A Happy Day

To the left of this is a poll where you can vote on which brand I should feature next. A lot of them are companies from outside the US. I have a lot of untried polishes from them. So vote away!

The 18th was my birthday! I had a pretty nice time. I spent the afternoon in the city exploring and doing a little shopping. :) I kind of mapped out my day with Instagram pictures. I'm allibally on there if you would like to follow. I thought I would share my day with you through photo! See my NOTD here.

So I started my afternoon in the city by having a late afternoon lunch at Chick-fil-a. It's a great option to grab a quick lunch and some really tasty lemonade. They also have funny pictures decorating the place. Like this one where the cow is on the EL. ;)

 Then I proceeded to get back on the red line to get farther down state street. I conveniently ended up right outside the giant 4 story Ulta.

Where I promptly bought 3 bottles of shampoo on clearance for $1.99 each and some facial wipes that retail for $3.99. I ended up paying $7.10 for the lot of it. :) The wipes are awesome btw. They smell good, don't burn, and seem to be not irritating my skin.

Then I headed to Urban Outfitters. Where they had one color from the Models Own Beetle Juice Collection. It's Golden Green. They have this and two other colors from this collection on the Urban Outfitters website. Yes, it came home with me. They also had some other nail polish that was interesting.

Cute little sculptures. I'm fond of the owl ones.

After a little retail therapy I made my way down towards Millennium Park. Here is some of the stuff I saw on my way.

Newish Mural on State Street

Lightscape. The lights move in synch to the music.

Picasso Eye

Now I've reached Millennium Park. The first place I checked out was the Crown Fountain. It's these two pillars that have water featured in them and the faces change on one side of them too. I wanted to check this out again because they just turned the water on in the last few days. If you visit Chicago with kids go to Millennium Park at the end of your day or pack some extra clothes. It's too tempting to not get a little wet. ;)

Then the other thing to check out is the Cloud Gate aka the bean. It's a giant mirrored shape bean. Looks awesome and a popular spot for pictures.

Do you see me yet?

Here I am...

The architecture at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion is so neat.

The Wrigley Building

Chicago River

Marilyn

Birthday Frozen Yogurt.

At the Spanish restaurant Vera for dinner. It was delicious.

A interesting sticker. Google it... as it's an interesting website.

One of my birthday gifts was a Inglot palette. Love it so far.

Thanks for joining me on my birthday photo spam. :) You can see a picture of my NOTD here.

A Day in Chicago

Hello! I've been MIA again. Life can get pretty busy as many of you know. I have some pretty exciting stuff to show you all. On Saturday I headed downtown to check out the Macy's flower show. Which then proceeded in visiting the Walgreens concept store that is next door. I have a photo below of what it looks like from the outside when I was at it a different night.

Check out the dancers from the Joffrey Ballet on floors 3 & 4!

First off this isn't like you local Walgreens. When I walked in it was quite shocking. The first floor is the grocery area. There are a lot of options to pick up some lunch to go. There is also tasting bar. They were sampling tequila at the time we were there. The second floor is where the LOOK Boutique and the other personal care items are.

The LOOK Boutique is pretty neat. I didn't walk around too much as I didn't have a whole lot of time. They have a nice area where you can get your nails done. There is a great selection of nail polishes to buy. They also had the other typical things you would find at Walgreens usually too.

But by far the best find of the day was when I spotted the GOSH cosmetics display. Did you spot it yet in the photo? Here's the close up.

GOSH cosmetics is a Danish company. This brand of cosmetics is mostly only available in select countries of Europe. We didn't have it in Switzerland when I left in September and I'm sure it's still not there. About this time last year it was introduced to a Duane Reade concept store in NYC. Well Walgreens bought out Duane Reade took the idea of the concept store and created one on State Street in Chicago. Where they thankfully brought over GOSH cosmetics!

I only bought nail polish. Two bottles to be exact for $7.50 a piece. Which is a really great price! The make-up looks nice and I will probably pick up a few pieces eventually. It's just priced a little high for what I would usually spend. I wanted look for reviews for some of it first before I buy. The display does get limited edition colors which is also great news! See my review of Ocean here.

Ocean & Groovy Grey

Well Walgreens was the unplanned stop but the real reason was to go to Macy's on State Street for the Flower Show. Which is going on at the flagship stores in NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and San Fransisco and it ends this weekend.  The theme this year was Brazil. It's not very large but it was a very neat exhibit of rare and beautiful plants, flowers, and trees.

The really neat thing is that Macy's in Chicago used species of plants that the Garfield Park Conservatory really needed. After this weekend they will be donated to Garfield Conservatory so they can try to rebuild their plants they lost after a devastating hail storm last June. You should click on the link and check out the damage to the glass greenhouses.

The Macy's store on State is pretty impressive and was actually the old Marshall Field's. Unfortunately Macy's bought out the company and changed the name of the store. Regardless the place is huge. You could spend your whole day in it if you wanted to roaming through its 10 floors of retail space.

I bought a lacy dress.

Then a stop on Michigan Ave. to check out the Tulips.

A stop at Nordstrom Rack to pick up the Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV for $30

And finally my NOTD Barielle Falling Star.

China Glaze - Haunting

Yes, I'm showing you a polish from a Halloween collection in February. :p I picked this up on clearance at Sally's in December for $1.99. It's from the 2011 China Glaze Halloween Collection.

Haunting is a lovely black shade with bits of silver glitter. Totally an acceptable color to wear outside of the month of October too. I needed three coats to get coverage as at two I still had some bald patches. I think 3 coats are a bit much for black since it's usually suppose to be pretty pigmented.

The nice thing about the glitter is that it is fine, so my manicure is not bumpy at all!

The manicured worked well with the task I had to take care of today too. I had to make a trip to the Adler Planetarium for my Astronomy course. I watched a simulated star show in one of the theaters.

 

Have a nice weekend!