CND Night Factory Duo

Everyone knows that I regularly get excited about nail polish. But it's pretty rare that I get fanatic about one. But I am fanatic about this duo. CND's fall "fashion trend" is a creamy teal called Urban Oasis and its effect counterpart is Teal Sparkle. And Teal Sparkle is only the greatest thing to happen to nail polish all fall. I'm so in love with this effect it's not even funny. I've never bought any of the effect, so I ordered all the sparkles. I've been playing with them since the second I tore open the box and they are so much fun! The combination possibilities are endless.

I mentioned before that I'm digging teals this fall, and Urban Oasis is a unique one to me. It has just the slightest hint of dustiness to it, a quality that I'm always crazy about. And I was very pleased to see it was different from the other teals that have come out recently!

Comparison- left to right: Essence Meet You In Budapest, OPI Ski Teal We Drop (dupes to RBL Teal and Sonia Kashuk Taunting Teal), Urban Oasis, and the teal from StrangeBeautiful Volume 4. Urban Oasis is pigmented and smooth enough to be a 1-coater!

And here's the SPARKLE!! All the Sparkle Effects have flecks of flashy sparkle in them, like a flakie but smaller and more uniform in size. The flecks in Teal Sparkle, in direct light, show up blue, green and gold, giving an overall teal-y look. It's... well... amazing!


And as cool as it is in bright sunlight (which I'm SO glad I got today! It was supposed to storm on my Sparkle parade!), it's absolutely breathtaking indoors. When the sparkle catches a hint of indirect light, the whole nail looks like it's glowing. Think a slightly darker Zoya Charla. I love that these look even better indoors, cause we all know that's where we'll be spending more time during fall!


I started trying Teal Sparkle out on a bunch of other colors to see what I like and don't like. It's impossible to make this thing look bad. I've only bought 1 back up of a color ever, but this is back up worthy. Totally getting another bottle in my next order.

Over darker colors the teal color comes out beautifully, and it's best over black. My absolute favorite combination (so far) is over a dark purple, the contrast is epically amazing!

Left to right: OPI You Don't Know Jacques, RGB Plum, Barry M Grey, WnW Black


Here's more of the gold flecks:

Indoors, with flash:
Over lighter colors it looks pretty too, though I'm not as into these for fall.

Left to right: OPI Ogre the top Blue, Damone Roberts 1968, What's with the Cattitude? China Glaze Flyin' High

Seriously, looks SO much better indoors!


If you like teal, or sparkles, even just a little bit, the Night Factory Duo is MUST HAVE.

And a tip for using the Sparkle Effects: top coat between polish and effect is a must, because even if you let the polish dry the effect brush will pick up pigment and turn the clear base colored.

Week in Review: Chills and ills

September 13th to 18th Our homeschool week was basically non existent with the boys in bed with fevers and Mommy under the weather too. We did some reading but that was about it. No school work this week but that’s okay. We can take a week off and always catch up. That’s what I enjoy about Homeschooling.Nest week we begin week 5. So if it is okay with you, I’ll be playing the part of Mom the

Thalassemia (WHAT???) The children cry out for help.

Never heard of it???

Well the predominent countries are, India, Pakistan and Iran with millions of sufferers.

Thalassemia minor is an inherited form of hemolytic anemia that is less severe than thalassemia major. This blood smear from an individual with thalassemia shows small, pale, variously-shaped (poikilocytosis) red blood cells.

These small red blood cells (RBCs) are unable to carry the sufficient amount of oxygen required by normal RBCs.

Cells require oxygen (O2) to live, because O2 is what our body cells feed off.
Without O2,  cells will starve and die. .
When you breath in air you get approximately 21% O2 as you inhale.
Transported to your lungs it hops aboard the fresh blood's haemoglobin in RBCs pumped from your heart.
Via circulation it then gets transported all over your body to feed and revitalize billions of cells to keep you alive.

Treatment for these children is a blood transfusion every month.

Without this treatment the sufferer would die.

And what about the children who's parents cannot afford this??

There is also a cure, but it is an expensive one, and not one that is readily  available.

The cure is a Bone Marrow Transplant,

or for some, the Stem Cells from the mother. 

Yet this is not a hundred percent success.    

For related bone marrow donation (generally from a brother or a sister) there is really no age limit, a bone marrow harvest can be safely performed between 6 months and 60 years of age if the donor is in good health.
It is only for unrelated (donor registries) bone marrow donation that the age limit is much narrower, generally between age 20 and 40.

Money speaks,  so donations are desperately needed.
This is a despairing disease and the sadness is.... many die.
Should the Lord place it on your heart to help then your donation would gratefully be appreciated.

http://www.cure2children.org/node/222


"There will always be poor people in the land.
Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11

Transportation Game cards

I made a Transporation game for my preschooler to help learn about the different modes of transportation. I made the picture cards and came up with questions for the game.I am sharing the game with my readers! Feel free to download and print the cards and questions by clicking on the thumbnail image below.There are 4 pages shown in this set with 6 cards on each the Transportation card pages.

RGB Crimson

And here today we have the rarely seen dominant hand NOTD picture... shhh, don't make any sudden movements, you might scare her back to her natural habitat behind the camera...

I majorly broke a nail on my left hand so we're going to try this for a while. It's hard. I have never, not even once, done a full and proper clean up on my right hand, so I'm taking on the challenge until I perfect it. I think the clean up turned out okay on this one, but taking pictures with my left hand did not go well. Holding the bottle in my right hand was weird too.

I picked up this polish in hopes of satisfying my intense lemming for OPI Vampire State Building, and I think I lulled the LemBeast into submission! I compared my nails to many pictures online and the color is close enough for me to be happy. And the slightly jelly finish makes me beyond happy with this color. The mani wasn't without trouble though; I got a defective brush from RGB. There were some odd bristles sticking up and having to landscape and trim the bristles on a brush seriously pisses me off. That's a mistake that I feel should NEVER happen with ANY company, especially not from a more high end polish like this. I don't even let it slide with Maybelline. Bad brushes shouldn't happen to good people! Now I have 6 other bottles of RGB that have been problem free, so I'm not condemning the brand by any means, but it does make me question their quality control a little.

What my children are reading – Sept. 6 to 12

We entered our third week of homeschooling and we continued our study on weather. During our second week we read about clouds and this week we are reading about the seasons, rain and learning about wind and air pressure.The boys enjoyed some of our selections and they learn quite about weather. One thing I leanred this week is that we need more fiction books on our topics.While my oldest son

Butter London Marrow

Fall is in full swing for me, I mean take a look at my front yard:


It was fully green just 2 days ago!

I spent an entire evening packing away all my summer shades and pulling out everything I want to wear for fall and lining up all 40 bottles on the top shelf of my desk. So much to choose from! I'm loving teals, vampies, taupes and anything that's really greyed out. I wore BL Marrow a few days ago and it was awesome. I love the hidden shimmer to it, it makes the polish feel a bit like a Chanel, and adds a wonderful depth to a great shade of purple. This wore really well for me, I had 3 full days with no chips!