quick tip!

When my mom was in town about a month ago we decided to go to a day spa, because that is what mothers and daughters need to do when they haven't seen each other in months. After reading a few reviews and blogs about gel and shellac manicures I decided I really wanted to try them. 3 weeks without chipping? Count me in! 

I was a little hesitant that they take a dremel to your nails to file them down so that the gel doesn't look too thick but since I am a nail biter I was willing to try something new. I decided to go with "My Private Jet" for the color, it is a great sparkly brown and hello, I would love a private jet - great name!! The lady who was working on me REALLY filled my nails down, it hurt a little. After the entire process was done I was really happy and loved my nails for a good two weeks, around week three they had grown out so much that it was about time to take them off. Here is where I went from loving my nails to wanting to cry. The take off process wasn't awful, lots of soaking in acetone followed by peeling the gel off. 

Moral of the Story:

It has been two weeks since I took the gel manicure off. My nails hurt. My nails are so thin that even washing my hands in water that is too hot or cold hurts. I think that the nerves under my nails are exposed. They are thin and fragile and bend and I want my old bitten, chipped nails back. I had the OPI axxium process done, my mom had a shellac process done in Houston that did not involve filing the nail down. Her nails were super shiny, lasted a long time and she loved it. 

If you are considering gel vs. shellac, go with shellac!! 

Still working on the new site, so stay tuned!! 

xoxo

Updates

Hey bloggers!

I am in the process of some changes around here, so I probably will not be posting for a couple of days but I promise I am still around - just working behind the scenes! 

In the meantime I am trying to come up with my birthday wish list and so far all I have are crest white strips  and kate spade everything - any other ideas out there?! 

Have a great Thursday everyone

xoxo

taking chances

When I decided to become a world renowned chef learn how to cook I had no idea you could boil chicken.  To me you can bake, fry and grill chicken, I had never in my life heard of boiling chicken. Well there were like a million recipes out there that started with boiling the chicken and this scared me to death. I am already crazy hesitant about cooking chicken because I can never tell when it is done and am always scared I will undercook it and poison myself and friends - I think this is why I was so good at being a vegetarian! So last night I decided to step waaay out of my comfort zone and boil up some chicken!

It all started when I saw this recipe of Chicken Noodle Soup Casserole on my favorite Pioneer Woman and realized if I wanted more casserole options in my life I had to step out of my chicken boiling comfort zone. I researched what temperature and how long it should boil for and got about a million different answers, everywhere from 12 minutes to 22 minutes. So I stuck the chicken in the water with some olive oil, crossed my fingers and set my timer for 11 minutes to check on it. 

All I can say was that was the easiest chicken I have ever made!! Since our chicken was a bit thinner than normal chicken breasts it only took the 11 minutes and then it was perfect for shredding. Who knew chicken could be this easy?! 

I cooked the chicken earlier in the night since I was not sure how that situation was going to go. Once we were ready for dinner I started the water for the pasta and got to chopping up the celery, carrots and onion while mister pressed the garlic. Then we put it on a pan with some butter to start cooking all the veggies. 

Once that was done we just dumped in the cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soup followed by half a cup of sour cream and the boiled chicken ( no we did not almost forget to add the chicken, I don't know where you heard that)! 

We did not have room to mix everything in the pan so we actually put everything in a big bowl with the pasta. Once that was all mixed up we put it in a pyrex pan and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes. 

Lastly heaven was created. Dumping an entire roll of crushed ritz crackers on top of this wonderful mix and cooking for another 5 minutes. This casserole was HEAVEN. Overall it was easy, there were quite a few steps but nothing was difficult once I stepped out of my comfort zone. 

 All I can say is I know exactly what I will be having for lunch today and probably dinner tonight!! 

On another note, I am dreaming of this dress and this dress. 

xoxo

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend has come and gone - where on earth is this year going?! Friday night mister and I went out with some friends who are my absolute favorites. Over Christmas we took pictures with Santa so we decided we had to take pictures with the Easter bunny!! So we enjoyed some drinks at happy hour and headed on over to the mall to get in line with all the babies and toddlers - please forgive my picture of a picture

After our adorable picture we wondered the mall for a few minutes where I discovered that forever 21 now has maternity clothes. I am just not sure how I feel about this. Opinions? 

Paco enjoyed his Easter. He has been hiding/sleeping in the strangest places. Yesterday we discovered him cuddling in the back of the closet with my cowboy boots. I think he misses Texas so he was drawn to the boots! I gave him some plastic easter eggs which have always been his favorite toys to play with, however all he wanted to do was sleep!

Saturday night we went to see Water for Elephants. I read the book a couple weeks ago and was really excited to see my favorite actress in this part. The movie was really good, it definitely had some major differences from the book, but seeing the changes and things left out/switched around I can understand why. Normally I get pretty upset when a movie is drastically different from a book I love, but this time I actually understood the changes and still really enjoyed it. I also loved having an awesome date night with frozen yogurt included!

Mister brought me home an awesome Easter surprise. We named him Walter. I love him. 

Thanks to the wonderful world of netflix I am completely addicted to the show Fringe. I think this show has taken over me more than any other show ever. We watched season one and two on netflix but since the third season is still currently on we had to find the first half of season 3 online which was such a pain but we did make it happen - so I may have gone a little overboard and we may have watched like 10 episodes in the last three days - Whoops!! What can I say, you put Joshua Jackson in something and I am HOOKED, I fell in love with him in Mighty Ducks. Love like that just doesn't disappear. 

who could resist that?

 Also due to my not working I have been sucked into some pretty awful day time tv, today I have been watching Bethany Ever After while I clean and do some crafts and it does not seem to be as awful as I expected. I was hesitant due to Real Housewives but I did always like her so I am giving it a shot!

Hope everyone has a great week!

xoxo

Thursday Pizza

A few months ago I saw this post about a homemade breakfast pizza on Smitten Kitchen and knew I had to make it. I am a full believer in breakfast for dinner and one of our favorite things to make at home is pizza, combining two of my favorite things? Easy decision! 

Last year for Mister's birthday I gifted him a pizza stone - best thing ever! It is awesome for homemade pizza, store bought pizza, bread of any kind. We tend to keep the stone in the oven at all times. This is where I got ours, I also recommend the scrubber and pizza peel! 

As I looked over the recipe again last night I decided to make a few changes, first of all, I was not going to make the dough - too lazy! Publix always has fresh bags of dough in the bakery section so all you have to do is pick it up! Secondly, we still had some fresh mushrooms and spinach from the farmers market last weekend that I really wanted to use. 

To start if off - we preheated the oven to 350 with the pizza stone in it and start turning the dough into crust!

We put the crust onto our pizza peel so it will be easy to transfer to the stone 

followed by a layer of cheese and four eggs

Pilled on some sliced up mushrooms and spinach

Finally transfer the pizza onto the stone! We cooked it for about 30 minutes

It was HEAVENLY!!! The egg was so perfect, I could not get enough of it! It's the weekend folks - go make yourself a pizza!!!

xoxo

discoveries

Last Christmas my wonderful mamma put a pretty dark green nail polish in my stocking. I LOVED it. I get the fabulous OPI, China Glaze and their popularity, but every once in awhile a girl just needs a low cost fabulous color that they can do at home. 

Enter Sally Hansen Insta-Dri fast dry nail color. The brush is amazing, it is flat which makes getting right up to the edge of the nail/skin super easy. I am fairly awful at painting my own nails and due to my complete lack of patience I tend to walk around/type/text and never let them dry properly, this stuff is super quick drying so you have less time to mess it up! It also only takes one coat for awesome coverage, max two coats. 

Best part - they cost less than $5 so you can get lots of fun colors!! 

I just got peachy breeze and am lovin every minute it!

xoxo

relaxing weekend

I have been a total ball of stress for the past week and a half, and I have never handled stress well. So this weekend I decided to be as stress free as I could be. 

Friday night we went and saw a movie at Universal City Walk and wandered around some shops which is always fun. 

Saturday I read Water for Elephants by the pool and I have to say I loved that book.  With the movie coming out this week I wanted to make sure I had read the book before I saw it and it was fantastic. I am hoping that the movie is half as good as the book because it was truly wonderful. I know I am late in the game, but now I'm onto Eat, Pray, Love.

Sunday we went to the farmers market and I swear I could have eaten absolutely everything I saw.  The fresh fruits and vegetables were all so colorful and wonderful. We ended up leaving with tomatoes, eggplant, spinach, mushrooms, blueberries, strawberries, 4 loaves of fresh bread, home made pasta and Guinness cheese. We decided to take everything over to Seans mom's and cook them dinner after hanging out in the pool. 

Is anyone else loving Kate Spade as much as Stefanie and I are? I cannot get enough of it lately. Everything from the bags to the breathtaking skirts/dresses/bangles/shoes/website. Here are some fantastic things I've been eyeing. I especially love the bangles because they all have cute phrases inside them and do not even get me started on the pineapple earrings!

 xoxo

friday love list

Anyone who knows me well, knows that today is a huge day for me. The newest Harry Potter DVD was released at midnight. I didn't think anything could beat that. As I was doing my normal blog reading I clicked on over to a blog I like to read every once in a while, and died laughing. Never in my life did I expect this. 

Confession of a 20 Something is always entertaining but today, she made a discovery that I can only dream of making. Insert the Cuchini. There are so many things to say about this, from the camel mascot to the amazing slogan and video. Watch it. Laugh. Explore. Laugh. Question what the world is coming to. and laugh some more.

Enjoy your Friday. 

all on my own

In January one of the first meals I made all on my own was an awesome spinach and cheese stuffed chicken. This week I was thinking of making it again but I was already out and couldn't completely remember what ingredients it needed, but I thought it was ricotta and cottage cheese, well I was wrong. So needless to say I got home and had the wrong ingredients but still wanted something stuffed chicken.

So for the very first time, I made dinner without a recipe. It was a scary experience to say the least. I still had the recipe up for reference, but since the ingredients I had were so different, I had no idea how much to use. 

I started by slicing up the spinach smaller since I remembered that last time the pieces were too big, I also included mushrooms because they sounded delicious. I put those on the pan so start cooking and got to pounding out the chicken

Once that was done I put a couple tablespoons of ricotta cheese and cottage cheese in a medium bowl. I added the cooked spinach and mushrooms in and started stirring. I glanced at the recipe from last time and saw that it called for fresh garlic so I added some garlic powder and prayed that it would taste good. Then the fun began!

I took the chicken and added a large spoonful of the mixture in the middle and started the "rolling" process, which I pretty much failed at. You would think a girl from Texas who has mastered the fajita roll could handle the chicken roll, still not quite there!

Once that was all done I dipped the chicken rolls into an egg and water mixture and bread crumbs!

Around this time mister got home and looked at me like I was crazy because there was not enough counter space so my laptop was on the floor right outside the kitchen

After 35 minutes at 375 the chicken rolls were perfect!! Served up with some steamed veggies and it was a perfect Monday night meal!

xoxo

impromptu dinner

Last week after a later than usual work out mister and I were hungry... but we just did not know for what. Normally we would go back and forth trying to get the other person to decide and then end up having chicken and some sort of vegetable with rice, but I remembered we had a fresh, delicious avocado screaming to top a delicious chicken sandwich. 

So we got into itty bitty to hit up publix for some fresh buns, organic fresh chicken (we did not have any thawed out), a salad mix, almond slices and a raspberry vinaigrette. 

First we sliced up the inspiration for the dinner (pics taken with my phone, forgive me)

We used a pre-mixed salad, but added sliced almonds, mushrooms, grapes and a raspberry vinaigrette - it was awesome

Mister covered the chicken in a honey bar-b-q sauce we had left over from wings and cooked them on a non stick pan

Once the chicken was cooked we put it onto the fresh bun, added the avocado slices with the salad as our side and it was delicious!! All the flavors combined perfectly for an awesome quick impromptu dinner!!

We also had enough left over for me to take for lunch the next day, which was a great change from my usual sandwich!

xoxo

changes are upon us

As you can see there are some changes happening everywhere! This week started off with my parents heading home, which totally sucked but I know my mom is enjoying seeing her friends in Houston once more and then getting home to Luanda to get back in the swing of things. Dad is back at work being the rockstar that he is. 

I decided to give the blog a bit of a makeover.  I am really excited to be getting more into the blogging world. I also purchased the domain name so now you can skip the .blogspot.com portion which I think is pretty awesome. 

I am currently back on the job hunt which isn't too exciting but I am hoping that this is going to be a blessing in disguise. I am really interested in marketing and social media and it would be wonderful to be in a position where I can grow more in the industry. If anyone knows of anything in the Orlando area please help a lady out!!

Off to get back to the job hunt - have a great weekend!

xoxox

EPIC week

We are back from our wonderful week on the EPIC, and I am ready for another! We started our heavenly 10 day holiday driving down to Miami to pick up my dad. After some last minute shopping and dropping my mom and dad at the hotel mister and I had a nice dinner with his friend Alistair and some drinks to start the vacation off right!

Saturday morning we boarded the ship and said goodbye to Miami!

NCL EPIC

bye Miami!

My dad had been traveling from Africa for around 22 hours and with being on planes for that long he caught a bit of a cold. The first night of the cruise is the pub crawl (which we had all been looking forward to) but my parents decided to skip it so my dad could rest a bit. I was sad they missed it, but Sean and I still crawled away. They take you to 5 bars for 5 shots plus a few other games which includes beer. I never do all the shots but it is still really fun!

Pub Crawl 2011

We had two days at sea to lounge around, relax, read and hang out by the pool. Our first stop was in St Maarten. We took a cab to the french side of the island and enjoyed a beautiful beach and the sun! We all managed to get a little sun burnt even though we were all wearing sun screen. It was a beautiful day with great views and the water felt amazing! Later in the day we did a bit of shopping and mister and I had lunch and a drink at a cute place on the beach.

Mister and I in St Maarten

Me and my Dad looking at some shops

Our next stop was St Thomas, lots of fun shops to look at and beautiful scenery. After all the time in the sun the day before we opted for shade and a yummy lunch at a restaurant with a great view. 

Us being silly

St Thomas

Our final stop was in Nassau. I was most excited about this stop because I have always wanted to see the Aquarium at Atlantis. I am so glad we went! It was pretty expensive for a pass just to see the aquarium but there were so many awesome fish and critters it made for a day of fun. The best part was feeding the sting rays! After Atlantis Sean and I went and explored the straw market and found a few things to bring home including two large wood masks, a pretty bracelet and Christmas ornaments. My family always gets an ornament for each trip so every year when we put up our tree we can look and them and remember the fun times. I have always loved this tradition because that way you don't just buy something that will clutter up the house and you always have it to look back on. I also love that Mister and I have done this for all of our trip so far!

love the manta rays

fun fish

mister feeding the sting ray

my turn!

mamma with the sting ray

giant chair

Here are some other highlights of the trip:

I LOVE towel animals and this one won my heart

So many photographers all over the ship, couldn't resist this picture!

We won another bottle of champagne in the casino!!

At the Cirque du Soleil dinner theater

Beautiful parents

Taking Yahtzee really seriously

cheezin it

All in all it was a wonderful week and I am really sad it is over. My parents head back Wednesday morning and I probably won't see my dad again until around Christmas. I will get to see my mom in July, but that is it for the rest of the year. I am so grateful we had this time, and really happy they got to spend more time with Sean and get to know him more. 

We are now back to work and counting down until our next trip in May!

xoxo