A year of pretty nails! :)

I was reading back on my blog a couple of weeks ago and I saw the posts I made about my nails last year. I was a nail biter pretty much my whole life. I've always had ugly fingernails and I've always been a bit envious of people with pretty nails. After years of nail biting I assumed that I had ruined my fingernails forever and it never really even occurred to me that I could make them pretty. 

Then last year when I started riding my bike and running, two things changed. First of all, the daily exercise did wonders for my anxiety and I realized that without the anxiety I wasn't really biting my nails. It's always been kind of a nervous habit. 

Second, I started taking vitamins as part of my new "healthy me" plan and they have biotin in them, which is good for your nails and helps them grow. They're called Rainbow Womens One and I highly recommend them. I still take them. 

So between finally getting over the urge to bite them and the vitamins to help them grow strong, I was amazed that for the first time in my life my nails were actually growing. 

So as they grew I started to paint them and I blogged quite a bit about it at first. I was having fun with polish and nail art and all of that for the first time in my life. 

And now, according to my blog, it has been a full year since I started taking care of my nails, so I thought I'd give an update on them. Wow, things have changed in a year! 

This is the first photo I posted of my nails last year when they very first started to grow. I thought they were super fabulous at the time, lol.

Nail polish on my fingernails still kind of freaked me out back then! I could only do light colors because anything bright or bold just felt really weird. I also wasn't very good at painting them at first.

But over the year I experimented, I learned, and nail polish has become a bit of an obsession with me! Now my nails are always painted. It drives me crazy if they aren't perfectly painted at all times and it feels weird to me if they AREN'T a bold color.

 A year ago I didn't even know how to paint my nails and now I have people requesting me to teach nail care classes and teach them how to paint their nails. People ask me all the time who does my nails. ME! :) I own so much nail polish and so many nail care supplies I could practically open a store, lol. 

Here is a photo of what my nails look like now. (Well, not RIGHT now, I took this photo before we left town last week, but close enough.) What a difference a year makes! 

Nail polish is like my little happy place. It's the little thing I do to pamper myself. I'm not super girly or high maintenance in general, but I do enjoy having pretty fingernails. Even after a year I'm still kind of amazed with myself that I managed to keep it up and kick the nail biting habit for good. I'm glad I blogged about it from time to time over the past year. It's been fun to watch them change over time. I'm proud of my progress!