A trick for removing dark nail polish stains

I recently read about an awesome French trick for cleaning the dark nail polish stains off of your fingernails. All you do is hold your nails in a dish of lemon juice mixed with a bit of water for a few minutes and the stains fade instantly. Cool, right?

I was a little skeptical that it would work, but when I tried it myself after using my darkest polishes several weeks in a row, it really did help! Lemon juice is apparently good for both whitening nails and strengthening them when used in an olive oil mixture.

This is a really helpful tip to learn going into spring because I like to transition from my dark shades to lighter, more pastel hues, and the light colors can a little dirty with dark stains behind them.

Have you ever tried this trick before? What beauty tricks do you swear by? 

P.S. Favorite winter nail colors and how to get wrinkles out in less than 5 minutes

How to get rid of wrinkles in clothes in less than 5 minutes

I think most of us would agree that ironing is not our favorite thing to do. It's not so much difficult as it is time-consuming, and I often end up creating at least one crease where I didn't mean to. And if you've ever tried to un-crease a crease you've made, you know it's nearly impossible to get it smoothed out completely.

And then there are the fabrics that are just too delicate to be ironed. I have several of this kind of light-weight, silky or chiffon type shirt, and they can get wrinkled from being stuffed into my full closet, being dried in a weird way or even from being folded in a bag for too long if I'm traveling.

Lucky for me, my mom introduced me to the Conair ExtremeSteam Professional Handheld Garment Steamer and my life has been forever changed (maybe a slight exaggeration?). The steamer only takes about half a cup of water and less than two minutes to heat up. Then you just hold it up to your shirt and steam until the wrinkles come out, which takes just a couple minutes depending on the material and how bad the wrinkles are. It's such an easy fix when you want to wear something right away but notice it's got a few major wrinkles. Like I said: total game changer!

Do you iron or steam your clothes? Or do you have another method that you recommend? I'd love to hear!

P.S. No-closet storage solutions and the key to healthy lips

Do you know how to fight successfully?

I was at home for lunch one day last week when The Talk came on (before you judge me, I just turned the TV on and it was there!). Anyway, they shared a quote from Pete Wentz explaining his divorce from Ashlee Simpson. He had this to say:

"I think there's an important thing where you know how to fight, because you can fight with somebody and it's not the end of everything. But if you don't know how to have those arguments, then they become nuclear." 

I thought his take on it was kind of perfect. I've always been very shy and non-confrontational — and I've always been at least mildly aware of the way it affects my relationships. Whenever I was mad, my default used to be shutting the other person out and holding in my anger until I was just annoyed for the same reasons all the time. It sounds cliche, I know.

But Adam doesn't let me do that. The first times we fought, he was annoyed with my resistance to talk through the problem right away, but he just went with it anyway. And then one day he took a new stance; he called me out on my habit of shutting down and made me share what I was feeling when I was angry. I'll admit that I was resentful about it at first, but then I realized something kind of amazing.

When one of us was mad or upset about something, we could talk about it openly, tell each other why we were mad and how we wanted to fix it — and then it was over. We didn't leave angry, we both understood how we felt and how we would move forward. And then we went back to laughing and being happy again. Fights weren't this big, stressful thing anymore, and the issues that started them didn't become recurring incidents between us.

I think every couple has a different way of dealing with their issues, but it's important to talk through them and find resolutions that work for both people. When you're trying to make a relationship last, you can't just push everything under the rug — you have to know how to eliminate those problems. And if you find you're having the same fights over and over, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the real problem.

Adam has always been better at open communication — it's in his nature as an extrovert. This is what he has to say on fighting in relationships: It's okay to be angry with the other person, so long as both people know where that anger stems from and both know it's not the end of the relationship.

It makes sense, right? Couples are supposed to fight. It's learning from those arguments that helps you learn about each other. And ultimately, that's what is going to determine how long you stay together.

Related: the choice to have children, family names and pet names: yes or no?

(Image via Everly True)