ALIQUID year in review!

Happy New Year's Eve! (And Happy New Year to any Eastern Hemisphereites reading!) 2013 has been a momentous year for me in many ways--I got married to my wonderful husband, we moved to Boston, and I started my own indie polish line! And, of course, I started this blog. I'm proud of myself for keeping up the hard work of polishing, photographing and posting for nine months now.

I thought I'd celebrate my accomplishment by going back and picking out my personal favorite ALIQUID posts from 2013. There are a lot, so I broke them down into categories. Please enjoy looking back with me!

Swatches

Here are my favorite polishes that I swatched this year, in chronological order. Not surprisingly, they're mostly either multichrome or holographic!

Indigo Bananas Anansi: My very first post on the blog, I still think it's gorgeous! A glass fleck that shifts from dark green to purple.

Orly Sparkling Garbage: This green jelly with tons of holo glitter was my favorite release from Orly this year!

Emily de Molly Cosmic Forces: It seemed like the whole Internet was lusting after (and then duping) this Australian indie. Really glad I managed to get my hands on it! A purple jelly with purple and holo glitter.

Ninja Polish Divinity: A truly divine purple base with awesome orange>brown>green shifting shimmer.

China Glaze It's a Trap-eze!: China Glaze really achieved an indie-like vibe with this white base with rainbow glitter.

I Love Nail Polish Mutagen: The ILNP Ultra Chromes wowed everyone with their extreme colorshifting abilities and great formula. Mutagen shifts from silver through green, blue, purple, red and orange!

I Love Nail Polish Indie Go: A perfect shade of indigo with linear holographic shimmer and blue sparks, this is close to my ideal polish!

Nail Art

My nail art skills really improved over the past year. Here are the ones I'm most proud of (and the ones that got me the most compliments!).

Interlocking Dots

 The Rusty Skunk (click for the epic story!)

 Dotted Skittles Tips

 Green Colorblock

Teal Waterfall

Cave Art

Rainy Gradient Dots

 Christmas Tree

Recipes

Here are some recipes I've gone back to over and over. They're all easy!

Curried couscous: This recipe is very versatile because you can switch up the grain used, as well as the mix-ins.

Martha Stewart's "crack 'n' cheese": Literally the best mac and cheese ever.

Cinnamon craisin cookies: Sweet, spicy and tart. Another recipe that's easy to play with.

No-knead bread: A nearly foolproof bread recipe.

Meatballs and tomato sauce: Recipe courtesy of my sister, it's hearty and completely satisfying.

Language posts

I've really slacked off on writing about language, so I'll make sure to do it more often in 2014! Here are a couple of my favorites.

Haphazard Hypercorrection: The case of the disappearing h, plus Romans making fun of each other.

Regular Mice: Why is it "Of Mice and Men", not "Of Mouses and Mans"?

Thai Tones: A post on some of the amazing things humans can do with voice pitch.

I can't wait to see what's in store for ALIQUID in 2014! Have fun and stay safe tonight! Trudy and I will be back next year (i.e. tomorrow)!