Hard Candy Pink Taffy and Fireworks

Hard Candy Polish has a new collection available at Walmarts. The Yukon, OK store has them ALL! :)
Pink Taffy is a winner! It's opaque and creamy while still saturated with glitters. Two coats was enough and it's totally wearable without a top coat. Not too rough.
Fireworks, on the accent finger, is a jelly with many sizes of glitters. It's pretty but the long, skinny glitters stick up and dry like prickles. It took a lot of SecheVite and coaxing to get them to lay flat.
In the end I still had to pluck a couple pieces out. They kept catching on everything.
At $4 a bottle I hope I can gradually collect a LOT of these! :)

Glamour Girl and Gold Star by e.l.f. Polish

While shopping at Target I found a cube of polish. Yes a cube. A holiday gift set by e.l.f. Nail Polish that includes 14 mini polishes for $10! I'd never used the brand before, so of course I had to try it!
I think Glamour Girl may be my favorite. It's a beautiful flesh/nude color packed full of gold shimmer. One coat is almost opaque, but 2 coats is perfect. Applies very smooth and creamy!
Gold Star is very bright hexagon gold glitter in a clear jelly polish. If you make sure the brush is loaded, one or two swipes will give you the speckled look in the pic. Gold Star stinks! Literally. It reminds me of Kleancolor polish, with a similar smell, but nothing that can't be tolerated. Beauty, sparkly beauty, can be painful right?!? :)
Glamour Girl dries quickly...Gold Star not so much. One coat of Seche Vite made everything right with the world. :)

Easy spider web nails

This was easy peasy. The Sally Hansen polish goes on pretty easy with 2 coats. It needs a smooth touch tho...or you get some streaking/bald spots.
The spider web accent nail was made with a silver striper polish. Just 4 straight lines connected with a few curved strokes. Easy Halloween nails!

Black Bean Soup

This recipe came from my friend Leslie, the Mom of my son's BFF.  Leslie made this soup for dinner one nite while Garrett was staying over and he RAVED about it for weeks!  I don't know if your kids like beans, or request beans, but mine do not.  Ever.  EVERRRRRRR.  Well, except this once.  :)

I followed the recipe exactly, except for the yogurt topping.  I had never tried Greek yogurt before, and I hope to not try it again soon.  **shiver**  Instead I topped the soup with the chopped cilantro and shredded mexican blend cheese.

Also, I chopped ALL the veggies in my little slicer dicer machine so there were no big chunks.  (my picky eaters hate chunks)  Then I threw it all into the oiled pot and continued per recipe.

Black Bean Soup

Prep: 25 min
Cook: 45 min
Serves: 6

1 1/2 Tbsp. canola oil
1 medium onion diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and diced.
4 carrots, diced (about 1 cup)
3 ribs celery, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. cumin
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
4 15oz. Cans black beans, drained and rinsed
Salt and pepper
6 Tbsp. low-fat Greek yogurt
2 Tbsp. chopped cilantro

1 Warm oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic, bell pepper, carrots and celery; cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 12 minutes. Add chili powder and cumin. Sauté for about 3 minutes.

2 Stir in broth and beans, then bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove 2 cups of soup and purée in a blender. Stir puréed soup back into pot and cook 5 minutes longer. Season with salt and pepper.

3 Spoon soup into bowls, top with yogurt and cilantro and serve.

Subtle Essie shimmer

This is Essie Sand Tropez as the base. Essie Shine of the Times and Seche Vite top coat. The accent nail is my attempt at glitter placement. I had a LOT of time to kill while I helped the 8th grader with his algebra homework. Like the blind leading the blind! Sheesh!
This is a pretty subtle shimmer that you could get away with if you were at a non-blingy nail event. Like work. :)

Cookie Monster nails

Finger Paints Laugh My Art Off is so so pretty! And it matches my new $5 cookie monster shirt perfectly!

Deep purple Disturbia with glitter

If it had not required so much top coat, this would have been a super quick mani. Wet n Wild Megalast Disturbia is almost a one-coater! The long, rectangular glitters were a gift that I think came from a Dollar Store.
Even with 3 thick coats of Seche Vite the ring finger glitter catches on my hair a little. But that's an OK price for super bling! :)

Silver holographic

It's a cloudy, overcast day here in Okiehoma. Too bad because sunlight makes this Catherine Arley holographic polish come to life!! #676 is a shiny silver. In this pic I'm wearing it as a top coat over the fleshy #672, which is also awesome.
Someone please pass the cuticle cream. Yikes! Didn't realize how dry they were until I loaded this pic. :)