Live. Laugh. Love.: InstaFriday

Warning: this post is sort of dominated with talk of nail polish. Haha!

Sophie will often float into the kitchen and ask to help with whatever I'm doing. Saturday mornings pretty much always include a pancake breakfast for us. On this particular Saturday, whole wheat oatmeal pancakes were in the works, so she took over the whisking.

Jammin' to Party Rock on the way to the library. I think we've been watching a little too much Chipmunk movies. The kids know soooo many more songs!

Don't think I instagrammed this one, but I love their contrasting expressions. Such a beautiful weather morning! Soph has on her new rain/spring jacket.

A solid game of Dora Memory while I get dinner going in the crock pot. I heart lazy Sundays! And having Craig around to play with the kids while I get work done is WONDERFUL! Side note: you'll notice that Will and Craig ALWAYS have on a red shirt for their lay around clothes... and usually the same ones every time. Will's Under Armor t-shirt and Craig's either North Face or OSU sweatshirt. Seriously, guys. Branch out a little bit. Try, say, blue for a change!

This game is tricky but Sophie's determination is unwavering. Mad skillz. :) I think she's gonna' excel in math. Craig and I sometimes get into an intense Winomino match when this is out. So fun!

It's been a few months now and my basil plant is... thriving, if not hearty. I'm shocked and proud at once. This is the longest I've kept something alive besides my kids. Maybe the vegetable gardens have turned around my terrible luck with house plants too?

I've been on the hunt for an emerald green nail polish. Not sure this is exactly what I had in mind (this is more forest), but I still dig it. OPI - Jade is the New Black.

I think I've mentioned before that I have a co-worker who's obsession and collection of nail polish FAR exceeds mine. She claims to have created a monster after seeing my sudden interest. Haha! And although my boss doesn't paint hers regularly, she admires and discusses our new daily colors with us. :) So, although in the hospital bold colors might be frowned upon, our little office is openly accepting. And slowly everyone is converting into polish-aholics.

Bahahahahaha!!! Amen!!

Sophie was the special helper again this week. Craig went with her for the second time and they had a great day. I made some carrot apple coconut mini muffins and sliced up some apples for them to take for snack.

Preschool Special Helpers!

Oh, vomit! After seeing a really cool acid-y gold on Whitney Cummings on her Wednesday night sitcom (she always has great nails on that show, btw), I'd been on the lookout for a similar color. So I tried this OPI shade and HATE IT!! But in an effort not to have completely wasted my time, I left it just for one day and walked around with what looks like bile at the ends of my fingers. An emergency polish change was scheduled for that very night. I passed on the whole bottle to another co-worker who actually looked much better in it and determined that my skin tone is just not meant to compliment acid yellow gold.

But never fear! All sorts of happiness arrived in a box that day!! Have you heard of Zoya? They're a Cleveland-based brand that uses cleaner ingredients and removes a lot of the bad chemicals in polish. They're also designed specifically for natural nails (not artificial like some other brands). Zoya polish was awarded for their long wearing formula, but that doesn't really matter much to me because I voluntarily change it about every 2-3 days. Plus, I LOVE all their colors!!!! Madly in love.

With this particular order, they had been offering a New Years special where you could get three "free" bottles of polish for the price of $10 shipping (shipping is not normally that much though). But if you spent $25, you'd get free shipping. Their colors are usually $8/bottle, so I chose four more, spent $32 + tax, and got 7 bottles of polish and a free 2oz bottle of their remover to try. OMG - best remover ever. Even with glitter polish, it's all like difficulty-who? It has a more pleasant scent and removes all layers with ease. Will be buying more!