{Wordless Wednesday} The elephant(s) in the room

12/30/2015 11:11:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments


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{Mani Monday} Orly Rage

12/28/2015 02:57:00 PM Ashley 0 Comments

Man, last week got away from me. Badly. With it being the end of the year and the holidays hitting full force, I just kept forgetting to get photos of my nails. Also, if it could stop being SO DAMN DRY here, that would be peachy. Cause my nails are not appreciating it. Nor are my hands loving the abuse they are receiving. After a handful of nail breaks, with one guaranteeing nubs, and a crap ton of variously acquired cuts I think I am finally able to start healing and re-growth.

With things calming down a bit before New Years hits, I found some time today to sit and paint my nails with a classic color from Orly. This color is called Rage and is just a really great rose gold foil metallic. It applies well, isn't streaky and is a just good color to have in a collection. The only major issues are cleanup as foils like to leave shimmering reminders of the polish behind, but all you need is a good hand wash to get rid of the shimmering remnants. I use it as a base color as well, which you'll see in next weeks post. So just an all around solid polish. Photos of the polish were taken outside in cloud cover, so the warmth of the polish is lost a bit.

{Outdoors: cloud cover}

{Outdoors: cloud cover} 

{Outdoors: cloud cover} 

{Outdoors: cloud cover}

{Outdoors: cloud cover}

{Outdoors: cloud cover}

As you can see I didn't wash my hands before photographing the polish, so there's shimmer around the cuticle. I was fighting with the sunlight trying to get photos before the clouds fully moved in.

Clouds - 1

Me - 0

But I win in the end, because I have a pretty polish on.

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{Wordless Wednesday} Mid-Century Modern Bathroom Lust

12/23/2015 09:11:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments


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{Friday Favorites} Boot dreaming

12/18/2015 08:30:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments

Wandering Instagram can be a very dangerous thing. There's so many great and odd things to be seen.

One of my recent, late night, IG wanderings lead me to a pair of booties that I just can't get out of my head. After clicking around a few photos I finally found the link. Right to Anthropologie. Of course. 




These beauties are from Billy Ella and are a navy faux suede with silver star embroidery. It's like a starry night is being laid across your feet. Swoon. I'm in love and trying to come up with as many outfits to wear these with as possible.

They are currently out of my size, but I can only hope that they will magically be restocked at some point so that these night sky booties can find their way to my house.

A girl can dream right? Cause I know I sure as heck am.

So what are your current favorite things that you own or are lusting after?

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{Wordless Wednesday} Sleepy smooshed face

12/16/2015 09:04:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments


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{Mani Monday} Great Lakes Lacquer and Stamping

12/14/2015 10:58:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments

Let's start off with a truth. My nails are brutal right now. Between packing orders and how dry it's been here this winter, my nails look haggard. None of my nails are the same length. At all. There's been some bad breaks, including one yesterday that became not only a broken nail but a cut into the tip of my finger when I was trying to file the nail. Yeah...it's bad.

Which means I'm kicking off Manic Mani Monday with a mani I did a month ago. It's perfectly fall and wonderful and shows off my very new stamping skills. It also showcases a beautiful small batch limited edition from Great Lakes Lacquer. The color is called Raisins Fall and is a beautiful browned out purple holo that has a copper like sheen. I purchased mine the first time it was released. It had enough interest in it that the maker worked to recreate the polish to re-release on Cyber Monday of this year. Meaning that there are two versions on Raisins Fall, though I don't know how much they differ from each other. My version applied beautifully in two coats and was easy to remove. 

Okay enough jabbering, let's get to the polish...

{OttLite}

{OttLite} 

{Outside: full sun}

{Outside: shade}

After wearing this polish for a day I decided to try out some stamping over the top. I just recently started stamping, after putting it off forever. I'm still learning but it's been fun. 

{Outside: full sun}

 {Outside: full sun}

I went with some fall leaves off of the Uber Chic Halloween-01 stamping plate. I used four Illamasqua colors in various shades of yellow, orange and green to create a water color effect (it probably has a proper name, but let's just go with this). I really love how subtle the leaves were and how the colors blended into one another. Just like leaves changing in the fall.

So there we have it, the kick off to Manic Mani Monday! Hopefully I can get my nails to a happier place so that I can share a current mani next week. Fingers crossed!

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{Decor} The rainbow tree receives an epic upgrade

12/12/2015 10:33:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments

In the not so distant past I had an idea. A wild hair, if you will. It led Nate and I on a late night trip to Meijer for a white Christmas tree. I had plans. Very colorful plans. 

Five years ago an idea exploded and I had no idea it would be so popular. I took a white Christmas tree and combined it with a plethora of rainbow colored ornaments I had stockpiled away. Thus our rainbow tree was born.

Since then our tree has been posted and reposted on Pinterest and other various sites many times over. At this point the tree usually doesn't even link back to this blog. A tree lost in translation.

The good news is the tree is alive and well. Going strong so many years later. I have moments where I think maybe we'll change it up, but then I re-fall in love with the tree all over again. So every year it goes up and slowly gets decorated color by color, starting from the top. It's a decorating dance that I know well at this point.




This year though, something was set in motion to help give the rainbow tree a new breath of life. For once stores having their holiday accessories out, just as Halloween wrapped up, paid off.

On a random wandering of Target, because it's what I do as an adult, I ran into the trickling out of Christmas trees and all of their accoutrements. I did my usual wanderings to see all of the new things only to have my eye caught by a shimmering star topper that spun color onto the "ceiling" of the visual box it was displayed in. Videos were instantly taken to send to Nate. 





Yes...that video was sent to Nate instantly. Along with pleading. And whining. Really anything I could throw at him to somehow make that tree topper come home to live with us. All that was needed was another trip back to Target, this time with Nate it tow, to show off the the tree topper of epic-ness in person. Also known as the Lit LED Projection Star Topper. My name for it is so much better.

Let's just say that this topper sat in it's box taunting me for almost a month as we finally finished getting our house put back together from the summer basement flood. Which is another long story for another time. As we scrambled to get the last bits and pieces of a destroyed house put back into proper places, so that we could enjoy Thanksgiving with friends, the white tree may have found it's way into the house. Before Thanksgiving. GASP. And while not yet decorated, the topper may have also found its way to the top of the tree.

About a week later the ornaments found their way onto the tree. 







Swoon.

To say that I'm still smitten with the tree is a total understatement. And now with this amazing topper? Stick a fork in me, I'm done. If you need me you can find me laying on our sofa next to the tree just staring at it in wonderment.

I mean, just watch this video and tell me how you can't absolutely love this tree!?

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{Friday Favorites} New K-beauty favorites

12/11/2015 08:30:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments

Korean beauty, or K-beauty for short, is finally hitting the beauty market in a big way. And I am excited! I've been a fan of K-beauty products for awhile, but getting ahold of certain things was difficult.

With it being easier and easier to find products, I'm finding more and more products coming home with me. Some of my recent purchases were from two really fun brands. Cute packaging is always an eye catcher for me. Honestly it's how I end up buying a lot of things. Cute packaging? SOLD! Okay, so I do actually do research on the beauty products that I buy, but cute packaging still helps with the decision.


My recent purchase of K-beauty products comes from Tony Moly and Too Cool For School. 



Tony Moly Panda's Dream So Cool Eye Cream is a cooling eye serum. It cools on contact with the skin, is easy to apply and doesn't feel heavy. I can easily see this being a go-to under eye product for the summer. 


Too Cool For School Dinoplatz Holiday Wish List is an offering of three scented and tinted lip balms. Each one has a scent/flavor that pairs up with the color. I'm pretty much smitten with these. Between the adorable art, the kiss of color and the hydrating feeling these are a must. They add a nice wash of tinted color. Nothing over the top, just a hint. They go on nicely, aren't sticky and feel smooth and hydrating on the lip. There are five colors in total and I can easily see myself getting the other two. Sadly it doesn't look like this set it still for sale, but you can buy the individually.

So there's my current Friday Favorites! What have you been loving and/or lusting after recently?

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{Wordless Wednesday} Snow Edged Leaf

12/09/2015 10:32:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments


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The Thing About Daisies reawakens

12/07/2015 10:56:00 AM Ashley 0 Comments

It's been months since giving this blog a much needed, clean facelift.

It's been over a year since the last time I posted anything here.

It's been over 6 years since I first had a wild hair to create a personal lifestyle blog.

So why come back now?


I could write out a beautifully long story about life being crazy and having huge amounts of self-doubt and being too busy and losing the love for blogging. 

Instead though, I will simply say...

I missed it.

For months I have racked through my brain about what I want to do to revive this blog. What I want to share. It always comes back to keeping it the way that it was. A place for me to share whatever strikes my fancy, but with a little more structure.

Reviews will still happen. Sharing craft ideas are a must. Random musing of life are always interesting (at least to me). There's my desperate love of all things fashion and beauty related. With some home decor thrown in. Food and drink, can't forget about that, be it making it or just simply eating/drinking it. Totally need to share things I currently love and things I currently would love to have, we can all dream and drool together right? And to round it out, nail polish, because it is my life and day job.

To get back into the flow of things I am going to start with three main, weekly cycling, posts to get content rolling. So keep an eye out on Mondays for Manic Mani Monday, where I will share my favorite current polish. Wednesdays will see Wordless Wednesday, which is just sharing a wordless photo. Fridays will see Friday Favorites, where I will share either something that is currently a favorite thing I own/use or a favorite thing I have been lusting over. From there I'll add on various posts as I get the content up and ready for them to go live!

So welcome to those who are new to this journey with me and welcome back to anyone who may have stuck it out throughout the years. 

Let's get this blog re-blogified! Also apologies about so many blog posts with broken photos. It's on my to-do list for fixing.

My parting gift is this random photo of holographic snowflake decor:

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