my life in instagram photos

Zoya Avril / Essie Licorice

China Glaze High Hopes / Essie Licorice / Orly Gumdrop

Chocolate macarons filled with peanut butter ganache

China Glaze Gothic Lolita

OPI Overexposed in South Beach

OPI Pedal Faster Suzi / OPI I Don't Give a Rotterdam

OPI Big Apple Red / Essie Licorice

China Glaze Bare if you Dare

Essie Wicked

Chocolate macarons filled with a Chambord strawberry buttercream

China Glaze FYI

If you want to follow me on Instagram, my username is claralhotak. Thanks for looking :)

well if you say so...

I haven't been checking my blog too frequently these days. I decided to check today, and I found this little gem...
Aw, I love you too sweetie.
For those who don't know, Christian is my fiance who is currently serving in Afghanistan as a US Marine. And he's bored out of his mind.

Anyways, a hodgepodge type post is better than no post, right?



OPI Tickle My France-y, OPI Just Tea-sing, China Glaze Ravishing Dahling
I've been obsessed with half moon manicures lately. Standard half moons are usually a nude or white moon, with the rest of the nail in any shade of red. I decided to reverse it, and I really liked this! I felt all vintage and classy.

On my last post, a lot of you guys said you'd love to see some recipes and baking photos! Well, I got super excited and rushed to the kitchen to make chocolate macarons. They turned out horrible. Because my almond meal was too moist, the shells turned out fragile and soggy. They look awfully perfect in the pan though, don't they?


And what's a random post without cat pictures?





Well Christian, I hope you're happy now ;)

And to everyone else. Thanks for reading!

impromptu nail art

Hi everyone! I have't made a NOTD post in a while. I'm always too lazy to take pictures of my nails with my Nikon, but I liked my nails so much today I settled with webcam. I'm in my school's library, on my two hour break in between classes. Hope you guys don't mind :)

I used:

China Glaze Rose Among Thorns
Milani Nail Art Black Sketch
Milani Nail Art White Canvas
Color Club Nail Art Stripers (silver glitter)

huge pink/purple polish swatchfest

Hey everyone! As we all know I haven't been quite up to par with posting NOTDs and such. Hopefully this gigantic picture-loaded post makes up for it!

Christian is coming next week. We're going on a week long camping trip, just him and I- it's our first vacation together. Hooray!


OPI It's My Year, 3 coats

OPI Be A Dahlia Won't You, 3 coats

topped with OPI I Lily Love You, 1 coat


Color Club Disco Dress, 3 coats (neon)

OPI The One That Got Away

China Glaze Rich & Famous, 2 coats

with Zoya Sooki + nail art pedicure

topped with OPI Red Shatter

OPI Planks A Lot, 2 coats

topped with LaRosa Deep Black Crackle


...can you guys tell I'm an OPI girl? Haha.

Have a great week! Happy Monday!

notd spam

Happy Independence Day to all my fellow Americans!

Who's excited that True Blood is back?! I know I am!! This season is going to be crazy... Eric and Sookie... mmmmm...
To represent my excitement, I chose one of my sexiest nail polishes to wear...


Zoya Sooki
Now, the name is purely coincidence.... just kidding! Of course I bought it for the name. And after seeing how sexy it looked on me, plus an amazing buttery one-coat formula sent this one straight to the Top 20!

OPI Teenage Dream topped with Black Shatter

China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway topped with Pure Ice Heart Breaker

OPI Dulce de Leche


Lippmann Across the Universe
Sorry for the craptastic pics -_- absolutely does not do this polish justice...


If you don't already, follow me on Twitter! I promise I'm more exciting on there.
My Twitter!

Thanks for looking!