The Zoya website describes Kissy, part of the 2011 Gems & Jewels Holiday collection, as “a glitter that combines red, pink, purple and hologram particles with unique bar glitter.”  It’s not a great polish to use alone, because it has only medium opacity so I layered it over Julep’s Glenn.  I also don’t find it to be particularly holographic — the silver bars of glitter are nice, though.

For the photograph below, I used two coats of Kissy over two coats of Julep’s Glenn.

It’s a nice, festive polish but again, you really need to layer it unless you want to use, like, six coats.

My February Julep Maven box (I’m an American Beauty) contained two colors: Oscar, which came in every Maven box in honor of this month’s Academy Awards, and Glenn, which the Julep website describes as “a bold berry red shimmer” and reminds me of the Red Carpet.  The formula is fantastic — I had full coverage after one coat and it just look so polished (pun intended).

For the photograph below, I used two coats of Glenn with China Glaze’s Strong Adhesion Base Coat and Seche Vite’s Dry Fast Top Coat.

See how shiny it is?  Really beautiful color that I think would go well with Deborah Lippmann’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?, which I wore for Valentine’s Day.  No fancy outfit today to pair with Glenn — I took advantage of Casual Friday for the first time since starting my job in July.  Jeans and an oversized black sweater, woohoo.

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson.  I’m changing this one to Book Whose Main Character You Want to Date because I don’t know if I want to get married ever and marriage is such a commitment and I can’ t think of a character I’d want to spend the rest of my life with.

So, I’m choosing Buster Fang, one of the two protagonists in The Family Fang, which I wrote briefly about in my January 2012: Books post.  The Family Fang is about Annie and Buster Fang, the grown-up children of performance artists Caleb and Camille.  As children, Annie and Buster were often known as Child A and Child B, mere props in their parents’ artwork, which focused on wreaking havoc in the most docile environments.

While Annie becomes a famous actress, Buster grows up to be a struggling, yet published, writer.  Early in the novel, while on an assignment for a magazine, he gets shot in the head by a potato launched from a potato gun, and is very badly wounded yet handles the situation humorously, which is something I would do too and like a lot in other people.  Laughing at hardships, seeing the funny in horrendous situations.

Buster wanted to be very happy; in his desperate moments of self-absorption, he felt that the earth was powered by the intensity of his emotions. When he mentioned this to a psychiatrist, the doctor said, “Well, if that’s the case, don’t you think you should be out doing something a bit more, I don’t know, worthwhile?

I appreciate people who want to be happy.  I spent the majority of my formative years invested in being unhappy, and that was a horrible choice.  Now, I, like Buster, just want to be happy.

Buster’s smart and sensitive and quite funny — and these are all things I look for in a potential love interest.

Given that pale, pistachio greens are in for Spring, I decided to purchase OPI’s Stranger Tides.  The bottle looks almost white so every time I saw it in Duane Reade, I avoided it.  However, after looking at some swatches, I thought I’d try it out.

I absolutely love this color!  It’s a super light creme-based pistachio — much lighter in person than the bottle swatch — and perfect for this spring’s upcoming trend.  The formula’s a little on the thin side, though, and I probably could have used an extra coat.

For the photograph below, I used two coats of Stranger Tides with China Glaze’s Strong Adhesion Base Coat and Seche Vite’s Dry Fast Top Coat.

The color looks a lot more minty in the picture than it is in person.  But I assure you, it is definitely a pistachio, and not a mint, green.

Gouda Gouda Two Shoes was the color I was most looking forward to from OPI’s Spring 2012 Holland Collection and it did not disappoint.  A shimmery dusty-brown rose or burnt pink, it’s an amazing formula (somewhat sheer with the first coat, total opacity by the second) and a really classy color.

For the photograph below, I used two coats of Gouda Gouda Two Shoes with China Glaze’s Strong Adhesion Base Coat and Seche Vite’s Dry Fast Top Coat.

I paired this classic polish, which reminds me a bit of a lighter version of China Glaze’s Fifth Avenue, with a black sweater dress, gray tights, my polka dot flats, and a pink and silver ring with pink-gold earrings that actually match the polish quite well.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.  I don’t really think there’s a book I’ve read whose “main character” (can we please be adults and say “protagonist”?) is like me, but the challenge says most like so I’ m going with Jeffrey Eugenides’ third novel, The Marriage Plot, which was released this past fall.

The Marriage Plot revolves around the love triangle of three recent college grads in 1982: Madeleine Hanna, Leonard Bankhead (who my friend Liam asserts is a stand-in for David Foster Wallace), and Mitchell Grammaticus.  Mitchell’s into Madeleine, Madeleine’s into Leonard, and Leonard’s into himself, mostly, in addition to a plethora of psychological issues.

I share some qualities with Madeleine.  We’re both recent college graduates trying to figure out what we want to do.  We were both English majors.  Madeleine wrote about the Marriage Plot in Victorian novels but I wrote about Freudian theory in modernist ones.  That being said, I am overly familiar with the Marriage Plot as a literary device and like Austen just as much as Madeleine does.

But I’ve never been in a love triangle.  I do, however, have a history of falling for irrevocably, pardon my language, fucked up guys and ignoring or being completely oblivious to the advances of the good ones.  And sometimes, I’m too preoccupied by literature to pay attention to my life and the people in it.

But it’s the way that Madeleine thinks that is most like me.  Generally positive with intermittent cynical undertones.  And at times, completely out of touch with reality.

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close.  This was a hard category for me.  And as soon as I started writing about An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin, which barely resembles my life, Jennifer Close’s Girls in White Dresses popped into my head and I thought, “Now that’s a good choice.”

I read Girls in White Dresses while on vacation in Edinburgh and Dublin this past August and it was a very fun and witty diversion from the hours of bus and train and plane and cab and walking I endured.  But it was a phenomenal trip and I particularly loved Edinburgh (I heard A.L. Kennedy read from her latest work, The Blue Book, which I was able to purchase and have her sign — it’s not out in the States yet), which I had visited briefly during my senior year in high school with my theater group.  That was not as fun.  Mostly because I was eighteen and could therefore drink legally, which I took advantage of to the fullest extent.  And paid for it.  I remember being sick in an alleyway and having a rather nice Scottish gentleman hold back my long, corkscrew curly, and — at the time — orange, hair.  But I learned a lesson: tequila is a no-no.

Nothing remarkable happens in Girls in White Dresses.  It’s a very plain novel that is exceptional only because it is so funny and accurate.  But it’s about women in their 20s and early 30s living in New York City and grappling with their careers, friendships, families, boyfriends (or lackthereof), while everyone else seems to be getting engaged and married.

My parents got married when my mom was 29 and my dad was 34.  I grew up assuming this was normal.  If I get married, I want to do so no earlier than 28.  That’s just how I think.  I want time to have a career, to travel, to do whatever I want without having someone legally attached to me.  I’m not ready to “settle down” and don’t know if I will ever be.  So it’s extremely foreign to me when I hear of my friends or ex-friends or friends of friends who are actually younger than I am (okay, never by more than a year) who are getting married this summer.  Or see themselves getting engaged to their boyfriends and having kids within the next two years.  I just don’t get it.  And I firmly believe that everyone grows up at a different pace, that people are ready for things at different ages, but this just doesn’t sit well with me.  It’s probably about my own fear of growing up (Hi, Peter Pan Complex?  I’m your Poster Girl).

Anyway.  Girls in White Dresses is an extremely ordinary novel, plot-wise, and is therefore the book that most resembles my life.  Twenty-somethings?  Check.  In Manhattan?  Check.  Struggling with life?  Check.  Nothing special, nothing weird or paranormal.  Just ordinary people doing ordinary things and encountering challenges as they do them.  That’s my life.

Now this is what I call a polish for Valentine’s Day, both in name and formula.  Named after the Rod Stewart song, Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? is a limited edition polish from Deborah Lippmann released as part of the Holiday 2011 collection.  It’s a clear gel formula with large chunks of hexagonal ruby-red glitter.

On her website, Deborah Lippmann says the following about the polish: ”I did my one woman show at the famous NYC Feinsteins earlier this year and I wore a ‘couture’ red sequin Jessica Rabbit gown.  Since I can’t wear that dress daily, I decided to create a color we could all wear all holiday long.  We even used the shade in the hottest fall runway show Rodarte.  Talk about feeling sexy when you are wearing nail color!”  Apparently, the color was almost named Jessica Rabbit, who happens to be my favorite Disney character of all-time (“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way”).

For the photograph below, I used two coats of Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? on top of two coats of Essie’s Size Matters with Seche Vite’s Dry Fast Top Coat.

Amazing Valentine’s Day nails, right?  I feel like my nails are a dead ringer for Dorothy Gale’s ruby slippers.  Maybe if I snap my fingers three times, I’ll be back at my apartment? The rest of my Valentine’s outfit consists of my red pumps (to match my nails!), black and white polka dot dress, and black double bow headband.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Of course, I’ll be reviewing a red today.  Two actually so stay tuned for my next post.

Size Matters is part of Essie’s Winter 2011 collection, Cocktail Bling, which I absolutely adored.  Beautiful jewel tones in that collection (hence the “bling”), including Size Matters, which the Essie website describes as “a blazing hot ruby red.”  I like Size Matters because it’s not particularly “blazing hot,” in my opinion, but more subdued.  It’s not an in-your-face red but perfect for Winter.  The formula is also excellent — I had almost full coverage after one coat but used two to cover up the whites of my nails.

For the photograph below, I used two coats of Size Matters.

It’s a little messy but that’s because it’s just a base for what’s coming next: Deborah Lippmann’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day week, I decided to try this Deborah Lippmann pink that I got about a month ago as a bonus for ordering two other DL polishes from Neiman Marcus.  Constant Craving is a creme-based lilac-y bubblegum pink — I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same base pink that DL uses for its ever popular Candy Shop, though I have yet to try out that polish.

For the photograph below, I used two coats of Constant Craving (named after the k.d. Lang song, of course) with Seche Vite’s Dry Fast Top Coat.

Please ignore my messed up pinkie finger.  But as you can see, this is a very pretty pink, true to the description.  I might add red tips to it to create a Valentine’s Day French manicure, but I’m not sure.  If I do, what red do you think I should use?