Being Thankful

Well, I got a few lovely things for Christmas, including 6lb which I didn't ask for but seems to have shown up overnight! Does anyone know where I can return it to?

Jokes aside, I got some LOVELY things for Christmas!! My darling, ever-suffering husband got me Little Big Planet 3, a bottle of Jinzu Gin and the limited edition Vaseline tins that have come out this year! My brother got me the Monty Python Movie Box Set and his lovely girlfriend got me 4 Hello Kitty Nail Polishes and a lovely pink hair dye!! My parents got me a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka and some matching glasses (not seen here, they were swapped with the others because my lovely mum understands my wish for matchy matchy bobbins)

The best part, however, was having a lot of the family in once place at the same time. I very rarely see my brother and it's just wonderful to have 6 of us in the same place together and not fight!

The Christmas Dinner that mum cooked was wonderful and the whole family (Mum, Dad, Martin, Katrina, Richard and I) all played Cards Against Humanity together. I did have to explain a couple of choice words to my parents but hey, I was expecting that!!

So, as I sit here drinking my Jinzu gin for the first time from my skull cup, with a bone ice cube, I think about how lucky I am to have such wonderful people in my life - my family, my nail friends (shoutout to Hilary, Laken and Zara), my running friends, my work friends - and I am thankful.

Your Christmas Traditions

I love Christmas. I'm a bit of one of those 'Christmas Nuts'. If I had my way I would spend a month decorating the house and preparing Aged Egg Nogg and making Home Made Mince Pies but we have bills to pay so I have to work and can't just spend December being mental.

So the minimum I manage is a themed tree, matching wreath on the front door, and matching presents. I love the way that a well-wrapped bunch of presents really hide the bottom of the tree, and tie the whole lot together.

As for our traditions, Christmas morning is Bucks Fizz and Smoked Salmon Scrambled Egg. Anything after that I haven't really got into a habit yet with as my relationship with Richard has involved coming back to my parents' house, or not, or being together, or not, so there's not been much consistency over time.

TBH I really LOATHE a turkey, I find the meat dry and boring - there's a reason we only eat it once a year - if it was more interesting and tasty we would eat it more than that!! Last year we had Ribeye Steaks as big as a doorstop with all the trimmings, and I woudln't hesitate to do that again.

As it turns out, this year we're at my parents house again, along with my younger brother and his girlfriend. There will be turkey and there will be booze. That's another staple of a Nail Goth Christmas, plenty alcohol and I'm always happy to try out the next big thing. This year I'm giving Marks & Spencer's Honeycomb Cream a try, a suggestion care of NailGoon Jo. Of course I'll let you know if it's any good.

So, let me know, what are your family traditions for Christmas and what is your non-turkey dinner of choice?

The Joy of Secret Santa

A group of Nail Goons and I are currently involved in a Secret Santa Swap! We do it twice a year and I absolutely adore this kind of thing - I love trying to work out what someone may want and then sending it over.

The one part of it I don't like is having to go on a No-Buy!! I am a SERIOUS impulse shopper, and not being able to wander out and hit up the Pound Shop is driving me mental. There are a few Revlon Colorstay Polishes that I'm missing and I want to pick up, however I can't in case I duplicate something.

I've had a couple of splurges (a friend online was having a Destash, and I figured as it was coming from the USA I was safeish) and I had an accident in SuperDrug at the Barry M counter, but I'm coping. Not well but I'm coping!

I also almost splurged and got EVERY ZOYA PIXIEDUST as they are on clearance right now as they are discontinuing them. BOGOF on all of them. Serious sadface, Zoya. I can't get them though as I live in the UK and they don't ship over here. Getting them shipped to a US friend would then probably cost me $80 in postage to get to the UK, so I'm trying to get over it.

I have already sent my polish to my fellow blogger Laken. She's opened two, though she is saving the rest for Christmas Day. The first one I wrapped differently and MADE her open because it was KB Shimmer, Snow Much Fun and I really didn't want her to miss out on having a Snowflake Polish if it snowed but I let her choose which one she opened next.

She hit jackpot and opened up aEngland's Ascalon:

I picked this, partly because it's grey and I'm on a massive grey kick at the moment (co-incidentally so is Laken!) and it's a bit GOTH but also because there are a lot of aEngland colours that get LOTS of love, and I always root for the underdog.

I can't WAIT to see her little face on SnapChat when she opens the others on Christmas morning. She's already sent me a picture of her Grandad eating a dark chocolate mint willy. I'm sure she won't disappoint with the pics :D

I've not heard from my Santa at all, I'm assuming that she's coming to the meetup I've organised in January. We're going to sit in the pub and swap polishes and drink Piña colada. I can't think of a better thing to do in January.

I'll leave you with a picture of last week's Christmas Manicure that I did because Laken told me to. Gold and Purple, she basically owns me. The night after this I snapped the tip off the middle finger and I'm nowhere near as elegant as I was. Sad times.

Beginner Nails!

I should probably live up to my name, hey?

When I was young I loved Nail Polish (Nail Varnish for those of you from the UK like me!) but I bit my nails. One day my mum told me that unless I stopped biting my nails, I couldn't keep polishing them. So I did!

Mum only let me polish my nails during school holidays, and even then I had I think 3 colours from Avon - gold, bronze and beige; the least bright ones she had.

I picked up a few more, once I had some pocket money and after that, a paper round. Heck, I still have a few of them:

L-R: Spectacular Blue Moon, Revlon Street Wear 02 Whip Cream, 16 Charming and 19 Splash

I've always bought a few here and there, but then I found the Nail thread on the SomethingAwful forums. Next thing I know, I'm buying Revlon like it's going to sell out and I'm branching out! I'm painting ladybirds and trying out caviar beads and stuff like that! Fortunately the Goons were pretty kind about beginner manicures and I tried more and more things:

And so it started. I paint my nails at least twice a week, mostly three times a week. I love to match events, films, seasons, outfits, hairstyles, my car, anything! Every week some friends have a 'Sunday Funday' challenge, where a theme is set and we set to it, the chooser of the theme chooses the winner, who chooses next week. It keeps it fresh and I love that I don't have to participate every week, meaning if I feel burnt out then I can do whatever I like!

I'm gonna leave it here with a picture of one of my favourite manicures for the last year, before I managed to find a shape I loved though - Sponged blue with black leopard and Über-shiny topcoat!

House Hunting

So hunting for houses is strangely voyeuristic isn't it? You get to look at people's lives through the internet in pictures, and then maybe even visit and look around!

Fortunately there are a couple of sites that you can put in specifics and it won't throw too much at you that's inappropriate! You can narrow down ones that are detached, semi-detached, with parking, gardens and things like that as well as drawing an area you want to live in. Unfortunately it's only as good as the information put in by the Estate Agent, which at times can be pretty bad but on the other hand, Zoopla lets you 'hide' properties from sight, so you can get rid of terrible matches.

I spent a couple of months looking around with a particular price bracket in mind, but then by upping it a teeny tiny bit I found loads more suitable properties!!

We went and looked around one - an old stables that had been converted into a cute little detached cottage. It had rooms off the side of everywhere and the bedrooms had rafters and the lounge was HUGE with a cool hearth in it. We liked to so much that my mum and dad went around without us and gave us a thumbs-up, with the proviso that we looked around some others.

So we took them with us on a Sunday and looked around 3 others. And fell in love with a little white detached bungalow. It has been recently refurbished, it's got a brand new kitchen and bathroom and the garden is just grass with no borders so it's CRYING out for me!!

We put in a cheeky offer, got rejected so we've put in a real one and things are going through!!  It's so bloody scary and nothing much else has happened other than mortgage application and acceptance. I could really do with your posts about how simple it is without a chain and how we'll be in by February, please!
(or you can leave me horror stories, and steal my sanity, but tbqh there's not much of that left anyway!)

I'll leave you there, no more boring house stuff for a while until something happens, but that's the back story, so when I start moaning you'll have some idea about what on earth is going on.

Here is my other girl cat, Gamora, attacking my Frankenstein's Monster Manicure.

Buying a house?

I never thought I would be the kind of person who bought a house, I liked the convenience of renting
- being able to leave easily if you don't like the neighbours, area, get a new job and so on
- having someone you can call if something goes wrong
- not having to worry about replacing carpets or furniture

and the list went on.

But recently I've not been liking the fact that I can't easily find a new place to have cats, or modify, or even if I do modify it I can't be sure that I won't be kicked out next month and I didn't like paying someone else's mortgage, so we started looking at buying.

I moved down to Burton-Upon-Trent in July 2012, from Leeds to follow my career. We had lived in Leeds for 11 years. Richard had a house to sell and a job to find so for 6 months I lived with my parents and once the house was sold we got a rental in Burton and then 6 months after that, Rich came to join me.

We started looking around Burton at houses in June 2014 and found the most perfect detached house with a manageable garden, cute through lounge and dining room. The current owner was the sweetest quirky lady (and husband, though we didn't meet him) and the family had at least 2 VWs.
The only problem was the location - the local pub was a dive and the beer was off, and it was up a hill. A very steep hill.

I also have become very disillusioned with Burton recently - there are a few restaurants, but nothing that Richard likes. A few good pubs, but nowhere that felt like "my" local. So we decided to start looking at Derby. We'd been on a couple of good nights out at a pub and the shopping was lovely, so we figured that maybe a smaller city was better for us than a small town! So we started looking...

and I'll tell you about our search another time. For now this is my girl cat, Frenzy, preventing me from crafting both IRL and on LOTRO

Blogging? Blogging!

Thought I'd give this blogging thing another try! Hello interwebs for like the 10th incarnation of my drivel on the internet!

I frequently have way too many things going around my head and I fancy sharing that, or when I try to do DIY and it goes horrifically wrong. Hopefully it stops the next person doing the same!!

I'm currently buying a house with my husband - my first house! We're getting a bungalow in an OK area, detatched so I can make all the noise I want to and not bother anyone. Currently there are 2 kids on one side of us so I feel guilty when I want to have a 90s dance fiesta.

I'm going to post the manicures I do, pictures of my cats, car, decorating, anything really. I just hope I can keep it interesting!

For a start though, here's my boy cat, Rumble. Hope you come back!