Manicure Madness: Fails of the Month!

With my last exam merely days away one would think I would be a whole lot more focused and spending every spare moment at the books, getting ready to shoot the exam out of the water! And while I am indeed getting ready to go HAM in the exam, I get so frustrated/bored studying the same thing over and over again! Plus it's the weekend and I really just want summer to be here already! 

So I was busy listening to an audio-capture of one of my previous lectures when I realised that I could listen and paint my nails at the same time without being told off by anyone! Not that I've ever tried to do this in an actual lecture, but I can imagine the looks of utter disdain everyone else in the room will be casting me, after all, engineers dont care about those things... Ha, such lies! Or maybe I'm not a proper engineer. The long and short is that I care about my nails and decided to paint them a nice bright colour to get me out of the laziness funk I've been in.

I've been spending some time on pinterest and seeing all sorts of crazy nail art so I decided to give it a go myself. Before you scroll down can I just say that this was kind of an epic fail and I can't wait to have a proper manicure after exams are over!

So this was the beginning of my first attempt. It's called 'Fairy Cake' by 17. I love the colour because it's so pink and girly! Clearly I have a problem with holding the brush still but that's another story! 

This is how it turned out after I tried to add a different colour to it. This was initially meant to be pink and green but the green nail polish was too faint to go over the bold pink properly and since I had already started I decided to go all punk like and rock some black. The black in this picture is called 'Night Shade' also by 17.

This is the green nail polish I was talking about earlier 'Juicy' yet again by 17. Actually pretty much all of my nail polish is by 17! They are a nice budget brand seeing as most times I can't be bothered to do my nails I figured there's no point investing in OPI and the likes... yet. I also really like this colour! This is after two coats though and it's still a bit see through but never mind, its still a winner.

Look how crooked those lines are! Lol. Apparently I was meant to leave the tape on until the polish dried not hastily take it off and hope for magic to happen!

It is nice and straight on my thumb though. Unfortunately I dont remember what this red nail polish was called and I can't seem to find the bottle anywhere! I will update when I do though.

Unfortunately I was very disappointed with my 'watermelon' nails and I decided to just go over the green bits in red instead! I think I should just stick to one colour for a little while but I will definitely be giving these manicures a shot again soon!

P.S. This post has been edited so many times because when I first started writing it I hadn't even had my first exam yet! So I'm sorry if there are some mixed up tenses but I have proof-read it though. I cannot believe I am finally done with exams! All I can think is yipeeeeee! :) So much has happened since I finished on Tuesday, my poor blog can barely keep up with my now fast paced life!

Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine this weekend!

Ciao, Reni x

As a Real Yoruba Girl: Aso-Oke Love

Okay I know what this looks like, you think I have once again desserted you and neglected my baby but I promise I haven't! This time I have a legit excuse, I've been out of the country and without wifi for about a week or so; I went to the heart of Ondo Kingdom, Nigeria for my granddads' funeral and though it was generally  time of extremely mixed emotions let's focus on the not so sad shall we? My Warrior Angel would have wanted it no other way!

It's been more than a while since I last dressed up in the full Yoruba attire but this past week I must have worn all the different types of aso-oke (top cloth) in Ondo! from the lovely purple and pink in alari, to the subtle gold in sanyan and the deep blue of etu!

Pink, pearls and alari, excuse the messy room in the background, that is what happens when you put six females together AND make them rush to get dressed quickly everyday! This is a typical yoruba traditional outfit, the head piece is called a gele, the top is a buba and the wrap around skirt is called an iro. I'm missing my iborun in this picture which is another piece of cloth, the same as the gele that is wrapped around your waist but you can kind of see it on my Aunt in the background. Trust me when I say there is no rushing this outfit! The gele (head piece) will be tied to perfection!

Gold, corals and sanyan and the massive necklace around my neck is called an 'igbaku'. I think it's only used at funerals if I remember rightly.

My brothers and cousin in sanyan agabadas (the long gown over the trousers), filas (men's hats) and igbakus. Those agbadas are heavy! I never realised how much so until I tried using one as a duvet!

Cute lil cuz in his own mini agbada

The girls in lilac and purple, honeslty I don't even remember what this outfit was for!

Sleeping in church. tut-tut!

After this trip I have a really deep love for aso-oke now! I always hated wearing it before but I think I have been well conditioned to it, I've even gone as far as daydreaming on what my aso-ebi (family cloth) for my wedding will be made out of and what colour it will be! just have to learn to tie my own gele so that poor Aunty Toju doesn't have to tie about 20 every morning the next time the whole family gathers God bless her soul! Once again I'm sorry I left you for so long! Hopefully you see that I haven't just ditched, thanks to all my readers for always coming back and to my favourite anonymous commenter and all the readers in Russia, thank you especially!

P.S: Posting this month might continue to be sparse as I prepare for summer exams but I will try very hard to not leave for too long again! Blogging is a nice study break. :)

Reni x

A Little Sunshine on A Rainy Day

So this post initialy started on an ever so jovial note on the day it was originally meant to be pubnlished but now.... now I just don't know. My lecturers are certainly trying to drive me to insanity! Why on earth will you increase the weighting of coursework from 10-20% less than 48 hours till the deadline, 20% coursework requires significantly more effort to do than 10% coursework! And to think I had toyed with the idea of just not doing it at all so I could focus on a bigger project whose deadline is also imminent! HA! Well that plan's out the window! Anyways I'm on a  little break from number crunching and hair tearing and remembered that I hadn't put this post out yet so what better way to rest my brain than remember all the positive things happening around me. Like the fact that Spring is finally here! I was skeptical about posting this last week or before that because I was certain the warmer weather and sunny-ish ouside was just a phase but it's been a little while now and the sun still comes out to play almost everyday! There's something about good weather that just puts me in an instantly good mood, I'm so happy I can finally ditch the boots and scarf and turn the heating in my apartment down (bye bye nasty electricity bills!).

 

Sometime in my last MIA periods it was one of my besties birthday and she had a surprise party at Navajo Joe's in Covent Garden, London.It was a really great day and I think she was actually surprised (or maybe just afraid?) when we all jumped at her! It was a really fun day and even though the food wasn't fantastic there's nothing better than being around good company for a few hours on a lovely day! Here's a couple of pictures from the day. We took a couple of random bits and bobs inside the restaurant

 

Birthday Girl in her white dress looking gorge!

 

 

But decided the weather was too awesome not to have a couple of snaps outside!

 

Ayo loving the effect of the wind on her 'cape' !

 

We  even found a lovely porch to play about on even though the boys were getting a bit tired of us by now! Jacqui (in orange) couldn't stop posing even if her life depended on it! Don't you love her bangs though??

 

 

We eventually stopped taking pictures, kind of, amd made it to My Old Dutch for some dessert and some more chit chat!

I had a hankering for a cup of tea which is really weird because I never drink tea! And waffles always go down well with me! I even forgot to take a picture until after my first couple of bites! My favourite part about this post and Spring in general is all the pretty colours floating around, and the trees are finally not going to be naked anymore! Whoop whoop! Writing this has significantly cheered me up, I think I can go back to the number crunching and other boring stuff again. Here's looking forward to the weekend!