Earth Update: Cleaning Supplies Part 2

Several days ago, I posted about the importance of using eco-friendly cleaning supplies. I got some awesome reader feedback and some new, super-smart ideas! I totally took them to heart and I think you will too. Check them out:

Cincinnati Femme said- I'm so glad you mentioned bleach. Some folks actually mix bleach with other chemicals and can end up with chemical pneumonia. Really dangerous! Plus, my son has asthma, so I know how important it is to use natural products. I'll take a look at Green Works. Here's a tip: Use rubbing alcohol to clean the scum in your tub. It also works on mirrors, too. The vinegar and water combination works too, as you said. That's a great tip. Thanks!

Natalie said- I like your blog!

Here are a few tips for all-natural cleaning, the next step after natural cleaners:
Clean your windows and mirrors with water or vinegar (water really works well).
Use your vinegar as a cleaner/deodorizer in the bathroom and kitchen.
Fill a bowl half with water and a generous amount of vinegar. Put it on high in the microwave for a few minutes. The steam it generates should make any messes inside easy to wipe off and deodorizes it too!
Use baking soda to get baked on stains off of glassware/Corningware.
Used coffee grounds also can be used as a scrubbie.
Clean stained mugs by making a paste of water and baking soda (also works well).

I don't know about you but seriously, these readers went to the next level on earth-friendly cleaning!! I am SO impressed and best of all, I learned some new things too!

A special thanks to Natalie and Cincinnati Femme, you rock!

OPI La-Pazitively Hot Matte

OPI has joined the matte craze this season and I had to check it out! I picked up a couple of the colors and my favorite has to be this one, La-Pazitively Hot matte. What makes this one super cool a is that it has some shimmer in it, not like glitter but small shimmer, just to add depth. This gives the matte less of a flat look and trust me, it works!

My swatch is a little more satiny looking than the actual matte. I'm sorry, I had to put on some hand lotion to soothe my dry hands! OPI mattes come with a little list of guidelines about matte polishes and one of them is, no lotion! Also on that list it's stated that you should not wear any base coat, drying products, or top coat. Sorry again, OPI, I'm wearing base coat. I am not going to risk getting worse stained nails!! I don't really see how applying base coat could mess up mattes, unless you don't let it dry completely.

Application; Very good for matte polishes. It's a little tricky getting used to, you have to work quickly because mattes dry FAST. Try to completely cover your nail in as few brush strokes as possible because the more you do, the more uneven the polish is. My swatch is two normal coats.

Although it may be tedious, all these special rules for mattes are a small price to pay for such a cool look!

China Glaze Retro Diva... 3 Colors

For fall this year, China Glaze released the Retro Diva collection. These color palette for these shades is all reminiscent of the 70's decade. They are all super fun and chock full of tiny particles of shimmer, which I love! I have three colors from this collection; Skate Night, Let's Groove, and Short and Sassy.


Here's Skate Night, a light red shimmer with some purple tones. I wasn't too excited about this color but once it was on my nails my opinion changed. This to me just says "Fall!" I would NOT put it in the totally unique category but I WOULD put it in the cute, flattering, and "I will wear this" category.

Next is Let's Groove. I love purples and this is definitely a standout! I would describe this shade as a stunning dark purple loaded with multicolored shimmer. If you look super close in the picture, you can see that the shimmer is not just purple, but blue and red too! Another thing I love about this color is that when the sun hits it, it just shows you that the color has it SO much depth to it. I guess you could say it's lit from within!

Last, Short and Sassy, my deep cranberry-esque shimmer. Like Let's Groove, I found that this color has that lit from inside thing going on! Totally cool and pretty, I find that when that's the case, I can't stop staring at my hands!! This color especially says fall to me, I think it's because it reminds me of cranberries at Thanksgiving!

Each of these polishes were perfect, formula wise, and were swatch ready in two coats.

These few colors got me a good taste of this collection and I absolutely love it!! What makes these colors so cool is that shimmer. The small particles gives each of the colors so much intensity and depth. They are truly luminous! China Glaze also did a great job of making unique shades that you'll still want to keep wearing over and over again this fall season!

Earth Update: Cleaning Supplies

Some cleaners that you may use to clean your house are pretty hard on the environment. For example, bleach, phosphorous, and sprays that eliminate odor are actually filling the air we breathe with chemicals. Spraying something when the air smells funny is actually just covering up the smell with another chemical!

You can also replace your bleach based cleaners with products made with plant or mineral based ingredients. Try Green Works cleaners, they work amazingly well and are made with 99% natural ingredients!! They can be found at a local supermarket.

Thanks a bunch and have an "earthy" day!!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Other Colors (Finally!)

Okay, I've talking all about my new Rescue Beauty Lounge polishes for a while now, and here are the rest of them (finally!!)

Here is Recycle, which gets the honor of being called one of (if not my favorite) greens EVER! It's a deep forest green creme which applies like a dream. I love cremes in general and Rescue Beauty Lounge just has this way of making their cremes into fabulous, easy to apply, fashion statements. Perfection!

Next is Under the Stars, a navy blue infused with a lighter blue shimmer/glitter. I say shimmer/glitter because it's almost too thick and defined to be shimmer, I think of shimmer as being completely part of the polish, this stands out. This color is unique and really captures the my idea of the night sky.

Last, is Purple Haze. This cool toned vivid light purple is a stunner, it's not your average lavender, thats for sure. What makes this color special is the tone it's given; it's too dark to be a lavender but too light to be called just purple. I am shocked at how RBL turned a light purple into an edgy-cool color!

Each of these shades applied like a dream and were perfect in 2 coats. My pictures are shown without topcoat.

Rescue Beauty Lounge, in my opinion, is pretty much perfect. They have unique, fun, fashion forward, flattering, cutting-edge, contemporary colors and if that's not enough, they combine them with flawless and I mean FLAWLESS application. I'm always pleasantly surprise by RBL and I doubt that will change anytime soon.

Earth Update: Cell Phone Chargers

Did you know that leaving your cell phone charger plugged into the wall when you aren't using it still uses tons of energy? Only 5% of the power that cell phone chargers use are actually used to charge phones. The other 95% of the energy they use is just from being plugged in. So basically, just leaving the charger in the wall is almost using the same amount of energy, even though it's not doing anything!

Unplug those cell phone chargers when they're not being used!! It will make a world of a difference. Thanks and have an "earthy" day.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Spring 2009

Hello everyone and happy Monday! As you may have heard from my previous posts, I recently went on vacation to New York City. I could not leave without going to check out Rescue Beauty Lounge, and it did NOT disappoint! Today I will be showing you part of my swag, Rescue's Spring 2009 collection... the glitters! Each of these polishes is three coats in the swatches.

First is Locavore (pronounced Lo-ka-vor-ay, I asked) a combination of gold, green, light blue, and silver glitter. Out of all the colors in this collection, this one has the most different colors of glitter in one polish. This color is amazing and beautiful and best of all, unique!

Next, my personal favorite, Frugalista! A combination of purple and silver glitter. What I love about this is the light changes it; sometimes it's more silver, sometimes it's more purple. An almost duochrome, I like it!

Last but certainly not least, Look Rich Be Cheap. This color is made up of gold and dark purple glitter, it's fabulous! My swatch does not give this color enough "goldness" though.

Overall, this has been my first experience with glitter polishes and I love them. Ji did an excellent job of turning glitter into something mature and fabulously fashion forward. Kudos to RBL for a job well done!

Essie Summer 2009

For Essie's Summer 2009 collection, they chose to do a "soft palette of corals and nudes, with bursts of bright pinks and oranges to compliment the warm feeling of the season"

That description sounds pretty accurate but they left out a key part; sheers!!! They put 2 sheers in this collection, which is kind of a lot out of 6 colors. Here is my take on this collection.

First up is Funny Face. It's a cool-yet-bright flamingo pink, a barely purple pink! This color is cute and fun, like most of the colors in this collection. What you see here is 2 coats of color.

Here's Luscious Lips, the first of the sheers. It's a pale milky warm pink, that could easily be worn with just one coat (if you want the totally sheer look.) Here on my nails is 3 coats, you can still see through it slightly. It's a very subtle shade that makes your nails look super perfect and clean from afar.

Take a look at the second sheer in the collection, Not Just a Pretty Face. A milky sheer nude, more nude that Luscious Lips. This is 3 coats and you can still see a little of my nail through the color. This color is not for me, it's not ugly, but it's not for me. I think that fairer skinned girls can rock it!

Here's the bright bubblegum pink shade, Lovie Dovie. This shade makes me think of cotton candy. It's very playful and girly. Lovie Dovie was surprisingly pigmented, complete coverage in 2 coats!

Here is Cute As a Button, my personal favorite of the bunch! It's a light pink-toned coral creme which screams "cutesy". Although it's not a jaw dropping color it is wearable and flattering, especially for the summertime.

Last is Chubby Cheeks. This color was extremely hard to photograph correctly. In real life it is more coral-ish and less orange. I'd describe it as a warm reddish-coral creme. This is 3 coats of color.

The formula for these on the most part was fantastic!! The only color I had some slight trouble on was Luscious Lips. It kept pooling in at my cuticles. Hmmm, was it just me? The colors were not streaky like some Essie's in the past, which made the colors easy to apply.

I liked most of the colors but to be honest, nothing blew me away. The shades are cute and flattering which is definitely a plus but I wanted to love these as much as the North Fork shades!

To sum it up this is a cute and wearable summer collection full of "staple colors" as Scrangie said. I am still very happy that I own these shades and I will be sporting some of them over the summer.

To purchase these colors go to essie.com

Earth Update: Whiteboards

Most people communicate with people in their home by leaving notes on paper that say for example; I went out to the store! Be back in 1 hr! A way to turn this into a non-paper-wasting process is to leave these short little messages on a whiteboard instead of a post-it note! Because these notes are so short, writing it on a paper is a huge waste of materials while a whiteboard can be used forever. A whiteboard is also convenient as it can fit almost any place in your home!

That's your tip from me today and I hope you can incorporate it into your lifestyle! Have an "earthy" day!

Excuses/ Half of Essie Neons

Well first off let's just say... Happy Belated Independence Day!! I know posting over the past week has been very very very (need I say more?) slow. I was on vacation so I only got a quick chance to sneak over to the computer and post. Apologies aside, my vacation brought back some great surprises for you!! I went to New York as part of the trip so of course I had to hit up Rescue Beauty Lounge! I brought back some goodies that I can not WAIT to show ya! This post is long overdue... the Essie neons! Well, half of them. I only chose to get Flirty Fuchsia and Perky Purple, as those were my favorites on the website (which this explains my title of this post!) Ugh! I'm making excuses again!! Anyway, to the reviews and pics!!

First up is Flirty Fuchsia. This is a bright pink neon and I mean like day-glow-I-need-to-wear-sunglasses neon. The color itself is not what I am ordinarily drawn to but I will admit, it's showstopping!! This picture is shown with topcoat, as both of these neons tend to dry slightly matte. The formula was good, three coats gave me complete coverage.

Next is Perky Purple. To be completely honest... this color ROCKS!! I really like purple neons as they flatter most every skin tone and are bright but not too overwhelming. This one as you can tell was my favorite. It's slightly darker in real life and it took only two coats to completely cover the nail.

Essie, the verdict is in. Fab job!! I hope that Essie's future collections are as daring as this one because the risk paid off! These neons shades are perfectly summery and fun to wear!

Coming soon: Essie summer 2009 collection!!