Today's mani: psycho killer

It's about time I got around to doing some Halloween nail art, right?

Cue the screeching violins! This is the first time I've done a drip mani, and I found it fun and easy. I used Revlon Stiletto for the black, Zoya Carmen for the blood red, and Sally Hansen Lightening for the yellow (I was trying to make it look like a lightning bolt illuminating the knife, don't think I pulled it off). I drew the knife-wielding psycho with a Sally Hansen black nail art pen.

I'll probably try one more Halloween mani this week--jack 'o' lanterns maybe?

Anybody planning on dressing up this year?

I made food: black bean soup

Before I get started, it's time to announce the winner of the Indigo Bananas giveaway!! And the winner is...

...drumroll please...

Entry #40: Kathryn T.!

Congratulations! You have 48 hours to let me know which polishes you'd like!

Thanks to everyone else who entered, followed and liked--it's great to have you here!

Now on to the food. It's soup season again, so the other day I made this really simple and tasty black bean soup. I got the recipe from How to Cook Everything (gotta keep pimping this cookbook, it's just so good). Here's my not-so-great picture:

Like I said, it's very simple (and quick too): chop up two medium onions and a few cloves of garlic. Cook the onions in a little bit of neutral oil  (I used grapeseed) until they're soft, then add the garlic and a tablespoon of chili powder and cook a minute longer. Add 3 cups (about 2 cans) of cooked black beans, 4 cups of any kind of stock, and salt and pepper (also, if you're not a wuss like me, you can put in a chile pepper). Bring everything to a boil, then simmer for about 10 minutes. If you like, you can puree some or all of the soup to thicken it up--I used my immersion blender but didn't puree the soup completely, so there were still some chunks of bean and onion in there. Add 2 teaspoons of lime juice and you're done! We ate it with cheese, sour cream and cilantro.

This soup is very hearty (especially if you add sour cream) and flavorful, with just a little bit of spiciness. Plus it satisfies my neverending craving for Mexican food. I'll definitely be making this one a lot over the winter!

Swatch: L'Oreal The Muse's Attitude

The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

(Psst--have you entered the giveaway? It ends tomorrow night!)

Oh man, I've been a bad blogger this week, haven't I? I've actually been spending a lot of time on a super duper top secret project that I can't tell you about yet. ;-)

Here's a few pics of my current nails; I'm wearing L'Oreal The Muse's Attitude, which I also picked up at Rite Aid last week. It has a blackened base with a pretty green-to-teal shifting shimmer.

L'Oreal The Muse's Attitude. Two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

Pretty, no? This could be a nice Halloween polish if you're dressing as a witch maybe! I actually couldn't capture the full spectrum of the color shift--in normal indoor light this polish looks fully green with no blue undertones. I had no problems with application.

I grabbed The Muse's Attitude for $5.99 (11.7 ml) at Rite Aid!

The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

Swatch: Revlon Wintermint

The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

The other day I had a rare opportunity to go to Rite Aid, which has a much wider range of polish than my normal grocery store, so I was able to grab a Revlon polish from the new Parfumerie collection. As the name implies, these are scented polishes, and they come in these really cute bottles:

Wintermint is a seafoam green foil with tiny blue hexes, lots of gold shimmer, and I think I spotted some copper sparks in there as well.

Revlon Wintermint, two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

You might have noticed that Wintermint is very similar to the popular (and expensive) Deborah Lippmann Mermaid's Dream. I don't own Mermaid's Dream, so I can't compare them directly, but judging from pictures they are pretty close--Mermaid's Dream looks to be a touch more blue, and seems to have a bit more glitter. Wintermint also looks less bumpy than Mermaid's Dream. I can't call them dupes, but I certainly don't feel the need to own both!

Wintermint applied very nicely, and the glitter distributed itself evenly. Despite being a foil, it was easy to get nice thin, even coats. The texture is pretty smooth with topcoat. As for the scent, it smells like spearmint gum! The scent isn't strong (at least not under topcoat)--I generally have to get my hand pretty close to my face to smell it.

I think Revlon did a nice job with this polish. I'd like to go back and look at some more from this collection; I'm a sucker for smelly things!

I bought Wintermint for $5.99 (11.7 ml) at Rite Aid.

The polish in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

Today's mani: a mani of many names

Good evening everyone! I'm still fighting this cold (it's moved from my throat to my nose, ick) but I gathered the energy to do my nails today. I didn't have a very strong vision for how I wanted this to look; I just played around with doing little splotches of different colors in a vaguely gradient-like fashion (yellow-green in the middle and blue-green and black towards the edges).

Since I didn't know what to call this mani, I asked for help from my friends in the nail thread at Something Awful. Kirby at The Mercurial Magpie suggested "Rainbow Camo", while Andrea of Indigo Bananas preferred "Parrot in a Blender" (vivid imagery!). I also got the suggestions "Jumble in the Jungle" and "La Grande Jatte" after this pointillist painting.

What do you think? Does it remind you of anything?

Today's mani: falling leaves

Happy Friday! I have a cold right now. :-( But I still had the energy to do my nails today! I felt like having a fall-themed mani, since the leaves have really started to turn here. I also wanted to practice some freehanding.

The base color is Essie Armed and Ready (which has a nice gold shimmer in the bottle that's hardly visible on the nail). I painted on the leaves with Orly Sand Castle, Julep Minka and Julep Otte.

Is anyone else excited about fall? My favorite part of it is being able to get hot apple cider everywhere!

Swatch: Incoco Fright Night nail polish appliques

The product in this post was sent to me for review. All opinions are my own.

Good morning! Today I wanted to show you another set of nail wraps from Incoco's Fright Night collection. (Here's my other review from last week.) This pattern is also called Fright Night, and it features a haunted house and graveyard pattern over orange glitter!

Incoco Fright Night nail polish appliques, no topcoat.

As usual, these appliques were very easy to apply smoothly and remove, since they're made of nail polish and are quite stretchy--none of them tore while I was stretching them either. Definitely recommended if you're looking for an easy but intricate Halloween mani!

You can buy Fright Night at incoco.com ($8.99 for 16 double-ended strips). You can also follow Incoco on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram!

The product in this post was sent to me for review. All opinions are my own.