Ellie Nova Ottati - First Birthday!

Ellie is one year old today! We had her birthday party a day early so my mom, my brother and my sister in law could come over. It was so fun to see how happy she was when I gave her the smash cake I made. She would look at it and touch it carefully, poking it with one finger. Then she would smear some of the icing off. Then she would squish the cake in her hands and dig into the middle of it. Finally she started smacking it and dumping the cake everywhere and smearing it all over her face and dress! I loved it. 

Me in my jammies getting everything ready.

Murray is a love bug.

Uncle Will and Aunt Cyndel in the morning playing with Ellie, and Murray's doofy face.

I made cake pops, a heart cake and a smash cake. 

Happy birthday!

What is it?

 

My little chunky monkey!

All cleaned up.

This was actually from the week before but they were too cute to leave out. She was pooped from her party though!

Nail - 90's Pink Grunge

To be truly grunge all you would have to do is slap on some black polish and let it chip off for a few weeks, but that's no fun unless you have better things to do like practice with your garage band.

For my index finger and pinky I painted on the China Glaze Bottoms Up first and then applied the Sinful Colors Black Crackle to the top after it dried. The crackle color is pretty matte itself but I still coated them with OPI's Matte Top Coat once the nails were completely dry.

My thumb, middle and ring finger I painted black. Then I used the striping brush to apply the pink stripes to my ring finger. I was so happy that the brush worked to well! It was really easy to draw the lines straight. I applied the matte to my ring finger after this as well.

For the flower pattern on my thumb and middle finger I coated the black with matte polish and then used a dotting tool to make slightly irregular flower shapes with the China Glaze Bottoms Up. On top of the pink blobs I again used the dotting tool to add Wet ' Wild Dreamy Poppy. Then I used L.A. Colors Palm Tree and a smaller dotting tool to add green leaf blobs (it's not so important to make it look perfect) Lastly I added some little pink rhinestones to the center of each flower.

Polish used:

Maybelline Express Finish - Onyx Rush

China Glaze - Bottoms Up

Wet N' Wild - Dreamy Poppy

L.A. Colors - Palm Tree

Sinful Colors - Black Crackle

OPI - Matte Top Coat

OPI - Natural Nail Base Coat

Supplies used:

Cheeky Rhinestones

VAGA Striping Brush 

VAGA Dotting Tools

Japanese Candy Sushi - Popin' Cookin'

I love saw some YouTube videos of people making these cute little candies and I had to order some for myself! I love cute Japanese things and this little kit was so much fun.  

It was pretty easy to figure out how to do it even if you don't read Japanese. I still looked at a video to make sure I didn't mess it up. Each tray had little numbers or letters that matched the powder packets. 

You add packs of powder to water and mix them in the different molds. One was like tuna and the other was made to look like egg. The rice was just chopped up white jelly and the seaweed was a weird taffy thing that you molded into a strip. Everything was a strange gelatinous consistency.

The coolest part was making the fish eggs! You used a dropper to drip blobs of goo into a mixture of powder and water. They set into little balls and look just like fish eggs. 

Last was to assemble and drizzle on soy sauce!

We were scared to try them and I had to force Joe to eat one with me. The rice was the weirdest part. It was very jiggly and smooshy but none of it tasted too bad. The fish eggs were the best!

I've got a whole bunch more of these so I think I will post them all along with a taste test. Some of them are really gross from what I've heard. 

Passover / Easter Weekend

Friday morning was my yearly tradition of saying, "Hey, is it Passover? It's Passover! YESSSSS, I'm making FOOD!!"

I have this memory of a certain mystery food that was spread on matzo bread from Passover when I was a kid. It was sweet and I can never figure out what it was. 

I made matzo ball soup with parsley, dill, parsnips, tri-colored carrots and celery. I love that purple carrot. Matzo ball soup is delicious if you have never tried it. Usually it has chicken in it too but I didn't think we needed two meats since I also made salmon with a horseradish and dill cream sauce. For the side I made tri-colored fingerling potatoes and roasted beets.

I also made challah from scratch.

Saturday I decided to dye some eggs since I planned on making egg salad. I'm obsessed with egg salad. We watched the original TRON too. I don't know why you need to know all that.

The dog found the first Easter egg and brought it into his bed with him before I caught him. Ellie found the rest and tried putting them all in her mouth. She got a nice little goth lipstick look!

Happy Spring!

Nail - Spring Patterns

Happy Friday! This week was a little rough for me. I totally bombed a math quiz that I spent HOURS studying for and I got another parking ticket at the school. Lots of really great things happened though. The highlight was that Ellie can WALK now! She's so cute wobbling around. She has a bruise on her butt from plopping down on it. After I came home from my crappy quiz day Ellie came wobbling up to me for a big hug. The sweetest!!

On to my nails for this week... I cut them short again because the length was getting annoying. Immediately after I cut them I found a video showing how to file perfect almond shape nails and I regretted it. I want my nails sharpened to a point like Miss Kitty! Also my nail art haul from Amazon finally got here. I have a whole set of nail guides in different shapes, gems, pearls, roses, bows, pink brushes and dotting tools. 

The husband will have to be on nail photo duty from now on because I can't get a picture with my real camera that is any better than my iPhone! I discovered that I cannot get it to focus on me if I set it up and move in front of it. Yay. I know nothing about cameras and the more I try to learn the more confused I am. It's worse than my pre-calculus class.

China Glaze - Lotus Begin

Milani Jewel FX - Lavender

OPI - Bride's Bouquet

OPI - Natural Nail Base Coat

OPI - Top Coat

Martha Stewart Glitter - Sugar Plum

XJ French Nail Tip Guides

I can't even get a good picture of flowers! WTF.