I love having my nails painted. I feel like the color I pick is the armor I choose for the week ahead. I don’t know why nail polish and not my outfits or other accessories are the way I go about finding and building self confidence. But it is what it is. As much as I love myself a good manicure, I suck at them. My left hand always looks great but my right hand, well, my right hand is a whole other story. I’m a right handed person through and through and whenever I get to painting my right hand nails with my left hand, I more than just struggle. It’s kind of hilarious how different my two hands look after I paint my nails.
I recently found Essie’s new nail polish, Essie Expressie, and they’ve been life changing. I absolutely love the brush/wand on this nail polish. It’s thicker and sturdier than the other nail polish brushes I tend to use so it makes it far more easier to paint my right hand nails. The wand/brush on the Essie Expressie nail polish offers far more control than the other nail polish I own.
True to its name, it also dries pretty fast and has saved me from accidentally smudging my nail polish, a sad but common occurrence for me.
A fair warning, while the application of this nail polish is improved, it does chip a bit. Using a top coat definitely offers a decent amount of protection so I suggest applying one.
I have fallen in love with “The Happy Fits”. They’re an alternative/indie band from New Jersey and I discovered them on a Spotify playlist and now, they’re all I listen to. Their songs are very thematically matched to their name. They’re happy. I love how all of their songs have a string or orchestral touch to it and as someone who loves string music, I really appreciate seeing that genre of music incorporated into modern music.
My current favorite songs of theirs are: Achey Bones, No Instructions, Moving, Two of Many, The Garden, She Wants Me (To Be Loved), Reason for Dreaming.
People, I have found a podcast that is now my new home. This podcast is a compilation of everything I love and is hosted by creatives/influencers who I aspire to be one day. This podcast is centered around books. They have a monthly bookclub that highlights new releases in a wide variety of genres. When they’re not talking about books, they also dip into the lifestyle corner of podcasts and discuss things like their Amazon favorites, favorite tv shows, or feature guests that have started business like an Olive Oil brand or a Candle business. I love how versatile it is but also how its foundation is books. It’s kind of what I envision for my own site.
I also love the hosts of the podcast. The current podcast hosts are Becca Freeman and Olivia Muenter. Grace Atwood used to host the podcast with Becca but I believe she stepped down recently (April?) and Olivia has taken over as cohost.
I love how they discuss their highs, lows, obsessions with each weekly upload and take us along their lives, whether it be the books they’’re currently reading or how their writing projects are going. They’re all freelancers, aspiring writers, book lovers, and involved in the blogging world.
It’s a very friendly podcast that’s easy to fall into.
This is a recent favorite. I read this book in two days and it only took two minutes for me to want to pick it up and read it again. I don’t want to write too much about this book because I want to write an in depth review of it but I genuinely loved this book. I love how unapologetically it played on rom com tropes, I love how it dove into the topic of loss, grief, and how people handle or process grief in different ways. I also how this book was a love letter to books. It made me desperate to visit my small bookstore in town and just sit there and smell the books and find the most wrinkly book and claim it as my own.
The only Emily Henry I’ve read is “People We Met on Vacation” but this has become my new favorite book of hers. This is far more romance forward than “People We Met on Vacation” so if you were wanting something a bit more steamy, I recommend picking this one up.