Rimmel - Marine Blue

Rimmel Marine Blue is a lovely blue green shimmer. It's one of the most beautiful blues I own. This is the only polish I own from the Rimmel Lasting Finish Pro line. I personally really like the brush.  It's a wide flat taper brush. I like that the end is tapered round because it makes it really easy to paint around my cuticles.

It applied really smoothly and only needed two coats.

China Glaze - Sugar Plums

Today I'm going to show off China Glaze - Sugar Plums. It's from this year's Holiday collection called Tis' The Season To Be Naughty And Nice. When I first saw other swatches of it, I wasn't sure if I would like it or not.

I applied it and it looked great, but once it was fully dried it got really bumpy and the base color lost its shimmer. With two coats of top coat it did look much better. The base color is a burgundy shimmer. This polish also has bits of holographic glitter that really sparkles in the light.

With Flash

I only bought four other colors from this collection. I wanted to get Frosty but when I ordered from TransDesign they only had it in a gift set. I'm hoping that Sally's will have some of these on clearance when I visit my family in January. Did you purchase any colors from this collection? Or did you pass on it?

Something Different Sunday - Liechtenstein

Sorry I've been a bit busy this week and next week isn't looking much better. One of the great things about living in Switzerland is the ability to travel around to different places. That is just what I did on October 30th. I drove one and a half hours to check out Vaduz, Liechtenstein. It's the sixth smallest country in the world. It's not too much different then Switzerland but I really wanted to go just to say I did. :)

Here is the view early into the driving. Still in Switzerland.

I ended up going to the capital Vaduz. It's a small place. The most notable landmarks... First up the art museum. It's kind of brute, isn't it?

Of course we had to check out the castle. Which is still the home to the Prince of Liechtenstein. It probably has the best view.

Of course a trip isn't complete without checking out the awesome architecture of a church.

The government building. Just about every government service was housed in here.

How about a blue & red cow statue.

Don't forget to check out this weird taxidermy animal in the shop window.

Probably the coolest thing about visiting Liechtenstein was finding leaves as big as my face.

I made sure to check out the cows.

Then I decided to drive up the mountain a bit to see where it took me. Aren't the leaves gorgeous!?

On the way back down I stopped to take a look at the valley.

It was a fun little day trip. The weather was great it was really warm out that day. It was really windy but it was blowing warm air. So much sun too! Hope you all enjoyed a peak of Liechtenstein.

Essie - Mint Candy Apple

Today I'm going to show off Essie Mint Candy Apple. This shade came out in winter of 2009 and I passed it up then without much interest. When I saw it on clearance at ASOS I decided it was definitely something I wanted. I have a few mint polishes but this was unique as it leans blue instead of the typical pale green. This needed three coats. The application was awful. Such a streaky mess with the first two coats, but luckily the third coat smoothed everything out.

This is taken with flash to show the blue undertone.

I can't really compare this with my other mints since they are back in my room in Wisconsin. I do have swatches of the mani's I wore.

OPI - Damone Roberts 1968

OPI - Hey! Get in Lime!

Catrice - Sold Out Forever! (Flash) 

I know the mint nail polish trend is a few seasons ago, but I still like it. Have you caved to the mint polish trend?

OPI - The Show Must Go On

Today I'm going to show off another stunning color from the OPI Burlesque Collection. The Show Must Go On is a favorite of mine a duo-chrome that most of the time is hot pink but every once in awhile flashes orange. I needed to use three coats to get rid of VNL. It's stunning. I took my photos on a cloudy day and you can still see how much this flashes!

Stunning, isn't it? Anyone else buy any of the Burlesque polishes? Which ones?

Orly - Viridian Vinyl

Orly Viridian Vinyl is from the Summer 2010 Plastix collection. This color is supposed to have a finish that is similar to plastic. I think it's just a matte satin finish. Doesn't totally look plastic in my opinion. I sort of like the finish but like matte polish the wear is awful. I used two coats for this.

This shows the finish best.

It looks beautiful with a glossy top coat. I put a coat of Orly Sec N Dry to show off the shine.

essence - Steel Me

I've been on the look out for the essence metallic displays. Yesterday I managed to find one that wasn't empty. I bought two polishes Steel Me and Iron Goddess. They have magnetic bits in them that form a patten when a magnet is placed over your nail. I didn't buy the essence magnet I've heard it doesn't work really well and since I already have the magnet from the alessandro polish I figured why spend another $3.50 on something I don't need.

L-R: Steel Me and Iron Goddess

It's a pretty easy process. Place one slightly thick coat on your nail and immediately put the magnet over it for about 10 seconds. Lift the magnet check out the pattern. I'll show the process with pictures when I wear one of the other polishes.

Pretty neat effect right? Right now they are available in European countries that carry essence products. This is a limited collection so buy them before they are gone. If you live in the US it seems that this collection will eventually make it to Ulta.

Something Different Sunday - The Great Birthday Cake Disaster

I've had it in my head that I wanted to make a birthday cake from scratch for a birthday which was on Saturday. So Friday I began the process of making a two layer cake for them and many disasters followed.

The recipe I used can be found here at expat chow. She made a very complicated recipe really easy to follow. My first mistake with this is not using a round cake pan. I didn't buy one because they are expensive to buy in Switzerland and we are moving back to the US eventually and I hate buying stuff that will end up being left behind.

At this point everything is going good. I have the chocolate, olive oil, and butter mixture cooling in the pot on the left. In the mixing bowl I have just creamed the eggs with sugars. I'm feeling really confident that my cake will turn out perfect!

Mixing the rest of the ingredients in.

Ready for the oven.

While the cake is in the oven I begin reading the instructions for the cream filling and frosting. That is where I realized that I didn't have enough cream and dark chocolate. It's 7pm and the cake needs to be in the oven for another 10 minutes. We live on the outskirts of the city. The closest grocery store is a 10 minute tram ride and the store closes at 8pm. If I don't make it to that grocery store, then I have to make the 27 minute tram ride to downtown Zurich to the grocery store that is open till 10pm. Thankfully, I made it in time to the closest store. Bought my stuff and came home to get to work on the cream filling and frosting.

Cream filling is in the mixing bowl. Needs to be set in the fridge for an hour before I whip it. Cutting board has chocolate that I'm cutting for the frosting.

I've finished both the frosting and filling now. While they are setting in the fridge for a no hour I began work on taking the cake out of the pan. This is the first failure I had. I was having such a difficult time getting it out of the pan. Then bam, it just falls out into a crumble messed on my cutting board.

I recollected myself and decided since I still have enough ingredients I'll just quickly make another cake. Then, while I was getting butter out of the fridge to grease the pan another accident happen.

The kind of accident that makes you swear uncontrollably. May I add that liquid chocolate is really a pain in the ass to clean up... I tracked chocolate everywhere trying to clean this up. Once I have that cleaned up I looked at the second cake I made. It didn't rise and it tasted awful. Which left me to have to use the original cake I made.

At least the frosting and filling turned out.

I  managed to salvage what was left to make two layered pieces. Not very pretty, but made it's edible at least.

I still had a lot of leftover crumbles of cake. So I became very resourceful and made dirt cake out of it. Anyone remember grade school when the cool kids came to school with dirt cake for their birthday complete with gummy worms? So with the leftovers I made 6 dirt cake cups.

The first cake I made was full of disasters. What matters most is that it still really tasted awesome! I'm going to make this again when I have round cake pans. More specifically the spring form kind, so I don't have another crumbled mess.

All 24 candles. :P