Gnarly Gnails

Fall Favorite Polishes - Reds

Tuesday, October 10, 2017
By Missy
4 Comments

Foodie Fridays - Potato Gratin Stacks

Friday, October 06, 2017
By Missy
2 Comments

As I'm getting back into the swing of things, I wanted to mix it up with things besides makeup and nail polish. I have always loved cooking but for the past 8 years I was living somewhere where I had to share a kitchen and it was very difficult at dinnertime to even attempt to make dinner while someone else did the same, if you can imagine!

Now that I have full reign of my own kitchen and man with a big appetite and almost no food hangups, I have been cooking like a crazy woman. I usually like to find cool recipes online and then tweak them to my own liking.

So as my first foray into food blogging (which I know already I suck at photography and nutritional values wise, I use the term food blogging VERY loosely), I figured might as well go with a potato dish since potatoes are one of my favorite foods.

This is a very impromptu post, I made these for dinner last night for the first time and had no intention of making them a public spectacle, but they came out so good I figured I might as well get this Foodie Fridays feature going!

Not only are these delicious but they're super easy to make. In fact, I didn't even look at the recipe I found for them and instead just eyeballed all of the ingredients and measurements.

What you'll need:

A muffin pan

Non-stick cooking spray or a bit of oil or butter

A spoon

Foil

Preheat oven to 350.

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Butter

Parmesan Cheese

Italian Seasoning

Garlic powder

Garlic cloves

Salt

Pepper

Milk

Caesar Dressing

Grated cheese

Cut your potatoes thinly, you should be able to get two stacks out of one small/medium potato.

Spray the muffin tin with nonstick spray or drop a pat of butter or drop of oil in each muffin well.

In one bowl mix together some Parmesan cheese with Italian seasoning, Garlic powder and salt and pepper.

In another bowl melt about 2 tbsp of butter and then add 2-3 garlic cloves, Caesar dressing and a small amount of milk. Stir until the consistency is of a thin cream. In my recipe I actually added a bit of sour cream to the mixture as well.

Begin assembling the stacks...place one slice in the tin and then sprinkle the dry mixture. Do this for each slice. After three slices, add a spoon of the cream mixture and a pinch of grated cheese of your choice. Repeat three more slices on top of that and add another spoon of cream and pinch of cheese.

Once you have your muffin wells filled, loosely cover the pan with foil so the foil is not touching the tops and stealing your cheese.

Bake for 40 minutes, remove foil and then bake another 10 minutes or broil lightly for 3-5 minutes depending on your preferences. Spoon out of the tins and enjoy!

Most of my cooking is done very loosely with little to no traditional measuring and alot of the time I sub items in a recipe for whatever I have available...I know my cooking style is very unconventional, but that's how I roll!

Feature Focus - Ardell Stroke a Brow

Thursday, October 05, 2017
By Missy
2 Comments

Disclosure - Personal Purchase

Today we are discussing brows.

Ever since I was about 19 or so, my eyebrows have been my favorite part of doing makeup. Back when I lived in Long Beach, I had an amazing brow girl and she is still one of the things I miss most about California. I was a hardcore plucker in the 90s and I've never recovered from it. Because of this I am always on the lookout for the next great thing to make my brows look full and natural. I saw Ardell Stroke a Brow advertised on someones YouTube channel about a month or 2 ago and was quite intrigued by the idea of it. A few years back I had tried the Eylure product similar to this, it was like a blunt slant tip marker on one side and fine point on the other. But when I purchased that it was just TOO much pigment and I was instant groucho.

Ardell knows a thing or two about lashes and brows so I would like to assume this would be pretty much exactly what I needed. As far as I know you can really only find this at Sally, so off I went on my way to work one afternoon and stopped by beforehand. They ONLY had medium brown in stock and I thought that might actually be perfect since I am really only wanting it to draw in the front hairs and I can use my normal products for the rest which I generally do just a bit darker.

This is a pen with a hair tip, shaped perfect, where the product flows through the brush (no clicking its just freeflowing like a Kat Von D liner). I love the brush. The pen size is slim and easy to hold. And the color is a nice solid medium brown, not too warm or cool.

The top line is fully pressed to my skin, the middle is a little lighter pressure and the bottom line is the same amount of pressure. As you can see, this is where Stroke a Brow becomes a fail. Product simply doesn't come out. After merely three strokes, I am begging for color and getting zero payoff. And as you may know, a swatch on my hand is gonna be much darker than what it would appear on my actual face. The strokes are all but invisible there. Its such a great concept but I simply cannot get the color to flow out, so for now I will stick to my silicone eyeliner brush and MAC dipdown. Still seriously the best hair mimicking I've found.

Have you tried the new Stroke a Brow? What are your favorite eyebrow products and needs?

Subscription Spotlight - Boxycharm September 2017

Wednesday, October 04, 2017
By Missy
2 Comments

Disclosure - Personal Purchase

I've been a subscriber of Boxycharm for about a year now. I love every single box, I find the value of this subscription box to be superior to anything else out there. In fact, this is the first month I've gotten a "deluxe sample" ever, and because we got an extra item this month, I just consider that sample to be the extra.

So lets crack into what came in this months box...every month it seems like they keep adding bigger and bigger brands to the service and this is the first month they've offered a MAC product...which I may have been thrilled about a few years ago, but these days...MAC is just not the "it" brand it used to be. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I received the MAC Brow Pencil in Lingering. Don't love this. I find it barely pigmented on top of the fact that the color is just much lighter than I like for my brows. Not the products fault there, but I just don't care for the formula/pigmentation here whatsoever. NYX, Milani and L'Oreal make far superior skinny brow pencils. But still...the value alone for this pencil is almost the price of the box.

In this months box there were chances of getting either a set of eye brushes or this face brush from Bare Minerals. I was hoping for this brush and I'm stoked I got it. I wasn't sure if I'd like it and honestly I didn't really NEED another brush in any category but I'm obviously a hoarder so I kind of did need it. I love this brush! I mean seriously...this has taken the place of any other foundation brush OR sponge I was using. In fact, I've only reached for a sponge if I need to powder or bake my contour. I normally would clean the brush before taking a pic, but I love this thing so much that it will always be either very used or cleaned to be used again. It has a tiny indent in the center where the hairs are cut shorter, its like a well to pump your foundation into. It does leave streaks but its just the right size to kind of stipple those out. I cant even pinpoint why I like this so much but I'm very pleased.

Studio Makeup Luminous Loose Blush. Meh. This is a nice sort of dark peachy nude with a definite luminescence. Its ok...nothing special colorwise and the loose factor just makes it a bit of a hassle. But I mean, its nice.

Pur Cosmetics again in Boxycharm. I really like this brand alot so no complaints here. This is a 12 pan shadow palette, neutral warm, 2/3 matte, 1/3 shimmer. Gorgeous cardboard packaging mimics marble with rose gold lettering/accents. Fantastic presentation, great mirror inside but...the shadows are the real star.

This palette gives me real hard Shade and Light vibes. Especially now that the S&L Glimmer palette is out. Its sort of a mashup of both. Lots of light shades for transitions and highlighting the brow. Nice medium and dark shades and stunning shimmer shades. They're all nicely pigmented, I have two absolute favorites in this palette I use just about every time I open it up. The shimmer shades on the bottom row are GORGEOUS when applied with fingers.

Top Row

Middle Row (Snazzy is a gorgeous red brown matte and my top pick in this palette)

Bottom Row (Twinkle is my 2nd fave)

There was also another Colourpop Ultra Satin in this months box. I love these, so I'm always excited to see them in the box, formula is nice, not too drying, long lasting. The shade I got was called Mess Around.

And the swatch of Colourpop Mess Around. Not sure if I'll ever wear this, I'm not a brown lip girl, but you never know!

And lastly, Briogeo Don't Despair, Repair Mask. I actually colored my hair a few days after getting my box so I put this to work and I really like it. This is like the 3rd Briogeo item I've gotten in a Boxycharm and I always really like them.

So that's it! I've already seen some spoilers for the October Box and OMG I cannot wait. Seriously, If you love makeup and beauty items this is the box for you. If you are interested in subscribing, the box is $21 a month in the US, I do have a referral link, I just get some fairly useless "shop charms" if you use the link/code:

BOXYCHARM

P.S.

I do apologize for the lackluster photography. I need to get my lightbox and camera settings tuned back in, so please bear with.