Happy Anniversary!

...To Lacquer Laine! Today my blog turns 1 year old! Can you believe it!?

I wanted to do a few things for my blog for it's anniversary. The first is that I wanted to finally show my face. I didn't upload a picture of myself to my profile when I started and after a little while I realized I like the faceless attribute of my blog. The anonymity was... nice. You guys were reading for the nails! Not my face. I really like this especially since I am typically the type to be in front of a camera as well as behind it and post tons of pictures of myself on other internet media outlets. I don't always look "nice" in my pictures... I actually look like a goofball most of the time. But either way, I love pictures and always have and I have thousands from every year since I was in middle school. Thank goodness for the digital age! Now they are all stored on my external drive. Saves space! Anyway, I love to take pics and have taken a few photography classes. I am always the unofficial photographer for gatherings and parties. I don't even go anywhere without a camera. Ever.

The second thing I wanted to do for today was feature a particular nail polish, which I am wearing, because I credit it with leading me to blogging. It's NYC - Chinatown from the In a New York Minute line. It may seem like an odd choice. It may seem more likely that I'd wear one of my top 20 shades, or something really fabulous like a Lippmann glitter, or something high end like RBL, but no. My $2 drugstore polish is my anniversary shade.

I have always had a thing for my nails. And I have loved to do them. And I have also always loved bizarre shades. I just always had a very controlled, small sized stash with interesting shades. Well about Thanksgiving/Christmastime 2008 I started picking more and more shades, and when I graduated and realized I would have full time work, I let the buying go completely full on and kept picking up more and more shades with no cap on what I bought. And I was happy about it! I did not know about nails blogs, or Makeup Alley, or discount NP e-tailers. I was just browsing in stores and ebay.

Well one day in the early spring last year we had an unusually warm day so I rode my bike to an out of the way Target. I spotted the whole new line of NYC polishes and immediately picked the must unique, interesting shade. This ended up being Chinatown. The story doesn't end here, though. There was only one bottle left, and the brush was broken off. I kept looking for it in drugstores and other Targets to no avail. Finally I turned to the internet to help. Well what are you going to find if you search "NYC Chinatown"?! The wrong Chinatown, that's for sure. After some manipulating with the words "NYC", "Chinatown", "nail polish" and whatever else I did, I had a match. It led me to Steph's Closet. A beauty blog. And mostly devoted to NP. And guess what? She had swatches of all the shades! This opened the door. Nail blogs? I surfed and surfed finding more and more nail blogs. This upped my hunting game drastically. I had so many new things to look for! And now I knew about e-tailers like TransDesign and Head2ToeBeauty. Whoa boy! Then I got a Konad set. Then I learned how to water marble. My head was spinning. My collection was growing. And one day I realized that I had so much I could share, I thought it would be awesome to start my own blog. That was one year ago.

Thanks Chinatown. :c)

Now back to the other piece of business. My face. I wanted to find a good pic that I looked "normal" in and that I took fairly recently to give you the best representation of me. Not that there is much variation in how I have looked over the past decade. I still have my picture on my license that I took when I was 16 and now I am 24 and look exactly the same!!!! I say "normal" because when I take pictures it is rare for me to just look straight at the camera, and smile nice and say "cheese". I am usually making some sort of face, or dancing or I look like I have had one too many cocktails (not that I had too many cocktails....haha). I would have loved to had a photo shoot with myself yesterday and take some pics but I have a ginormous pimple on my chin. Gross. So I found some other nice recent ones. Are you ready?!

This picture I actually took last week at the White Sox opener. A beer or two in, but I look alright!

The other shots I have are from February at the Chicago Auto Show. Yes February. March only has "maniac Elaine" in its pictures.

Me in something... maybe a Honda?

I NEED THIS NOW!!! Oh the giant wheels! Dream car...

Me and Mustang GT 500. OOooohh

Okay. Do you want a maniac picture? I am sure you are curious. I would be! I'll give you one of me from Madi Gras... with my face painted...





READY?

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I told you! This is what I look like in most pictures. A lush. A doofus lush. HAHA! On the left is my friend Kate. I would have "smiley faced" her, but the mask she did on herself looked so cool I had to share!

Thank you so much for reading and supporting Lacquer Laine the blog and Laine the person for the past year. It means so much to me that my little blog has just kept growing and growing thanks to my readers. I really wanted to do a giveaway for my anniversary too, but I have so much going on with the move I really couldn't add one more thing to my to-do list. I'll do one soon, I promise!

Have a wonderful weekend!

I was tagged! Twice!

I was tagged twice for this "10 facts about you" fun! I was tagged by Nihrida and by Tuli!I have to give you guys 10 facts about me, and then tag 10 more blogs! Okay, here they are:

1) I am a fisherwoman. I was the first born child, and since my dad didn't get a boy, I learned the boy stuff. Incidentally, I love fishing and caught my first fish when I was about 2. Mostly I like to fish streams for trout, but last year I went fishing for striped bass in the spring on the Hudson River and caught a 25 lb. bass.

2) I love games. Mostly darts or pool or ping-pong definitely! But I also love card games (not really poker... not much of a gambler) and my favorite board game is Pictionary. AND I loooove to beat boys at games. Especially ping-pong.

3) I love comedy. Movies or TV. I enjoy laughing. I am not a very serious person. I love to laugh out loud at things I watch, even if I am alone, and I have a very loud, semi-obnoxious laugh. Favorite TV: 30Rock, The Office, South Park. Favorite Movie ever: Dumb and Dumber

4) I am short. Only 4'11''. I don't think I have ever shared that with you guys! I love it, I just hate when people guess my age is waaayyy younger than I am. I have a bit of a baby face, and it sux! I know that when I am older it will be great to look young, but it is no fun to be an adult and have people tell you that you look like a child. I get IDed for rated R movies and last week a guy in a toll booth didn't think I was old enough to drive! I am going to be 24 next week!!! Come on!

5) Although I am a shopper when it comes to nail polish, I am not when it comes to the other standard girl stuff. I don't have tons of shoes, bags, clothes or make-up. I wear the same shoes everyday, and when I wear down the heel tips (yes they are usually heels... shorty here!) I get them replaced! I have had the same couple purses for years, and I rarely do much to my face. I have been getting more into eyeshadow recently though.

6) I love to ride my bike!! I live in a city, so I don't bother having a car, but I love to ride my bicycle. When I lived a little closer to work/school I rode back and forth everyday. It was 5 miles one way. That seemed perfect. But now it's 11 miles to get to work. I can make it. I have done it a couple of times, but I just can't tire myself like that. Plus I would be so gross by the time I got there!

7) Although I don't have a car now, when I was still in New York, the only vehicle I ever had was an SUV. It was huge and I loved it. I carted around everyone and everything and I was always the driver on roadtrips. I have a good sense of direction. It was also a stick, and that is another thing I got from my dad. He had me driving that thing, by myself, when I was 12!!! Only on dirt roads up in the woods though. Not on real roads! This was my baby:

8) I have never dyed my hair!

9) I went skydiving on my 18th birthday.

10) I love spiders. I mean, they creep me out just like the rest of you. I don't touch them or anything, but I am fascinated with them. I think they are so cool and amazing and I love to look at them, and photograph them (I have a collection). Last week Tommy and I were at Target, and when we were pulling in I saw a huge web between two trees, and I had to go take a look. When we got out of the store, I looked... it was, hands down, the biggest spider I have ever seen in the wild! I mean, it was HUGE!!! Body was like a golf ball. From a distance Tommy didn't think it was one spider. He thought two or more. He didn't want to even get close! He was freaking out that I was so close to it. I could kick myself a hundred times for not having my camera. I want to go back, but I just figure he will be gone and I'll be disappointed.

Here's one I took a couple years ago:

And here are my ten blogs. I tried to hit ones that haven't done this yet:
Sparkling.Pink.Gorilla
Vampy Varnish
Concrete and Nail Polish
Lou Lou Land
The Nailphile
Steph's Closet
Dizzy Nails
Nail Art Tuesday
Gettin' Nailed
Alexlyndra