Who loves to PLAN? This girl does!

Ladies and gents, I may have momentarily lost my mind....but hear me out okay? After seeing a friend of mine post on facebook that she was looking at "Erin Condren Life Planners" I sort of laughed and thought to myself Life planner? What is this nonsense? Wow, I was so wrong! There is an entire following out there of ladies (and gents probably) who absolutely swear by the Erin Condren Life Planner. You all know I'm a law student and I'm a HUGE fan of everything organizationally focused. Yes, that includes agendas/planners. Color coordination? YES. Sticky notes? Heck yes! So I started looking at all the options for the Erin Condren life planner (I still chuckled that it was called a "life planner") and there were soooo many different types. The covers were all colorful and different. You could personalize it with your name (or whatever other words you want). And the space? Oh my gosh, the amount of space included in these things looked to be prime for 100% organizational bliss. The price of the Life Planner doesn't come cheap though, and I was really hesitant to believe that a planner, something to scribble down assignments, appointments, notes, etc, could cost such a price. At $50 it took a lot of convincing and I researched and researched the product. I watched youtube videos where people reviewed their Erin Condren Life Planners, checked blog posts reviewing the product, and even googled images for how you could use the showed you how you could use it. Eventually I broke down...and I bought one. More information on when it comes in! I might just review it? Or use it for a nail design? Who knows. If you want to see some of what the fuss is all about you can always watch this video:

And just a little hint: the cover of my Erin Condren Life Planner that I bought just might look like one these!

My BLOWN MIND by OPI Blue My Mind

It's very rare that I do something like this guys, but this is going to get serious right now. The last time I did this was when I was accused by an anonymous comment-er that I stole their nail design (seriously?!). Hard to figure it out when the person was anonymous and wouldn't give me a link to their design. Over-dramatic much? Anyway, my witty, joking demeanor has taken a step aside and I think my inner b**** might be on her way out. I know we're talking about nail polish here, but here's what happened:

I sat down at my computer today to paint my nails. Because it was going to be a swatch post, I googled the name of the color to try and get the original collection name and year to include in the post. Which polish did I choose? OPI Blue My Mind, a polish that I bought originally a LONG time ago (I couldn't remember the exact purchase date). I looked at the google image results and what did I find? A much lighter and more powdery blue than what my purpley blue OPI Blue My Mind polish looked like both in the bottle and on my nails. I tried to figure out if maybe my lighting was just off. Nope, the lighting was what the lighting was. It wasn't affecting my polish at all.

The swatch post I looked at was from Paint Those Piggies (an absolutely awesome blog that I didn't even know about until now -- you should check it). You can clearly see the light blue of the polish and the tag on the bottom of the bottle.

Looks good right? And there were so many others that looked exactly the same. So I checked my bottle. Could I possibly have a FAKE polish in my collection? No way. But here's what my photo looked like:

Does it look the same to you?? You can see the barcodes are identical. By the way, props to Paint Those Piggies for being able to balance the polish like that....I had to use my thumb for balance. Anyway, I panic, thinking DID I BUY A FAKE OPI? Seriously? and I google "fake OPI." Turns out fake or counterfeit OPIs are an issue in the nail community. For example, TransDesign (a website that sells polishes for cheap) was sued by OPI for selling allegedly fake OPIs (there is one lawsuit I enjoyed reading -- because I'm a law nerd you know). I have such a hard time thinking there are fake nail polishes out there. I mean, they are nail polishes. OPI retails for anywhere from $7 to $12 and people are counterfeiting them?? They are nail polishes, not the crown jewels here. Anyway, I found this post, this post, and this post saying that fake OPIs EXIST, and I found this post showing How to Spot a Fake OPI Their blog posts also included some tips and ways to tell if your bottle is a fraud so I grabbed my bottle and started looking for clues.

Apparently, it's really hard to tell if a bottle is fake and, although you used to be able to look at things like the bottle shape and smoothness, the barcode at the bottom, whether there are two labels on the bottle or one, the stamp of a black or white number sequence on the bottle, the spelling and warning labels, and a little dot on the P in "OPI" written on the top of the cap, now the fakes are getting so good as to include all these things. As you can see, my bottle had everything a real bottle should: there's the little dot on the P in the cap, the ridges on the inside of the cap, the stamped "OPI" on the brush (although it might be hard to see on camera, in real life it's clear as day), the stamped number sequence on the bottle, proper warnings and labels, and an appropriate two label bottom tag.

Now I throw this out to you guys. Thoughts about this? Am I seeing things and my polish DOES look like the correct color? Are my nails faking it today? Or do I have the real deal on my digits? Suffice it to say that if I bought a fake OPI I'm going to be really really angry. It's just nail polish at the end of the day but nobody likes feeling ripped off or betrayed. Needless to say, OPI Blue My Mind did in fact end up BLOWING MY MIND today.

Don't worry OPI Blue My Mind, I'll love you either way. Jk. Seriously though, is that not absolutely gorgeous?

And the crown goes to...

Hello lovelies, today's post relates to a certain very exciting TV program that was on last night. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you guessed Miss America 2015 then yes! You're right! The Miss America pageant was on last night and, despite it derailing me from doing schoolwork like I had anticipated on doing, I enjoyed every second of watching the girls strut their stuff, show off their talents, and dazzle the audience in their evening gowns. I recently went to TJ Maxx with one of my best college friends who was in from Maine and while we were there I picked up a polish that NEEDED to be swatched during Miss America: OPI Miss You-niverse.

OPI Miss You-niverse is from the Miss Universe collection that came out in...2013 I think? It's this absolutely gorgeous deep plum purple color that was pretty much the easiest nail polish to apply ever. I'm pretty sure you could get away with only doing one coat if you were in a rush but I always do at least two coats to make sure I didn't miss anywhere. The color is true-to-bottle which is always good. It was so hard to capture the actual purple of this color on camera because as you can see it kept coming up really dark but I did my best! OPI Miss You-niverse is a perfect winter polish and I'll probably wear it quite a few times this season.

I love how you can barely read the label on the bottle. Black lettering on this dark of a polish....nope, I can't see that.

 In case you didn't watch Miss America....*spoiler alert* New York won (for the third time in a row) and no one fell!

Thanks for looking!

Am I the only one that thought where did I put my ice cream? while watching the bikini competition?

30 Week Nail Art Challenge - Week 4: Green

Today's post is Week 4 (Green) in the 30 Week Nail Art Challenge and I'm excited to post it because it gave me a chance to use a polish I've never used before. I started with Jordana Key Lime for a base and then followed with a coat of Orly Lush to add a little pizzazz to the top. I added an accent of zebra because I love animal print. Orly Lush has intrigued me a little because I couldn't decide if it was yellow or green or what exactly was going on with the sparkles and little stringy things. Even after seeing it on my nail I'm not sure what to think of it. Thoughts?

 Just in case you're looking forward to what's coming next.....it's Blue!

30 Week Nail Art Challenge: Week 3 - Yellow

Hello everybody, oh my gosh I have so much to blog about right now! As you know, I got to visit my sweets (Andrew) in Colorado at the end of August. It was SO much fun and we kept ourselves sooo busy. I'm not sure if I want to do non-manicure posts focusing on the trip or if I want to just throw the trip in along with some manicures. I have sooo many photos though and I hope to share a few with you guys. Anyway, that's all stuff for another day. For today, I have my manicure for Week 3 of the 30 Week Nail Art Challenge. This week's challenge was...yellow nails.

I'm not sure why the yellow base is showing up so orangey-ish but it's definitely bright (like SUN) yellow. I used Sinful Colors Pull Over and China Glaze Broken Hearted.

Next week is - GREEN!