Greetings From AZ!

I'm in Arizona at the moment, visiting my sister and I don't have much to blog about. I'm relaxing with my darling friends and my sister and am pretty much trying to forget how to do anything productive until I move. I got to see one of my favorite artists in the world, Voltaire, for the second time at the Phoenix Fear Con. He showed his short stop motion films which were amazing and then performed a set of his songs. If you ever get the opportunity to go see one of his shows do it. Not only are his songs amusing and full of satire and references to anal sex, zombies and necrophiles, he's also an amazing entertainer. The man has a fantastic sense of humor and isn't afraid to get personal with the crowd. Great show, both times! I don't know when I'll get the chance to see him perform again, but I hope it's not too long.

Anyway, off to do things. Just wanted to check in with my blog. You know, make a habit of it. Next time I post, it'll be something useful and/or entertaining.

Tah!

Insomniac

Oh dear. My healthy habits have gone out the window the last few days. I've incurred a foot injury that's going to prevent me from running for a while. I'll have to talk nice, long walks with the dog again while I'm visiting my sister this next week. When I get home, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll have to use the elliptical in my mam's little home gym but I hate the idea of it. I like to run outside, go places, see things. Alas!

I've been reading crafting blogs nonstop the past few days. Ideas are eating me alive. I have a little notebook dedicated to craft projects and sketches that I've started. I'm worried that I didn't buy one big enough. My mother said that I'm allowed to use the little bungalow in the backyard as a studio so I can do messy printmaking and silkscreening and painting and other various things that aren't fit to be done in the house. I cannot express in words how excited I am about this. I'm very antsy to get home. I have so many things I want to get started on. This blog post isn't much more than an expression of that. I've got nothing for you! I've been too busy packing last minute. I'm really very good at procrastinating. I don't do it as often, but I haven't lost my game!

I really need to get to bed. I'm alarm is set to go off five and a half hours from now. I'm going to go try to sleep. Night night.

Pita, piiiiiita!

(My poor pepper looks like it's cancerous. I assure you, it's just fine!)

This recipe that I'm about to give you isn't rocket science. It is, in fact, moronically simple. I've found, though, that I like to read moronically simple recipes sometimes, simply because though they may be simple, they probably wouldn't have occurred to me if I hadn't read them in the first place.

The other night while my family was in Sea World, I was faced with the task of trotting up to the store and buying myself something to eat for dinner. I regarded this as something of a pleasure. I'm a food nerd. Sometimes I go into grocery stores (especially Whole Foods) just to look at all the food without buying a scrap of it. So with the vague desire for something noodly and $20 to spend, I set off for the store.

What I ended up with, instead of ingredients for the soba noodle dish I had been hankering for, were ingredients to put together a pita sandwich. I've never been much of a sandwich eater and have eaten probably a total of three pitas in my life, but once the idea of hummus going down into my belly occurred to me I couldn't be stop. I rampaged through the store, snatching things off the shelves and managed to spend a total of about $17. I ate the left overs for lunch the next two days.

This will probably feed two or three people for dinner or just one person for two or three meals. I would also like to point out that this is a meal that is so flexible that you could put literally anything in it: beef, pork, lamb, cucumbers, tomatoes, anything. I believe strongly in tailoring food to one's own tastes! The way I made them, though, turned out to be absolutely delicious.

Ingredients:

1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 bunch of green onions
1 avocado
1 package of wheat pitas
hummus (I bought the Athenos roasted red pepper--mm!)
two chicken breasts

In a small frying pan, put both of your chicken breasts. Put just enough water in the pan to cover the bottom. peel and crush three cloves of garlic with the flat side of your knife and throw these in with the chicken. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook on low-medium heat, checking occasionally and turning when necessary. Covering them with the water and the garlic in the pan not only makes them taste amazing, it also makes them tender as hell. I cook them until just after they're done and pull them off the stove. Cut into small cubes.

While your chicken is cooking, chop you vegetables into edible bites. I like cutting my peppers into narrow strips, but you could chop them small if you wanted to. I was lazy so I just cut my avocado into strips. If you'd like, you could mash it into a spread! If you want to save the cooked garlic from the chicken pan to put into your pita, you definitely can.

When the chicken is done and cut, warm your pitas. You could microwave them for a few seconds or pop them in the oven at 350 for a few minutes, whatever works for you. Depending on the brand you buy, the pockets might already be cut. Either way, be careful when opening your pita. I use the wheat kind, which seem to be especially fragile.

Spread the hummus (and the avocado if applicable) inside the pocket on one side. Distribute the chicken evenly in the bottom and put your vegetables in. I sprinkled my green onions on top to give it a little bite. I wouldn't recommend filling it too full or you're going to end up with a godawful mess.

Eat and enjoy!

Omg, I finished a project!

I found a tutorial for this on Craftster not too long ago and decided that I was going to modify one of my own shirts right then and there. It was a really fast, really easy project and now I have an adorable bow sleeve shirt of my own! As much as I have gone my whole life, protesting the fact that I have any girly-girlness in me, this is a lie. I have a wretched obsession with bows and lace and various other frilly things that I can no longer deny. Yay, bows!

Check out the tutorial here. Try, seriously. It took me like fifteen or twenty minutes. Simple. In the tutorial, she bought a really inexpensive Old Navy long sleeve shirt. In my case, I used a really basic long sleeve shirt I bought at Forever 21 at the end of last year. I like the color but I was getting bored with it the way it was. It was in serious danger of being thrown out. Good thing I found this tutorial first! I do have to add here that, while I love my shirt, I may start over with a different shirt. The one in the tutorial looks like it's made of a little thicker fabric than the ridiculously flimsy jersey that mine is made out of. I say this simply because the bows look like they hold their shape better with thicker fabric. You could experiment. Just sayin'.

My bow-y t-shirt of awesome:









I took a picture of the full shirt without me wearing it, but it was silly. Boring. You would've died of boredom just by looking at it. I apologize for the quality of the pictures, but they were all self taken. No one to help me. Alas!

I just remembered today that I have three different jersey fabrics in my stack of ne'er-been-used and I have big plans for them. I've been wanting to try making panties ever since I saw a tutorial on Threadbanger. I originally intended to make mini-skirts out of this fabric, but I think now that I'm jazzed about panty-making that it would much better suit the purposes of evil! I mean, er, knickers. One excellent thing about going home is that my sewing machine that my step-father kindly gave me is there. Mwahaha! So much to do!

Later~

Coco Before Chanel

My God, it's been a long time. I pretty much forgot about this blog. So much has happened since July of last year (if you'll take a gander through my posts, you'll notice that's the last time anything went into this blog). I've been living in Vegas trying to work things out here, but it's no good. I'm miserable living here. On top of that, I need to focus on school. I was going to go to school here, but, frankly, the education system here is a joke. I'd rather go home and go to a decent school and get decent grades at the community college there so I can get into a decent university and hopefully a decent graduate program.

I have made no more attempts at sewing since last summer, but I'm revisiting this blog because it's something that I'd like to continue doing. I like blogging and I like being able to bring things up that I'm currently interested in. I've been cooking all along the way, reading books, writing stories, but sewing has been left in the dust. That needs to be remedied. I spent $250 on fabric last summer and it's still just sitting neatly folded in the JoAnn's bag that it came in. They're beautiful fabrics and I have several ideas for what I want to do with them, but still they sit.

I watched Coco Before Chanel last night. Lovely movie. I adore Audrey Tautou. Amelie is still my favorite movie of hers that I have yet seen, but Coco Before Chanel was beautiful. Amazing costumes, acting, cinematography, the works. Boy was a little cheesy, but then again he was English. This outweighs any flaws he may have had.

I'd definitely recommend watching it. I enjoyed it. I haven't bothered to look at the reviews for the movie. All in all, I'd say it was a decent film. Not really an Oscar winner, but worth watching. One of the previews before the movie started was for the film An Education. I forgot about that movie and I want to see it badly. It looks good and, on top of that, I find Peter Sarsgaard irresistible. I'm a little confused by it, too, but that's just the card I drew. I'll have to see if the library has it. I've been thinking about trotting up there for the past couple of hours, but it's already so hot outside. We shall see, we shall see. Hopefully I'll be back sooner than later with more things to talk about.

For now I will leave you with these:



Totally affordable and unfathomably cute. Sounds like Forever 21!

Buy them! They're so shiny!

Mm, mini frittatas!

I've been trying extremely hard to cram as many vegetables as I can into my diet. I have a hard time with this, as I'm one of those people that is addicted to candy and generally adverse to anything green and leafy. Some vegetables are good (onions, broccoli, potatoes) but I've always had a hard time with salads, asparagus, carrots, etc. I find that vegetables are much easier to eat when they're compiled and cooked into a dish, rather than eaten raw (even though that's the way I should be eating them--I'll work my way there, eventually).

Today, I had in my fridge some carrots, some zucchini, some green onions, some feta cheese and some eggs. Rather than go with the typical omelet option, I elected to try baking mini frittatas. I found the recipe on Craftster (of course) and it turned out amazingly well. You can find the original recipes with pictures if you follow the link, but I'll post my variation of the recipe here. I apologize for the lack of pictures, as I need to buy a new cord for my camera.

Mini Frittatas

2 carrots, peeled and grated
1 small zucchini, grated
3 green onions, chopped
2 TBS feta cheese (The kind I had in the fridge was Mediterranean seasoned--it actually worked well.)
1/4 c. Colby Jack cheese (This is the kind I had. I'm sure and type of cheese you can think of to use would be delicious.)
8 eggs
A dash of chili powder (optional)
Salt and pepper (optional)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put the eggs into the bowl and beat them with a whisk until they're fluffy. I always add a couple tablespoons of water to make them fluffier. I used to add milk until I learned in my Foods class in high school that water actually works better. Add all of the ingredients to eggs and mix them together thoroughly. Oil a muffin tin (I used a jumbo muffin tin so I got six total). Spoon the egg mixture into the cups, filling almost to the top. The recipe originally stated that 15 minutes will do, but I found my eggs a bit undercooked, so they went back in for about five more minutes. Use whatever length of time works for you and your oven.

I'd also like to say that the only vegetable that the original recipe called for was spinach. Add whichever vegetables you like or happen to have in the refrigerator. As the original recipe states, this would make a wonderful breakfast on the go.

Thanks, Cheebz, the recipe was awesome!

Cute New Dress! ... Almost

I've started on a dress that I found a tutorial for on Max California's blog. If you haven't been over there, click that link right this second and go! She has a fabulous blog that every DIYer and every awesomely unconventional mama should look at.

The dress is coming along at a jerky pace, but it's getting there. For the record, I have never successfully sewn anything before. My mum is helping me on this one, but sewing is easier than I thought it would be. I've attempted to sew things before, but those turned out awful. We won't even mention the apron. With the dress, things are going fairly well. I've run into some problems and have had to rip out more than one set of stitches, but compared to the other disasters I've had with a sewing machine, it's downright magnificent. The fabric is a brand new magenta pin-striped sheet that I found yesterday at the thrift store. It has a dark purple border that I'm using as the hem of my dress (saves me some work!). The color is so offensively bright. I love it. Love it, love it, love it. I'll post some pictures of it once I've finished.

After this dress, the next project is a body form. Though, to be honest, the homemade ones kind of creep me out. But, alas, I don't have the money to shovel out for a brand new one so I'll have to make do with what I can. As I type this, a million other things that I'd like to do are exploding into my head. My next blog should be a to do list.

Thanks for reading! Until next time!


Miss Panda