fifrildi

NOTD - OMG! I’m Indi-a mood for love

OPI’s Indi-a mood for love is supposedly a dead on dupe for the pink in MAC’s limited edition Hello Kitty collection. Arguably, Indi-a mood for love does not have Hello Kitty on it, but it has a great formula and if you really really want Kitty on the bottle you can always slap a kawaii sticker on there!

For the konadicure part of this I used China Glaze OMG! I think it was a nice effect even if it was a bit more subtle than I had imagined it to be inside my head. But people have complimented this manicure so I guess it shows off enough.

I’m also beginning to be happy with the shape of my nails. I think they need a bit more work before I’ll be completely satisfied, but I’m on my way. I haven’t had long nails for a few years so it takes some getting used to.

NOTD - Nubar - Forest

The green-loving international nail polish community went into some sort of frenzy when Nubar announced that they were launching a collection consisting of nothing but greens. I am amongst those who feel that green polish is the ultimate and was lucky enough to get my fingers on this collection earlier this week.

I started with Forest - a green creme. The photo on the left is tweaked a bit in photoshop and is an accurate picture of how this polish looks on me. I find it so incredibly stunning and if I had to keep only one of my numerous greens it would be this one. It has even killed off my lemming for the legendary NARS zulu polish that was discontinued years ago. Zulu is way more blackened than Forest so this is no dupe or anything, but I’m staring at my nails now and am feeling so happy that there is no more room for a green lemming. Not to say that it might resurface again at some point in time - but for now I’m perfectly sated.

The rest of the colours in this collection are totally stunning as well, and I recommend taking a look at them at Scrangie’s blog.

NOTD - Nfu-oh 54 - Matte version

A couple of days ago I tested my flakie polish nfu-oh 53 on top of a black base. The nfu-flakies are so beautiful and change all the time depending on how the light hits. Yesterday I put on some Orly Matte Top, a top coat designed to give polishes a matte satiny effect.

I must say the effect was most satisfactory, and I actually preferred it to the original with a coat of Seche Vite. The matte finish made my nails look like exotic rocks with shiny bits deep inside. Also the blue base became much more apparent.

For this picture I put a droplet of water on my finger to show more or less accurately the matte vs the shiny effect.

Getting whipped into shape

Due to a case of failing health I have metamorphosed into this weak, stiff, slightly overweight creature that I simply do not recognize. My mental image of myself is still slim, fit and ready for anything so it’s confusing the way I have to dress to hide a stomach and annoying that I’m so weak that hauling my groceries is a chore.

I know I should be happy with the progress I’ve had. In February I was not able to walk for 40 minutes straight and now I walk twice that most days and can even go to 60 minutes aerobics classes. But even if my progress is fantastic I’m not happy with it and want to take advantage of this new found health and energy levels to get into shape - stronger, better, faster and more productive.

So yesterday I had a meeting with at PT at my local gym. He’s well educated and has several years of experience behind him and claims that his speciality is weight loss through weight lifting - which is just what I was looking for! He ‘hmmd’ a bit at substandard arm muscles, but was positive since I have little visceral fatty tissue (I am just plagued with being plain flabby and out of shape. My words. Not his.).

And since there’s no time like the present I’m going back today to get a full fitness evaluation and to set a plan for the future. So far we agree that 3-4 times per week sounds like a good place to start to find a healthier and better me.

Why is there a picture of a bottle of nail polish in this post you ask? Well… as somemight know I have a slight (healthy) obsession with nail polish and butted into a conundrum last night when I was going to do my nails. You see, I wanted to do Mint Mojito, but hesitated because I was not really sure that I would like to wave my green nails around while trying to get down and serious with this PT of mine. It would maybe feel slightly unprofessional in a way. So I ended up with OPI You don’t know Jaques - pictured on the left here, and simply stolen from The Polish Addict. The colour is totally unfitting for bright, summery weather so now I just feel weird.

We all have problems I guess. Some bigger that others. And mine are obviously not that huge even if I just need to get my mind to that place where I will enjoy being that woman at the gym sporting extremely colourful nails.

And on an end note. I have a new motto. “When you try you allow yourself to fail in good conscience. So I wont try. I will simply do.” I figure this will come in handy when my PT tells me to do just three more reps.

Homemade polish - Frankenpolish

As I have a self confessed love of all things colourful and shiny I am, ofcourse, madly in love with nail polish. I spend way too much time on the net surfing my favourite polish blogs, reading comments on MUA or just thinking about what to do with my nail next.

This is how I discovered the art of frankenpolish. This simply means that you mix your own polish - nothing so elaborate as cooking up nail polish from scratch (and that would indeed cause some interesting stories to tell the insurance company I’m sure…).

There’s some that says that you should not mix different polish brands, a warning I simply ignored with good results. And while I’m sure you’ll get your frankenpolish mixed more easily with mixing ballz I did just fine without it. I had my hearth set on a dusty green and mixed some gray, some green and some black in an empty bottle, shook like crazy and ended up with the lovely polish pictured in this post. It’s aptly named “Olive for my martini”. So far this is my only franken, but I’ll probably try it again some day soon! It was way fun!

My Japan Wedding

It was not like I had imagined, getting married. It was bigger, better and cliche enough I felt slightly different after. Giddy, yes, but also like a more improved version of myself and like I had clicked together for good with the man I love so much it’s hard to believe.

Family and friends were left behind in Norway, and we travelled to the wonderful futuristic land that is Japan. Our first night there was all sounds and light and tons and tons of very short and skinny people looking slightly desperate if we needed to talk with them. We walked around, gawking, being ever the tourist - but in Japan never feeling out of place with a camera because the natives, true to form, shoots away like crazy.

The Day of the Wedding I was finally rested. A night in the softest bed with the softest pillows and the softest comforter after taking a bath in the most luxurious bath tub had transformed my aching and travel-sore body almost back to its normal self. We woke up, had breakfast while overlooking the Imperial Gardens before we made ourselves presentable in our wedding outfits.

I had worked so hard on my dress-now-skirt (much to the scorn and ridicule of some and impressed noises of others) and it was ready and newly ironed just waiting for me to slip into it. And it was good, it was made by me - a one of a kind skirt exactly like I wanted with butterflies swarming.

The butterflies on my skirt though were nothing like the butterflies that flew around and around in my stomach on the way to the wedding ceremony. We both looked kind of pale and stared out of the window in the cab. We both felt this to be huge and real.

The ceremony itself was short. It felt like some sort of culture clash to be at the Norwegian Embassy after having spent the last two weeks solely amongst the Japanese, but the nice, very Norwegian lady wed us properly. It was a feeling to say “yes”. A feeling like no other feeling I have ever felt. It was true and good and huge and solid.

And then we went out in the sun lit Tokyo morning, cheesy, hand in hand -giggling whilst saying “wife” and “husband”. Then we took our newly wed selves, my home made skirt and the husbands home made robot tie out for ice cream. We felt ever so good about our selves; not only had we managed to get wed without the accompanying stress of having stressed out family around but we had our wedding in Japan!

For the rest of the day? Well, we made good use of having rented a very, very expencive suite for the wedding and also had dinner at one of Tokyo’s more fancy restaurants. So far, a good month into being married, I can strongly recommend married life - at least it agrees well with me.

My wedding dress - Part 2

On Monday my mother came visiting to see if we could salvage the wedding dress, or if I should go for Plan B: Make the dress into a skirt instead. We tried the dress on and my mother hmmmed, and she hammmed, and she made me turn around, then she tugged at the fabric here and there, hmmmed some more, fetched a belt, made me turn around and said that she could make this work ok if I wanted to, even if I claimed I felt a bit boxy and fat in the entire thing. I do think she wanted the dress to work because she, as my mother, have always envisioned me in a dress at my wedding day.

Then I showed her plan B with the fitted, stretchy top and the belt and she caved immediately realising I looked both better and more comfortable.

So today I have made the dress into a skirt, sown on a functional zipper that doesn’t look half bad and I have pinned on the butterflies.

The black butterflies on green have been the main concept of my entire wedding dress-now-skirt since we decided to wed last summer. The butterflies are made of felt and I custom ordered them from the very talented etsy seller kutz. I have a couple of other of her creations as well, and I simply cannot recommend her enough.

I’m quite happy to have gotten this far ahead on my wedding outfit. I’m been very stressed trying to get it all to come together, and ever since it hit me that I’m  actually going to Japan any minute now I needed to get my act together and just sew.

As for the vacation in it self I’m all made up of butterflies on the inside as well - This is my Dream Vacation coming true, and the wedding to boot!

My wedding dress - Part 1

I really, really wish I knew how to sew. Well - I do know how to operate my sewing machine (at the bare minimum), I can more or less follow a simple pattern and friends and family tend to be terribly impressed with what I present them; either just to look at and admire or to keep and admire.

But for some reason it never quite struck me that maybe they are so impressed because they really don’t have any faith in my sewing skills? Maybe I’m actually way to overconfident in this area?

The overconfidence thought has struck me now, and with such force.

I am getting married in just over a month. I am flying to Japan in exactly 18 days for a vacation / honeymoon / wedding. For that wedding I have planned for months and months to wear a bottle green 1950s dress with black butterflies appliqued to the fabric. I did have some initial doubts about making the dress myself, but when I discovered that a competent dress maker will charge somewhere between 600 and 1000 dollars my cheapness got the better of me and I decided that I would make the dress myself.

I have harboured all kinds of romantic notions about floating around in a pretty homemade dress, feeling like the top of the world and getting compliments from everyone. I started out the quest for this fantasy fulfillment by ordering a vintage 1950s pattern. I proceeded by (foolishly) thinking “how hard can it be to make a simple cotton dress” and bought fabric and thread and everything pretty.

After a while I started getting worried. I had totally neglected to take into account that I am quite busty so I would need some serious tailoring in that general area. I had also not put any thought towards the fact that I’m really bad at sewing holes for arms - something that a dress should have after all.

So.

18 days till I leave for Japan. What do I have? I have a half sown skirt, some sort of top, some scruffy looking arm holes attached to that top, brand new shoes, an underskirt ordered off eBay and a plan B to drop the dress, sew the skirt part into a, well, skirt, stick on the pretty butterflies - and then pair it off with a lovely top and a broad belt.

Plan A is still not completely lost though. I have called upon my mother to visit me next week to see if she can salvage the dress. If she can, she has to sew it all in one evening while I do things like stand stupidly around, cook dinner and act as a mannequin.

Wish me luck -

Pot holders

Pot holder in progress!

A while back I bought some white and green cotton yarn called “Mandarin” because I wanted to make a baby jacket for a friend of mine. What I had not counted upon (especially as the smiling woman in the store swore  this was easy as pie to to) was that I simply did not manage to knit the jacket. I have tried several times, and the whole thing is too loose, to chunky, too strange or i just feel like the yarn is splitting into several finer threads making my life miserable and the jacket into an unholy mess. Once my mum glanced at my feeble attempt and promptly frogged the entire thing!

The baby this jacket was intended for is now 2 years old and wont fit it anymore. But seeing that I’m becoming an aunt (again - love those little rascals) I picked up the knitting needles and the “Mandarin” and tried again. To no avail I might add - it was a total mess again, and certainly did no wonders for my self esteem…!

But then a friend told me that it’s rather hard to knit well for a beginner with this yarn, and she suggested I buy some baby wool instead and then give the jacket another go. I decided to do that, but that left me with quite a bit of green and white cotton yarn - and what to do with it.

So - I decided upon pot holders. The ones I have are old, worn and have stains no washing liquid will remove so I needed new ones anyways. On the internet I found a lovely recipe for old fashioned pot holders. The recipe is in Norwegian.

And to my surprise they are quite simple to make. They do take forever though considering I use 2,5mm knitting needles, but I have time and several episodes of Gossip Girl on my tvix.

The pitter patter of tiny little feet

Well, actually we can hope that the little person I made these wont make much pitter patter for a while longer as he is only six weeks old.

I wanted to make something personal and useful when my friend A had her baby and remembered that I had seen a pattern for something that looked like easy baby booties. My only problem was that it was in English - a knitting language I’m really not familiar with. Not that I let that stop me! Oh no - I boldly knittet like I have never knitted before; and it was a long, long way into bootie A until it dawned on me that this was going to be far too big for a newborn baby and that the pattern looked seriously wierd.

So I frogged it. Then I recalculated.

And then it turned out that these booties are a breeze! I knitted them up in an evening whilest watching tv, and the little recipient loved them - especially the fact that they are cool, black and manly!

The pattern is from Bernat.com. It is a free pattern, but you have to sign ut to access it.