Addiction: Nail Polish

A few months ago I hardly ever painted my nails and I only had a handful of polishes. Now, I paint them at least once a week and my collection of polishes has grown exponentially!
I've got a few different brands, some OPI and essie, but really my favourite is the $2 Ulta3 you get from the chemists. This stuff rivals the best of them, and you can get 10 bottles for the price of one OPI.

This is my latest haul. I was originally not going to buy more nail polish till I'd used all the ones I already have at least once, but I needed a little pick me up on my work break. Why not spend not much money on lots of polish eh? I actually have a list of colours I'm allowed to buy (yes really) but these polishes are in bins, so it's a bit hard to be picky about what you're after. Turns out only one of the colours was on my list. Whoops. But I am happy with them all.

These photos really don't show the colours (and I am far too lazy to do swatches). Twilight fever is a sparkly purple with grey tones, and wild berry is grey with blue tones. Watermelon and party shoes are just nice pinks. 

L-R: Rimmel Pop!, OPI Rainbow Connection, The one that got away, Stranger Tides, Italian Love Affair, and Ulta3 Earl Grey.

I think I'll be trying wild berry with either watermelon or Essie's fear or desire next time I do my nails. I also bought some Thin Lizzy 6 in 1 while I was at the chemist. I was with my friend paying for the polish when she spotted it (she's a kiwi) and because you got 2 powders, 2 eyeliners (half black+half brown), 2 lipglosses and 2 brushes for $50, we thought we may as well try it. The colour seems too dark for me but I really don't know if I'm doing it right, haha. The lipgloss is super sticky (I haven't used gloss in years though so I have nothing to compare it too), but the eyeliner and brush are decent.

Hello again.

So I've decided to start blogging again, mostly after reading through a million beauty blogs lately and baking 1 million cupcakes. And, you know, I have a huge amount of assessment due so I need another thing to help me procrastinate. It seems like the more urgent an assessment is, the more I procrastinate. How did I get this far in uni?

Uni is almost over for me, I only have a handful of weeks left now. And in those weeks are too many reports and presentations. 

So, for my birthday the boy (and fam) got me a Kitchenaid!! It's actually amazing and made making 5 lots of cupcakes a breeze. Also it's pink, which makes it infinitely better. Making all these cupcakes was pretty fun, even if I was on a pretty tight time frame (thanks to my mixer!). I don't have much experience with icing, but I think these turned out pretty good looking. The first batch were for a friend from uni who needed them for a friends baby shower. The second I baked for mum for her work morning tea. They're vanilla, and i piped some raspberry coulis in the middle. They taste pretty great.

Here are some flowers too... it's spring now and I like all the flowers.

pintrest

So, after looking at photos on pintrest for a friend who wanted ideas for an engagement party, I thought it was about time I join. I think it's a pretty cool place to keep your collection of photos you find on the internet that you like, and the boards make it easy to look back on pictures. It's giving me heaps of ideas of what do to for decorations for my 21st in June. Here's a bunch of pretty pictures from my first day :)

dessert table

floating candles

This print

These drinks in jars. Cute!

Find me here: http://pinterest.com/klerr/

pumpkin cupcakes!

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've posted! But really, I haven't been up to much.

A while ago a pumpkin plant grew out of Toby's chook run. It grew quite a few pumpkins so I got to take one. We've had it a few weeks now and I've been too lazy to do anything with it, but I knew I wanted to try making cupcakes with it. I had today off work so I decided to finally give it a go (mainly because mum had cut into it for a dinner and we didn't want it to go off).
For the cupcakes I had to make a pumpkin puree. Which involved roasting the pumpkin first. I've never roasted anything before because I'm not a huge fan of roasts, so it was a challenge. Mum was out so I couldn't ask her so I consulted the old internet. Which wasn't actually that helpful and I ended up roasting it on what I now know is a chicken roasting rack. It did kind of work but it would have been easier just to chuck it in. It also didn't cook through evenly which didn't really matter because of the next few steps. When it was all cooked I scooped the flesh out and put it in a food processor which worked ok. Then i had to strain it through a sieve, which was tough work! But it was a nice puree after that.
Then I could make cupcakes!
I used this recipe but I halved it because I didn't want to make that many. I also didn't stick with the exact measurements for the spices because I didn't have ground nutmeg so I added a bit of spicemix to it on top of all the other spices.
Instead of using the cream cheese icing the recipe calls for, I decided to use the marshmallow cream (cheap Fluff) I bought from the reject shop instead! Which was amazing! That stuff works SO well as icing that I'm going to have to go back sometime this week and see if they have anymore left, and then buy it ALL.  It makes these cupcakes even more delicious.
And after making these, it makes me a little jealous of America! With their canned pumpkin puree and their Fluff. And speaking of America, I went to tea with some friends this afternoon (gave them a cupcake each and they thought they were great! Yes!!) and went to the yankee candle shop. I ended up buying an autumn fruits votive which smells incredible and got my friend hooked on them. Enough blabbling, here's some pictures of the cooking!

pureeing pumpin

creaming the butter

This is all that's left now...

What I wore...

Today I went into the city to do something super fun and secret with my friend Nicola. I can't keep secrets so you'll probably find out soon enough. 

I really like this dress! Although, the shape is a bit funny. It's fine with a cardigan and belt though. The cardigan is my go to cardigan at the moment. I wear it with everything. All together, the outfit cost less than $25!

It's a bit cold and really windy today. Looks like it might rain. Perfect day to stay inside. When I was shopping today I started feeling a bit sick, so I'm going to spend my afternoon watching tv in bed. Nice way to start a week off uni, too!

Dress: back of a record shop ($10!), cardigan: op shop, shoes: cotton on

broach: Gemmas Jewellery Gems, belt: from another dress.

Spinach and Bacon Pasta.

So, we have a vegetable garden that I'm trying to make use of. I bought some english spinach when I was buying things to put in it, and I had no real idea about what I could actually use the spinach for. I usually just use baby spinach leaves in salads, and that's the extent of the spinach usage. These ones are bigger and thicker and I feel that they need to be cooked. So I picked a bunch last night and today I decided to use it in pasta. Oh my god. This was one of the best things I've eaten. So now I will share. I don't have any photos of the cooking process, just the before and after, because I didn't realise until after I'd tasted it that I wanted to share the recipe with everyone.
Also, I don't measure things when I'm cooking things like pasta sauces. I just put a bunch of stuff in and hope it works (it always does, by the way!). So, here it is...

Spinach and Bacon Pasta
Serves 1.

Ingredients.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 an onion
2 little cloves of garlic (or however much you want to put in, I'm not sure how many people like lots of garlic...)
3 button mushrooms
2 rashers of short cut bacon (I used three but that was probably too much)
About 1 tablespoon of pine nuts (probably too much, so put in however many you want)

1 handfull of spinach leaves

About 1 teaspoon of butter. Or enough to cover everything lightly, use as much or as little as you want. 

About 150g cooked pasta (I used leftover pene)

Parmesan and pepper to taste (I like a LOT of cheese...)

Method.

Heat oil in frypan. Finely chop onion and garlic. Fry until the onion is whiteish. While that's frying, chop up the mushrooms into large slices. I got about 4 slices per mushroom. Mushrooms shrink a lot when they're frying and in this dish I think bigger pieces are better. Add the mushrooms and fry till they're cooked a bit. Meanwhile, cut up the bacon into however big slices you want. Add that. When everything looks almost ready, add the pine nuts. Keep an eye on these because they burn easily and then they don't taste too good. Tear up the spinach into smallish pieces when the pine nuts are cooked and add them. Add butter to cover everything lightly, and add the pasta and mix it through.

Put in a bowl to serve and add however much parmesan you want and a bit of pepper.

YUM.

before cooking

Finished product! With a hazelnut iced coffee.

Things I like...

So, I used to have stretched ears, 8mm. I took them out in January and they're not quite closed up yet, but I can wear big studs if they have big backs! So now I've been looking at cute earrings to wear (I had stretched ears for almost 6 years!) These ones are lovely.

Shirts and dresses with ties on them! This one is super cute. And I've started liking green apparently!

These DIY candle holders are a great way to use old jars.

This picture

Kaylah's weekly nail blogs!

Other things...

- I bought The Walking Dead season 1 at JB on the weekend. And then finished watching it. Oh WOW, it's good! Wishing someone told me how great it was sooner! Can't wait to start watching season 2.
-Making delicious food with veggies from the garden!