December's not so Nerdy Craft Time and other miscellaneous things

December will not have Nerdy Craft Time posts. Not because I ran out of things, but because I've been extra busy this month and now it's almost the end. I have 2 Nerdy Craft Times set up for January, it's completely possible that I will add in an extra one.

We ended up springing for all new LED lights for our tree this year, I can't get over how bright they are! 

Christmas preparation has been crazy for me and my family, we started early but it just feels like I'm going way too slow and time is passing way too fast. I can't wait to cook on Christmas Eve, large family meals are what I live for! There has been plenty of snow, hot chocolate, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas this year though which I think makes it extra awesome.  I'm so excited for Christmas! It ties with Halloween for my favorite holiday. My family has always been huge on Christmas so it is super special for everyone. 

We made these super fun little ice "marbles" a couple of weeks ago when it was really cold. All you need are balloons (we used dollar store birthday ones), water, and liquid food coloring. (and freezing temps either outside or a spacious freezer)  I put a couple of drops of food coloring into the balloon (about 5-10 drops), then filled it up slowly with water from the faucet until the balloon was the size I wanted. I tied them off and placed them gently in a bowl. I transferred them in 4's because I didn't want to put them on top of each other and risk breaking them inside my house. I gently set them in the snow and let them sit for a few days. If you want your color a little more evenly distributed you may want to wait 6 -8 hours (depending on how cold it is) and flip them over. Then I cut the tops off the balloons and peeled it off the newly formed ice ball. Then you can sit back and enjoy your new ice marbles!
Word to the wise, do not place them on concrete if your temperature will get above freezing, the colored water will stain. You could certain do what we ended up doing though and place a plastic sheet underneath them, just remember to move them into the yard once it starts to warm up so they can melt without the chance of ruining anything.

After 9 months of flirting with platinum, I'm back to being a ginger. It's a bit lighter then my natural ginger hair but I'm pretty much in love with it. Blonde was nice but I do enjoy being a red head. Although I hated growing up with it, that was before "ginger" was a thing and it was all about certain horrible names that I won't type ever. Ginger is funny as long as people don't take it to a physical level. Nasty names are not. What I find the most interesting about being blonde though is hearing every time I tell someone I'm a natural red head, "Oh I LOVE red heads!" as opposed to every time I hear that rocking my natural color... Oh wait, that's never. I never hear anything about how people love red heads when I have my red hair. Most people like gingers in theory, until they actually meet us and realize most of the rumors about us are true. I also love when people tell me the red looks so much more natural on me.. well... I am a natural red head, I'm literally made to have red hair, of course it will look more natural. But I appreciate the compliments all the same. Red head problems.

Before with the blonde

And back to being a magical gingery unicorn. And yes, those are ghouls on my window, around Christmas... I may never take them down. They look hilarious when the sun hits them and they are silhouetted through my blinds. 

Aside from everything, I'm so excited for 2013 to end. This year has not been so kind to my family and we are so ready for a fresh new year. I can't complain too much, we still have food in our bellies, a roof over our heads, and family around us. But we've have a year marred by major health issues and strange mean spirited occurrences.

So, I'm sorry that I haven't thrown up 2 new Nerdy Craft Times including a new food edition. I promise I have one in the works for next month!

I probably won't have anything new up until January so I hope you and your family are having a wonderful time during the holidays, whatever you celebrate or traditions you have, I hope they are filled with joy and love. Have a lovely new year and I hope 2014 is the best year for all of us!

Milani Thankful for Color Giveaway Prize Pack!

I ended up winning one of the Milani Thankful for Color Giveaway prize packs on facebook!
I believe mine was titled Emerald City. Everything is green, which is exciting because green is my favorite color! Not normally to wear on my face, but with these I'm thinking I'll make an exception! I've never tried anything from Milani before so this was a wonderful way to get introduced to the company.

YAY! Prizes!

Not only is everything on the Milani site extremely affordable, the make up they sent me is lovely, and rivals several other companies known for their staying power. I'm not going to go all crazy in depth for these ones. I don't really have a ton to say considering everything was amazingly pigmented, super smooth, and gorgeous. I'm so excited to try more products from Milani.

You can check out the Milani website HERE. You can find all of these on the site, I'll include the retail price of each but not the link, since they all come from the same place.

Milani Ultrafine Liquid Eyeliner in Emerald Glisten $7.49
This comes in 5 shades including the one I received.  I am in love with this liner! Although I do love the color of this one, I'm not sure I love it for me to wear. It is beautiful! It is a true emerald green (although it looks blueish in photos) with small silver sparkles in it. It is opaque in a single swipe, there is no reason to build it up but it does layer smoothly over itself or eyeshadow.
The liner formula is fantastic, it goes on smooth without snagging or skipping, it doesn't crease, dries down within a minute, and it stays put through anything until you wash it off and then some. I actually had to wash this and then use make up remover before it would budge.

This liner and the Shadow Eyez fall in to my very favorite category of make up, almost unwashable.

Milani Shadow Eyez cream shadow pencil in  Green Safari $6.99
This comes in 12 shades including the one I received.  This went on super smooth, even, and opaque with a couple of passes. It blended out easily and dried down within a couple of minutes. It is a super pretty jungle green color. I used this as an eye shadow base and it lasted through several hours in the snow and over the course of a day, probably about 10 hours until I washed it off and even then it took soap and water and eye make up remover.

Milani Eyeshadow in Just Perfect $5.99
This comes in 12 shades including the one I received. The swatch of this looked like it was barely there, but this went on super pigmented. It went on butter smooth with hardly any fall out. It is a gorgeous shimmery mermaid green.(although it looks blue in the photo)

Milani Jewel FX Nail Polish in Teal $4.99
This comes in 8 shades including the one I received.  I loved the chunky pieces in this! It was a fun mix of tiny glitter pieces and large multi colored confetti type pieces. Because the large pieces were hard to distribute, I had to apply this in 2 stages. I applied a couple of coats, let it dry completely, and then apply a few more coats. This dried completely within 5 minutes and was smooth when I ran my fingers over it, which surprised me because most of the time you find glitter polish to feel gritty and uneven without a top coat. This lasted several days (without a top coat) before it started to chip.

(Left to Right) Just Perfect, Green Safari, Emerald Glisten (Double Swatch)

I saved the swatches for an all together collection for this one. I could not get my camera to focus on the eye shadow swatch to save my life. I ended up getting really frustrated and gave up. So it just looks really sad which is a shame because the eye shadow is the star of my prize pack. It is so gorgeous! This photo just doesn't do it justice.

Overall, I loved everything in this prize pack! Beautiful colors, crazy awesome staying power, and highly pigmented, everything I love in make up, plus everything is super affordable. I'm definitely a Milani fan now!

Enjoy! 

Ipsy December Celebration Glam Bag!

Holy sweet marshmallow goodness! It is already the middle of December! This month is just flying by. I'm sorry I have been so inactive this month, although I'm unsure if anyone reads this anyway (not that it would shut me up). I've done 3 people's Christmas shopping for them, plus I've been making a Harry Potter themed gift for my child (more to come!), I've taken on a new project of making an ugly Christmas vest for my dad, and I've been doing the usual Christmas things. You know, baking, decorating, putting up our tree, wrapping gifts. It's also been like eight thousand degrees below zero here for the past week and a half. Ok, it's been like -8 but my weather man assures me that it only feels like -22. ONLY.  None of this applies to my Ipsy Glam Bag, I know this. What can I say, Midwesterners never get straight to the point. Ever.

So the Celebration Glam Bag has been full of sneak peeks on the Ipsy facebook! If you didn't have a clue about what you were getting then you haven't checked it out at all. I still stand by my thought that it would have been magical if we had little confetti poppers in our bags this month. But life will go on some how I suppose.

The Celebration bag is a shiny, sleek, black, textured bag. It has a tiny little quilted pattern, it almost looks like it's covered in tiny black jewels. It is a gorgeous make up bag. Inside we find...

Be A Bombshell The One Stick in Sunset $16
You can find this HERE. It comes in 7 different shades, all of them are beautiful. I was confused on this after first, is it a cream blush, can I use it on my lips, is it an eye shadow stick? Apparently it's all of this. You can use The One Stick on your eyes, lips, and face. This is super pigmented, goes on smooth, and can be blended out easily to almost nothing. Because this smells like straight up crayola crayons right out of the box, I wouldn't use this on my lips in any situation, I'm not a fan of that scent being stuck under my nostrils all day. The smell made me so sad because this would be gorgeous on my lips but I'll live some how. However, this worked lovely as a cream blush. I'm a super baby pink or pink peach blush worshiper, I rarely stray from those colors, so I was surprised at how nice this looked.  Just a touch blends out beautifully to a slightly bronzey flush. It lasted about 8 hours on me until I washed it off without any settling, caking, or movement. I have dry/normal skin though, so I'm not sure how this would be on oily skin. If I only used this as a cream blush it would last forever considering the generous amount you get in a single tube. Overall, I think this is a fantastic product. The fact that you can use it on your eyes, lips, and face makes it perfect to keep in your purse for touch ups. (Not that you would need them!)

Pop Beauty Bright Up Your Life eye shadow palette in Naturally Bare  $24
I received 3 shadows from this palette but I'd like to mention that the full palette ($24) has 10 neutral eye shadows in it. You can find this HERE. This was a really well thought out trio of colors. They all work well together. All 3 are a shimmer, easily blended, and easy to build up the colors. The first color on the left which is kind of a champagne color, was the most pigmented for me, I got that much color in 2 swipes, the only problem I had was getting it to show up in the swatch because it melts into my skin tone so well. The middle color is a medium cocoa brown, and the last color was almost a grayish brown, it is much more brown then it looks in the photo though. Each of these shadows felt super soft and I had minimal fallout from them, although they did get pretty powdery in the pan. They stay shimmery even when blended which is fun, I come across a lot of shimmer shadows that loose quite a bit of their sheen once blended out and it makes me sad, not with this though! Overall I was really surprised at how much I loved this because I've had such horrible luck with Pop lately. If I didn't already have a neutral palette, I would be buying this.

Ardell Lashes in Natural 120 Demi Black $3.49
You can find these HERE.  You can buy them HERE. I don't normally wear false lashes because I also wear glasses so they tend to be too long and hit them every time I blink, which hurts my eyes after a while and doesn't look beautiful. BUT on the occasion that I do not wear my glasses, I love false eyelashes. These were interesting because my first impression of them was that they seemed a little sparse. They are on a strip and it just seems like the lashes are spaced out a bit too far. These definitely lengthened my natural lashes however, they didn't really give them the appearance of being much thicker then they already are. These are super soft though, not at all stiff or pokey. I love that they get slightly longer at the end of the strip and sort of wing out all on their own. They blended in easily with my natural lashes with a couple coats of mascara.  I removed and cleaned mine and they held up nicely, with gentle handling you would be able to get atleast 3 wears out of these. Overall these were pretty casual, they weren't anything crazy special (not that you would buy "natural" lashes for crazy special night out lashes) for a night out, but they did enhance my natural lash. I would wear them again.

JCat Beauty The Big Lip Pencil in Carmel Mocha $3.99
You can find this HERE. This comes in 12 gorgeous shades including the one I received. This lip pencil is chubby enough not to be a lip liner but skinnier then a lipstick, it is creamy like a crayon liner rather then a pencil consistency. It went on smooth and was opaque in 2 swipes. It didn't settle into my lips, but it didn't dry down either, so it sat on top of my lips like a gloss and was easily worn off within an hour. However, it looked fantastic on! It ended up being a nudey slightly rose color on my lips, not my natural lip color but it did look like a natural lip color which was awesome. I love lipstick probably more then the average 20 something but sometimes the "understated" shades end up being so completely unnatural which is not what you're going for when you pick a subtle color. I pretty much love everything from J.cat and this was no exception.

Starrily Nail Polish in Bzzz Bzzz  $12
You can find this HERE.  The first thing I saw on this website was their holiday collection and how funny their polish names are. "Ho Ho Whore" was cracking me and my mom up. I love glitter polishes so this was right up my ally. Although, this wasn't really glitter as it was more confetti with gold glitter in it. There are 5 different sized shapes in two different colors in this bottle. I had to glob this on just to get an even mix and coating, I would assume that if you wanted that over another color you would have to let it dry between coats. It dried smooth though which was impressive, normally you get a texture with glitter polishes. Overall I didn't like this. I mean I loved  the way it looked, LOVED IT! But it was so hard to get it to look even half way decent that it was ridiculous. Also, $12 for a single nail polish is crazy expensive in my book.

As usual, if you would like to receive your very own Ipsy Glam Bag you can sign up HERE! It is $10 a month and each monthly glam bag has a theme of it's very own, right down to the mini make up pouch. You also take a beauty quiz when you sign up to help personalize your glam bag. To personalize it more you can review the items you get in each glam bag, stating if you like the color, item, or brand, or if you hate it completely.  

Enjoy!

*Ipsy Glam Bag is a monthly beauty sample bag that I paid for with my very own money. I do not get paid to give good reviews*

Yummy Potato Soup

There is something about potato soup that is instantly comforting, the rich thick texture, the soft chunks of potatoes, the delicious flavor... All of it together makes me want to take a nap.
If you want something to warm you up on a super cold afternoon/evening then you have come to the right recipe!
I've adapted this recipe from 4 potato soup recipes, kept what I wanted, threw what I didn't. All potato soup recipes are pretty similar, some have ham or bacon, cheese or no, different types of potatoes and spices, milk or cream. You can really mix and match any recipes you find, most veggies are interchangeable (aside from the potatoes of course) and you can always add what you want instead of what I have on here. Peas, beans, additional carrots, squash cubes, broccoli, cauliflower...  Just remember that stronger tasting veggies will change the taste a bit. It will still be good I'm sure, just different. I don't like to add cheese to my soups unless I have to (such as broccoli cheese soup) because I think it changes the texture when it's reheated and gets grainy when you freeze it. If you want cheese in your potato soup I suggest that you add it to your individual servings. Then everyone can adjust the amount of cheese they want and you don't have to compromise on the texture of leftovers. I like to use ham and bacon, but if you prefer to use only bacon or ham you can without flavor loss.
I can't claim that this soup is healthy, but it's not as unhealthy as some other versions I've seen that add the bacon grease and heavy cream.
So you'll want about 13-14 medium sized potatoes (or like 9-10 large potatoes), I like to use Yukon golds for this because I love their flavor but you can use regular potatoes as well. You probably want to stay away from baby reds because they have a very distinct flavor and are pretty small. You can also cut your recipe in half and make a smaller batch. I know it seems like a ton of potatoes but I use them as the "soup" as well as chunks of potatoes in the soup.
I use yellow onions in my soup because our grocery store has them in abundance and they don't have a crazy strong flavor. You probably don't want to use red, but white onion or vidalia should be fine as well as yellow.
If you don't want to use an emersion blender or don't have one, you can mash the potatoes with a hand masher or electric mixer after you drain the water and before you add broth. If you need a little liquid, add a small amount of the broth until the potatoes are smooth and creamy, then add the rest of the broth and stir well.  To mash the carrots and onion, instead of pouring the carrot/onion mix straight into the potatoes you'll want to pour it into a bowl and tightly seal it up with some foil for like 10 minutes. peel the foil off (be careful with the steam!), then using your potato masher you should be able to smash it all up until it's relatively smooth. You don't need freakishly smooth, but you don't want any chunks. Then throw that into your potato mix and stir it up really well.

On to the soup!!

What you'll need

• 13-14 Medium sized potatoes or 10-11 large potatoes, peeled
• 4 cups of chicken broth
• Milk (you'll need anywhere between 1-3 cups don't worry about exact measurements of this)
• 1 large onion
• 4-6 carrots peeled
• 1 pkg of frozen corn or 1 can of corn drained
• 4 T (1/2 a stick) of butter
• 6 strips of bacon
• 5 slices of deli honey ham (like lunchmeat ham, it doesn't have to be honey)
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Soul Food Seasoning (you can find this at Family Dollar stores and many grocery stores)

 

1. Take all but 3 of your peeled potatoes and roughly cut them into chunks, place them in a large pan (the one you'll use to make the soup in) or a dutch oven, cover them with water, and boil until soft. You'll want them a bit softer then fork tender because we are going to mash them up.
2. Drain the water, add your chicken broth and cook them on low.
3. Using another pan, melt your butter, thinly slice your peeled carrots and onion, add to butter, and cook on medium/low with the lid on until the carrots are easily mashed with a spoon. Stir occasionally.
4. Once the carrot/onion mix is soft add the entire pan (butter drippings and all) to your potatoes.
5. Using an emersion blender, blend the entire mixture until smooth and creamy.
6. Add 2 Tablespoons each Garlic powder, Onion powder, and Soul food seasoning, mix it all up and taste. Adjust the seasonings if needed. The more Soul Food seasoning you use the more spiced up it will be.
7. Put the lid on and set the entire pan aside, removed from the heat.
8. Take your remaining potatoes and cut them up into bite sized pieces, throw those into a sauce pan, cover with water, and boil on high heat until tender.
9. In the mean time, using the same pan you cooked the carrots in, add your bacon and cook it until done. (I prefer mine not crispy but cook it to the doneness that you like)
10. Scoop out the bacon with a fork or slotted spoon and place on a paper towel lined plate, set aside. Cut up the ham into small pieces and throw this in the same pan (grease and all) you cooked the bacon in. Cook until just crisp.
11. While it's cooking, cut up or crumble the bacon and place it back on the paper towel lined plate.
12. Once the ham is done scoop it out with a slotted spoon and place it on the plate with the bacon.
13. At this point your potatoes should be done, so you'll want to drain the water out of that pan and pour your potatoes into your mashed potato mixture. Add your bacon/ham as well. Stir it all up.
14. If it's frozen, throw your corn in the microwave until hot and add to your soup, if it's in a can, drain it and throw it in your soup without heating.  
15. Add your milk. Start with 1 cup and increase from there at 1/2 cup intervals until you get the consistency you like. You don't really have to measure this though, just pour and stir until you get the consistency you want. I like mine to be thick enough to cling to a spoon but some people like it thinner then that. If you want everything to be super hot, place your pan back on the stove and heat through on medium/high heat.
16. Serve and enjoy!

If you want to add cheese go on and add it to the individual servings. Shredded cheddar goes really nicely with this. If you really want to add cheese to the pan, bring your soup to a simmer and turn the heat off, then add your cheese, and stir until melted.

I know it sounds like a lot of work and pans but in reality you're only using 3 pans. It isn't that much work either, I probably spend about 30 minutes prepping for this and most of that is peeling potatoes. I spend about an hour and a half cooking. I do my dishes while things are cooking (such as the carrots or ham because they require very little attention) so in the end my kitchen is super clean and we have a super yummy pot of soup!

 

As always,

Enjoy!