photo time again. two of my favorite things: food and nail polish
Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.
1. pretentiousness
2. rudeness
3. only reads about things and thinks that's "knowing" but doesn't do anything
4. no hobbies
that was easy!
NEXT: photos.
this is how it'll go
misc > food > cute things > nail polish (including a review of 2 competing brands of instant nail polish remover)
On our way to the restaurant, we used to go to this restaurant a lot but actually since I've been back I haven't gone there at all! At the height of frequencies we went there once a week or more... To be fair, it was the only restaurant my parents liked (besides Cracker Barrel and to a lesser extent, Golden Corral). OH these are my new pretty, iridescent, Tom-style shoes by Roxy! They are so pretty and comfortable, I love it!
It was a birthday dinner for a family friend. Our gift to her was this beautiful orchid from Costco (LOL I think it was Costco, maybe Lowe's or Home Depot or wherever you get orchids). Orchids are so lovely, they instantly remind me of Georgia O'Keeffe's works but better, of course, because they are the thing she was painting.
now we digress a bit from the birthday dinner to photos taken earlier that day (I think?) because it'll seamlessly transition back into the dinner, you'll see! Okay, these are the four (I guess I only had four) painted stoneware (?) I did when I was age 8-11, one for each year probably. They're dated on the bottom. I'm so proud of them!! My least fav is the one on the left. I think that might actually be the latest one. My fav is ... well I really really adore the middle two because they're so vibrant and fun. the second from left one is my favorite because of all the designs I did with my name but I also like the no-handled cup because it's very pretty. the right one is nice but sort of "eh", plus doesn't have my name on it so :( OH haha the left cup has my initials on the bottom. I painted all of them quite thoroughly, i.e. inside have different/matching designs and everything :)
buns and mango upon second look, I'm pretty sure those are squash.. we don't really eat them together, i guess they were just put on there together to conserve space.
watermelon. i love it but that watermelon wasn't that good so i didn't eat it. i'm picky. You can tell b/c the color's not as bright and it looks a bit... idk the word, it's "sa" third tone. like falling apart ish. it's sort of cool but I like my melons tender
OMG WE'RE GETTING TO THE RESTAURANT OMG YUMM! we were a couple min late so the other family ordered a couple dishes. the girl (6 years younger than me) had decided not to eat any meat except for fish and octopi etc because of the way animals were treated or something so they ordered seafood)
OMG SO GOOOD!!! IT'S THE SAME SPICES AS THE SALT AND PEPPER SQUID BUT ON SHRIMP NOM NOM NOM I LOVE THE JALAPENOS! idk if this is an authentic dish tbh, i've never had jalapenos in China but HEY it tastes super duper.
rofl the girl ate like this entire plate. it was bigger before i think this was already some eaten. also she was moving it as i was taken the pic so that's why it's blurry D:
WOOO MOVE OVER SEAFOOD, TIME FOR CHICKEN!!! this is my favorite dish at the restaurant right now. well plus a couple others. idk what it's called. OK SO THEY GOT NEW WAITRESSES AND A NEW BOSS?? OR ANOTHER BOSS? so like this waitress was sort of annoying and kept assuming we didn't know what we wanted, like we ordered these chives buns and we called them "bao" b/c that's what they are and she insisted we were wrong and said they were "jiao" which is dumplings and we were like, "uhhh no we don't want the whatever you just said, we want the buns!" and there was even a pic of it and we pointed to it and then she said yes that's what they're called and it's like ok last time we were here and for the past 4 years we were here, they were called something different but OK WHATEVER and this girl was so stupid, she didn't even ask us how many servings we wanted. each serving comes with 3 of them, and there were 6 of us, so any normal waitress would've been like "2 servings, right?" so we could each have one but she only ordered one serving and didn't tell us that and when it came out, we had to call over another waitress and tell her to add on another serving OMG THAT GIRL IS SO DUMB I HATE WAITRESSES WHO ARE SO ADAMANT WHICH ARE USUALLY CHINESE WAITRESSES LIKE OMG CHILL THE FUCK OUT WE'RE TIPPING YOU IN AMERICA SO BE A LITTLE NICER OK but then and again tips add on to a lesser than min. age salary so... :/
WAIT that was not relevant to the photos above. so this is a chicken mix with peanuts (?), shun (errr bamboo?), mushrooms, carrots, and idk what else but it tastes divine and underneath are those fried things, idk what they are, and then you wrap it all in those lettuce leaves like a taco!!! so good. I also like to order it out and wrap it at home with spring roll paper, it's better that way i think :P
I only had one fortune cookie (unusual) but had two fortunes in it!! Def thought of Jess for the second one!
okay out of restaurant now, this is a book that i never write in basically but i decided to go through my purse and paste all my recent tix in it. I have since this photo also added my katy perry ticket. Can you believe High Museum of Art was $18???!! ridic. probs cos i only spent an hour in there and had to pay that much. *harrumph*
omg bad news!! You know the hospital i volunteer at?? well the volunteer coordinator is named Joyce and is super nice and hands-on. She runs this gift shop whose profits go towards scholarships for volunteers and community giving and WE HEARD FRIDAY THAT THE PRESIDENT/CEO/WHATEVER OF THE HOSPITAL TALKED TO HER LAST WED AND TOLD HER THE GIFT SHOP WAS CLOSING DOWN THE END OF THIS MONTH! In its place, a Hallmark store will be there, paying rent (right now the hospital makes $0 on the gift shop). Apparently this is worrying NOT ONLY because of the lack of affordable, cute, personalized stuff that Joyce personally picks out and prices very reasonably, but because apparently 1/2 of Joyce's salary comes from sales of the merchandise in the gift shop! Nobody knows if Joyce will be let go at this point :( so sad. Also it's so dumb b/c Hallmark is so stupid and literally every Hallmark store I've seen in the past 5 years have closed down b/c they are ridic expensive and not personal and who wants to spend $6 on a stupid card?? or $25 on a stuffed animal that's worth $5?? ugh so dumb b/c after the Hallmark lease is up, I'm almost 100% sure they will not renew their lease b/c it will fail as a business.
Anyway the following 3 pics showcase some things I bought at the gift shop last time.
$3 for this cutie!
$1 jingle bell ring!!
$4 bracelet (original price is $10, there were SO many of these glass bracelets that were more summer-y last week but i wasn't sure i wanted to commit to buying one so i gave myself a few days to think it over and LITERALLY ALL OF THEM WERE SOLD OUT WHAHHAT so i bought this before it was sold out (only 1 of 2 left!). Such good things Joyce picks out! How pretty is it, though? I love the color scheme and the day of the dead theme :)
OH btw if you'll notice, my nail polish colors are also july 4-th themed but not the same as on july 4. That's b/c the day after, I got bored of the sparkles (meaning I had them on for less than 24 hrs lol read on) and decided to do a pastel version of July 4, except it was July 5 but whatever, I only kept them on for the photo shoot basically (i.e. were off by end of day again haha).
Its eyes were 3-D! only on one side, of course :D so cool, i love it.
This leads to my impulse buy earlier today (err technically yesterday). Ever since I bought the bracelet, I wanted a nail color scheme that would match the bracelet, only to find out that despite having a bajillion nail polishes, I didn't have many of the colors from the bracelet!. So today I stopped by Target and picked up 2 colors: Rimmel London's purple (which I had been wanting for quite a while now! Under $4 and honestly the best polish I've ever used. too bad they only produce such a narrow color palette), and Essie's new Mojito as part of the latest collection. I tried on the color in teh store and it was SO BEAUTIFUL i jus thad to have it. It also went on really smoothly. It was just so pretty. The flash doesn't do the colors justice. So now, combined with the other two Julep nail polishes, I can do my combo!
I also bought a new nail polish instant remover because the Sephora one I was using was running out. Here's the thing: I change nail polish a lot. Every 2-3 days is normal. If I have it on for a week, that just... doesn't happen. I mean, it happened more often before I had the Sephora Instant nail polish remover if I didn't want to take up time to take off colors but with the instant nail polish remover it takes literally 5 secs per nail so I change colors very very very very often. I often do try to give SOME breathing time for my nails, i.e. a day. hahahahaa. or a couple days.
My old remover: as you can see, it is foamy inside with a small hole to stick your nails in and you wait a couple secs, and then it's all clean! Well unless it's getting old like mine, now I have to rub against the foam. Or if you have sparkles. Sparkles are really hard to take off D: glad I didn't buy the Essie sparkles, those took FOREVER to get off. I had to claw at my nail to get all of the sparkles off. This bottle (Sephora's Instant Nail Polish Remover) is quite nice and very effective. I didn't even know such a thing existed until I saw it at Sephora and tried it, and even though it had a bajillion other people's fingers down it and I could see polish in it, it still worked remarkably well so I bought one, thinking it was $4. No, this tiny bottle is $10. It leaves nails very nice after, and doesn't smell too bad like cheap acetone nail polish remover. It actually leaves a super nice smell after a couple minutes and I usually paint another polish on RIGHT AFTER i use it, without washing hands or anything. THE ONLY DRAWBACK is how expensive it is, so I decided to buy the cheap generic version from Target, assuming it was the same. OH the other drawback is that it's thin but deep so I feel like it's not as efficient as it could be... i.e. unused clean foam at bottom of bottle.
OK so i finally bought a new bottle from Target b/c i figured my Sephora one was running too low (had it ... 4 months? at least 3 months). First of all, when I opened it, I knew it was different. The strong is like 5x stronger, and not pleasant AT ALL. Secondly, it's not foam inside like I presumed. It has bristled (pictured) where you rub your nails against, and besides those plastic bristles, it's just acetone liquid inside. Ingredients are acetone and denatomium benzoate, which I googled and turned out to be the most bitter compound known. but with no scientifically proven long-term health risks... UH OK i'll take their word for it. Oh this MUCH LARGER (9 fl oz vs 2.5 of Sephora's) was $3, making it wayyyy cheaper. After I used it on my nails, however, it was obvious it lacked quality... First of all, I had to rub against the plastic which was ok, but it was obvious that if I just left my finger in there, the polish wouldn't come off as quickly as if I did with the Sephora one. PLUS afterwards, I was shocked to find my finger was WHITE, I presume dried-out or something. I immediately washed with water and it looked normal. Still, I'm shocked by it.
VERDICT: Even though Sephora's instant nail polish remover is twelve times (12x) more expensive per fl. ounce than Target's, it may be worth it. I looked up the Sephora ingredients and they seemed more natural (with scents and stuff). Plus it's made in France. is that just cool or what? Actually I'll have to see how long this Target remover lasts, how my nails feel after a prolonged time of usage, and I'll get back to you on the official verdict.
ETA: OR I may just buy Sephora's normal nail polish remover, which is the same formula as the instant-remover but without the foam, and i could use cotton or something. the thing i don't like about that is i feel like im wasting the remover, like most of it is going on the cotton/my other fingers and not the ones i want cleaned. OH PLUS sometimes i just want one finger's nail polish off but then the other finger's colors get messed up
OMG I just know I am going to regret staying up for 2+ hours just to write this because I have to be up tmrw at 8 fml
