Vacation!!!

Hey all! So I promise I am not being a blog slacker. I've been relaxing and the only place I have Internet is down in the lobby. Which doesn't mesh well with my constant sun time. Haha. But today I am not laying out. Even with sunscreen I have successfully gotten some nice burns. My thighs are not happy with me. I have learned I will need to reapply like every 30 minutes, being a pasty Oregonian sucks! Anyways, Anaheim has been really fun. Lots of outside time. Today I walked over to downtown Disney and found the two things I need to come home with. An etch-a-sketch iPad cover and a Cheshire cat pillow pet. Now, it's just convincing the husband I need them :) Richard is at VidCon yesterday, today and tomorrow... Then Sunday is Disneyland day! I stoked. Hopefully we will get everything I want done in one day. Monday we are heading back toward the airport and finding a hotel there so we can do the whole LA and beach thing before we leave Tuesday evening. We still have lots of fun left to be had! I'll do a better job blogging the rest of the trip. Lovelovelove.

Just a few more hours...

Until the hubby and I leave for Anaheim... :) And just look at this weather! I am so excited. (sorry dad, no rain or tsunamis)...

My post tonight won't be too much, I am actually thinking if going to sleep soon because we are leaving at 4:30 for the airport. Tomorrow might be a little better, but I'm feeling another early night from the long travel day. I'll decide how I feel then.

Anyways, I hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday evening and I will post more tomorrow!

Lovelovelove.

 

Pinterest Interest

Hey everyone! So here is my new weekly installment of Pinterest Interest. It is going to take a different twist than what it did in the past. Every week I am going to pick something I have pinned (or a reader suggestion) and test it out. I am really looking forward to this and now it gives me a reason to use Pinterest more.

I am no exception to the rule about girls, chocolate, and that time of month. I woke up this morning craving it... Luckily I woke up at ten. So I booked it into the kitchen and started some brunch, but first I looked at Pinterest. I had recently found this recipe of Brownie Batter Pancakes. They look amazingly delicious. So of course, those were what I made this morning.

Ingredients: (Makes 6-8 silver-dollar pancakes)

• 1/4 all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 T Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa or dutch cocoa (You can sub regular cocoa, which is what I did and it had less of a chocolate taste)
• 1 T plus 1 tsp sugar (you can use less if you’re planning to top with syrup and don’t want the actual pancakes to taste sweet.)
• 1/16 tsp salt
• 1 and 1/2 T applesauce or oil (Personally, I use 1 T oil and 1/2 T applesauce. But I don’t like fat-free pancakes.)
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 5 and 1/2 T milk of choice

After mixing all my ingredients together the batter was way too runny. Like, if I dumped any into my pan it would have went everywhere and I would have had crepes or a mess. I had to add extra flour to make mine work. I think I am going to do some more work with the recipe and hopefully perfect them for myself.


Okay, I'll admit, hers looked way better than mine and I am not quite sure how she did it. Mine were really flat but they still tasted really good. I just sprinkled them with some powdered sugar and I could have ate them all day.

I will mark these as winners and I will add them to my list of deliciousness. These would be a perfect breakfast for a special birthday morning. Or a special Monday. Or Tuesday.... Or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.... You get the picture. These are great for anything.

Alright everyone, head into the kitchen and get cooking :) Hope you all loved my new Pinterest Interest and make sure to check back next week to see what we are reviewing!

Lovelovelove

 

Polymer Clay Pens

I LOVE going to the store and buying new pens. Seriously, back to school shopping is my love. Everything about it is amazing. But mostly the pens. You can never have too many cute and fun pens. Now, we come to the part where I love to be different. Standing out is awesome. So here we have a dilemma. There are only so many pens in the world and you will most likely run in to someone with them as well. That whole rant has brought me to this tutorial. Polymer Clay Pens. You can make them look however you want and it is almost a 100% guarantee yours will stand out from all the rest.

The materials for this are quite simple:

• Polymer clay-- like Sculpey, you can find this at Michael's or even Walmart.
• Pens with the plastic barrel that you can remove the ink from like so.... Make sure to pick your favorite kind :)

First begin by removing the ink from the barrel. You should just have a plastic barrel, empty of all ink. Wrap the clay around the empty barrel in a design however you would like. I'll be honest, this was my first polymer clay project so I didn't do anything crazy. I used a couple colors and rolled them together to create a tye dye effect. I also did some polka dots and some zebra stripes.

For the tye dye-- pick a couple colors and roll each into a long snake. Then, put all your snakes together and roll them into a snake. Basically, you want the colors to still be identifiable and not mixed into one. Take sections at a time and cover your barrel. You want this to be pretty thin so the pen is still comfortable in your hand, but don't make it too thin.

For the polka dot or zebra stripes-- pick one base color and cover the barrel with that. The polka dots were really simple, I just took small little balls and pressed them out so they were flat like pancakes. For the zebra print I carefully cut out the stripes and then laid them on the barrel carefully so that they looked like a zebra.

Put all your pens onto a baking sheet. Bake them in a 275 degree oven for 15 minutes. Don't worry about the plastic melting, the oven isn't hot enough and the plastic is thick... I'm sure there is a better explanation for it, but that's mine.

Now you have some incrediblely awesome pens that are all yours :) tell me what you think!!!

 

P.S. I am sorry my descriptions are so terrible, I haven't worked with polymer before and I'm sure there is probably a better way to do it but I tried! Leave comments with any tips or tricks, I'd love for some help with it!

 

Lovelovelove.

 

Horrible Blogger

That is how I feel right now. It is almost the end of June and I have only posted twice.... TWICE!!! Good gracious. Well, since it is now summer vacation for me I will do better. I PROMISE! Someone hold me to it.

I'm going to start with a little update on the Hubby and I. We are both still alive, just preparing for BIG things to come this summer. On Wednesday morning we leave for LA/Anaheim. He will be attending Vidcon and I will be attending the poolside. I will make sure to blog while I am there :) His 22nd birthday is on Thursday! Which is pretty exciting, but I have no clue what we will be doing since we already celebrated with Coldstone and presents. Then we get back from Cali and it's already the Fourth of July. Gracious. Then it's almost my 23rd birthday.... After that it is finally time for Richard's shoulder surgery. I am so stinking excited for that. He will finally be getting better and being able to move his arm. I'll make sure to record him after surgery when he is still drugged up to for everyone's entertainment.

I think that is kind of it right now... Well it is at least all the important stuff. I am going to do much much much better at blogging, and I know I have said that before, but this time I will.

Right now we are watching True Blood. I love this show. I got hooked on it earlier this month and watched all four seasons so that I could be prepared for this season. I hate getting addicted to shows because when the new season starts I am so impatient I hate waiting a week to watch the next episode. I am sure that is a problem everyone has.

My other favorite summer show is So You Think You Can Dance? It is my all time favorite. Vegas week just ended and next week we find out the top 20 and I think I already have my winner picked. Well my girl winner that is. Alexa. That girl is AMAZING! Just watch her video below. You won't regret it. Plus, she is a gorgeous girl. Hopefully soon I will have my top boys pick :)

 

I am thinking of starting a new Pinterest section. Every week I will highlight a recipie/home tip that I find on Pinterest and do it and review it. I always find stuff on there and think, "I love it, but that can't be possible". So now I am going to put some of those things to the test. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. Plus, if you find anything you'd like me to test out, you can forward it to me or whatever and I can try it :)

 

 

Crack Corn

So while perusing my kitchen the other night I really wanted a new sweet treat. And popcorn. And well I love chocolate on popcorn but I still wanted something new. This led me to searching the Internet and I found A LOT of delicious looking popcorn recipes but one kept popping up. Literally. Anyways, many of them called this poppy chow, but I a sticking with crack corn. This stuff is crazy good and so addicting. Eating just a little bit is hard, so now that you have been warned here is the recipe....

Ingredients

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
9 cups Popcorn- I used a bag of butter flavor
Powdered Sugar

Mix the peanut butter, butter, chocolate chips, and vanilla in a pot. Stir constantly until melted and mixed together.

While doing that pop your bag of popcorn according to directions. Dump that into a big bowl.

Top that with your peanut butter mix and stir it all together so the popcorn gets coated completely by the mix.

Pour all of that onto a baking sheet and top with as much powdered sugar as you like.

Place in the fridge until the peanut butter mix sets, or just leave it out.

Store it in an airtight container... But let's be honest, there won't be much left :)

*FYI, this is not a recipe that I came up with on my own... It just so happens to be the recipe for Muddy Buddies or Puppy Chow, just with popcorn instead. :)Either way, it is equally delicious and I feel that everyone should know about it.





Anyways, only three tests left until this term is over and 19 days until we leave for LA/Anaheim! It is getting so close and I am getting more and more excited for sun!

Check back later this weekend for a new tutorial and lots of other fun stuff :)

 

Slacking... And reupholstering an office chair.

I know my last post said I would do better about posting more, and well I really did plan too...... But again I have become really busy. Next week is finals and this week was just insane. I have some videos that are ready to go, I just need the hubby to edit them.

I am so excited for this term to be over! I am worn out and need summer vacation... I need some sunshine. For any one who loves in Oregon, this weather has been insane! Luckily only like 20 more days and Richard and I will be in Anaheim for a few days.

So one of our roommates moved out and a new one moved in, but in that whole process I got a new craft room :) yeah I pretty much love it. I've been spending a lot of time getting it together and I have to say it is becoming quite nice and cozy. I just need a massive beanbag chair and I'll be set. But anyways, I found an office chair on Craigslist for free... Definitely not the best shape... I gave that one to the man cave and took one of theirs :) and reupholstered it. It was way easier than I thought it would be. Below is my process.

Materials- fabric of your choosing (I used two pillow cases and pieced it together), staple gun and staples, and an ugly old office chair. Plus anything you'll want for embellishment.

Step one- unscrew every screw you can find on your chair. This will separate the seat from the back and the arms. Make sure to save all the screws!

Step two- I started on the seat and pieced together the fabric pieces to completely cover it. You want enough fabric to cover it all and go about an inch or two onto the bottom. Once you have the fabric placed where you want it begin stapling on the bottom. I started on one area and worked around the chair, then I made the corners all nice and tight. This will take a lot of pulling and adjusting, but you want it to look as nice as possible.

Step three- move to the back rest now. You can either sew or use just the staple gun, I went the staple gun only because it was easier. You'll want to have a piece the at least covers the side your back goes on completely so there are no staples for you to lean up against.

Step four- Your chair should now look like the image above. The last little bit of the of the back of the chair will get covered with pieces. I tried to make this look as nice as possible,since people will actually be seeing it. Then I used some hot pink elastic to cover up one row of the staples and plus I can use it to hold stuff down there. After you are all done with this rescues everything back together.

And voila, you now have a fancy new chair. I loved this project and it was a quick way to help make my room look better.