It’s been almost a month since I moved blogs and so far I’ve been having a great time! I’m posting more often and I’ve been having for many great ideas! The only downside is that I don’t see you guys as often. Sure a few of you followed my new blog, but the majority of you have stayed put and I miss you. :)

I know that there’s a possibility that some of you didn’t read my blog in the first place, but I’m choosing to be optimistic and thinking that you just didn’t get the memo. So here’s a quick reminder (before I forget) that I’ve moved!

I’ve been posting consistently every day since my move. Most of it has been nail art because of the challenge that I’m doing, but I’ve also posted other content too! I have a few drafts waiting for a few finishing touches and as soon as September is over they’ll get published!

At my “new” blog you’ll find -

• Videos
• Movie Reviews
• Recaps of the 8th season of HIMYM
• Nail Art & nail polish
• And pretty soon: Fall outfits, birthday wish list, bracelet tutorials, a recipe and a pinterest guide (but you didn’t hear it from me)

So make sure to go over to Mario, Shut Up! and follow it to keep up with me! Don’t forget to follow me on twitter too!

Life of Carbon is getting a name change! Wait, no. Life of Carbon is moving! Where to? Good question.

Warning: This is a serious post. Don’t worry though, I lightened it up with some of my favorite pictures.

About three months ago I sat down and decided to write a list of all of the awesome things I wanted to this summer. Number ten on that list was blog redesign. You can tell I was super committed to it because there’s a question mark at the end. At the time I just meant a new header and maybe some cute icons and if I was really feeling it maybe a more organized navigation bar or something like that. July went by and then during August I was too busy with VEDA to open up my photo editor and now that I finally have the time to sit down I’m starting to think that a new header and some cute icons might not be enough.

You see, during VEDA I was making a video every single day, but I didn’t feel it was right to post them here and now that I think back I’m not really sure why. It’s been almost a year since I started vlogging and I love it, but I’ve never felt that my videos had a home here which is ridiculous since it’s not like I’m posting incredibly different content there than I would here! And it’s not only my videos, I always feel weird whenever I want to write a post about some of my other passions like video games or social media. I always ask myself if they’re appropriate topics for this blog or if maybe I should just keep it to myself. Isn’t that ridiculous?

The more I thought about it the more I realized that as much as I love this blog I’m not really sure what it is and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s holding me back. So I decided to sit down and figure out exactly what I wanted this blog to become.

What this blog is to me – To tell you the truth, I’m not a hundred percent sure. So far I’ve posted DIYs, recipes, fashion/thrifting tips, personal posts, my life list, videos, book/movie reviews, guides and (currently) nail art plus a few more things I probably forgot to include. So why do I still feel limited? Why do I feel like I might not want to post a picture of my dog or a summary of my trip to the zoo?

What I want this blog to be - My homepage on the internet! I want this blog to be where people come when they want to see me, all of me! Sure, twitter is where people contact me, pinterest is where people can go see what I’m planning to make, youtube is where all of my videos are and both of my tumblrs are like little summaries of what I post here, but this blog should be the gold mine!

What I can do -

• Name Change: Wait, what? What does the name of my blog have anything to do with what I post? Well, it might seem a bit petty, but it means everything! Don’t get me wrong, I love Lifeofcarbon! Maybe a bit too much actually. Lifeofcarbon is beautiful, poetic, smart and sometimes it’s just a lot to live up to. I feel that when people come here they’ll expect a certain level of refinement and sometimes I just don’t have it in me. I know that this might just be something I feel and that people probably don’t put that much thought into the name of this blog, but it means something to me and I’m the one that’s writing!

• Layout Change: I love Pilcrow, it’s an amazing, versatile theme and even though I’ve had the itch to change it for the past few months I’ve always come back to it because no other (free) theme could live up to it. You see I’ve recently discovered the joy of making multiple posts per day, but I’m afraid to do it since an important post could become lost in the archive after a wave of shorter posts. So I’ve just been sitting back, hoping that WordPress would release a theme that would be as aesthetically pleasing as Pilcrow, but with a better showcase function so I could keep the posts I was super proud of on my front page. And it finally happened this past week! I’m really happy to be changing my theme to one with a magazine vibe since I feel like that’s what I want this blog to be, a magazine directed exactly at me!

• Post Whatever!: One of the main reasons I stop posting for large amounts of time (other than burnout, but more on that later) is that I’m way too concerned with what I’m posting. It’s not that I don’t actually have anything to post, it’s just that I don’t think I can post it. Earlier this week while I was catching up on all I’d missed during August I came across this amazing post by Young House Love (my blogging idols) about how they decide what to post and it stuck with me. Especially #5:

#5. Nothing is too small if you’re psyched to post about it. Try to have a no holds barred / no rules policy if you’re excited to share something (people can tell when you’re holding back and blogging can be a lot less satisfying if you are)… — Young House Love

• NO MORE SCHEDULES: Wait, what? Isn’t that like a cardinal sin of blogging? Usually the other reason why I stop posting for an extended amount of time is burnout and guess what causes that burnout? More often than not, me. How? With over-ambitious schedules. *Hides face in shame* I’m not saying schedules are a bad thing, most of the blogs and vloggers I love have pretty regular posting schedules it’s just I’m not very good at making them. So for now I’ll just take a page from YHL (same post) and figure out what my pace is before making an actual schedule.

#1. Find a pace that works for you. It’s probably one of the biggest “discoveries” that you’ll make along the way. Don’t worry, it’ll happen. Figuring out a pace that works for you will do two things: it’ll help your readers understand what to expect (thereby hopefully reducing your fear of the unknown as a new blogger) and you won’t feel rushed or bored (two things that can quickly kill a blog)… — Young House Love

So that’s it. Don’t think of this as me starting a new blog because I’m not. Sure, it technically is a new site, but I’m importing all of my old posts and all of your comments so it’s not like I’m starting from scratch! Making a new separate blog just makes it easy for me to redirect traffic. Wouldn’t want to create a huge trail of broken links, would we? The new icons and navigation will all come a little later when I’m feeling more settled in. For now the “new” blog will be more than enough.

What you can do -

• Follow my “new” blog: Go over to Mario Shut Up and click the follow button. Easy as that. That way you’ll be able to see all the content I’m putting out.
• Update your bookmarks/feed: If you keep up with me using a feed reader just click here and subscribe to my new feed. If you come here using a bookmark make sure to update it so that it takes you to the new address!
• Change your blog-rolls: If you are sweet and amazing enough to link to this blog please make sure to update the link there too! Also, thanks for being sweet and amazing. :3
• Keep being awesome.

As always, suggestions and advice are totally welcome! I look forward to this new adventure. :3

I don’t think I realized this until today, but I’m pretty sure that green is my favorite color of nail polish. I was originally just going to do a skittles manicure using all of my favorite shades, but that seemed too easy so instead I tried to narrow it down and only use my absolute favorite green polish: Sinful Colors Mint Apple. I love, love, love this color. It’s a beautiful shade of jade (not really sure where they got the mint or the apple) and it has a beautiful shimmer that just makes this polish light up. I used it to try to recreate one of my favorite desktop wallpapers ever! Try to guess why.

I started off with three thin coats of Sinful Colors Apple and three coats of Sinful Colors Unicorn (a necessary evil, I swear) on my cupcake accent nail. Then I just went crazy with my dotting tool (polka dots are my comfort zone) using Sinful Colors Nirvana, Sally Hansen Xtreme Mint Sorbet and Sally Hansen Hard-core Party because they were the closest colors I had to match the dots in the wallpaper. The icing on the cupcake was just free-handed using Sally Hansen Hard-core Party (more like Easter Party, amirite?) and the sprinkles are Pure Ice Gossip! And voila, a delicious desktop wallpaper inspired manicure. *Muah* PS: Go download this wallpaper!

Today’s post is actually up this late because today was a super busy day. It was filled with driving around and paper work and argh! But it was well worth it and I should stop being such a complainer. Maybe I should go get myself a cupcake.

What do you think? Nailed It or Failed It?

If you want to join you can get an awesome 31 Day Challenge Graphic courtesy of Chalkboard Nails and post your entries over at Polished Criminals so that everyone else can see them!

I was thinking about posting my nails with no polish today as a joke (yes, they really are that stained), but I decided against it. You guys already have to look at my incredibly dry cuticles/hands so it would be cruel to make you look at my icky yellow nails! So instead of looking at my bare nails today you get some ikat print inspired nails. Aren’t they adorable?

ikat (Photo credit: Felix.Funhouse)

This manicure was actually something I had been wanting to do after watching an ikat nail tutorial on youtube, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I really love the darker look in the video, but whenever I think of ikat print I always think of a cute yellow ikat skirt I saw on Pinterest forever ago so I wanted to recreate the look with a light yellow. I started with four coats of Sinful Colors Unicorn. You only need three coats to get full opacity, but this polish is so damn streaky that I needed a nice (bordering on) thick coat to even it all out! After that I just followed the directions in the video and made a white diamond using Pure Ice SUPERSTAR! and a black diamond in the center using Sinful Colors Black on Black.

And that would be it, except I just have one small thing to add: UNICORN BY SINFUL COLORS IS THE WORST NAIL POLISH EVER! It’s streaky, gloopy and if you’re not careful it bubbles like it’s nobody’s business! Not to mention, this polish STAINS! Oh god, does it stain! I made a joke about my nails being yellow now, but just you wait tomorrow morning they’ll make me look like I have a disease! Don’t get me wrong, the color is absolutely beautiful (it looks like a baby chick), the price is great, and most Sinful Colors nail polishes have great application, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth all the trouble. This is why I need your recommendations. What’s your favorite pastel yellow color that doesn’t streak like a drunk dude at a high school graduation?

Nailed It or Failed It? What’s your favorite yellow pastel? What’s the worst nail polish you own? Have you ever gone streaking? You don’t have to answer that last one. Hahahaha.

If you want to join you can get an awesome 31 Day Challenge Graphic courtesy of Chalkboard Nails and post your entries over at Polished Criminals so that everyone else can see them!

I want to start this off by saying that I never realized how similar all my oranges are. No, this isn’t me admitting that they’re all the same because they’re not, they are all different and I need them. They’re all just similar shades and if I tried to do a look using all of them it would be hard to because to the untrained eye they would just look like the same color layered over itself. Why am I telling you this? Because I spent the night over at Colin’s house last night and just brought over my orange polishes instead of ALL of them. It seemed like the smart and efficient thing at the time (I swear!), but it just made everything impossible. I even made Colin drive me to Target last night so I could pick up a few oranges, but everything there was WAY too similar to what I had already brought. WHY AREN’T THERE MORE VARIED SHADES OF ORANGE? I did however end up picking up a few top coats, one of which pretty much saved my butt from posting the ugliest manicure I’ve ever done.

For this manicure I paired Essie Braziliant and the NYC Matte Me Crazy top coat. I painted on three coats of Essie Braziliant (for the first time ever actually) and then topped it of with one coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy. Then I dipped my dotting tool into Braziliant and made a polka dot accent finger and some polka dot french tips. Voila! Isn’t she beautiful? I think to properly understand why this manicure seems like utter perfection you have to know what I went through to get to it. I wanted to do a Charmander (you know, the pokemon) manicure soooo badly, but my Charmander ended up looking less like an adorable little lizard and more like an ugly potato mutant. So I scrapped it and decided to try a geometric manicure, but my nail art pen bled all over my fingers and it looked less like clean white lines and more like I had tried to paint my nails with white out. Then I tried it again, but with stripes and the same thing happened. I honestly thought about posting my hideous “white out” nails and just calling it quits for today, but then I caught a glance at my new matte top coat and let out a sigh of relief. As for the polka dots? Polka dots are my comfort zone.

I was actually pretty overjoyed when I saw this top coat (and it was only $0.94!) because I’ve been looking for Essie Matte About You for the past WEEK! I didn’t even know NYC made a matte top coat! I know, I know most people hate matte polishes, but I LOVE them. More specifically I love the paring of a matte and glossy finish. Maybe I’m just easily amused, but I could look at matte/glossy manicures all day! However, while I did like the orange and matte pairing I’m not sure if I’ll ever do it again. I think I like the more dramatic pairing of matte and a darker color like black or a very dark purple.

So what do you think? Nailed It or Failed It? How do you feel about matte top coats? What’s you favorite shade of orange?

If you want to join you can get an awesome 31 Day Challenge Graphic courtesy of Chalkboard Nails and post your entries over at Polished Criminals so that everyone else can see them!

For this manicure I was going to go with just the color, but it seemed too boring (this is a nail art challenge) so I scanned my room for inspiration. My eyes landed on the red polka dot shorts that I was planning to wear to the mall later. Perfect! I started with two coats of Essie Forever Young, not that the second coat was necessary this polish is opaque yo! Then I just dotted away with my Sally Hansen nail art pen. I was going to do a full polka dot, but I felt like that might be too much so I just did a polka dot accent nail and then some polka dot half-moons. Topped it off my Sally Hansen Insta Dri Top Coat, Clearly Quick and presto! Ready to photograph!

Confession Time: I don’t like red nail polish. *gasp*

I know, I know. Red is the quintessential feminine nail polish. It’s classic and it will never go out of style. Blah blah blah. In my opinion those are all ways to say it’s  tad boring* and it totally is, at least in my opinion. That’s why in my collection I only have a total of three reds: this one, Sinful Colors Under 18 (I almost didn’t count this one because it seems like too much of a Christmas color) and Essie Silken Cord. Maybe in a few years I’ll learn to appreciate red as a polish choice, maybe I’ll find the perfect shade of red that calls to me and demands I wear it constantly! Until then I guess  I’ll just have to jazz it up with a little bit of nail art.

*Except for red glitter! I covet it like no other nail polish! I can only talk about it in exclamation marks! Everyday that goes by that I don’t have a red glitter in my collection is a great injustice!

So what do you think? Nailed It or Failed It?What do you think about red? Where does your inspiration come from?

If you want to join you can get an awesome 31 Day Challenge Graphic courtesy of Chalkboard Nails and post your entries over at Polished Criminals so that everyone else can see them!

Yes, you heard right! Starting today (probably in an hour or two) I will be participating in the 31 Days of Nail Art Challenge along with a lot of lovely bloggers and nail polish aficionados because why the hell not! Get ready to be bombarded by pictures of my incredibly dry cuticles!

Don’t worry if you’re feeling a bit blindsided by this because I am too. Right after I uploaded my last VEDA video yesterday I came across a post by Rebecca Likes Nails where she mentioned the challenge and as much as I tried to stop myself from hopping on board the nail art express I just couldn’t. You’d think that after 31 days of non-stop video making I would want to lay back and not do anything too crazy, but I’m pretty sure that my personality doesn’t allow me to do that.

I’m really excited to show off my polish and (hopefully) pick up a few new skills! I feel like this challenge is the perfect way to show off my newest obsession and maybe make a few new friends in the nail polish community! If you want to join you can get an awesome 31 Day Challenge Graphic courtesy of Chalkboard Nails and post your entries over at Polished Criminals so that everyone else can see them!

Today is the last day of VEDA and I’m having a hard time processing it. Has it really been an entire month? Are you sure? More importantly, did I really make 31 videos? As much as I count and as much as I look over them I still feel like I missed a few days. But I didn’t and I’m pretty proud of myself. :)

I know I haven’t been posting very much this month and can you blame me? So much has been happening that I’m surprised I have the energy to be typing this post right now. Colin moved out of his parent’s house, I had to get new glasses, we’ve been taking care of a new dog and my nail polish obsession pretty much took the wheel, but more on that later. You’ll be happy to know that I’ll definitely get back into a regular posting schedule over the next month once I adjust to not having to bust out my camera every single day!

I have a lot of things planned for the upcoming month(s) including a blog redesign which I’m super excited for. As for what I’m going to be doing over the next few days? Mostly relaxation and all that, but I’m also going to try to figure out in which direction I want to take this blog. As for what you can do? You can definitely watch all of my VEDA videos. Here’s a playlist I made just for you. :)

Today is Colin and I’s four year anniversary! Wait! What?

I know, I’m not really sure how we got here, but it’s been an amazing ride.

To an amazing four years. :3

The Dark Knight Rises (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let me start this by saying that this movie (the Batman trilogy, really) means way more to me than it really should. The Dark Knight is one of my favorite movies ever. It came out July 18, 2008. Three whole days before Colin and I met. We went to go see it on our first date on September 1st and before that I saw it way more times than I feel comfortable admitting. TDK captivated me, it hypnotized me, it showed me that action movies have the capability of being more than just a buff guy throwing one-liners at the screen while walking away from an explosion. That action in a movie could be used to drive the story and actually develop characters instead of dooming them to two-dimensional personalities. And when I heard that they were making The Dark Knight Rises I was ecstatic and I’ve been happily anticipating it since then. Even more perfect the release date: One day after Colin and mine’s 47 month anniversary (yes, we are that sappy) and one day before his birthday. It was a no-brainer that we were going to see this the second it came out and we did and it was worth the four years and every penny.

Super Quick Movie Review:

If you’re like me and you don’t like to know too much about a movie before watching it. (No spoilers, I promise)

If you ask me to summarize this movie in 7 words they would be:

Not The Dark Knight, But Worth It.

The story is a little bit patchy and Bane is definitely not the villain that The Joker was in The Dark Knight, but this was still the best movie that was released all summer. No, scratch that: ALL YEAR. Yes, I can say that. If there is one movie that you watch in the theaters this year make it this one.

Actual Movie Review Stuff

First of all let’s get one thing straight: This movie is NOT The Dark Knight and Bane is NOT The Joker. This is the problem I’ve come across in other reviews I’ve seen. I understand that it’s tough not to compare this movie to its talented and super-hot older (younger?) brother, but you got to let poor TDKR try to stand alone. Judge it for what it is and not for what its predecessor was. Second thing, I recommend you watch Batman Begins before you go see this movie. Maybe it was just me, but I did not remember a lot about Ra’s al Ghul or the League of Shadows and whatever the hell their plan was.

Bane (Tom Hardy) is a weird character to me because he’s both terrifying and anything but. He has the potential to be a great villain: he’s ruthless, he has a loyal group of followers and he’s strong. This is not a guy you want to make angry because there is no way he’s letting you go. He has everything going for him and I wanted, oh how I wanted to love him, but there’s just something missing. Most obvious: he’s can be pretty hard to understand. Literally. It’s kind of hard to be terrified of someone when you can’t hear what they’re saying. Now I know that Bane had to have the mask, it’s Bane and Bane wears a mask, but couldn’t they have done something more on the side of Darth Vader rather than old man using an oxygen tank? Bane’s lack of interaction with Batman also made for him being a less compelling villain. I’m pretty sure that Bane and Batman were only in the same room twice and if that number is actually higher then it sure didn’t feel like it. This is such a shame because it makes Bane seem absent from the movie. I never felt like Batman was actually trying to stop Bane, he was trying to stop an evil plan that Bane was just a part of.

“Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!” – Bane

The story in this movie, while compelling, felt a little patchy. Maybe it’s just because I didn’t remember a few things from Batman Begins (all the important parts I’m guessing), the fact that I’m not really familiar with the comics (yes, shame on me) or the fact that I was really tired, but there were definitely a few times during the movie where I wished I could just pause and rewind. Like, what is up with The Pit! Where did it come from? Does it have a back story or did they just throw it in for symbolism? Am I supposed to know about it or do they just want me to accept that a place like this would actually exist?

What I love about this movie (and the trilogy in general) is that while it is about Batman and his struggle to bring justice to Gotham (and Bruce Wayne and his struggle to find meaning in his life) it is also about the other characters and their struggles too. We get to see a young police officer, John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), learn about what it means to be a hero. It’s truly amazing.

Now to answer the question you’ve all been asking. How does Bane compare to The Joker? He doesn’t, but in all fairness you can’t really compare the two. The reason why the Joker was such an amazing villain was because he was completely bat-shit crazy. He’s a deranged psychopath and he only has one motivation: to watch the world burn. Bane on the other hand is not crazy, he’s just a radical. Bane has actual reasons behind what he does and that makes him predictable and as a result, a lot less terrifying.

In Conclusion:

In my opinion the only flaw that this movie truly had was how short it was. A weird thing to say about a 2 hour and 44 minute movie, but it’s totally true. There just was not enough time to completely flesh out some plot points or to show more interaction between some key characters. I would have gladly sat down through four hours of this movie if it had meant more character development and more background information!

I’m going to be honest with you, I think this movie is the best movie of 2012, no holds barred. Sure, it doesn’t have the same psychological drive and the chemistry between Batman and the villain that made The Dark Knight what it was, but it tries and that’s all that I wanted from this movie.