Konad!!

I just ordered some Konad nail stamping supplies & am so excited! They should be getting here next week, but meanwhile I thought I would share what I learned about the supplies & show you what I ordered.

First off, here are the two plates I picked to start with ~



I had to have the houndstooth print you can see on the bottom left (M63) and thought the other plate had a nice mix of full nail designs (the rectangles) and little accents to play around with (M51).

Basically you fill the design in with polish, scrape off the excess, then you can stamp the design on your nails! There are a *ton* of plates with several designs on each & they run about $5 each. (There are also a lot of off brands that are cheaper, more on that later) I got these on Amazon from Venus.Online (free shipping!).


I also got a double sided stamper, with scraper, and the Konad Special White & Special Black polish (from loveotc on Amazon, also free shipping) ~



Now, you do *not* have to buy Konad polish, most thick or metallic polishes will give you a good print. But I heard a lot of good things about their white & black and know those colors can run pretty thin & I will be using them a lot. I found this really great tutorial that talks about a good substitute white & black and shows a side-by-side comparison, starting at the 3:30 mark ~



In the first part of the video she basically just says you may want to stamp with your hand flat on the table or up in the air, whatever works best for you, and to practice. (She also names the base color she's wearing and the # of the disk, but that is about it) The rest of the video is great & you get to see lots of examples of the stamping & tips, but it is pretty long!

I also checked out the Part 1 video and about 1:00 in she does a nice comparison of the Konad plates with the main off brand, Bundle Monster (a "Faux-nad", haha), which are a little cheaper & lower quality but pretty comparable. It does not look like she made Part 3 yet.

So ~ everything ran about $5 each so I ended up spending around $25 (yay, Amazon gift cards!), but you could definitely ditch the polish and start off with a stamper & one plate for $10. Are you excited yet? Unfortunately my nails are have been peeling really bad lately & so I had to cut them down pretty short ~ this is not the best time for me to order nail supplies, but I'm sure I'll have fun playing with them anyway!

Reading

The last couple of weeks I've had my nose buried in a book!

I wanted something I could do while I was sitting around watching Orson. He'll play intently by himself for long periods of time, as long as I'm nearby, but will not tolerate much computer use. We also go outside for 30 minutes to an hour most days and I'll often find myself sitting on a bench with nothing to do for most of it (while he plays). So I decided to start carrying a book around with me and have since gone through about 4.5 in 2 weeks!

Granted, a lot of them have been young adult/children's novels. After reading an Asimov book and my first from the Discworld series I grabbed "Ella Enchanted", "Princess Diaries", and "Stardust" - all of which I had heard were *so* much better than the movies. While I normally agree with that sentiment, I have to say that in these three cases I'm pretty neutral. Different? Yes, but not really better or worse.

I am enjoying the books greatly, but they do have a downside. I was only looking for something to fill the Orson downtime during the day, yet I get so interested in the stories that I spend my little free time in the evening reading as well. My normal hobbies are suffering! I need to keep reminding myself to save my evenings for blogs and Japanese study and other things.

Any sci-fi/fantasy recommendations?

Spaetzle

This week I decided to make Spaetzle, just for fun! I mentioned it when we were planning dinners for the week & Justin veto-ed it, thinking it would be too complex, but I couldn't get it off my mind.

Spaetzle is a German side dish, like an eggy noodle with very irregular shapes. We tried it on our last anniversary at a German restaurant & I loved it... although I wonder how much of that had to do with the delicious gravy that topped it?

I'd been eyeing this recipe for a while and decided to make a half batch of that along with this gravy recipe. It was pretty easy to make - you mix the dough ahead of time, chill it for at least an hour, and then push it through the holes of a colander into a boiling pot of water (I didn't have any problems with the steam). Let it boil 2-3 minutes and then remove the noodles into an ice bath, drain & eat.



I did, however, end up with *very* wet, soft noodles. Not a far cry from scrambled eggs. I tried some with the gravy (which was very good) and decided they definitely needed some of the pan-frying she mentions to stiffen them up a bit. It took a long time for my soggy noodles to brown up but it did improve the texture. (Still not quite right though)



There were a couple of small goofs that I made that might have caused the problems - 1) I let my batter sit an hour but forgot to actually chill it. I think this would have made the dough stiffer going into the water & I'm sure the finished product would also be a little different. 2) I let the ice bath warm up too much. I should have added more ice along the way because the noodles warmed it up a lot. As I was removing the noodles I noticed the water was not cold at all anymore, so they were probably overcooked (not as firm). 3) I think the water level was too high, too close to the bottom of the colander. This did not give the noodles far to fall, which is why I think I ended up with little balls rather than longer shapes.

Next time I'll make sure to fix those and also think I'll use a different recipe with less eggs. In the recipe she mentioned trying two versions - a more traditional recipe and one with more eggs - and that she liked the egg version better. Since this reminded me too much of scrabbled eggs I'd like to go the more traditional route. I may just follow the ratios posted with the gravy recipe, or maybe I'll see what Martha has to offer.

Have you ever had Spaetzle? Ever considered making it?

Asian Lettuce Wraps

Here is a recipe I've been working on for a *long time* girls, so I hope you give it a try! After many trials & tweaks I think it's ready to share.

Asian Lettuce Wraps


Have you ever eaten or made lettuce wraps before? I've had them a few times & they are tasty but always end up dripping sauce down my arm. And if you make them at home it is no fun trying to pry apart the leaves of Iceburg lettuce into usable pieces - it tears so easily! (our grocery store doesn't carry any fancy alternatives)

I decided to take a few aspects from different recipes we'd tried to try to create the perfect wrap - taking the healthy fillers from one, the tasty sauce from another, and the idea for using Romaine from a third. After adding a few extra tweaks to get rid of the drippy-ness, we have a winner!

Winter 8x10s

I switched out the decorations in our 8x10 frames pretty close to Christmas, so I wanted to do something that could easily work for 'winter' decorations afterward. Here they are before Christmas ~



The center column uses my "Christmas" ambigram & a drawing I did a few years ago. After Christmas I switched the center column with more snowflakes ~



I actually used 3 colors of blue paper for the backgrounds (the four corners are a different shade) but you can not tell at all in person. I blame our dim lighting!

I always enjoy making paper snowflakes for Christmas & they look even prettier framed! Here you can find my tutorial for cutting snowflakes from a few years ago. It's been very popular!

Late, late...

No time like the middle of January to post Christmas foods, right? Ah well, I think I've given up on punctuality for now. Usually I have a lull in orders right after the holiday but not this year! Not a bad thing, just busy.



We cooked one meal while we were staying over at Justin's parents' this Christmas & decided to try out a new recipe ~ a spaghetti casserole with cream cheese & topped with french onions! It was really delicious, we even made it again this week. (We did ditch the green bell peppers, but that was just my preference & they would work well if you like them.) You must try it!



We also brought a dessert we'd whipped up at home ~ some Jell-o with a fun stained glass, mosaic kind of look. I got the idea from my favorite food blog here & used some pretty Christmas colors.



They really did turn out just like the pictures & were pretty easy to make, but I don't know... they just didn't have that 'ooh' factor I was hoping for? I can't really explain why. A block by itself was rather pretty, but I couldn't figure out how to arrange a jiggly tower nicely on a platter. And I was expecting more of a cream-sicle taste from the addition of the sweetened condensed milk, but it really just tasted like straight Jell-o. I'm not sure that I would make it again, but it was fun to try.

2011 in Pictures

And just for fun....