My dear friend, Claudia, that runs this blog has continually told me I am more than welcome to make a guest blog entry here.  Now, I appreciated the sentiment, but I thought eh, this will not happen often because all of my posts would be truly negative.  See, I’m not the average girl.  I’m by no means a girlie girl and my lifestyle makes it very hard on my nails and nail products.  I have tried lots of things and I have never been satisfied.  Nothing stands up to my lifestyle.  For a little explanation, I work very hard.  Not at my day job – that’s hard too, but that is more a mental struggle.  My home life however, wow.  I have four horses, we raise our own beef and we also raise our own pork.  Therefore we have cows to tend, baby cows to feed who happen to like to suck on your fingers a lot.  We also have baby pigs to feed, the occasional goats and chickens.  Maintaining horses in Arizona means that you have to scrub out their water troughs pretty regularly; almost every other day; due to algae and moss buildup.  Add to this my regular home life – dishes, scrubbing bathrooms, laundry, dusting, etc. You get the picture.  Everything that I do means I haven’t found a product that I’ve been satisfied with.  Nothing lasts.  By the end of day one we’re usually chipped, peeling and needing very severely to be taken off because it looks incredibly horrible.

About two weeks ago, my local family dollar had a sale on Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips.  Now, I wasn’t sure why I wanted to even attempt this given my massive failures with polish in the past, but I was intrigued.  Plus, I really loved the prints.  I went for Booty Camp – it’s a fabulous pink camo.  The package says lasts up to ten days, but given my lifestyle I knew that wouldn’t happen.  I loved this print and it suits me so I thought, given the price I’d give it a try.  On day one (left), I applied this in the afternoon, early evening time so there wasn’t much testing to go on this day, except dishes.  Which isn’t much of a test as any polish should hold up to dishes.  I threw this on and I’ll admit, it isn’t the best application as it was the first time I had ever tried a product like this.  Over the top I put on my Seche Vite dry fast top coat and we were off to the races.

I decided that if I was really going to test a product out, it needed to be really tested hard and it would need to go through everything that I normally go through.  So dishes came and went and everything looked good.  Now, aside from dishes, as I mentioned previously, there are a lot of things that go on in my daily life.  Being an owner of hard working animals, plus raising your own animals for various purposes means there is a lot to do.  By time day three rolled around, I had scrubbed two water troughs for my horses. This is one of my more difficult tasks as it entails getting into a bathtub after its been drained and really scrubbing with a wire brush and steel wool pad to get all of the algae buildup out of the water troughs.  I don’t use any cleaners as  chemicals can be harmful to the animals so it’s a whole lot of elbow grease and scrubbing on top of scrubbing.  On the same day, I spent a few hours feeding four baby calves that require bottle feeding.  One of them – who has aptly been named love bug because he’s got a white heart on his head – requires a LOT of work.  He didn’t receive good care from his mama and he’s only four days old.  Feeding him requires keeping the other three babies away because they will be finished before he gets started and they will bump him out of the way.  I have to pretty much pry his mouth open, getting him sucking on my fingers first because he doesn’t quite know how to suck properly and then get the bottle into his mouth once he’s got his suction going.  A lot of work and a lot of time with fingers in his mouth, getting bitten and chewed on till he figures out what he’s doing. This day also included taking care of six week old baby pigs and six goats.

Day three (both below) included feeding the calves again, feeding horses, brushing them out including mane and tail which is not an easy feat either.   Day three also included scrubbing bathroom showers, tubs, toilets and sinks.  I’m a bit of a germ-a-phobe so this an in depth scrubbing process too.  Dishes and laundry were also on the list of things to accomplish on day three.  Over all, I am very happy with the way that the Booty Camp has held up.  As you can see, I have some minor chips and a few flaws, but they are still holding on pretty strong.  I’m convinced that as I get better at putting them on, they will hold on stronger.  It didn’t last ten days, but, over all, I am very pleased with the way they measured up to my real life challenge and I’m glad that I had the chance to guest blog on a positive note.   I have also purchased the Winter Funderland polish strips from Sally as well.  I’m looking forward to giving that a try as well. So, if you’re looking for a quick application that really does last, this is the way to go.  I would highly recommend it.