of this wasn't too bad, either.  I was expecting it to be PITA because of all the glitter/shimmer, but it really wasn't.

Last, but definitely not least - this picture was taken outdoors in the shade.  See all the great colors there?  Green, gold, purple, dark purple.  No matter how many pictures I took to try to capture the awesomeness of this polish, I just couldn't quite get it.  This picture came the closest.

Short and sweet!  One more thing: I received my giveaway package from "geeky" Kayla at Glamorous Geek Chic today.  OMG!  There are sooo many gorgeous polishes in that box (10, to be exact) and I want to wear them all. right. now.  How am I ever going to decide?  Maybe I'll put together a poll...

Until tomorrow, Kitschies!   

*Almost* Nekkid

It's Thursday, Kitschies!  Do you know what's great about today?  I only have a half a day here at work AND I'm off tomorrow!!  Don't know what I'm gonna do with myself all day tomorrow.  I'm sure I could come up with a million things to do though.

Today I bring you a duo of manis.  The first one is what I wore late in the weekend and Monday.  I was *almost* going to wear it on Tuesday, but there was some chipping at the tips and I just couldn't bring myself to wear chipped polish to work.  That would be just plain sacrilege!  LOL  So, this is Zoya Shivon.  I got this beauty with my second Zoya exchange back in June. 

This color is very pretty - it reminds me of Fall.  The Zoya website describes Ms Shivon as a dark rose gold with hints of purple and bronze and strong gold duochrome shimmer. This color flickers and changes with light and movement so you'll never be bored.  Yep, they're right.  How do they come up with these descriptions?  Do you think a bunch of people sit around a big table and throw out ideas and then they pick the best one?  LOL  However they do it, I'm glad I don't have to do it.

Sorry about the quality of this mani.  I took this late in the second day so you can see tip wear and kind of an uneven finish.  I'm fighting with my FDTC - it made the finish all rough.  Booooo!!  I really do like this color - darkish rose with a gold duochrome.  You have to see it outside for full appreciation.

Oh.  You're wondering about the title of this post, are you?  Well...as I mentioned, I almost wore Shivon to work, but just couldn't do it.  At the last minute before I left for work, I took it off but I couldn't wear nekkid nails to work, either.  That's even worse than wearing chipped polish! 

Instead of being all-out nekkid, I slapped on a coat of basecoat and pulled out my trusty dotting tool and two nail art polishes for some quick flourishes.  Once that dried, I added a coat of Orly Glosser and I was out the door!

Quickest. mani. ever.  LOL  I got lots of compliments with this one.  People are always so impressed that I did this myself.  With the right tools, nail art really is rather easy!  I don't think my designs or my art are all that original or that great, but I usually like the end result.  And if people are impressed by my "abilities", that's fine with me!!

So, there ya have it!  One fully-dressed mani and one *almost* nekkid mani.  For those of you who obsessively polish your nails, do you ever go out without polish? *gasp*  That's kinda like going out without makeup!

One more thing - I almost forgot!!  The wonderful Becky at From The Kitchen of: Mrs Bettie Rocker was cool enough to tag me as a Blog with Substance.  How sweet is that?!

 Rules for award recipients:

• Thank the person for the award
•  Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience using five  words.
•  Pass it on to 10 other blogs which you feel have real substance. 

My five words:

1. creative
2. food
3. sharing
4. family
5. love

And the 10 (10?  Really?) blogs I'm passing this out to:

Linda at More than Quilting
Debra at Housewife Eclectic
Chris at Lacquer Ware for Tips & Toes
Annie at Nailstah
Wendi at Makeup Zombie
Jacqueline at Purple Chocolat Home
Amy at Baking and Mistaking
A Family of Shorts
Ms B at Elevation of Purpose & Desire (and it's her birthday, too!)
Lisa at Rugby Beauty

I love each and every one of these blogs for one reason or another.  Please go check them out!


Listening to: Dreaming with a Broken Heart by John Mayer (what's up with him not doing videos?)
Mood: I'm outta here! 

Ki is Kool

Failure is not an option. *sigh* Yeah, tell that to my camera. No matter what I did, I could not get a good pic of Ki. According to the Zoya website, Ki is described as a complex multichromatic shade combining silver, purple, blue and green in a shimmery metallic finish. A unique shade for a truly fascinating nail look. They're right - it's unique and it's gorgeous! This was my first pick from my exchange package.

This is the best picture I could get of the multichrome effect - and of course it was in the bottle.

This is the only color I could get to show up with flash. I probably could've gotten some better ones outside without flash, but I wasn't patient enough for that.

This really is a beautiful color. Purple, blue, green, silver - this one has it all!! I am very happy with this purchase.

And while we're on the subject of polish...

A couple weeks ago, the BFF and I took a girl's afternoon and went to the mall. Where else would we go? LOL We stopped by Hot Topic to see what they had to offer. Of course I made a bee-line to the polish and look what I found!! I hate when companies don't name their polish. So, I'm gonna do it for them.

Poison Plum

This is *super* dark purple - the BFF didn't share my confidence that this was, in fact, dark, dark purple. In the pic you can see that the body of the polish does look black, but up around the rim of the bottle you can tell it's purple. I can not wait to use this one! Especially with accents using the next polish.

Super Bad

I love stars. And I love holo. As soon as I saw this I said OMGLookatthis and never put it down. LOL The little stars are SO holographic! It's a clear base with little tiny holo glitter particles. This has been pushed down to the bottom of my "un-tried" container because of my Zoya purchases, but I might just break it up a bit and do a little Poison Plum and Super Bad. But then again...4th of July is just around the corner and I might use Super Bad in a patriotic mani instead! Stay tuned. :D

OH!! My sister, Kristen, is the queen of deal finding. She can go anywhere, find something she likes and when she takes it to the register, it'll be on some sort of hidden super sale. She's good like that. She must've been with us on this shopping trip because I also found this:


It's GIR!!! My sis also loves Invader Zim, so it was rather fitting that I found this. The packaging is so cute, but that wasn't even the best part! Originally $5, this was in the clearance section for $1.98. But, wait! There's more! It was on Kristen hidden super sale for $0.98!! It's bright pink with a very slight shimmer. It says neon, but I don't know that I'd call it quite neon. Anyway...it could've been puke green and I would've gotten it because it's GIR! Apparently there is a Fluorescent green that goes with this same promotion, but all Hot Topic had was the pink. But, like I said, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. LOL

And speaking of the BFF...she happens to be the one and only Wendi from Makeup Zombie! She is hosting a giveaway to celebrate 100 followers!! Take a look at what she's giving away.


Head on over to Makeup Zombie, join in the fun and tell her Kitschy Suburbia sent you!!

Have a most awesome day, my dear Kitschies!! Thanks for stopping by.

Listening to: Questions 67 and 68 by Chicago Transit Authority (later just Chicago)

This IS love!

Happy weekend, Kitschies! I hope you're enjoying your weekend and you're getting some much deserved R&R. I, however, am not. Yet. The hubs and his BFF went camping last night. I was at a backyard gathering with the boys until around 11:00. My older son did not get to sleep until after 11:30. He staggered in to my room and wiggled his way in to my bed around 4. We were abruptly awaken by the smoke alarms going off - for no reason - at 4:30. Grrrrrr!! I was hoping against all hope that the boys would sleep in this morning. No such luck. They were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:30. I definitely was not. The younger one is sleeping now, but I know as soon as I get the older one down, the younger one will wake up. No rest for the wicked!

OK. I'm done complaining about that.




I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of my Zoya polish exchange order ALL week! I would lurk around the front office of my clinic waiting for the mail to come in. Nothing but disappointment day after day. Then, when I get home late last night, I see a Zoya box on the table!! WOOT!! The hubs didn't even mention I had gotten it. Even though I was exhausted, I tore open the box as soon as I got the boys to bed. Let me tell you - it was love at first sight! The colors are gorgeous, even in the bottles! With my fitful night of sleep, I dreamed about these dang bottles on and off all night. Pathetic? Here's what I got.

First up are two colors my BFF wanted: Roxy and Eve.

Roxy: Sheer red-toned purple base loaded with bright purple glitter. A must-have shade for any rock star or glamour girl.

Eve: Saturated berry-red with strong violet and fuchsia duochrome shimmer. Great for a bold manicure or pedicure.

Next are the 8 colors I *finally* chose.

Yasmeen: Dark blue-toned purple base with very strong red-toned medium purple shimmer and hints of gold duochrome. The ultimate complex purple for maximum drama.

Ki: A complex multichromatic shade combining silver, purple, blue and green in a shimmery metallic finish. A unique shade for a truly fascinating nail look.

Adina: Violet metallic multichrome. A frosty hint of green and magenta creates a unique "oil-slick" look.

Reece: Rose metallic duochrome. A frosty hint of gold creates a unique "oil-slick" rose-gold.


Delilah: Bright red glitter in a cool toned cherry red base. The fiery, glimmering red that can add glamour to any look.

Lianne: A juicy medium tangerine fused with fine gold shimmer. A cheerful and stylish way to accent any outfit.

Charla: Tropical blue sparkling metallic. An expensive-looking metallic shade for summer.

Ibiza: Blackened indigo-blue brightened slightly by subtle metallic blue shimmer. This bold blue is the new black for nails.


Miscellaneous comments on the colors: Eve is the perfect color for my BFF. She is obsessed with pink with blue shimmers. This is what she wanted! Though Yasmeen, Ki and Adina are all purple duochromes, they're all so different. I've never seen colors like this. Delilah is AMAZING in the sun! Oh, Delilah...where have you been all my life? It's such a beautiful red jelly that glows in the sun. Charla is so much prettier in person than on their website. I've seen a multitude of reviews of Charla and I was kinda unsure but now that I have it in my hot little hands, I'm so glad I went with it. Ibiza is going to be the perfect winter color. My only question is: When is Zoya going to come out with holos?

I've said it before, but it warrants another mention. The Zoya polish exchange program runs through June 30th. If you haven't done this - do it quick because you're about out of time! I'm contemplating another exchange but don't know if I'll be able to decide on 6 more colors in time. LOL I probably won't post about ALL of the colors I got, but I will post some, though it won't be a mass swatch party, either. In due time, my friends. All in due time.

Disclaimer: These polishes were not provided to me for review by Zoya, they were purchased by me through the Zoya Polish Exchange Program. All color descriptions are per the Zoya website.