Holiday Haul

The holidays were good for my nail polish collection! Here's the nail polish I got while I was away.

Sephora just opened its flagship store in Sydney early in December. I was super excited because I heard that Formula X was a good brand, but I only had a chance to try their base coat and remover before I moved to Australia. But since they just opened, they didn't have gift cards yet. My parents-in-law gave me $50 to spend at Sephora on nail polish. Sephora originally promised that they would match US prices, but they didn't at launch. I was very excited to go there and find out that the prices had been reduced from over $20 a bottle to just $14! That meant I could get four and just go slightly over budget.

The colours I got are Continuum, Brazen, Gray Matter, and Desire.

 This one wasn't a present, but I didn't have a quick dry top coat. I just had one from Nicole by OPI and it took FOREVER to dry and usually resulted in me messing up my nails. I kind of feel like my life has now been changed.

The next two pictures were my Santa presents. Santa is funny when he sees my in-laws because he likes to wrap everything individually. Yes, that means that the sponges that you see in front of the polishes were wrapped individually. He goes through a lot of wrapping paper.

The polishes here are Pastel Punk by Revlon, Brilliant Blue by L.A. Girl, My Dogsled is a Hybrid by OPI, Amazon Amaz-off by OPI, and Gargantuan Green Grape by OPI.

I was really excited to get this travel set. My mom got me the full mini set when it first came out. I've always been a collector of Coca-Cola things, so I was hesitant to open it up and use it. Now I can just use these ones!

I got this polish from my sister-in-law. It's an OPI sheer tint called I Can Teal that You Like Me.

These were from my Christmas Cracker that my husband's grandma made. Every year she makes us personalized Christmas Crackers. I'm not sure if I'll use the studs or the fake nails, but the white and black are definitely useful!

These three were from when I went shopping with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. I went into a cosmetics store to "just look" at the pretties as I usually do and they sat on a bench right outside. I saw a display of OPIs that were on sale. OPI is usually around $20 in Australia, but these were 3 for $20! I'm still on my no buying until I get a job thing, so I came out of the store looking really sad.

My mother-in-law then asked if I saw something that I really wanted and so I told her. She's awesome and let me get three and help her pick out three for my sister-in-law as late Santa presents.

The colours I got had perfect names for me. The first is Diva of Geneva, which is great because Geneva is the headquarters of the WHO and I have my degree in public health. The other two, I Don't Give a Rotterdam and Dutch Ya Just Love OPI, are perfect because I grew up in a city called Holland. It has a strong Dutch heritage, which I say makes me honorary Dutch even if I don't have any Dutch in my bloodline.

The next two pictures are from a purchase when I was going stir crazy. I was bouncing off the walls, so my in-laws took me shopping. The parents went to get coffee while my sister-in-law and I looked at nail polish. We were going to go to Priceline, but sadly that one had closed. Luckily there was a chemist across the street. They had the polishes in the first picture on sale, 5 for $10. My sister-in-law bought me one and I bought the other one, but since it was able to be paid with a single coin, I don't count it as buying for the sake of my no-buy. The one on the left is Gaga for Glitter and the one on the right didn't have it's name sticker and was the only one of that colour left. So sad since the names are half the fun of nail polish!

This was sort of a cheat for my no-buying rules. I blame my sister-in-law. We're bad influences on each other. The reason it's sort of a cheat was because it's a quick dry top coat, which I put in the category of things that I need to keep doing nails. That category is things like base coat, files, etc. However I didn't really NEED it because I just got the other quick dry top coat. Buuuuut, it came with a free full size bottle of nail polish, Red my Fortune Cookie. I couldn't pass that up!

Then one last nail polish arrived in the mail today. My mom sent my husband and I some Christmas presents. I was just able to pick the package up from the post office today and I found another bottle of polish. It's my first bottle of Sugar Shimmer, so I'm interested in using it. It's Mint Tint from Sally Hansen.