Wednesday Manicure: Metallic Ruffles

This week’s manicure was inspired by the ruffle manicure tutorial seen here. (From the top) I used Wet & Wild “Silvivor”, Color Club “Wild at Heart” (purple), Orly “Halley’s Comet” (teal), China Glaze “Tinsel Town” (dark silver), Kleancolor “Metallic Green”, and Color Club “Cold Metal” (blue).



While I love the super shimmery color combination, this is one I wish I’d tested on a nail wheel before doing all ten fingers. The top few rows are just too similar from afar & blend together. I think the secret for a good ruffle manicure is alternating a light and a dark color to make the rows really pop (even if it means repeating one polish more than the rest).

Monday: Getting Things Done

First thing, I wanted to point you over to The Craft Patch, a great blog that I recently discovered. On Mondays she does an awesome "Pinterest Tested" post, where she tries out a lot of those too-good-to-be-true posts that you've seen pinned again & again to see if they will really work. I came across her blog as I was about to clean my cookie sheets with hydrogen peroxide + baking soda only to see her & several commenters declare it worthless (with photo evidence). Glad I didn't waste my time!

You may or may not have noticed, but I've settled into a nice little schedule over here - posting recipes on Sundays, 'Getting Things Done' on Mondays, manicures on Wednesdays, and any other random post on Friday. Sticking to a schedule like this has helped me keep up with the blog better than ever, and I'm easily able to plan ahead so it is not stressful or rushed.




Well, last week was a productive week! I....

♦ Used this idea and decorated our water bottles with pretty duct tape (found in the Target $1 section!). Good news: our re-used bottles are easy to tell apart from new waters for guests! Bad news: our waters smell like duct tape. This bothers me, but I'm hoping it will fade in time (Justin doesn't notice it). I would probably not recommend doing this for a party!

♦ Tried 2 new recipes

♦ Backed up my whole computer! I do this every January, burning every photo & file onto DVDR's that I send with Justin to store at work. This way I have back-ups not only in the event of a computer crash, but also for things like fire or theft (where I'd probably loose the computer and the back-up disks). Throughout the year I put a copy of any new pictures/files into a folder and burn that set about every 2 months.

♦ Cleaned out an old binder of our favorite recipes, typing up the few that had not gone digital already.

♦ Cleaned out an accordion file of new recipes, recipes that needed work, etc. Had to type of most of these! (And I thought I'd ditched all of my old recipe binders!)

♦ Added links to our *long* list of favorite recipes (will post about that soon) for easy access

♦ Bought Goo Gone (Target $1 section) and cleaned off the glitter bottle I made for Orson. Tried to clean his "I Spy" bottle, but he ran off with it & hid it somewhere - haven't spied it yet.

♦ Working on long overdue blog posts, which should be popping up on Fridays

♦ Mixed half blue Dawn soap with half white vinegar, which I've seen toted as a miracle cleaner all over the place lately (good for kitchens & bathrooms). Inspired by this Pin test, I used it on our shower floor, which has been getting a little dingy. A big improvement, though there was a stubborn area that might need a 2nd treatment. (I did have to use a toothbrush to get down in the crevices, but just wiping it off, no real scrubbing required)

♦ Bought new curtains for the Master bathroom - and even hemmed one set!

♦ Bought some pure acetone to clean off old Cool Whip containers, inspired by this post. It worked great! I didn't let it soak, just put some on a paper towel and wiped until clean (using a cotton swab dipped in the acetone for stubborn spots). Probably a little more time consuming that soaking, but you can clean one in about 5 minutes that way. I'm doing one a day to keep the fumes minimal & will post pics next week.

Dinners for the Week

We tried two new recipes this week & both were winners!



► Chicken Florentine Pasta (pictured above) - I skipped the first half of this recipe & used cooked, shredded chicken instead (I always keep some in the freezer). This made it a very easy, 15 minute meal! The sauce was wonderful, and the spinach was subtle enough for picky eaters.

► Spicy Tuscan Soup (doubled to make 2 dinners) - I worried this would be a little too similar to our Sausage, Lentil, & Kale Stew since they both use sausage, kale, potato, and chicken bouillon. But the small changes made a big difference, and this delicious soup is definitely a keeper.

► Sandwiches on Onion Rolls - lunchmeat, cheese, toasted in the oven, with a side of roasted kale.

Translated Recipe - Hamster Bread

A looonnnng time ago I had plans to start translating Japanese recipes & posting them on here. I posted one soup and that was about it. My second translation ended up being an 'Indian' recipe, so I didn't bother posting it.  And then the move happened, and this cutie ended up sitting around for months unfinished ~

Ham & Raisin Hamster Bread (original found here)



Makes 5 rolls

(Bread ingredients) Substitutes are OK
Bread flour - 135g 
Wheat flour - 15g
Dry yeast - 3g
Milk - 1/3 cup
Salt - 1g
Sugar - 15g
Butter - 10g
Egg - 25g

(For the rest)
Roast ham - 3 slices
Raisin - 10 raisins
Nuts (almonds or walnut, etc.) - 5 nuts
Finishing touches - egg, as needed

1) Cut the slices of ham into 6 wedges (see original recipe for example picture). For each hamster you’ll use 3-4 wedges.

2) Put all of the bread ingredients except butter into a bowl & mix. Add the butter & stir well, kneading.

3) (Using the rising function on your oven?) Let the dough rise until doubled.

4) Remove 10g of dough for the ears & hands and divide into 5 pieces. Divide the leftover dough into 5 larger pieces and roll each into balls (see pic).

5) Spread out the dough and place the wedges of ham in the center (see pic). Wrap the edges shut to create a nice rounded triangle.

6) Cut the smaller balls into 2 larger & 2 smaller pieces (see pic). Roll the larger 2 into balls to create the ears, placing them at the top left & right of the head. Stretch the smaller two into into flat ovals.

7) Make 2 notches on one end of each flat oval. Press the nut into the center of the head and arrange the hands so they are holding the nut (use a little water to help it stick).

8) Line the hamsters on a baking sheet and allow to rise for another 30-40 minutes (with the oven’s rising function). Preheat your oven to 180C.

9) For the finishing touches, brush the top of each hamster with the egg mixture. On each hamster press in two raisins to create eyes and firmly press in the nuts again. Bake for 12 minutes.

-------

Let me know if there is any interest in translating more of these, or if you have any specific recipes or craft tutorials you'd like me to do.

Gradient Sea Stamping

This week I tried out lots of new things for my manicure! First, a gradient - fading from teal to dark blue. I used Orly "It's Up to Blue" for the teal and Color Club "Cold Metal" for the darker blue.

The easiest way to blend the colors in the center is with a make-up sponge. Of the best tutorials I've seen, one has you lay the polish out on a surface first & then sponge it on, while the other has you paint the polish directly onto the sponge. I'm not sure which method I prefer because apparently I picked a finicky polish for sponging!...

 The dark blue has a silvery sheen, and when I started sponging it looked as if the blue color was getting soaked up in the sponge, leaving only the silver behind! At that point I just started sponging the colors separately, doing whatever I could to make it look decent, and luckily any rough transitions were hid by the stamping. And wouldn't you know - when I put on topcoat the blue reappeared in the silvery sections anyway! (grumble, grumble)



The second thing I tried out were my new(ish) stamping plates! I bought the Cheeky 2012 Summer plates back in September, but didn't get a chance to use them for a while with all of the fun holidays back-to-back (being released in the summer, these plates don't have any winter holiday designs). I was a little worried because the one time I did try them - a tiny butterfly accent I was stamping on a friend's nail - we apparently picked a bum plate and I could not get a good stamp. But as you can see these plates work great! I used plate CH38 with Pure Ice "Silver Mercedes" for all the nails pictured here. I also accented the thumb, middle, and pinky nail with my new silver hex glitter from Born Pretty.



The best thing about these Cheeky plates - larger full nail patterns! Both my thumb and middle finger are too wide for the standard pattern size, so I'd pretty much given up on stamping full patterns until I could find something larger. These plates managed to mostly cover my gigantic thumbnail, leaving only the bottom tip bare (which I easily filled in). It was so nice to not have to worry so much about lining everything up precisely - I didn't re-do a single stamp.

These nails were inspired by a visiting friend who works at the Ga Aquarium and they were a hit! When she saw them she wanted her nails painted the same way. :)

Getting Things Done

Last week I had some lovely pelvic pain from the baby, did lots of cleaning for our weekend guests, and still managed to get a few things done ~

♦ Fixed my database! (been working on this for a few weeks)
♦ Filed all November & December orders away in newly working database
♦ De-seeded the Pomegranate from Christmas (I think the oranges are beyond hope now)
♦ Sold 2 things on eBay
♦ Added a note on my site saying I am closing shop in May!
♦ Ordered a new baby monitor
♦ Joined a small group at our church (a chance to meet people in our new town)
♦ Signed up to volunteer with the toddlers at church
♦ Figured out my new fabric steamer & de-wrinkled all of our curtains
♦ Assigned both of our moms their own ringtones
♦ Hung a dark sheet over Orson's window & got him napping regularly again!
♦ Tried 2 new recipes from my Pinterest

By the way, if you ever wonder why something kind of silly made it on this list, it's because I've been bugging myself to do it for weeks, maybe months. Sometimes we put off the simplest things!!


And here is a picture to go along with last week's post. This is what happens to toddlers that go days & days without napping - they get trapped in their beds!



He stayed in there but still did not sleep somehow. But you'll see above that we figured out he'll still conk out if the room is dark enough. Thank goodness for nap time!!

Dinners for the Week

Last week we tried 2 new recipes! (the first & last listed below)

► Beef Tips in Mushroom Sauce over egg noodles with roasted kale (2 dinners) - I was really in the mood for beef with a rich, brown mushroom sauce after seeing this recipe, but after reading the ingredients I quickly realized that one was going to look nothing like the picture. Cream of mushroom soup (white) + onion soup mix + can of Sprite? It might end up tasty, but for a nice brown sauce I was going to need to look elsewhere.

I picked the recipe linked in the title and the sauce was dark and tasty, but it was so thin it did not cling to the noodles at all. After dinner I added cornstarch to thicken it up more for the leftovers (haven't tried those yet). I felt like the directions needed a little tweaking, but nothing major.

Go figure - our toddler wolfed down the kale & wouldn't touch anything else! And look how tempting the steak & mushrooms are (pre-sauce) ~



► Asian BBQ Chicken & rice mixed with Asian veggies (2 dinners) - This time we made the chicken in the oven, and it was not as pretty as when it is grilled, but still delicious! On the side I took some Asian veggies (shredded savoy cabbage, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, green onion, and matchstick carrots), cooked them for a few minutes in a pan and then mixed them together with rice. I made another batch of the marinade & drizzled a little over the finished chicken and the rice mixture.

► Chicken Cobbler Casserole (2 dinners) - We made our normal changes of doubling the bread and 1.5 times the bread coating. (I also left out the wine this time because of the pregnancy)

And for lunches I tried ~

► Asian Chicken Salad - This was good, but not something I’m going to find myself craving. Once I mixed everything up it just didn’t look that appetizing to me, but I’m not fan of many salads. I topped it with my Savory Miso Dressing, incredible as always, and did make a fair amount of minor changes to the recipe (used cooked, shredded chicken mixed with half of the marinade, no cilantro, half of the carrots & edamame, sunflower seeds instead of almonds).

Purple Potion with Square Stud Nails (Skittle)

I bought a new purple polish, after lots of looking around in stores & online. It is surprisingly hard to find a purple that is not too blue or too red, too light or dark, and is opaque in a few coats. (This is at least my third or fourth bottle!)

This time I chose Sally Hansen X-treme Wear in “Purple Potion” (#350). It’s a red-tinted purple with a blue shimmer that definitely shifts the color in different lighting between a reddish or a blueish purple. Application was a little splotchy, but once again the X-treme Wear lives up to it’s name - a whole week and I’ve still had no major chips!





I dressed the polish up with some silver square studs that I got for Christmas from Born Pretty Store, a different design on each nail (the nails girls call that a 'Skittle' manicure). These were a lot of fun to work with & very easy to apply - just put a layer of top coat on your nail then dip the end of a toothpick in the top coat to pick up the tiny studs. Position them where you want & then coat the whole thing with some more top coat to seal them in when you are done.

These studs add a lot to your manicure with little effort, and you can even re-use them later. I do wish mine had the nice X shape across them that you see on the site - mine were definitely a lot smoother which made them look more like blingy diamonds than a fun punk look. And you are definitely going to have to replace some along the way. I lost about 1-4 a day, but they are so easy to re-apply I did not mind at all. The stud at the tip of my middle finger was the only repeat offender, constantly falling off. As much as I love the look of the line I don’t think I’ll be using that for a full manicure!

Getting Things Done

Ever since the move I've been thinking a lot about organizing & de-cluttering, but not doing a great deal of it. Sure, we got things mostly set up to make it livable, but there are so many boxes still floating around, things that haven't found homes yet. (I can't believe the move was 6 months ago. How is that possible?) A lot of that is waiting on new shelving, but there is definitely stuff that can be done meanwhile.

Since New Years I have been inspired by all of the resolutions and by an LJ friend who is getting rid of 20 items a day for 100 days. I've been looking around and really noticing the random things shoved on shelves, the things that I've been meaning to fix for months, the things that we really just need to throw out. I haven't overhauled a whole room or anything, but I have been tackling one small thing after another this week & they are already starting to add up!

I decided to post a list of accomplishments from the week here to hopefully inspire others as well. I am not listing all of the mundane stuff that I constantly have to keep up with - laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, etc. - but the random tasks that are so easy to overlook or put off until later. This week I...

♦ Organized all of my nail art supplies into a new make-up bag
♦ Gathered up the various things I want to list for sale on eBay into one bag
♦ Cleaned off my desk - lots of recycling, filing, & organizing
♦ Read through & recycled 4 old magazines
♦ Tossed the bottle of lotion from my purse (Justin hates the smell, I'm not fond either)
♦ Cleaned out the fridge & dumped 15 things
♦ Glued 3 broken ceramics & a ring
♦ Finished putting together Orson's 2011 photo book (yikes!)
♦ Bought a new toddler bed for Orson from Craigslist
♦ Managed to block off the open side of the new bed with 2 bumpers after several days of no napping (kept him in there, but still no nap)
♦ Recycled 3 boxes from Christmas gifts
♦ Dumped sweets left from Christmas, washed & put away tins
♦ Sent out Thank You cards for Orson's gifts
♦ Organized the junk drawer



I also managed to try quite a few new things from Pinterest!

♦ Made a glitter jar for Orson
♦ Tried 4 new recipes. I even took photos!
♦ Tried rubbing a walnut over scratches in wood furniture to hide them. (It did darken them, but not enough to match the dark cherry finish)


I hope to keep up the good work, but realize most weeks are probably not going to be too impressive. And that is OK! As long as I keeping pushing myself a little each week, every little bit counts.

Dinners for the Week

Last week we tried *4* new recipes! I must have added a lot to Pinterest lately, because there were so many I wanted to try. Normally I would have doubled one of these to make 2 dinners, but since we were already making 2 dinners with crescent rolls we thought that would be a bit much!



► French Dip Crescents with black eyed peas (pictured above) - These were incredible! Definitely the stand out star of the bunch. I split the recipe to make 8 rolls & we made a dinner out of them, but they would also make great appetizers. The only problem I had was the sauce, which all boiled away when I wasn't watching, but I poured in 1 cup of water at the end and we had plenty for dipping (and a lot left over). Easy & very tasty!

► Soy & Br. Sugar Marinated Salmon with roasted green beans - This marinade added a nice flavor, but I was really hoping for more of a thicker, sticky sauce. It was a bit too subtle for me. I’ll keep looking! (The green beans we’ve made many times - tasty as always.)

► Crescent Chicken with mashed potatoes & green peas (pictured below) - This was good, but did not ‘wow’ me. I liked their idea of using the leftover sauce over mashed potatoes, but when we ate it I wished I had saved the sauce for the chicken instead. The fillings were also hard to fit into the crescents, so I don’t think I’ll make this one again.



► Hamburgers & tater tots (2 dinners)


And for lunch I tried ~
► Chicken Mei Fun - A great starter recipes, but I’ll be making some tweaks next time! I used a 6+ oz. bag of the noodles instead of the 8 oz. it called for & still thought there were be too many noodles when I first tried some. Once I divided it up for lunches it did seem a little more balanced though (I was able to divide up the noodles & the topping separately). I liked the idea of soaking the noodles in hot water to cook them while stir-frying the other ingredients, but even after adding another batch of hot water my noodles were undercooked. I’ll either use boiling water to start with next time or just cook them like normal.

5 months

As of yesterday I am five months pregnant! I meant to take a pic at 4.5 months too, the halfway point, but the longer I waited the closer we got to five anyway. Oh well!



And just for fun, here is the pic from 5 months last time. I even pulled out the same shirt for my new pic, though it's hard to tell since the silver stripes have all worn off! (How does that happen?)

Layla Silver Holo Polish

One of the nail polishes I got for Christmas was Layla Hologram Effect in "Mercury Twilight", a sparkly silver with a strong holo. I looked through pics of many silver holos to choose my favorite & have wanted this one for a while.

Unfortunately under most lighting you get a faint rainbow flash. You can barely see it on the middle nail here ~



Under bright lights & in the sunshine you get a much stronger rainbow. It was cloudy all week so I couldn't test out the sun, but it did look lovely under the bright light in our shower.



Holos are hard to capture, so you'll have to trust me that it was a lot more like the middle nail above. (Or do a Google search to see how pretty it can be)



Wear time ~

Holos are known to chip easily - I was a little worried when I saw one girl complaining hers began chippping after 3 hours! But you just need to know a trick to make them last as long as any polish - the top coat sandwich...

Top coats add durability, but they dull the rainbow effect of holos. Instead of skipping it all together, put down a coat or two of the holo, then your top coat, and finish off with more holo. (This works well to add durability under a matte topcoat as well)

I painted my left hand first this way and had to use four coats total of the holo polish. I started thinking, if I'm dulling the bottom layers anyway, why not just start with a normal silver polish first? On my right hand I used two coast of a shimmery silver, the top coat, and then finished with two coats of holo. You could not tell the difference at all, so this is a great way to save money using half of much of the pricey holo! And the wear time was even a little better - the all-holo hand got a few light chips on day 2 & 3 and then I did not have another chip until day 6! (this time on the mixed hand)

Dinners for the Week

Last week we made ~

► Frozen fish fillets with wild rice & roasted Brussels sprouts

► Chicken Taco Soup (2 dinners) - Hadn't made this one in a while - Orson loved it!

And I tried one new recipe ~

► Mushroom Lasagna with Béchemel sauce (2 dinners) - I based the meal on this recipe, but with quite a few changes. Mainly we halved the recipe & used fewer varieties of mushrooms - I used 8 oz. Bella, 8 oz. White, 4 oz. Shitake, and added 2.5 cups of cooked, shredded turkey.

This ended up being one of those recipes that takes longer to prepare than I expected (even with a generous estimate of time), and then we weren't that impressed with the results. It seemed so promising! I was drooling over the bowl of grilled onions, mushrooms, and turkey ~



And I usually love creamy white sauces! This one even has minced mushrooms & herbs mixed in.



I was expecting something rich & cheesy, more like Martha's Chicken Tetrazzini sauce, or maybe the Mornay sauce I made long ago, but this one ended up being a little bland & unimpressive.

As was the presentation! Not that I expect casseroles to be pretty on the plate, but this one had an interesting layering technique that was supposed to result in pretty slices. You lay down the noodles side-by-side, not overlapping, and then stack the additional layers on top of those. When it is time to serve you just cut across the noodles & can lift out a neat little serving with the ruffly noodle edges running down each side! Supposedly.



Apparently our noodles lost all their ruffle! You can barely see a curl. Oh well - I'm more interested in the taste, but this one was forgettable enough (yet labor intensive) that I don't think I'll be making again.

2012 Summary

Wow, 2012. That was a year I am not sad to see end!

Throughout the year one disaster after another happened to the majority of our electronics ~
♦ Our video camera died
♦ Our expensive printer died (from using the name brand ink!)
♦ The power switch on my computer malfunctioned (luckily we fixed it)
♦ Justin fried my cell phone in the pool
♦ My expensive camera was stolen
♦ Our laptop stopped holding a charge & the power cord broke (it’s barely holding on)
♦ Justin dropped his cell phone in the creek
♦ All of the electronics in our car, including the headlights, were fried from Orson shoving pennies in the CD player (Justin finally got everything fixed!)
♦ The air conditioning & heat at our new house has gone out more times than I can count (luckily we are renting & not paying for the fixes)

And I’m probably forgetting a few more! It’s a miracle our TV made it out alive.

Around the same time all of this started we found out I was pregnant but had a miscarriage a couple of weeks later. During this I had the worst tooth pain ever and both me & the dentist were convinced I had an abscessed tooth that needed to be pulled (which could not be done for weeks, until I was in the 2nd trimester, and no one could give me anything for the pain). Luckily I realized it was actually a terrible sinus infection putting pressure on my jaw & was able to clear it up with some steam, a neti pot, and some antibiotics. (No decongestants when you’re pregnant!)

Throughout all of this I kept my sanity looking forward to the next school year. We were on a very tight budget but Justin was planning on spending the summer looking for a new teaching job at a public school, which would come with a much higher pay. We were ready for a change, ready to get out of our old town, looking forward to not worrying about money so much, and I knew that was our only hope of replacing some of the bigger items listed above! Unfortunately months went by with no offers & no news.


Finally our luck shifted! At the end of the summer Justin finished up the last class for his Masters & the next day was called in for an interview in our top-choice school system! He got the job & we suddenly had about 2-3 weeks to find a place & move. We upgraded from an apartment to an awesome rental house with tons of room & were even able to settle in for a couple of weeks before Justin started work.

A few months later we found out I was pregnant again! The timing was perfect - the baby was due at the end of the school year and I’d have Justin at home with the newborn for nearly 3 months! After a little bit of bleeding and a negative doctor’s appointment we were convinced we’d lost this one as well, but it was an unnecessary scare - we are halfway through the pregnancy now & doing fine! We just found out we are having a little girl. I did spend the month of November in a zombie-like funk from another bad sinus infection (must be a pregnancy thing!) but we ended the year on a high note when, after months of working & waiting, Justin was finally approved for a very high paying fellowship!

We are looking forward to 2013 - enjoying the new job, new house, new town, and new baby! It looks like we’ll finally be able to get a 2nd car and I’ll be able to stay at home with our two little ones *without working*!! (Working at home with a toddler has been insane - I can’t imagine it would be possible with two!) Assuming we don’t have another colicky baby it should be a pretty good year indeed!

Peppermint Nails

A little belated, but here are the nails I wore for Christmas!



I've known for a while I wanted to do peppermint stripes for the holidays, but I'm picky. I didn't want the stripes to all be the same size, they had to be large & small like a candy cane. And the free-handed designs I saw were too messy (and too hard to do on my right hand!), I wanted the lines to be super crisp.

To create these nails I first painted my nails with China Glaze "Ruby Pumps", a lovely sparkly red. Then I laid down two lines of (super thin) nail striping tape & regular tape around that, painted the white with Milani "White on the Spot", and removed the tape. (This created the three white lines, thick-thin-thick) Getting the spacing just right was a little tricky, but I got the hang of it after a few tries.

Unfortunately I didn't have any tape the width of the thicker red lines, so I just had to wait for that section of white to dry & then filled in the outer edges the same way later on. I kept messing things up by getting impatient & taping over the white areas too soon - you really just want to leave it alone for a few hours!

2012 in Pictures

At the end of the year I like to round up a favorite picture from each month. Unfortunately this time I kind of gave up on taking pictures the 2nd half of the year with the loss of our nice camera, so we are left with only nails to look at. Whoops!

You'll be happy to hear that we should finally be replacing the camera in February if not sooner, so you won't have to listen to me whine about it any more! ;) Next year should be full of pretty food pics, a few baby shots, and maybe even the occasional craft.