Talon-tastic Thursday: Sally Hansen Age Correct Growth Treatment

This is my favourite nude-y pink nail varnish. It would definitely be my "mannequin hands" pick, and has the added benefit of being a treatment that reckons it can give you longer, healthier nails in 5 days.

It's Sally Hansen's Age Correct Growth Treatment, and this is two coats topped off with her Instant Dry topcoat. Now, I've tried all the classic (or "classical" as any Showhouse contestant worth their salt would say) pale pink shades from Essie, including Mademoiselle, Ballet Slippers, and South of the Hi'way and the streakiness drove me to distraction, as did the fact that 3 or 4 coats were required to hit bottle colour.

By contrast, this goes on really well and only takes 2 coats to be opaque (although 1 would work for a more natural finish). Oh, and at 6-ish quid it's about half the price of its Essie counterparts. Score!


What nail varnish or other lovely beauty bits are you wearing today or planning to sport over the loooong (yay!) weekend?

The garden in thumbnails: oooh, pretty.

The pair of Japanese crab apples in our garden are just starting to burst into bloom, and some of the plants that I thought were dead were actually just taking their sweet time about waking up.

Oh hai, fuchsia, good to see you!

I've been meaning to collate all the care info about what's in our garden so that I'd know when to expect them to wake up from winter or when to prune them, rather than just going on instinct and the few plant info cards that are floating around the house. I've been meaning to do it for about a year - so far, I have mostly just collected nice pictures of our plants. Ehem. Anyway, might as well put those photees to work, so here's a thumbnail collage of all the lovely things in our garden (that I know the names of and could therefore source a picture of) which survived the winter!

All photos are from BBC Gardening, I think,with the 

exception of the white lavender which is via Gardening Express.

Monica from 'Friends' has got nothin' on me.

The prospect of a visit from our next door neighbour has sent me into a sustained cleaning/tidying frenzy of late. We got talking through the back fence a while ago and she invited me in to her gaff for a cup of tea, and I was absolutely floored by how immaculate her house was. I mean, the idea of a visitor (other than Himself's dad) casually dropping by without at least a few hours advance notice makes me feel a bit woozy. And now I'm all freaked out that her next door will pop in on spec some day and the terribly untidy house I inhabit will be the talk of the estate.

We don't have all that much in the way of storage space and I'm a terrible hoarder, so little piles of things to be filed/chucked tend to bloom in unfortunately visible places like the dining room table/chairs or, um, the corners of the sitting room.

It's all a bit Miss Havisham, just slightly less cobwebby.

I can't even blame Himself (although, needless to say, I do my very level best) because most of the stuff in the house is mine, and I don't really know where to put lots of it. Like, I have reams of wrapping paper and bubble wrap and tissue paper and ribbon and cards stuffed into two big red and white Avoca bags in the spare room, because there is quite seriously nowhere else for them to go. Under the beds are already full of shoes and handbags and bikinis and skiing gear, and it's a bit too bloody hassle-full to have to get into the attic any time I need to lap a present.

Anyway, I came across a, ehem, top tip in the current edition of LivingEtc while I was waiting for the freshly mopped floors to dry, which I scanned tout de suite for you. If, like me, you are short of storage space and are wondering where on earth to keep cleaning essentials like a duster or brush or flyswatter, you will be delighted to see this eminently sensible suggestion.

As Feargal Quinn would say: WOW.

No, I'm not dead in a ditch...

I know that things were very, very quiet on the blog last week. Sorry about that, peeps, but a collision of circumstances conspired to keep me from the computer.

The weather was lovely, so naturally I panicked and thought OHMYGODTHISCOULDBETHESUMMER!!!MUSTMAKETHEMOSTOFIT!!! Cue lots of outdoors-y activity, and I can't see the screen of my laptop in the sun.

I also just had an awful lot of Real Life stuff on last week, including a clean-up of our estate, a 79th birthday party, a graduation, a confirmation, a big night out (and subsequently, a hangover) as well as lots of gardening and house-y things to do.

I couldn't even put up the weekly Talon-tastic Thursday post because, well, I was wearing a bling-y varnish you've seen before.

Anyway, one of the house-y things I did was finally print some photos and put them in frames! I'll leave you today with a gratuitous trinity of Boris-with-different-haircuts snaps in a deadly doggie frame I bought about, oh, 2 years ago:

This week, I haz mostly...

... fallen head-over-heels in love with this wallpaper (via decor8):

... tried in vain to find a supplier of a suitable paste (only "traditional style, starch based, ready mixed tub paste" need apply) for the Cole & Sons wallpaper that I already have...

... started making a blind for the kitchen window...

... DIYed some hanging votives by repurposing assorted crap rubbish stuff from around the house...

... felt very cool when I discovered that I have the same garden lanterns as design maven Nicole in Chicago (via Making It Lovely):

Nicole's	Mine!

... obsessed about Chanel Particulière nail varnish...

... gotten annoyed with myself for deciding I definitely want Particulière, bandwagon bedamned...

... given up Diet Coke except for cinema visits...

... eaten an egg every day as part of my lunch. Weird, but Bord Bia will be delighted...

... pretty much decided to get these specs. Yes, yes, we've been here before, but this time I've actually tried them on In Person. Once I get my credit card cleared I'm going to make purchase, damn it, because I am fed up to the back teeth with my boring bronze and gold metal frames:

Don't they look like something Garcia in 'Criminal Minds' would wear?

... marvelled at how cut off Ireland suddenly felt when plane travel was halted following the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. Some of the pics of the event are just incredible, though. Have you seen them?

Here is, as the photographer himself describes it, "a spectacular photo of the ash cloud over Machester. Oddly beautiful":

The Twitter hashtag for tweets relating to the ash cloud is, quite brilliantly, #ashtag. Heh.

Now before I sign off for the day, have a cut-out-and-keep joke about the hoopla that you can use with any sportsfan you want to annoy...

A massive dust cloud has shut down European airspace. Authorities are questioning the [insert name of your mate's team here] trophy cabinet cleaner in connection with the incident.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!

I will no doubt be hunted down and shot or lynched or creatively done away with for positing this, but there seems to me to be more than a hint of The Simpsons' Helen Lovejoy about the Penneys padded bikini top debacle that has been raging this week.

Incase you've been living under a large rock of late, Primark in the UK have decided to withdraw a line of padded bikini tops for pre-teens which sparked an outcry from child protection agencies, who were concerned that this represented the sexualisation of young girls and would encourage unwelcome adult attention from paedophiles. The items were not available for sale in Irish stores.

Now lookit, it's not that I think the sale of these products was appropriate. But er could parents not just refuse to buy these bikini tops for their 10-year-old daughters if they felt they were unsuitable?

That would suggest that the onus is on parents to be responsible for or, y'know, raise their kids right, I guess, a notion which is maybe un-PC or a bit unfashionable. And no doubt there would be parents who'd be happy to stick their pre-pubescent daughter in a padded bikini top. Sure it'd look well for the swimsuit section of the pageant. (These people do exist. No, not just in Crazy Backwater Hicksville, USA.)

Anyways, speaking of some parents being complete loons or deciding to get technology to raise the kids (why not just nominate the XBox as the child's godmother and the telly as its godfather from birth and have done with it? I suppose then the Nintendo DS would feel left out) and what not, I have a story for you.

On Wednesday, I noticed a child of about 2 ½ years of age wandering around the car park of Lidl in Portarlington. I assumed she was just lagging behind her mother en route to the car, but when I got out of my own motor there was no-one around. An older lady was trotting towards her saying "Hi pet, where's your Mammy? Are you lost?" while another woman called across that she'd go into the shop and get them to announce a lost child. When I got into Lidl, the message was relayed between cashiers across the checkouts, and eventually a woman with her shopping up on the conyveyor belt looked around for an age and seemed, after a long while, to notice she was missing a small blonde.

Out she legged it, while a small boy who I presume was her son, himself maybe 3 or 3 ½, ran unheeded out after her and straight out into the middle of the carpark. If there had been a car coming he would have been killed stone dead. While Mammy ran off towards her daughter, who at this stage was trying to climb into a jeep with a man and his kids while the first woman cajoled her to stay with her and wait for her ma, the second woman called the little chap back onto the footpath.

Mammy scooped up her daughter, who started roaring crying about not being allowed to go with the strangers, and didn't say a word of thanks to the two women who had likely saved her kids from death by bumper or abduction.

At this stage you might be charitably thinking, as I was, that she was probably just mortified, and that it'd be tough to be out your own like that, trying to juggle doing the weekly shop with minding two small children.

Yeh. Next thing who puts in an appearance only the Da, who has apparently decided to meander out of the shop to see what the craic is.

Listen, I'm sure it's hard work for two grown adults to handle two small kids while doing the shopping (*cough*), but it was pretty clear that these children had been allowed to run riot, unsupervised, while Ma and Da got on with filling the trolley. I mean, they hadn't even missed their daughter, who had been AWOL for a while given that she'd managed to get a very long way from the front door of the shop at a slow, rolling pace.

Of course, I don't have kids so what would I know etc, and no doubt the suggestions I'm about to make will run the gamut from radical to ridiculous, but...

If your kids are likely to wander, well, maybe you should make use of the child seats in the trolley. Or use those bungee bracelet things, or those body harnesses, if they want to be on their feet. Yeh, they look a bit stupid, but at least your kid's less likely to end up under the wheels of an SUV with them than if they're free range.

Or (kompletely kerazeee idea alert) maybe one of you should stay home with them while the other half does the shopping if they're really out of control.

And hey, while you're at it, maybe try a spot of reading or painting or mála moulding or something rather than just plonking them in front of the telly or handing them the DS Light...

Separated At Birth

It's been bugging me for flipping ages, trying to figure out who Eastwick's Paul Gross* reminded me of. 

Initially, I thought it was John Barrowman that he was putting me in mind of. And it was no mean feat trying to explain to Himself who John Barrowman is: "Ah you do know him, come on! Remember he was on Dining With Celebrities Come Dance With Me On Ice?"

Oh sure, indigestion photographs well but DAMN it's uncomfortable.

Then I saw a photee of one Larry Hagman circa I Dream Of Jeannie in Newbridge Silverware yesterday and it - finally - clicked.

Paul Gross	Larry Hagman

*Apologies to the purists, to whom he'll always be Due South's mountie.

Talon-tastic Thursday: My First Frankenpolish

What happens when Milani Cosmetics tell you they don't sell to Ireland and you're feckin' dying to have a go of their 3-D holographic Hi-Res varnish to ape Katie Perry's crazily bling purple mani and you decide to cross (or "franken", to use nail varnish speak) a blurple Bourjois number with a seldom used anymore glittery blue Stila eyeliner? 

Well, this!

(Cue thunder and lightning and me going "MWAH HAH HAAAAAH!!!" and rubbing hands together and the like.)

That's two coats of colour topped with a single layer of eyeliner glitter, finished off with Essie's Super Duper Topcoat after Seche Vite declined to stay put (it peeled off in the shower, pah) and it's satiated my desire for purple glittery nails.

For now, like.

I mean, lookit how pretty the aforementioned holo Milani Hi-Res is:

I'm also lemming Color Club's Wild At Heart for a truer, less lavender purple:

And Zoya's Mimi looks like another strong contendor for a space in my imaginary glittery purple arsenal:

Images are courtesy of Vampy Varnish

 
What nail varnish or other lovely make-up bits are you wearing today or planning to sport at the weekend?

Cath who?

For a long time, your only woman for cool printed oilcloth was Cath Kidston. And while some of her designs are things your granny wouldn't dream of putting on her table (pink with white stars, mar shampla) at its heart I always feel this is a cottage cool, shabby chic kind of brand and actually lots of the designs are likely to have major gran appeal.

So if Cath Kidston's a bit too twee for your tastes, you can now opt for something decidedly more kitsch. Flamingo print oilcloth, anyone..?

I can come up with no use for oilcloth in my own gaff (suggestions on a postcard) but here are some more of the new-for-SS10 offerings from Rice for your viewing pleasure:

Clicky here for details of Rice stockists in Ireland.

I can haz summer now, yes?

I know, I know. One swallow doesn't make a summer. Cast ne'er a clout til May be out. But the weather has been so incredibly gorgeous for the last couple of days that I can't help but get a bit giddy about it and, er, eyeball nice outdoors-y things.

I have a couple of these cream Moroccan-stylee lanterns dotted around the gravel border that cast fab intricate shadows across the back garden when lit at night, and since my solar powered LEDs for the trees have given up the ghost I'm thinking a few lads like these would look fairly sweet strung up in the branches:

Pix via Not On The High Street & Clayton Gray Home

Pix via Not On The High Street & Crocus

Later on in the summer when the flowers have gone off the trees, they could do double duty as mini hanging vases like these during the day:

Source

Wouldn't this mirrored agapanthus from Susan Bradley look fab in a courtyard garden?

Sadly, this pink parasol suits neither my cream and green garden furniture nor my wallet with its £165 price tag, but it is oh so pretty and The Indian Garden Company are offering free EU-wide delivery for a limited time if you're feeling flush:

Or maybe sail shades are more your thing?

Source

Not sure how comfortable slatted metal folding chairs would be In Real Life, but I just love these French bistro sets:

Source

Considering the fence needs to be stained this year, a large number of our plants didn't survive the winter, and the grass is in ribbons courtesy of the dog tearing it to shreds, I may be getting just a little bit ahead of myself looking at nice garden accessories.

Now, where's me secateurs?

Source

Talon-tastic Thursday: Orly Country Club Khaki

Very late with today's nail post, sorry folks, but here we go now...

This is three coats of Orly Country Club Khaki topped with Seche Vite topcoat. 

Now before you start in with all the dead nails remarks (oh, hai Himself!) you should know that I'm not even wearing a smidge of gradual tan in this photo and this is a nail varnish that definitely looks better on me when I'm a bit less blue.

It's not for everyone, but I'm really liking greige and today am sporting it as a sophis foil to pastel clothes. I'm wearing a pink vest top and nude coloured sequinned cardi (that's it posing in the background) with jeans and silver bejewelled flats, and think the greige nail polish sort of toughens up the look a bit.

Oh, and in further validation of my Totally Awesome Trendspotting Abilities, I've been wearing greige on my nails since well before Chanel Particulière was even a whisper on the Interweb. Fancy!


What nail varnish or other lovely make-up bits are you wearing today or planning to sport at the weekend?

I am cool. Mammy - and now Apartment Therapy - sez so.

These are our pebble-stylee salt and pepper shakers from US store CB2, which were featured on Apartment Therapy last week.

Not our *actual* salt and pepper shakers, now, but you know what I mean.

I picked up a set of these get-yer-rocks-off bad boys in New York more than 2 years ago. Himself had sprung a surprise trip to The Big Apple on me for my Christmas-and-birthday present (I felt like all my Christmases and birthdays had come together. Best Present Ever) and I was determined to bring something from CB2's SoHo store home with me.

Me and CB2 go way back, y'see. When Himself and I lived in Chicago (admittedly only for 5 months on the J1 in the summer of 2004, but still) a brand new branch of the store opened close to where we were living in the RANCH Triangle area of Lincoln Park. 

Our Chicago apartment building

While I never actually bought anything there, seeing the CB2 logo always reminds me of our time in Chicago and I just got sucked into the SoHo branch when we were walking past. I couldn't help it.

Who'da thunk I was so ahead of the curve with what was, ironically enough, a nostalgia purchase? Trendpotter extraordinaire, so I am.

Talon-tastic Thursday: It's Chanel, dahlinks...

Sticking two fingers up to this week's completely psychotic weather (stupid LHC), I've decided to go with something bright and cheerful and decidedly un-wintery for today's Talon-tastic post.

This is part of my Chanel nail varnish wardrobe, which mostly houses Blue, Rose and White Satins together with an ancient bottle of as-seen-in-Pulp-Fiction Rouge Noir.

Still no Particulière yet, and since apparently the only way to get hold of it is to pay insanely over the odds and promise your first born to some fleaBay shark, it looks unlikely to join my little collection anytime soon.

*Cry.*

Anyways. Orange Fizz was bloody hard to capture accurately on camera and is actually not quite as pink as it appears in the swatch above. It's a bit of a strange colour, swinging between a near pastel-looking coral outdoors in daylight and a bright, near neon tangerine indoors. In terms of application, you're looking at a minimum of three coats for an even finish, which is something that wouldn't faze me at all with cheapy polishes but rightly gets on my wick with a top dollah super-luxe brand.

And yes, there is an argument that you're just paying for the name with a brand like Chanel, but frankly that's no excuse for peddling the kind of streakiness that any self-respecting rasher would be jealous of.