Mini Christmas Tree

After hemming and hauing about it, I got myself a little tree.  I wish it was a little bigger, but for $40, I can't really complain.

Wicked!  Well, I think it's really the Wizard of Oz, but we're going to say
that these are Elphaba and Glinda.

These are my favorite Christmas ornaments.  My Mom was nice enough to
give them to me for my tree.  A couple of years ago when our tree fell over
these little guys were my main concern.  

More projects

I will probably be working on these after Christmas and New Years since weekends have been pretty hectic and busy.  I was very excited, as always, to find free and very inexpensive things at a garage sale.

I found this bad boy at the bottom of the stairs.  As some
of you may know, Nick will be moving in with me come February
when his parents move home.  Currently, he doesn't have a night
stand and will put my laptop on the floor where I can step on it when
making the bed.  I plan to sand this down and paint it white to match
my existing nightstand.  The styles are actually quite similar.  I think
with some love...a lot of love, this guy will look really good. 

I think if I sand the top of this really well that it will be good
as new.  

Don't worry, I've vacuumed and disinfected this whole piece
since these pictures.

I got these at a garage sale for $5 each.  I'm in desperate need of more lighting,
but they're expensive!  I actually kind of like the color of the tall lamp on the left,
but will be painting the other two black.  I think that detailing on these old
 lamps is fantastic. I've also already thrown out the lamp shade on the right.
 I think that the one on the left, already vacuumed for dust of course,
will look nice with some modern embellishments.  We'll see what I come up
with.  But for $15 in a weekend, Nick now has a nightstand and lamp to read with
and I can move furniture around to add more lighting to my living room.  

All in the pot chow mein

A week after Thanksgiving I still had some leftovers in my fridge.  My rule is that if it's been in there for a week it either needs to be eaten or it gets thrown out.  Lets be real here.  I'm on a budget so very little actually gets thrown out.  After surveying my sparsely stocked fridge, I managed to pull together a chow mein that Nick really enjoyed.  What is that saying?  Poor as church mice, but happy as clams.

Chinese Gai Lan, garlic, left over broccoli, ham, turkey, and egg.

I first par boiled the Gai Lan and then flash cooked the noodle.  After the water evaporated from my wok, I added EVOO, garlic and egg to scramble.  Then I tossed in the rest with some Oyster sauce and Sesame Oil.  Saute, saute, saute, and done!

Turkey Katsu

I'm so behind on my food blogs so I'll make this one quick.  After Thanksgiving Nick and I were sitting around being bums when he said that he wanted something fried for dinner.  KFC is too expensive for our thin wallets and my fridge was practically empty.  I had left over turkey that I took from our Thanksgiving dinners and one egg.  Since all of my chicken was frozen and I really only have bone-in dark meat I decided that I would improvise a Chicken Katsu recipe with the left over turkey.  I have to say, I was quite impressed with myself.  I also quickly defrosted some soup that I had made a while back and wa la!  Dinner is served.

 

Naked 2: Initial Thoughts

My biggest question when buying this palette was, Is it worth it?  The answer isn't exactly simple.

• Quality: Yes
• Cost: Yes
• Colors: Yes
• Variance from Naked Palette: No

As always, the quality of the makeup is awesome and the dual-ended synthetic brush is handy also.  For $50 +tax (free shipping) I think that this palette is a really good deal.  It also comes with a mini lip gloss that is super shiny.  I'm not a fan of lip glosses, but I thought it was pretty cool that it came with it.  I'm sure you can read all the comments on their site or other blogs about how fantastic the quality, texture, scent, color payoff, convenience, etc.  My main issue with this palette is that it is extremely similar to the original Naked Palette.  I think all of the colors are very pretty, but so are the ones in the original.  There is even a repeat, which I knew about before purchasing, but now considering that the colors are so similar I am not so pleased with the repeat.  I guess there are only so many options to stay within a neutral palette zone, but I suppose was just hoping for more.

I also prefer the matte colors in the original as they work well in the crease.  There are three matte colors in the Naked2 that are pretty good, but my makeup application skills aren't good enough to make Blackout very blendable.  I enjoy Foxy as a highlight color, but already have a very similar NYX shade. 

Onto the pictures!

Foxy and Tease are the matte colors in this picture.  The others are all
shimmer or have hints of glitter. 

Blackout is the matte color.  I really like all of these colors in this picture. 

I don't know how other bloggers do such a good job
with swatching.  It was so hard to get everything in the
shot!

The bottom line is that the palette itself is awesome, but if you already have Naked then you don't need to rush out to get Naked2.  I have nothing really negative to say about the makeup itself, just that it is too similar to the Naked Palette.  I would definitely recommend this to anyone who doesn't already own Naked.

Should anyone be interested, here is a real review on Naked 2:  MakeupbyTiffyanyD

Meyer Sale 2011

If you recall from last year my Mom and I went pretty wild with the 2010 Meyer Sale.  This year I think we might have gone just as bananas for all of the stuff.  I am seriously stoked about my new grater/zester.  I have a microplane and box grater, but nothing in between.  Yippee!  I'm also excited to use the cast iron grill/pancake top. I always see them on cooking shows, but they're so expensive that I've never bought one.  Unfortunately, I read the sign incorrectly and thought it was only $20.00.  It turned out to be $56.00! There are no returns or exchanges so I'm stuck with it, but at least I didn't pay the full price $90.00 and it is a really solid piece of equipment.  I would fear for my toes if I ever dropped it.  It would seriously break something and maybe fall through the floor if it was dropped.

Since I moved out of the house and bought new pots, I needed new cooking tools to go with them.  All of my pots and pans are Teflon so I was worried about scratching them with the medal tools that I bought at last year's sale.  Now I can't go wrong!

Lunch is Served

Using my Fire-Roasted Tomato sauce and turkey meatballs
I made this yummy meatball sandwich on and herb french
roll. 

Lazy Dog Pics

She's actually out playing here, but look at those dirty
paws!  She had an undercarriage bath when we got home.

Cookie Bonanza!

I have been baking an absurd amount of cookies lately.  I think I'm actually getting a little bit of carpal tunnel in my right hand from using the cookie scoop.  Last week when it was cold and dreary I decided to make some Snickerdoodles to warm up the condo.  They were a hit!  My office loved them and Christopher requested another batch.  I used Mrs. Sigg's Snickerdoodle recipe and added a tsp of nutmeg, substituted the shortening for butter, and double the butter amount.  Instead of using one cup of butter, I used two.  Maybe next time I should try the normal amount, but they came out so moist and buttery that I don't know if I want to go back!

I also learned a pretty neat trick from reading the Snickerdoodle comments. Instead of rolling the dough in your sugar and cinnamon mixture you can put them in a baggie and shake.  Shake and Bake!  It works so much better and is a major time saver.

I had also gotten a request for my normal ginger cookies so I made a batch of those as well.  

Thanksgiving Feasting

I swear that my stomach has stretched in the last five days.  There was so much good food to be had on both sides of my family.  I love Thanksgiving!

Unfortunately, I was too involved with talking and the normal bustle around the kitchen that I didn't take any pictures at my Uncle David's feast.  It was all so delicious!  Auntie Wendy made super cute little turkey cookies too.  

Pizza "Pinwheel"

As I was making my meatballs, I found that I had too many to put on my trays.  I decided to break some of them up to make a little appetizer to bring to my Aunt's for Thanksgiving.  In true Allison fashion, I overstuffed the thing so that I couldn't roll it.  So though it's not exactly a Pinwheel, it's a stuffed flat-roll.

Turkey Meatballs

One of my favorite foods is spaghetti.  Lately I've been making spaghetti sauce and the freezing it to eat during the week when I don't feel like cooking.  What goes well with spaghetti?  Meatballs of course!

I had purchased ground turkey from Safeway at a buy one get one free price and picked up some Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage at my local Food Maxx.  Using what herbs I had in the fridge, basil and parsley, I made about 100 meat balls to freeze.  (I also minced some onion and one egg per batch to throw in there.)  These were super easy to make and only about $9.00 total.  I look for any excuse to use my Kitchen Aid mixer so I put it all in for a little whirl, but you can use your hands and it will be fine.

I used my cookie scoop to make them all about the same size.

Freezing them flat like this first will allow me to put them in a large baggie
later without them sticking to each other or molding into one big turkey
meatloaf.

They only take about an hour to freeze. I have a second tray waiting in the
fridge since my freezer is too small to do them both at the same time.

Wah La!  I made Hot Sausage and Sage Sausage varieties.  Now we can have
spaghetti and meatballs whenever we like,  I'm also excited to have some
meatball sandwiches!