Flavour of the Week: Butterfly Nails

New this week, Monarch Butterfly nails.

I remember one year when I was still itybity and lived in Chinatown, my class room kept a tank of Caterpillars in the class room. Though I can't remember how long we had them, we took care of them and watched them transform into butterflies. As soon as they came out of their little shrivelly cocoons, transforming into these amazingly beautiful butterflies, we were able to go to a field and each let them free. It's too bad I don't remember it more clear, but thinking back now it was such a neat thing to be able to do. As we grow up we don't appreciated these little beauties in life, and not many people are lucky enough to watch nature run its course like that and be a part of it.

So with that here are the nails I did this week. A reminder of those days. They aren't my design though, my attempt from a YouTube tutorial.

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear- Sun Kissed
Sally Hansen Complete Salon- Midnight in NY
L.A Color Art Deco- Black
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear- White On
Seche Vite- Top Coat

My Good Friday Full of Wontons!

So growing up, I remember a lot of time spent watching my mom cooking. It was some of my fonder memories of my childhood, and definitely picked up a lot of tips and tricks on the way. One of the more fun food ventures was her making wontons. The last time I remember this happening was at least over 2 years ago, so a natural craving developed inside of me.
As a "killing 2 birds with 1 stone" tactic, I decided to suggest wrapping wontons sometime over the Easter weekend since we had free time anyway, and finally killing the long time craving. I find great pleasure in hands on ventures and producing something from scratch, so I was very excited when she agreed.... but only to put together the mixture, and I would do the wrapping. I didn't really care, it was worth it and I always thought it was fun anyway =)

So for the mixture (filling), she soaked dried up mushrooms over night. Snipped off the stems (they get rubbery) and cut them up into slices. While she did that and chopped them up into bitty pieces, I worked on the shrimp...

Raw shrimp, shelled and deveined

My mom keeps the shrimp shells and boils them up for the broth later (waste not want not). I patted down the shrimp after the cleaning and snip them into 3 pieces.

Chopping up the ground pork and mushroom together

"The meat mixtureeee!" Ground pork, mushroom, pepper, garlic power, salt

With everything mixed in

Mix in shrimp, sesame oil, and 2 egg whites.

The wrappers we used

So onwards to the fun part!

Here's how my mom taught me to wrap wontons!

Hold the wrapper in a diamond shape with point facing you.

Scoop in about a teaspoon amount of filling and 1 piece of shrimp.

Fold up the bottom point upwards most way. Leaving about a cm point to point at the top.

Turn up the bottom. Not too tightly but enough to keep it in place. Gently squeeze both sides of wrapper to move filling towards the center. Again make sure not to squeeze too hard, wrapper breakage isn't a pretty site...

Add a dab of water onto the right point of the wrapper.

Put your left pointer finger to where the mixture is in the middle, and wrap both arms of the wrapper towards the center. Overlap the right over left. Make sure to give the wrapper and extra squeeze where it overlaps to make sure the water has "glued" them together

And you have made your own wonton!

Look at all them!

So the finally result was about 4 plates. I don't know how many we made at the end. Yes, being my mother, she can't stand sitting back and watching, she had to help put them together claiming: "I would never finish before dinner time"... crazy moms =p you just wanted in on the action!

And the FINAL RESULTTTTT:

Drummmm Roolllllll:

Finishedd!

Ta-daaa! Yummers!

Thrill of the Hunt: Urban Decay Naked Palette

Nice fuzzy velvet outside, I predict it'll get dirty pretty fast though....

 So I finally got my little fingers on the much sought after Urban Decay Naked Palette, and I am jumping for joy inside =D I've recently gotten into the habit of reaching a lot more for my neutral shadows, so thought this palette would be much loved in my collection.

The inside (and me =))

 The palette comes with 12 shadows, and the classic Shadow Primer Potion. There is a nice mix of textures in the palette, with 4 exclusive shadows specific to it. It used to come with a double ended 24/7 eyeliner in Zero (black)and Whiskey (brown), but it has now been replaced with Good Karma cruelty-free eyeshadow brush. Not sure how good the brush would be, but will have to see about that.

A little closer look

L-R: Virgin, Sin, Naked, Sidecar, Buck, Half Baked, Smog (sorry its cut off)

Virgin-Satin vanilla
Sin- pinky champagne shimmer
Naked- Matte nude beige
Sidecar- taupe shimmer with chunky silver glitter
Buck- Matte cocoa
Half Baked- Satin gold
Smog- Shimmering Bronze

Darkhorse, Toasted, Hustle, Creep, Gunmetal

Darkhorse- dark brown satin with a bronze shimmer
Toasted- satin copper bronze
Hustle- dark red based brown satin
Creep-grey black with silver shimmer
Gunmetal- cool gray shimmer with silver chunk glitter

Flavour of the Week: Easter Egg Splatter Nails!

Continuing perhaps my unhealthy obsession with nailpolish, I try to switch up my nails once a week. I think it's because of the all the sewing I do that I try to at least make my fingertips appealing to look at =p

Revlon- Minted
Sally Hanson Xtreme Wear-Lacy Lilac
Sally Hanson Xtreme Wear-White On
Color Club-Lady Like
Seche Vite-Top Coat

My First Ever Quilt!!

This quilt has been a long time coming... a good half a year at least =p Buutttt it is finally done, and I'm pretty happy with it. It didn't actually take that long to make, but it took that long to start and get back to. After cutting and calculating the amount of squares needed to cover the batting; the machine and hand sewing took about 2 weeks. I haven't quite figured out how to machine quilt yet, so this one was hand stitched to bind the "sandwich" together.

Since this is my first, I started off easy. It's a little lap quilt, finished 47in x 59in. I just chose to do basic patchwork squares for this one, but the next ones will definitely be lots more interesting =)

Mister Monkey seems to be enjoying it too =)

Welcome to My Blog!

So here goes!
Uber excited to begin my own little contribution to the wonderful world of the web. Over lots and lots of time spent online, I am definitely learning a lot of new things, and finding a lot of sites that help expand my crafty mind among other things. So here is going to be my place to hopefully pass on some of my random thoughts, positive and negative experiences as well as general awesomeness I come across. Hope you come along with me and find the ride as enjoyable as I do =)