Manicure Monday : New Years

I am going to go to my friend's house tonight for New Years. She actually told me there is a 'no sequin' rule. I am not sure that I will be following it though... We will see.

I am not that impressed with my nails. The 2013 is good, but the paint drip thing- not the best, and it wasn't completely dry by the time I showered, so it smushed and I had to re-flatten it.

In other news, my resolutions for the year were simple: paint an accent nail every time I paint them (failed on this the week of Christmas, and Thanksgiving), wear earrings everyday- I did improve over last year at least, and the last one was to try, on average one new recipe per week. Which I did. I had started out the year by posting them on the facepage, but then my mate's aunt seemed to think we were in competition, which took the fun out of it. But based on photos I have on my phone, and recipes I remember, I made about 54 new recipes. So, that was successful! :)

I am still working on resolutions for 2013, have you figured out yours? Please share!!

Manicure Monday : Steal My Heart

Well, I went to the Dentist today. That was fun.  I haven't been to the dentist in 4 or so years.  I have cavities. Too many.  And I need to schedule to have a deep cleaning instead of just a regular 6 month check up cleaning.  So that will be more fun.

My little nephew also had surgery today.  He had his tonsils and adenoids removed, and his tubes replaced.  He is 2.5 years old. He seemed okay when I visited him, we watch some Madagascar 3, and played with his dinosaurs, and I brought some coloring pages.  He should be fine, other than eating soft, like, runny foods for 10 days.  Poor kid, and over the holidays too.  I am watching him on Saturday as his dad is going out the night before, and won't necessarily be in baby watching condition while my sister is at work.

Either way, for this fun filled day, I painted the nails with a steel gray polish, and painted an itty bitty heart on my accent nail.

Do you have any plans for the holidays?  Christmas is next week already!

Fast Food Breakfast - At Home!

The hubster went holiday shopping last night, and decided to swing through the grocery store. Which is nice, but he went without a list, or an idea of what he wanted to eat for the week. We have proteins, but need the sides, and other items to make it into a meal. He sees that we need food.

I re-arranged the fridge after he through his haul in there, and saw he picked up some Kraft single slices, in addition to 3 packs of cheddar slices. Clearly he is in love with cheese.

I woke up this morning, and turned on my CBS Sunday Morning, I think they adequately covered the school shooting, wasn't appreciative of their choice about needing to ban all the guns.. But we are allowed to have our own opinions. I was hungry and remembered that I had a package a Everything Bagels in the fridge that I bought a week or so ago because I wanted one. And thought- hey he bought some ham luncheon meat, and those Kraft singles- PERFECT for a breakfast bagel sandwich!!

Once the hubster crawled out of bed, I asked if it interested him, he said yes, so I hopped to it! He eats about double what I do, so I doubled his meat. We got lucky, because there were only 2 eggs in the fridge. Not really sure what we are going to eat for the week.. guess I will put him on meal plan duty for the week.

Do you and your mate have a similar problem?

I fried up a couple of eggs in a silicone egg mold, and fried up some ham slices, unwrapped some kraft singles and put it all on toasted, buttered bagels, sprinkled a little garlic powder and ¡VIOLA! Magic fast food breakfast!

Manicure Monday : Christmas Tree

For this week, I decided to try out the Christmas tree thing that I've seen a fair amount on Pintrest.

Mine didn't turn out as cute as some of the others I have seen, but, they are all right.

Just a few more weeks left of this year, and this is probably one of the only New Year's resolutions I have kept.

The other one that I may have kept, is to try a new recipe once a week, which would be 52 recipes..
I will have to go through my phone photos to see if I did it.. I might have though.. :)

Manicure Monday : Snowman!

My finger nails aren't very long right now. I had originally wanted to have a 3 ball snowman, but he looks okay with just the two.

I used some if those nail art metal sticks. I bought them on eBay some time ago. They seem to work pretty decent.

Before the sticks, I would use a dried out pen, or a toothpick. It's kind of nice to have the metal ones though.

Hope you like!

Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits!

I stumbled upon this recipe today, as I was wondering if I should make regular biscuits or something more super fantastic with our Pot Roast made in the crock pot.

I took a poll on the face page, and consensus was that I should make the cheddar bay off the Internet.

They were actually pretty close. I am sure if I had the required amount of Bisquick, or cheddar, they would have been spot on!

Here is the link!

Have you ever made a copy cat recipe and it turn out fantastic?
Do tell!!

Poor Man's Pad Thai

I love peanut butter.  I actually quite enjoy Ramen Noodles.  They are super cheap. And completely unhealthy.  I never had to live on Ramen, I lived at home through college. Both times that I went full time.

Chicken flavor is my favorite.  I tried one a couple weeks ago that was a spicy shrimp or something, it was good too.

But anyways, I saw a pin on the Pintrest.  Peanut Butter, Sriracha Sauce, and Ramen?!  WHAT!  That is out of this world! I had to try it.  So I did, and I have been eating it probably 1-2 times a week, for the past month.

Here is my delicious concoction.  Mind you, this is purely my preference/flavor combo for eating.

So, basically you make your Ramen, drain out about half the water, add 2 tablespoons of peanut butter (not organic, I tried that, it wasn't good). And add 2 tablespoons of Sriracha sauce. Or if you don't like it so hot, start with less, and increase to your liking.  They say you can use chunky peanut butter, I have also tried that, it didn't really do anything for me.  I posted the reicpe on my Recipe page, if you want it without all my posty stuff, check out the other stuff there too!

Once you have eaten all of your noodles, slurp, yes, slurp all of your delicious noodle water juices.  I LOVE that part.

Have you tried a weird flavor combination that was a little questionable at first?

Manicure Monday : Snowflake!

It snowed on Thanksgiving, and it has been cold enough for it to stay around.

I painted a base of Nicole by OPI's Party in the Penthouse, and used a toothpick to draw the snowflake with OPI's Rinse Charming. I was bored, so I ended up adding a line to the cuticle area too!

Finished it off with Seche top coat, and wah-la! Pretty nails!

Turkey Day 5K!

First off, Happy Thanksgiving!  My most favorite holiday of the year!

So, my running friend D and I have done the Turkey Day 5K for 2 years I think?  For sure last year, but I think the year prior as well, I could go through my closet with the pile of Race T's if I wanted, but I am not at home.



Our T-shirts and my personalized bib!

At any rate.  We did it, our 5K. Finished, I think she did better than usual, or I did worse? I didn't have my inhaler (that's my excuse), and neither of us really know when either of us finished. We both donated a bag of food, and once it was done, I zoomed home, and took a shower, and now we are headed north to have dinner and spend the night at my grandparent's house.  A two and a half hour drive, that I wish was quicker.

Turkey Day 5K, 2012

Hope you have a great Thanksgiving with your family, and you enjoy the fellowship around the table!

Manicure Monday : Maroon and Gold

Hello!
It's Thanksgiving this week!  I LOVE Thanksgiving.  It is my most favorite holiday of the year! Everyone gets together, they eat a bunch of food, and then they just hang out.  There is no giving or receiving of gifts, just people hanging out, engaging in fellowship with one another.

I painted my nails with Thanksgiving in mind, and I decided to do a maroon and gold look.

I am not going to lie, it is really similar to my black cherry and gold manicure I did back in September, but I swear it's not the same, it's a little different.

I painted all my nails with the exception of my ring finger maroon, and painted my ring finger gold.  Then I followed up with gold glitter on the tips, doing a little big of a gradient on them, and then I did all over gold glitter on the gold nail.  Sealed it in with a top coat, and viola! We have a manicure people.

What is your favorite Holiday?

Manicure Monday : French Tips!

I got Married on Saturday! But on Friday night as we were running around we still needed to get our nails done, and a spray tan.
Thankfully we found a place at 7:45pm that would take us for mani/pedis.

I got a gel french manicure with a rhinestone, pretty traditional.

We will see how long it lasts!

Update: It lasted like a week, and then I started chipping it off, which was a bad idea.  It tore off little layers of my nails, and they needed a lot of nail TLC.

Manicure Monday : Teal Sparkle!

Sometimes when my nail polish matches my shirt and even other clothes that no one can see, it really does make me feel like I have my sh*t together. Even if it is for that moment that I realize it.

I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way, right? :)

Detox!

So, I tried a juice/fruit only detox. To cleanse the system.

It was supposed to go for 5 days.
I gave up after 48 hours(including sleeping hours).

It was nasty. There was a gross tea, and a DISGUSTING banana flavored protein shake.

This morning I couldn't drink all of either servings. My body was rejecting it (literally).

Hopefully the colon got what it needed, not a full rest, but really, the best I could do.

I will say, I did eat 4 apples, 3 clementines, around 4 cups of grapes, 2 cups of mango, and few glasses of juice and water.

Hopefully I got enough antioxidants in my system.

Still have a bunch of fresh strawberries, pineapple, mangos, apples, grapefruit, clementines, grapes and 5 different juices- including prune- gonna have to incorporate those fully so they don't go to waste... :)

The photo doesn't look like a lot, but when your body is fighting to get it down..

Have you ever tried a detox? Did you make it through it? Any suggestions on a better one?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween out there! 

As an adult, I like it more, but usually just for the Halloween Parties!  The ones I attend, generally have a lot of alcohol.

This party, however, was for work, and I needed to bring something appropriate.  One Pot Luck item that I enjoy the most, is Spinach dip and Hawaiian Rolls.  Super simple, and people will generally eat it all gone.  Today was no different.

I bought the rolls, and cut them up into squares, and then I came up with brilliant idea to use a French roll as the body for a mummy, and then you could dip into his stomach!  I couldn't get the head idea to work out well, I chopped it up, but I never cut all the way through, so there was the opportunity to salvage it!!

I took 5 connected paper towels and cut them into long strips, and used those as the strips around him, and just colored with permanent marker for the eyes.  I think he turned out pretty good.

Spinach Mummy Dip

To help me get in the Halloween Spirit, with out dressing up, I cut up my fiance's shirt, based on something I saw on Pintrest.  He wasn't the most thrilled, but I bought him a package of muscle shirts last week, and this was an old one that had a tiny hole in it anyway.  Boys can be such babies.

I wore the muscle shirt over a black button down, the front I left plain, and just wore some long heavy black and silver necklaces. I didn't take a good photo of my hair, or make up, but the hair was pinned in a kind of a mohawk fashion, and I had heavy black eye makeup on.  It was a little interesting when one of my boss' (yes, I have two. It's super fun - not.) came by and was 'Whoa.. I am going to have to get used to this look.'

Here is a photo of my shirt from the back:

Aside from the bad blurry photo, you can kind of see my wedding dress hanging in a long clear bag, it has an apron over it so, even if the fiance does happen to come into my dressing room, he can't see the top, or really any of the details of it.

What do you think of the dip or the shirt?  I could have probably done a little better, if I wasn't already late heading out of the door, and cutting last minute.

Do you do anything, as an adult without children for holidays?  I would love to hear below!

Manicure Monday : Spooky Eyes

It's the week of Halloween!

And with that in mind, I painted my nails black, I had seen on Pintrest these cute little googly eyed guys, and I knew I wanted to recreate them!  The original pin was from the Icy Nails blog.

It's pretty basic.  Use a pen/pencil/toothpick, or anything with a tip, and put a large dot of the white. Once that is dry, then go back with a smaller tipped item, and put a little black dot on it to make the pupil.  Then, seal it with a topcoat!

Hope you enjoyed. Check out Icy Nails' blog, and if you tried it, let me know! I would love to share your photos!

Manicure Monday : Purple Glitter

Hello Hello Hello!!!
It.
             is
                           Monday!!

Are you ready for this?! No? 

Well, you better get off my page man.

So, today we are sporting a fantastic purple manicure, with a fantastic glitter polish, looking pretty snazzy, right?!

Hope you like it!!

Bachelorette Party!

I am officially down to the very last month of my engagement. Yes, my short engagement that has lasted, a little over a month. (more about that here.)

And so, in keeping with tradition (because I am completely traditional) my sister suggested a Zombie Pub Crawl!

In her mind/idea she thought we would all dress up as brides, in my mind, I would dress up as a bride, and everyone else would have brides' maid dresses on.  I couldn't find a bride's dress at any of my favorite thrift shops, and ended up wearing a more brides maid dress.  Little sister wore a white summer type dress, and her friend (well, a family friend really)- wore one of her older sister's wedding dresses. 

I made a Zesty Italian Crock-Pot Chicken, I found it through Pintrest, but here is a direct link to the blog I pinned it from.  It was easy to make, I used 6 breasts instead of 4, and put the raw chicken in the freezer for about 20 minutes and pulled it out, cut it up into 1/2 cubes, and followed it the rest of the way.  I made bow tie pasta like the blogger did as well.  It fed us all, and there were leftovers too.  There were a couple of dips, and crackers and veggies out too.  But this was the main bit of sustenance for us all.  From what I remember, it was pretty tasty!  I would make it again, I think I would add a little milk at the end to make it a little runnier, but, well, I had a lot of 'Pimp Juice' by the time it was ready, and wasn't the best hostest at that time.

Little sister's friend made what she called 'Pimp Juice' and brought that.  Well, let me just tell you.  I don't remember much.  I do know the Fiance drove 4 of us down and we jumped out, and one of my best friends drove and brought 3 with her.

I also remember that I biffed it off a curb, (to my defense, it was dark, and the curb was curved, everyone was waiting to board buses to leave Zombie Island, and I didn't see that I was halfway on/off the curb), I also remember, that at the end of the night, we were trying to get a cab, a van pulled up, people piled out, and I was like, c'mon ladies, I got us a cab, and the lady in the van, looks at me and was pissed, and said - 'Get out of my van, this is not a taxi!'  I am a happy friendly drunk, and was like - 'Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry.' And then started in to my reasoning why I jumped in, as my sister and friend pulled me out.

Either way, here is a photo of our un-dead crew.  As you can see, we had a pretty good drinking crew.

The 'Un-Dead'

This is a picture of my two best friends at Zombie Island, and myself on the right.  The girl in the middle and a better photo of her in the lower right, she did all of our scabs. She did a really good job.  :)

Oh, and the most annoying thing of the night?  DMX didn't show up.  So rude, and they were the ones I really wanted to see. 

How was your Bachelorette Party?  Did you sit around and have high tea?  I am heading back to the couch to sleep the rest of this off.

*18NOV Update*
We set a world record that night!  Pulled from the Guinness Book of World Records site:

Record Title: Largest gathering of zombies

Attempt Text: The largest gathering of zombies involved 8,027 participants and was achieved by Zombie Pub Crawl (USA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on 13 October 2012.

Record Title: Largest gathering of zombies

Attempt Text: The largest gathering of zombies involved 8,027 participants and was achieved by Zombie Pub Crawl (USA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on 13 October 2012.

Record Title: Largest gathering of zombies

Attempt Text: The largest gathering of zombies involved 8,027 participants and was achieved by Zombie Pub Crawl (USA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on 13 October 2012.

Record Title: Largest gathering of zombies

Attempt Text: The largest gathering of zombies involved 8,027 participants and was achieved by Zombie Pub Crawl (USA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on 13 October 2012.

Record Title: Largest gathering of zombies
Attempt Text: The largest gathering of zombies involved 8,027 participants and was achieved by Zombie Pub Crawl (USA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on 13 October 2012.
And I think I read somewhere that DMX did show up, but really late, and I guess they were rude about how many white people were there.

TC10Mile, ugh.

First, let me start out with, that was dumb.

I hated it, just about every mile after 5.  I have completed the 10k, and I have finished plenty of 5K's.  But this one sucked butt.

For real.  Yes. I will never do a 10 Mile ever again.  I honestly haven't run that much since the 10K.  I completed the 10K and the 10Mile with the same lady, whom I greatly adore.  I also completed the Color Run in July with her too.

For the 10 Mile, we walked, jogged and walked some more.  From Minneapolis, to St. Paul.  No thanks, next time, I will just jump in my car, catch a bus, or take a cab if I ever need to get from the Metrodome to the State Capital.  For the record, it is also not the shortest distance to the Capital.  I am almost sure of that.

But, I completed it.

I also received my very first medal!! That was exciting too!!

And because my friend is such a good socializer (I am not) she scored us a couple of passes to the special Medtronic Tent.  After we finished, we grabbed our shirts, and our medals, and headed over to the tent for some refreshments, they had sandwiches, and water, coffee (it was darn cold - it was SUPER windy too) and we got some sacks to put our loot in.  While we were there, they awarded the 1st place for men's, women's, and Marathon runners.  Literally like 10 feet away from where we were standing, trying to soak up some sun. So that was kind of cool.

Here is a mash up of some of my photos - notice the hat? My gloves were in my pockets. 

And this is right before the finish line, like literally 30 yards before I was done. Ugh. Again, never will I ever do another 10 Mile.

Have you ever signed up for something that you perhaps should have prepared a little better for?

Bunny Butt Cake!

Today is my former neighbor's birthday party.  I used to be, I swear as creepy as it sounds, best friends with her when she was 3, and I was like 13.  So weird.  She turns 21 today.  This is also my Fiance's best friend's little sister.  His best friend is the reason why we met. Or well, more specifically, his best friend's parents are the reason why we met, since they bought the house there 20 years ago.. Or maybe I should thank my mom's parents for building said house 40 years ago?  Another day.

Today we celebrate her birthday.  She is a HUGE animal lover, has an indoor bunny rabbit, which she is madly in love with. Her rabbit is potty trained, and they have a liter box and every thing.

I had seen a bunny butt cake on Pintrest. A long time ago - you know, Easter time.  But I really wanted to make one!  And now I had a reason!

I pretty much followed the recipe directions on the Betty Crocker website.  I didn't use any marshmallows, I made muffins for the tail and feet.  I didn't do any ears for my bunny friend.  I used a bake and fill cake pan for the body.

To frost my friend, I slathered on the canned vanilla frosting, and just tapped it with a butter knife to make the peaks.  I took a little of the white frosting and tinted it pink with food coloring to make the feet.  I mean, the girl is turning 21, she should be drunk by the time I show up anyways.

What do you think?

As you can see, I probably should have done a crumb layer.  I also should have planned ahead, and decided to make this yesterday, so I could have picked up the eggs and frosting before 10am today.

I don't plan on staying at the party very late tonight, I have a 10Mile run tomorrow.  So, I will make an appearance, and head to bed at my dad's house, and get up at what.. 5 am?  ugh.  Why am I doing this tomorrow?!

Manicure Monday : Black Cherry and Gold

This week, we are going Black Cherry and Gold Glitter Gradient.

I talked in a previous post about how to do the gradient, you can find that post here.

It's a pretty easy technique, and not too difficult.  I do hope you try it sometime for yourself sometime soon(and also that you share a photo with me of your handy work, and I will post it)!