A giraffe mirage and holiday fun

Wow it's nearly November already and I've been a slack blogger but I have a good excuse, I was on holiday and I've been playing catch up ever since!  It was our 10th wedding anniversary and we had our first ever family holiday, just the 4 of us.

Happy Anniversary babe!

We rented a house with a pool in a small seaside town and 'relaxed'.  Actually it was a little hard without computers and internet and I seemed to do a lot more cooking and cleaning than I do at home.  Being 'away from it all' was a new experience.  On the first morning there my hairdryer died and there weren't any appliance stores around.  It would have been a 3 hour round trip to the nearest big town for a hairdryer.  So with the salt, chlorine, different water and lack of hairdryer my hair turned into a mass of ginger curls.  I looked like my Mom in the 70s.  Not a good look on me.  Not sure why my hair looked ginger but it's back to blonde since I got home.  There was also a shortage of nail polish shops.  I took a small supply of polish with me but thought a new location would be a good polish shopping opportunity.  Nope, no polish to be found other than some neutrals and corals at the chemist. I don't know how the locals survive!  Of course most of my favourite brands are available online, if you have a connection.  It took us 3 days to get a connection working on one of our phones just for email and that was a bit of a ritual to connect and use each time.  I had to use 2 phones and sit in just the right spot to check email.  No such thing as free wi-fi hotspots there and I don't have an internet plan on my phone.  I had set up forwarding for four of my mail accounts so I could get it all while I was away but some of it I forwarded back to another account and haven't been able to it find since.  So if you sent me an email and are waiting for a reply you might want to send it again. I don't even know which email I'm missing :(
We did have a good time though and are already planing on doing it again but next time we'll be better prepared to 'rough it'.  We enjoyed some quality family time.  Lots of walks on the beach, BBQs by the pool, swimming and nightly games of Talisman.

The beach was so quiet, even in the school holidays.

Neither of the boys can swim yet and were quite nervous about getting in the water.  It was the 4yos first time in a pool.  Mr 7yo had just finished two weeks of introductory swimming lessons, which he'd been reluctant to start, so the holiday (with pool) was a reward for trying.  He can almost float now :)  The boys enjoyed the pool and got braver each day.


I was looking forward to getting back to my computer, polish and blog but we came home with a long list of things to get done while hubby was still off work.  Starting with a car show the day after we got home, I don't think my car has ever been washed so quickly before!
We've been slowly crossing things off but sitting in front of the computer and tuning out the rest of the family is something I haven't had much time for.  Things were supposed to settle down when Mr 7yo went back to school but then we discovered the hard way that Mr 4yo is allergic to something in chicken sausages and he ended up in hospital.  We've been a bit preoccupied with medical stuff ever since. He is fine now but I wont be able to relax until we get some answers as to just what he is allergic to.  We're waiting for our appointment for allergy testing now.
We also planted a veggie garden, only to have it ripped to shreds the next day by strong winds.  Living on the top of a hill means it's often quite windy here but it was just rotten luck we planted our little seedlings the day before a big wind.  We've been replanting and nursing them along ever since.
Hubby's final job has been to get the turbo engine conversion in my car finished.  The engine has been done and it's all been inspected and passed and the registration sorted, but the final step was to replace the intercooler so I could close the bonnet. Traditionally the 10th wedding anniversary gift should be aluminum so I got a lovely romantic gift of a new intercooler for my car. The new intercooler went in OK but there's been some problems since and my car is again off the road :(

My Dad running a critical eye over the intercooler before taking the bumper off and cutting holes in it.

Meanwhile I have nearly 500 holiday photos to sort through and I've got manicure photos piling up too.  I'm also quietly hoping for a date night for our anniversary :)  While we were away my parents came and joined us for one night.  The plan was for them to babysit so we could have a romantic meal out to celebrate, just the two of us, but instead all six of us went out for a club meal.  So I'm still hoping our romantic dinner will happen at some stage.  We did take advantage of my parents being there to slip out before dawn the next morning and take photos of the sun rising at the beach.  Being on the east coast we didn't get any sunset over the beach photos but the sunrise was beautiful.  Kind of a romantic way to start the next 10 years of marriage :)
Sooooo where's the nails?  OK I'm going to be posting out of order as I play catch up with recent manis and older ones that I haven't blogged yet including one polish change I did on holiday but I'm going to start with what I wore for my 4yo's 4th birthday last month.
I had planned on a rainbow themed manicure to match his rainbow cake but after cooking and cleaning I ran out of time and stamped over my existing manicure.

Rainbow cake!  I also made a rainbow hungry caterpillar cake.

He was enjoying the sparkler Nana stuck in his cake until the smoke alarm went off.  Then we all got to enjoy to sparkler ash over the top of the cake :(

I was wearing Picture Polish Mirage, for nearly a week.  I couldn't bring myself to remove it earlier.  It was mesmerising.  I found myself walking around the house with my hands held out in front of me so I could watching the polish 'change' with the different lighting in each room. 
Mirage is a pearly grey with a delicate purple/teal duochrome effect depending on the light.  The duochrome shows best over black, or a dark blue or purple base, but I wanted a more delicate look this time so I wore Mirage on it's own.  

I used three coats for opacity but I actually liked the way it looked at just two coats, more delicate.  Unfortunately I didn't think to take photos before I added the third coat.  There's a lovely fine shimmer through it and a finish that reminds me a lot of Picture Polish Simply Silk.

 I wish I'd taken more photos to capture the shimmer.

Anyway for the birthday party I decided to stamp a giraffe pattern from BM313 because Mr 4yo's favourite toy that week was his 'Giraffy'.  I struggle with stamping, especially with the curve of my nails but this time with my nails being shorter than normal I was able to get most of a full nail pattern.  Sure it's smudged and I missed the side of my thumb but this is my best stamping so far so I was pretty pleased.  I used Kleancolor Metallic Mango and with Mirage as the base it was a pretty good match for Giraffy :)

Picture Polish Mirage is a limited edition polish, available from http://www.picturepolish.com.au so grab it while you still can!

Oh and you might have noticed a change up the top of my blog.  I finally got my stash list typed up and added it as a google doc.  It's mostly up to date, just a weeks worth of nail mail to add :)  Now that I finally have everything entered it means I can go through and cull some of my dupes or unwanted polish and come up with a swap/sale list.  I have a few too many polishes I think.  If anyone has any requests to see any of the polishes on my list, just let me know.  I'm always open to suggestions for what to wear next.
I also added a page for my Instagram photos.  I'm pretty new to Instagram.  Previously I've only had phones for phone calls but I have a new Samsung Galaxy 3 and I'm loving the camera and Instagram.  I don't have internet access on the phone unless I use wi-fi so I can't yet get snap happy everywhere I go but I can upload photos when I get home :)