Happy Winter Olympics!

It’s no secret that I love the Olympics. So in honor of the Winter Olympics starting in Sochi last Friday, I gave myself an Olympic themed mani, in the colors of the teams I’m rooting for. The accent nails are a little obvious: the USA and the UK. Then the solid red nails are for Japan. So I’ve got my country of birth and residence, the two countries where my main research interests belong, and the accent nails also work for Russia – host country and where some of my ethnic heritage is. The only country that got left out is Ukraine (the biggest chunk of my ethnic heritage) – I just couldn’t work the Yellow in there, and the blue is a little too navy for it to work. Maybe for week two!

Now, this was supposed to be the first post in a recurring feature for “Mani Mondays,” but I did the mani Sunday night and then forgot I had scheduled the purple jeans post for Monday morning already. So Mani Monday on a Wednesday it is!

Now, it won’t be every Monday – I’m not one of those people who has their nails painted impeccably all the time – I’m really rough on my hands and I just don’t have the patience to keep it maintained! You can probably tell by the state of my cuticles and my horrible dry skin in the second pic that caring for my hands is not high on my priority list. And to be completely honest about it, it’s kind of a miracle that these have lasted all the way from Sunday to Wednesday without chipping. But I do love nail polish, and when I find the time to play with it, I figure why not share – even if I’ll never quite measure up to the perfect nail blogger standard. But hey, here at Magpie Making Do, we’re all about doing and celebrating what you love even through failures, frustrations, imperfections, and everything else life throws at you (although I do hope my ability to photograph my nails will improve the more I do it!).