Pokeball Nails!

I've seen these popping up around the interwebz, and decided to try to do my own. I'm going to call them a success. 

Ahh...nerd nails. :)

They were really simple to do. Ignore the paint around my cuticles...as I was finishing up, everyone was rushing out the door to go eat, so I didn't get a chance to do any clean up on them. 

The colors I used were:

      Red: Wet n Wild "Red Red"

      White: Fingerpaints "Paper Mache" and Art Deco "White"

      Black: Art Deco "Black"

      Top Coat: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails

I took a piece of Scotch tape and taped off the red before I painted it. Then I just carefully painted the white up to that line.

I took the Art Deco black (These are the skinny bottles with the long brushes) and did one straight line across where the red and white meet, then took a nail art dotting tool and made the black circles. As you can see, they're not perfect. 

Then I took the Art Deco White and made a dot in the middle of each black circle. Yes, I could have used the dotting tool and the Fingerpaints white...but that would mean having to stop and clean my dotting tool, and since I HAVE the Art Deco white, and the tip of the brush made perfect dots...you get the picture.

One of these days I'm going to take pictures WHILE I do something. I never do, because I always think that it won't turn out well (even tho the things I do almost always DO turn out well...) and I don't want to waste the energy to take the pictures. Um...have I mentioned I'm kinda lazy?

Well let me know what you think, and if you can think of any cool nails I could do let me know!!!

BEEEESS!!!!

My parents, as some of you may know, are beekeepers. It's really my dad's pet project. He got interested when I was in 6th grade...my middle school had a "Classroom in the Wild", and we had a bee hive that I got to mess with. However, by the time he got into beekeeping, I was already in college.

So anyway...D has been bugging me almost since I moved in to get my parents to show him how to work with the bees, and they finally did. D, McGoo, and I went to a family friend's house, who is helping my parents with the bees and has hives of his own, to extract some honey. Blondie stayed home and caught up on some much needed sleep. :)

They started by getting suited up and taking some supers off the hives, so they could extract the honey. I drove down in my parent's car with McGoo to watch...with the window's rolled up tightly. I don't mind bees flying around me, but I sure would hate for McGoo to get stung!

This is the best picture I could get from where I was. From L-->R, there's Jim, D, and Daddy. They've started using a leaf blower instead of a smoker to get the bees off the supers. D got stung a couple of times using the leaf blower. I think he had on the fabric gloves, tho...I got into a bunch of yellow jackets with them one day not too long ago, and they really don't provide much protection.

A super off the hive.

Oh, and if you've never had the good fortune to smell a beehive...it's amazing. Honey, beeswax, and a slight woody undertone make it mouthwatering.



 

My mom uncapping the honeycomb with a hot knife.

And D uncapping the wax. Not as pretty, but he got better.

While all this was going on, I was in and out with McGoo. We walked around, played with cars, and then he discovered the pool. I with I had gotten a picture of this...his favorite game that day was "Walk around the edge of the pool with a foam noodle and hit the water". He cracks me up.

My Dad and D with the extractor.

This was the best pic I got of my dad all day...he's not one for posing in front of the camera, really.

Jarring the honey. Yum.

After it's extracted, and we've waited for honey to drain through a filter into 5-gallon buckets (who knew honey was so SLOW?) it's time to get it into jars. That's my mom's job, but from there it's an assembly line of lids and rings. It's a pretty efficient operation, actually.

The finished product.

I love this picture. It almost looks professional...almost. But it is good. Lol. At least this is a good pic...my formatting on this post got kinda screwy, and you know what? I don't have the motivation to try to fix it. So, I'll leave you with one really pretty picture, a bonus hive picture, and one that'll make you want to squeeze the nearest cutie.

Close-up of a stump hive.

This is the opening to a stump hive they found. The chunk of wood is about my height. They didn't want to destroy their hive, but there's really no way to harvest it, so they just let it be. (Get it? Bee? I crack myself up.) And yes...I was that close to it. It really is pretty cool.



And as I promised...something to make you squee. He'd had a long day. He fell asleep with the sippy cup in his mouth AND the piece of paper he'd been playing with tucked under his chin. What a trooper.

 

Holy Crap!

Wow...it has been over a year since I posted last...so much for being a good blogger! Well, I'm going to try (again!) to keep this updated fairly often. We'll see.

I thought I'd kick things off with a cliff-notes version of the last year..then HOPEFULLY I'll get another post up this week. Tomorrow would be even better.

Ok. So...here goes! Last fall I finally finished up my basic university requirement classes, and started on my social work classes this Spring. Despite an incident or two with a teacher, it was a good semester. I got all A's, and made the presidents list for what I think is the first time ever. (Go me!) Plus, I finally feel like social work is where I'm supposed to be. 

In my "spare" time, I'm a nanny. He's almost 16 months old already! (I'm going to call him McGoo when I write about him...Idk why, but I feel better not using real names of other people when I'm talking about them on the internet.) A little backstory, for those of you who don't know me personally: McGoo's mother and I-let's call her Blondie-have been friends since high school. We roomed together in college, and eventually she and her husband-let's call him D, for now-invited me to move in with them, on the condition that I return to school. Well, I did (of course! How could I turn that offer down, really?) and they eventually got pregnant. And that's how I became McGoo's nanny. Let me just say...I LOVE IT! I would be perfectly happy if I could be a nanny the rest of my life, lol! 

So yeah...I had a good Spring semester, but decided that I'd hate myself and probably everyone around me if I took summer classes, so I took the summer off. It's been great...I just don't want it to end! It's been fairly uneventful, consisting mostly of McGoo. I also had to take a trip to Michigan, because my grandmother died at the beginning of the year, and we had to set her house in order. It wasn't a fun trip. I did get to spend time with my Aunt and Uncle, which I hardly EVER get to do. So at least that part was good. 

Other than all that ^^^, life has been pretty uneventful. I was dealing with some relationship things last year, but they've mostly resolved, and I'm not getting into them here. I'm sure I'll think of a million things to write after I publish this...but for now that's all!

QUICHE!!!

I've always been HORRIBLE at keeping a blog updated. Now, there's a baby in the house and I have a May class with 30 hours of volunteer work and a May-June online class...so I've been busy and I haven't been able to cook much. (To the people I live with...I'm VERY SORRY!!!) I'm also on a diet, so cooking food and not getting to eat any of it just doesn't sound like fun right now. Ugh...I love food so much...

Anyway...I had some pictures saved up, so I thought I'd post my quiche recipe. This is a favorite at our house...OMG it's delicious. And just as a note...most of my recipes are not exactly measured. I do a lot of "Hmm, I think it needs more of THIS ingredient".

First, you dump a bag of frozen shredded hashbrowns into a casserole dish (I use either a 9x13 or 11x15) and drizzle butter over the top; bake at 425 for 25 minutes. 

Next, put a layer of diced ham down, then a THICK layer of shredded cheese, then pour the eggs on top of that...the eggs will run down through the cheese. Cheese makes pretty much anything amazing.

TMNT Nails! (Tutorial!)

If I haven't mentioned this before, I'm a huge dork. I Stumbled (if you don't know what Stumbleupon is...go to Stumbleupon.com. It's pretty much the best thing ever) on a pic of TMNT nails and thought, "Hey, I can do that!". So I did.

Ignore the chip on my index finger...I did these over a week ago. I'm surprised they've lasted this long!It's kind of a long process b/c it needs to dry in between steps...but it's worth it!

They were actually really easy to do. All you need is the different color nail polish, (Green, yellow, purple, red, blue, white and black...or if you're really ambitious, enough to mix to make those colors.) clear polish for a topcoat, scotch tape, and a couple toothpicks.


Step one: Apply the green. (You can do an undercoat if you want, I never do thought.) This took 3 coats because it's a pretty thin polish. Allow to dry COMPLETELY.

Step two:  Pull off a couple pieces of scotch tape, and stick it somewhere-your shirt, whatever-to make it not as sticky. You want it to stick but not pull the green off. Place it about a half a centimeter apart...this is how you make the mask.

Step Three: Paint the masks...I think the yellow's actually supposed to be orange, but I didn't have any so yellow it is. Just paint over the scotch tape...it'll protect the rest of your nail and make nice clean lines. Let it dry some...the polish should still be slightly tacky when you peel it off.

Step Four: Use a toothpick to make the eyes...white under black.

Step Five: Let it dry COMPLETELY, and apply your topcoat. I've discovered that if you put it on really thick, it doesn't smear the colors, but sorta smooths the edges.

And that's it...your very own TMNT nails!

Peep Sushi and craziness from friends

I've been thinking about starting a blog for awhile, and after watching Julia and Julia one day, decided to go for it. I cook a lot, and have discovered that I'm a GOOD cook...so I thought I'd share. I also do a lot of crafts which I love sharing. And video games...I think maybe I'm a nerd?

So... I want to talk about sushi. Not the "real" kind of sushi...but the sushi that was just created in our kitchen. Peep sushi. 

Peep Sushi is pretty much what it sounds like. The "rice" was homemade rice crispy treats, with peeps (those fabulous sugar-covered marshmallow easter treats) and fruit roll-ups on top. I think there were jelly beans involved too. 

That spurred this post tonight. That, and me asking my friends what I should call this blog. That's the hardest part, right? The title and first line? We went through WAAAYY too many names before we settled on Chesty Confessions...and even that I'm a little dubious about. Many of the suggestions had to do with butter...for whatever reason, butter makes everything better. Butter, and things that shouldn't be mentioned someplace my mother might see it. :) Not that it was really that bad, Mom...

Anyway...I guess that's it for my first post. It'll get better, with better pictures and recipes and such.