Monday Manicure: My Christmas Manicure

Hi all!

As you might have noticed, I was quite busy during the Christmas days, so I was not able to post anything. Did you all have a nice Christmas? I certainly did, I ate waaaaay too much and we were all lazy, watching movies and playing games. But I enjoyed every second of it!

Today I'd like to share my Christmas mani with you.

China Glaze Conduct Yourself
stamped with A-England Rose Bower
using BundleMonster plate 314

China Glaze Conduct Yourself

Hello everyone!

In this post I showed you a few polishes I bought recently. China Glaze - Conduct Yourself is one of them.

China Glaze Conduct Yourself

More swatches after the jump!

Saturday Songs: Christmas!

Hello everyone!

Source: keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk

It's almost that time of the year! Christmas! The past few weeks have gone by soooo fast! With presentations to give, assignments to hand in, taking care of the horses and practicing for dancing, I sometimes was happy when I could sit down for a moment!

Now that the Holidays have started, I really start to get the 'Christmas mood'. I really look forward to celebrate Christmas with my family and have dinner together. And what's a Christmas Night without a bit of good music?

Of course, some of the Christmas songs are very well suited for dancing! Last weekend, at the Christmas Challenge Trophy, we danced to a lot of well-known Christmas songs. We really enjoyed the variation in more common dance music, alternated with typical Christmas songs. Because Christmas is only a few days ahead, I couldn't resist sharing some of them.

Enjoy listening and have a very merry Christmas!

Michael Bublé - Winter Wonderland (Slow Foxtrot)

Mariah Carey - All I want for Christmas (Jive - only ignore the long intro for dancing ;-) )

Frozen - Winter's Waltz (Viennese Waltz, it's rather short, but I loved it anyway)

Wham! - Last Christmas (Cha Cha)

Libera - Carol of the bells (Viennese Waltz)

For now, this is it for a few Christmas songs that can be used to dance to. If you like to listen to more, Micheal Bublé covered a whole range of Christmas songs. The Irish child choir Libera also has quite a nice amount of Christmas songs. If you like a capella songs, you should defenitely check out Pentatonix.

PiCture POlish Lollipop

One to satisfy your sweet tooth

Hi everyone!

Today I'd like to share one of the polishes I bought very recently. You could have already spotted it in my Shoplog. Here's Picture Polish Lollipop!

Picture Polish Lollipop

First of all, what a disaster to capture it accurately! In some lightings I needed a pink background so that my camera would pick up the purple better, haha!

However, despite this polish not loving the camera, I fell in love with this gorgeous purple glitter.

More swatches after the jump!

Shoplog (1)

Hi everyone!

Today I'm not going to show you a manicure. I recently bought a few new nail polishes and I'm too excited to show them to you!
Next to that, unfortunately my cuticles don't like the cold weather at all, and I happened to get a severe infection at one of my cuticles. It looks all ugly and nasty, and I won't bother you with the looks of it. What makes it worse, is that I got the infection at my swatch hand. Hopefully it will heal very soon, so that I can show you a new manicure next week :-)

More pictures after the jump!

Saturday Songs: Feeling Good (Slow Foxtrot)

Hi all!

Slow Foxtrot. It is the dance that is mostly described as difficult, technical and smooth. Some people may call it 'old-fashioned'.

Coming to old-fashioned, in a local newspaper, it was stated that ballroom dancing is "old-fashioned" and less younger people attend dancing classes. A pity if you ask me!
Old-fashioned is definitely not true if you ask me! To proof that the local newspaper is wrong, I'd like to share a song that was a hit just a few years ago.

Here's Michael Bublé with Feeling Good. Enjoy this - quite difficult - Slow Foxtrot!

Have a nice weekend!

Saturday Songs: Shake it Off (Jive)

Hi everyone!

Today I'll keep it short, because I think you all know this song.

I really like this song. Perfect for jiving, happy, uptempo, just perfect.
To me, some parts of it sound really familiar. I really can't do any other dance than ballroom dancing, but sometimes I just can't resist myself and make the most foolish moves. Ah, who cares! Sometimes you just need to shake it off!

Here is Taylor Swift with Shake it off!

Enjoy your weekend!

Cleaning satin dance shoes

Hi!

I know I shared this post already a while ago, but since there were many people who found this
tutorial helpful, I decided to re-post it.

Many ballroom and latin dancers own satin covered shoes. I think most of these shoes look very nice, but the satin tends to trap filth very easy. Especially when the downside of a shoe hits the upper side, large black spots are left behind.

A filthy, black spotted shoe.

The inside doesn't look really good as well...

Read more about the cleaning of those shoes after the jump!

Monday Manicure: Purple Stamping

Hi everyone!

Did you have a nice weekend?

Today I'd share a stamping manicure. I re-discovered the beauty and easiness of stamping, so currently I'm wearing a lot of stamped manicures. This is one of them.

Essence Purple Sugar stamped with China Glaze
Cowgirl up. The design is BundleMonster plate 314.

Saturday Songs: Roxanne (Tango)

Hi everyone!

Today I'd like to share one of the most famous tango songs with you.
Everyone who has ever seen the movie or musical Moulin Rouge will know about this tango.

Enjoy the ballroom version of Roxanne.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your weekend!

The Origin of Dancing: Rumba

Hi everyone!

What's better than to start my very first informative post with some background of the ballroom dancing we know today? So, here is the origin of the sensual Rumba.

Meaning of the word 'Rumba'
The term 'rumba' may refer to two different styles of dancing. The first meaning is the Afro-Cuban Rumba, which I will not explain here. The other, of course, is the ballroom rumba.

Welcome at my blog!

Hi all!

Time for a fresh start!

As some of you might know, I already started this blog in 2013. I started with small reviews, swatches and some looks. I wasn't a very regular poster, especially not in exam periods. However, I enjoyed blogging and when I did have the time to post, my head was full of inspiration!

After thinking for a while, I thought I'd better focus on the personal side of the blog. So, I started with 'Dansen met die Grijze Pony', a blog about me, my horses, my exams, everything, but I didn't think this was the right platform to show manicures, swatches and competition looks. However, I missed sharing my make-up thingies...

Last competition a few dancers came to me and asked me why I hadn't post anything in a while. I couldn't give a good answer. Why not? Why not use this blog to share my thoughts about make-up and dancing and use the other (Dutch) blog for all the rest? It's clearer for my readers to keep things separated. I can do both things.

In the 'radio silence' over here, I didn't quit with painting my nails and I've danced a couple of competitions. Luckily, I still kept taking pictures of everything, 'because you never know'.

At the revised version of Ballroom & Beauty, I will post on a more regular basis.
Every Monday will be Make-up Monday. I'll show you a recent look I did or a manicure. Sometimes it will be a matching combination or a full face make-up.
Every Thursday I will post some general information. Something about the origin of the several dances, some tips on preparing yourself for a competition, something about injuries. In short: Thursdays can be about everything, but mostly those articles will be informative.
Saturdays will be about the Saturday Songs. To start the weekend in dancing moods, I'll share a song I like to use for dancing.
If you have any requests, remarks or questions, please feel free to contact me.

Enjoy reading!