Lucy Liu Melbourne for my birthday dinner

I just wanted to share some snaps from my nice birthday dinner and my fun houndstooth nails using the Sally Hansen nail stripes. I picked them up for $5 at a sale a while back. I'm not well practiced,  so it's not the best application, but still really enjoy looking at them! I love houndstooth, but since I can't draw that finely and my stamping skills are non-existent, this is the only way to do it. I'd have picked up more boxes if there was more than one still in the bin!

Mmm... food

The food is, clockwise from top, a schezwan duck, lamb shoulder, ginger creme brulee, soft shell crab pancakes, Collin San (a ginger and lime based cocktail) and eggplant and pork tempura. Not pictured were the duck dumplings... totally forgot to snap that photo! Haha. Failed asian. 

I look rather well and happy there. Doesn't look like I am sick at all. But in actual fact, I became horrendously sick on Friday and instead of going out for my drinks, I had to cancel that at the last minute and laid curled up in bed all day, with rather frequent dashes to the bathroom. That drink is the one and only drink I managed for my birthday, and I was soon tucked back up in bed.

And a proper swatch photo of the nails

Fun and Easy Personalised Gift Ribbon

Early this month, I was invited to a 1st birthday party. As per usual, my friend gives out her invites with very short notice (if I remember correctly, for her wedding, I got the invite about 3 weeks out!) With all the other stuff going on in my life, clearly I was not going to be able to organise an amazingly thoughtful and unique gift. But I didn't want to just go over with a stuffed toy, so I re-purposed some white ribbon I had into a cute birthday greeting/decoration using the fabric markers I had from my Ikea curtains project. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen this. 

As you can see, the colours spread really quickly on the material. I had to develop a technique of writing a letter and then quickly ironing the letter to set it to stop it from running too much.

And here's how the gift looked. It is a very cute toy, with a nice big head and narrow neck, perfect for a cheeky 1 year old to grab on. When I arrived, he was having a little cry about something, but when I pulled out the toy, he kinda looked at it and went, "Oh, for me?"

As you can see, it was a very cute dinosaur, and I was tempted to keep him for myself!

Nail Art with Kit Orange.com

I got the amazingly bright and smooth orange.com as a birthday gift last month. It looks almost red and comes in a cute little box!

I'd already worn it on my toes, but when the heat started going up this week, I felt it was time for some bright colours! I went with a double nail art as accents, using OPI My boyfriend scales walls as the white base.

It was a fun, retro look and the flowers were easy peasy! The dots were actually more difficult.

 Again, I blinged it up after a day. I found Ulta 3 on sale in Target. Said itwas $1.60, but when I went to pay, it was only $1! A BUCK! It goes on very easy too, this was all 1-2 layers.

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I am really keen to to have some more consistent hot weather - I want summer already! 

Birthday and Christmas Nails Manicures - Now in more pixels

Just some better photos of the nails I wore for my Birthday on Friday 13th and on Christmas Day. They've already made an appearance as a phone camera photo on the blog, so let's keep it brief!

First up, birthday mani. I used the distressed nails technique I saw done by Chalkboard nails. As you can see, it worked perfectly with my new Review dress! (Oh I just noticed it's called Ashton, like in Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn series!)

Christmas in my household is a quiet affairs, since we don't have any other family in Australia. Still, I tried to get into the mood with some festive nails. I messed up the stripes on my left hand a bit, the right looked much better, but it's too hard to switch camera hands!

I started a new job and it's a real rollercoaster!

Hello! So it's been a little while since I started out blogging again. I've been busy, having launched straight into a job just a couple of weeks after finishing exams! It's pretty crazy how quickly that happened. The work is very interesting, and different and so intense at times. I have been doing my nails less and also less elaborately as a result. I haven't had the chance to go through my more recent photos. And also, the Friday 13th was my birthday! I did a really cute matching nail and dress combo. Like I said, I haven't sorted my photos yet, but here's a selfie from my phone.

I've also started hitting the gym after work again — I've not been able to play around with my nails anywhere near as much... plus I want to keep them somewhat professional looking. But I will have the Christmas/NY period off, so I will hopefully get some of my backlogged photos sorted and play with more nail polishes too.