Happy New Year! (and decade)

Hello friends! I know my blogging has been spotty in 2009, but to be honest it just wasn't a very good year for me. One of my New Years resolutions is to blog more in 2010, and I will try my best to keep my word.

I'm contemplating moving my blog over to tumblr, but I'm not sure if that would be the best idea. I started it out but I gave up hope for now. I'm not a huge fan of their commenting system, and even though Blogger can be more finicky, I don't mind the layout.

In the past couple of months I've had to do a lot of soul-searching. I'm not a huge sharer of emotions, but I've realized that nail polish and blogging really do make me happy. And if I share a little of what's been going on, maybe it can help someone else too.

I'm reaching the point in my life where I'm about to graduate college so it's been stressful figuring out what I have to do. In September, my grandpa in Shanghai died. I flew back there, missed a week's worth of school, and pretty much felt miserable and depressed and pressured all throughout this last quarter. To add to all this, my dad once again had to have surgery for tumors in his lung (he's been battling various forms of cancer since 2006). Mentally, emotionally, I hit rock bottom many times before I finally decided to try therapy. Dragging myself there was a huge accomplishment but slowly I've begun the healing process and getting my life back on track. I never thought of myself as a negative person, but I am the type of person that does tend to absorb blows and keep feelings bottled up. Not healthy, obviously. Anyway, I just wanted to say that you know, sometimes it's ok to ask for help. It doesn't make you a weaker person. We all need help at some point in our lives.

To keep things light though, this is a new year and a new decade. And I am just dying for almost all the shades in the new China Glaze collection, I can't wait for it to come out so I can buy them. My nails are Sally Hanson Salon Line Arabian Night, by the way. In terms of polish, 2009 was the year I started to love purple polish so at least there's a positive!

I leave you now with swatches from ALU of China Glaze's Up and Away collection. I haven't been this excited about polish in a while! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 It's also a lot more exciting than OPI's Alice in Wonderland collection too, but I have been consistently underwhelmed by OPI's overall collections since their Russian collection.

Anyway happy new year, dear readers! Thanks for sticking by me through thick and thin =)

Photo by freedigitalphotos.net

For Funsies

I'm not a super-makeupy girl by any means. Nail polish is probably the only consistent cosmetic item I use. The most I do is eyeliner & mascara. But, I am a huge mascara junkie. My bff gave me Diorshow Iconic or Christmas and can I just tell everyone....it's freaking amazing! It gives my lashes length, definition and volume AND holds up decently through a nice cry (I'm a total crybaby and I hate waterproof mascara). The only downside is that for me, it's kind of hard to take off.

Anyway, I was at CVS the other day and Loreal Double Extend Beauty Tubes macsara (I know, ridiculously long name) was on sale. The whole "tubing mascara" thing has really intrigued me so I decided to buy it. I was excited so I tried it as soon as I got out of the store in my car. The mascara part was all dried and cloggy and it didn't even coat the brush. I was puzzled but I walked back in and exchanged it for a new one. I didn't test the new one til I got home but lo and behold! It had the same problem. Since it was the weekend I e-mailed Loreal to see if it was just a bad batch. Their Customer Service was pretty quick in replying on Monday and asked if I still had the product and if I did, they'd send me a pre-paid mailing envelope to return it. I unfortunately already returned it to CVS, and told them as such. Here was their response:

Thank you for visiting L'Oréal Paris on the Web and for responding to our e-mail.
Our company makes every effort to provide the highest quality products for our consumers, and we want to know whenever a product is not completely satisfactory. If ever you are less than satisfied with one of our products, please save the items because we are eager to investigate any possible problems.
Thank you for making us aware of this problem. We hope you will continue to use our products with complete confidence and satisfaction.

So, really just another reaon to love Loreal: good CS. Anyway, since the mascara had a base/primer part before the mascara part, I figured why not, one eyelash is coated in white primer anyway so I put Dior Iconic over it and...well, I'll just let the results do the talking:

Please ignore my panda-eyes and frizzy hair

So....welcome to my first real off-topic post lol. I will try to not do too many of these stand-alone OT posts.