Stila Online Warehouse Sale

Thought you might want to check this out!

Click on the photo or follow this link to shop.  I've done reviews of a few of the items that are on sale in case you wanted to see a swatch or two.

I'm back!

Yep.  I took off a little more time than I originally planned, but I think it was worth it.

It was an interesting vacation.  My original plans fell through (seriously, this always happens, why do I ever bother planning anything?) but there was an unexpected silver lining to it all.  On one hand I feel like it was a waste of a vacation since I don't feel any more rested or refreshed than I did before I left and I didn't end up going where I wanted to go, but on the other hand, the time off seemed to flip some sort of switch in my brain that turned my creativity back on.

I've been writing purely for my own enjoyment, working on some old projects that have been gathering dust for years, learning to play a couple instruments I've never tried playing before, creating and imagining, and I've even scratched a few things off my bucket list.

Want to hear something else crazy about my vacation?  I didn't wear nail polish for almost two weeks straight!  I know!  It wasn't intentional.  I started off with an awesome Color Club glitter on my nails, but that chipped off on the second day.  I put on another glitter which also chipped, and after that my nails stayed naked because I was just too absorbed with other activities to pick out another color.

So, yeah, I guess it was nice to take an extended amount of time off from my usual routine even if things didn't go as planned.  The creative mental shift was both unexpected and very welcome.  We'll see how long it lasts.

But, now I'm rambling.  No one wants to read that.  So.... here's this picture I took of a duck scratching itself.

I didn't work on any blog stuff at all during my break so I'm way behind on swatches.  I might just do a few posts with either just photos or photos plus very, very brief reviews so I can catch up.  And it goes without saying that my inbox is completely insane right now (even more than usual), so if you emailed me something urgent while I was gone, you might want to re-send it because I haven't been monitoring my inbox.  Sorry about that :(

Vacation!

I know I've been fairly absent for the past couple weeks, but starting today, I'm officially on my annual fall vacation.  I'll be back to blogging in a week or two, but for now I'm going to be relaxing and enjoying the rest of this surprisingly short autumn.

If you hate off-topic posts, please skip past this one!  The tl;dr is that I'm on vacation and I really freakin' love Halloween.

So... I didn't really get a chance to do any Halloween nails this year, but I still enjoyed the hell out of the rest of my Halloween traditions.  Carved pumpkins, had everyone over for dinner, listened to Type O Negative, had a sweet costume and even did a little bit of trick-or-treating (okay, so it was only three houses and they were all friends, but still... there was candy and doorbell ringing involved).

Did any of you do anything cool for Halloween?  I know it was last week, but I wasn't around to see what you were all up to then!  I'm positively dying to see what your costumes were.  Please, please, please send me a picture (linking to your blog in the comments is perfectly fine if you've posted your Halloween pics there!) of your costume and the pumpkins you carved!

This was my costume this year.  Not exactly how I wanted it to turn out, but really not bad for the tiny budget!  It gets the point across, right?  I think I'll have the same one next year, but I'll work on trying to make it better.  I think the goggles are all wrong, and the angle of the beak on the mask is off.  My nails were just boring plain black, but no one saw them anyway because I was wearing gloves the whole time.

And, of course, this year's pumpkins. Can't have Halloween without pumpkins! Mine's the second from the left.  I carve the same face every year.  My Dad pointed out that the eyes and the nose together look like the radiation symbol.  Sweet.

 

 (image credit)

 On another off-topic note (what, I'm on vacation, can't I take a vacation from being on-topic too?), did anyone else catch Hatch Fever this weekend?  I think I did.

I mean, sure, I miss The Jon, but I rather like what I've seen of Hatchworth so far.  Maybe I'm just reading the character completely the wrong way, but I love the whole innocent/evil thing he seems to have going on (like with the little "simple loveable robot" personality but with subtle 'off' comments ["I will burn this whole place down!"]).  Really looking forward to seeing more of the new robot.

Anyway, I'll be back soon.  Probably won't be checking my email or Twitter much while I'm gone, but I'll miss you all :)  ♥

Butter London Friends and Family Sale