Summer Fun: Palm Trees, or, The Bad Day Manicure

I love palm trees and all things tropical. I collect flamingos. Up until last year my Christmas tree was a seven foot light up palm tree normally seen on kitchy front porches that I dangled sea shells and glass flamingos from.

So it was kind of a surprise that I didn't know what to do for this manicure.

In the end, I decided to swipe the silhouette at sunset look that I've been seeing around the blogosphere and on Deviantart.

Colors used: Two coats Maybelline Color Show "Porcelain Party;" two coats Color Zone florescent pink; sponged application of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Sun Kissed;" sponged application of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri "Lightening;" freehand design in Pop Beauty "Black."

I was just about to put my top coat on this, when I kind of freaked.

There were ants in my bed.

I'm a pretty tidy person. I'm not a neat freak, and sure, we have dishes in our sink from time to time. But I don't store food in my room and I try to vacuum at least semi-regularly.

Now let me preface this: earlier this week, I found some ants in the seams of the linoleum. Not in the kitchen, mind you.

In my bathroom.

So I promptly washed the bath mat, swept the floor, wiped the whole thing down with Clorox, and, at the advice of my mom, started spraying the baseboards and the floor with a 50/50 vinegar/water mix.

As of this morning, I thought they were mostly gone. I still spotted one or two, but dispatched them in short order.

Then I picked up my laptop to start this blog post, and found half a dozen on the keyboard and screen.

They were on the sheets.

They were climbing up the wall.

They were in my damn bed.

If that's not an invasion of privacy, I don't know what is.

So, instead of photographing my mani and writing out a nice, detailed blog post, my roommate and I pulled all of the furniture away from the wall, swept, sprayed the vingar mix on the baseboards and along the edge of the carpet, and then set it all back up. Four times. Because I have my bed on stilts for extra storage, and it kept falling off for some reason.

And it's hot. It's bloody hot, even with the A/C running.

During one of the falls, my mattress knocked the plug for my alarm clock out of the wall, cracking the plate cover in the process.

And then the full glass of water on my night stand was knocked off and spilled all over everything.

And did I mention that my mac mini also got knocked off my makeshift desk in the process? (Appears undamaged, so far.)

So once I got everything back in place, I went to take my manicure pictures, only to discover that it had been chipped an damaged during all of the hullabaloo. I thought briefly about starting over, but...

You know what? It's a manicure. The Polish Police aren't going to come after me for posting pictures of a sloppy or damaged mani (that I also forgot to do clean up work on).

While I like the way it came out (pre-damage), the colors just aren't really me, so I was thinking of taking it off anyway.

And since it's that kind of a day, I decided to just do a straight up swatchy mani. This is a new polish I got the other day at the Sally's sale. It's my first Orly polish, and I found it on clearance. I love the colors.

Orly "Mysterious Curse" $3.99 at Sally's.

This polish is a sheer, plum colored base with bright turquoise sparkles in it. It reminds me a lot of another favorite polish I had in high school--"hologlam," which was a Mary Kay color. I used it on it's own and layered it over every color I owned, and I think that this polish might suit better layered over a blue or black.


Shortly after these pictures were taken, I discovered that the airport card on my laptop is officially toast, and managed to scratch the polish on four of my nails in an unrelated incident.

It's just that kind of day.