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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Easy lunch idea-avacado and tuna toast

Today for lunch I had a little more time to spend. Whenever I have time for a meal I always try to make it healthy and delicious. Sadly today there wasn't much in the fridge so I whipped up this open toasted sandwich ( I have no idea what this is called?). You can tell I was really scrounging around since one piece of bread is multigrain and one is white. They  were the last pieces of bread left in the pantry. 

I placed two pieces of bread in a sandwich maker and on top of that I slice up some avocado, mushrooms and used some leftover lemon pepper tuna. For the mushrooms I'm not comfortable eating raw mushrooms so I boiled them in some water for one minute just so they were cooked. On top of everything I placed some nice cheese. I leave it in the toasted sandwich maker for 5 minutes just so the bread gets nice and crisper and the cheese is melting. 


And voila! This is such an easy healthy lunch and I just love to make this when I have an empty fridge because it only requires a few ingredients but it is so yummy! You can totally customise what you put on top of your toast. In the past I have used leftover chicken, cucumber, fresh tomatoes, and capsicum and it always tastes good. 



Comment below what you like to make for lunch and if you decide to try this please comment below with a picture. I would love to see different takes on this!

Friday, July 25, 2014

DIY lyric art- Don't you worry child

Got lots of love from my last DIY lyric art so decided to do another one. This is the chorus from Don't you worry child by Sweedish house mafia. This song isn't typically my kind of song but I remember listening to it a couple of times and just falling in love with the lyrics. I really live the lyrics because I am one of those people that just worry themselves to death. I am always so anxious and when I was little I used to have serious panic attacks but luckily I outgrew them as I got older.

Personally these lyrics are a little reminder that there is a bigger picture that sometimes we can't see. It helps me to stop worrying and just live out my life without fear. I hope you any this artwork because I worked really hard on it.

Comment below any other lyric art you would like me to do next.


Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Easy and Quick Gingerbread Men

In the middle of winter there is nothing better than a good gingerbread cookie. Now I am really picky about my gingerbread cookies. They have to be soft and warming but still gingery and sweet. I know that the 'American' gingerbread men recipe contains molasses but molasses are a rare and hated thing in my house. I think it's a New Zealand thing? I know most of my friends have no clue what they are. Anyway when I first began to make gingerbread recipes I bought a jar of molasses and I tried a couple of 'American' recipes that called for 1/2 cup of molasses and for someone who doesn't like the taste of molasses they all turned out horribly. Even my brother who will eat anything didn't eat them. I think it's because here in New Zealand we don't have the taste for traditional gingerbread. Instead I found this perfect recipe from Zoella last Christmas and since then I have made these cookies 4 times. These gingerbread men are so delicious. The molasses flavour is hidden underneath the ginger and cinnamon but still provides a warm spice. This recipe is really different because it is made on the stove but it works and makes cleanup much easier as everything is in one pot!
As I said this recipe is from Zoella but I've altered it a little bit. I found that this recipe makes about 50 small gingerbread men. it definitely makes heaps so if you want less you can halve recipe. These are so yummy You should definitely try these. If you do comment below and tell me what you think!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of golden syrup (I prefer to use honey)
1 tablespoon of molasses
1 tablespoon of water
1 teaspoon of cinnamon 
1 heaped teaspoon of ginger
100g of butter
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1 3/4 cups of flour

Mix everything except baking soda and flour in a bowl.


and melt it over a low heat.
When everything is melted add the baking soda and stir quickly. It should change into a golden colour. Once everything is combined take it off the heat. 



Slowly add the flour until it makes a dough and roll it out. Take a cookie cutter and make some cookies!



Place them into an oven for 8 minutes. Check them constantly because they burn easily. If you want the soft and chewy bake them for 6 minutes.

And Voila! 



For the icing I used one cup of icing sugar, one teaspoon of lemon juice and 2 tablespoon on milk. I prefer a lemon icing because the sourness goes perfectly with the warm ginger spice.

I love the way they turned out. I think they are super cute and fun for a lazy winter day!



Sunday, July 20, 2014

Easy pasta salad


For lunch today I decided to be healthy and make a pasta salad. This was super easy and I just used whatever we had in the fridge. I tried to make the dressing a little bit healthy by mixing a couple of tablespoons of mayo with some Greek yoghurt and it actually tasted really delicious. 

First I boiled the water and made pasta as normal.



We had some frozen green beans so i thawed them and then fried them with some button mushrooms.


To the pasta I added about half a can of corn, leftover takeaway duck, and some tuna.




For dressing I used 2 tablespoon of mayo mixed with half a cup of yoghurt and some garlic pepper.


And voila! Easy and healthy pasta salad.


Dessert at Frasers

Last night the family and I went out for dessert at Frasers cafe and Espresso bar on Mt Eden road to celebrate getting an A in my first semester at uni. The place was so crowded for a Tuesday night, every table was full and people were turned away. And there was a good reason it was packed. The food was amazing and reasonably priced as well which is a bonus. 

I ordered the warmed chocolate came with vanilla ice cream and warmed chocolate sauce. It was so delicious on a cold winter night. It was $13. 


My mum ordered the lemon tart for only $7 and they gave us a huge slice! It had the perfect sweetness balanced with he sourness of the lemon. Totally worth it.


Friday, July 18, 2014

Top 5 Apps


I love apps. I used to dislike them because I found them annoying and I didn't get the hype but now I love apps! Here are my top 5 apps and since I'm cheap they are all free. I'm also excluding social media cos otherwise my top 5 would be twitter, Facebook and YouTube. 

Comment below if you would like me to do a what's on my phone tag and your favourite apps. I would love to find more great apps.




1. Battery doctor
This app has been a life saver for me since we all know how short the battery life of an iPhone is. I found this app randomly one day in the App Store and i never looked back. This app has helped extend my battery life by hours and got me in much better charging habits. You basically open this app when you are charging and the app makes sure it charges fully. Since using this app I can nearly go a day and a half without charging!  It also clears junk in your phone, boosts memory and tells you which apps uses the most battery and how to optmise your battery life when you are running out.I highly recommend this if you are having battery problems.



2. Charades!
This app is basically the free version of Heads Up app by Ellen. I'm always on the lookout for fun games which are free and this one is great. It is basically charades and you can play it in groups where one person holds it on their forehead while the other describes it to them. 




The cool thing about this app is that you can actually create your own categories and personalise it. It also has so many built in categories like animal kingdom, songs of the 80s,90s,00s and brands and more. I played this app with my friends on a bus trip to Rotorua and it was so much fun. 

3. PicsArt
This is my favourite photo editing app to use. It has everything I would ever need to edit a photo in one app. It has all the tools such as brightness, crop, rotate etc but it can also place overlays on your photos, shape masks which is what I use to create my banner, stickers, borders, frames and more. The effects aren't that good but certainly useable and it even comes with a fade setting so you can adjust how much the effect appears on the photo. 



4. GuitarTuna
This is the perfect app for anyone who plays guitar. It has a built in guitar tuner so all you have to do is place your phone besides the guitar and pluck each string. The app will tell you if it is too high or low and then you tune accordingly. The screen goes green when the string is in tune. This app is perfect for beginners especially because when I first started learning guitar I could not tune at all. I have no musical ear even though I played piano for ten years so this app really helped me out. It also has games that help you learn chords and notes so it is just a great guitar app.




5. Sleep time
I have a love hate relationship with this app. It is basically an app that measures your sleep. You place it beside your pillow at night and it records how well you slept- how many hours of deep sleep you got and how many hours of light sleep and then in the morning it presents a nice graph of your sleeping patterns. 


Another cool aspect of this app is that it is also an alarm. At night you set what time you want to wake up by and the app will wake you up in your lightest sleep so you wake up happy instead of grouchy! 

The only downside to this app is that you have to set our alarm every night in order to get a graph and some mornings i don't have to be up at a certain time so I don't want to set an alarm but other than that it is a really great app!

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

DIY lyric art- Airplanes


 Airplanes by Bob and Hayley Williams is such an oldie but a goodie. The lyrics of this song is beautiful and meaningful so I decided to recreate my favourite lyrics from the song. "Can we pretend airplanes in the night sky are like shooting star?" These lyrics give me so much hope and brings me back to my childhood. I'm really proud of this piece that I did, it is super bright and colour and I am really happy with it.

Comment below other lyric art you would like me to do and I'll do my best.


Tuesday, July 15, 2014

St Lukes Shopping Haul


Spent the day shopping at St Lukes Westfield in Auckland today and picked up a couple of items.



Got this Jordana blush in 42 rich sorbet and it is the most gorgeous pink colour I have ever seen!


Jordana undercover cream concealer in 02 light medium.


Elf healthy glow bronzer in the shade sun kissed. I am so happy that elf is in Kmart now. Makes my life so much easier to get my elf!


I love this cute daisy patterned circle skirt from cotton on and it was in the sale section for only 10 bucks! What a bargain!


I also picked up this top from Valley Girl and it was 20 dollars. The cute cat with the moustache twisted my arm and the fact the print is in black and white, it looks so cool. I love!

DIY berry smoothie

Today we finally got some sun here in Auckland after lots and lots of rain so I decided to treat myself with a bright berry smoothie for breakfast. This is super delicious and really quick.

Ingridents:
A large Handful of berries ( I used a mix of strawberry and raspberry)
Half a cup of orange juice
One pot of yoghurt
One banana
One small apple
One teaspoon of cinnamon 
Half a cup of coconut water

Mix and blend thoroughly.



I really love this recipe because it is sweet but healthy. The banana helps me to stay full for a long time. Plus I love the bright pink colour!



Sunday, July 13, 2014

Chinese Steam Boat Feast

"Laughter is the brightest where food is the best"

Had a great feast with our neighbors before they move out. I am going to miss them so much even though we've only been neighbours for a couple of years. To say goodbye we invited them over and had traditional Chinese Steam Boat. Steam Boat is basically a mini stove in the middle of the table (in this case we had two- one for the adults and one for the kids). On top of the stove is a big pot full of boiling water and it's basically an all you can eat buffet. Whatever you wanna eat you can put into the pot and it only takes a minute to cook, and then you can dip it into difference sauces. It is actually quite a healthy way to eat because there is no oils or fats, just cooking with boiling water. We had prawns, mussels, fish balls, tofu balls, spinach, squid (as you can tell, lots of seafood), vermicelli noodles, cooked duck and chicken, bean sprouts, crab sticks and lots of other goodies. It was a great night to say goodbye to our neighbors!

 

 

Friday, July 11, 2014

DIY lyric art - 19 you and me

One of my favourite songs of all time is 19 you and me by Dan and Shay and I've been wanting to do some lyric art for it. The lyrics are just so beautiful and the song is really catchy. You should definitely check it out if you haven't heard it before. It's the perfect summer song ( shhh no one needs to know that it's winter here in New Zealand)

I was inspired by the lyric video for the 
song in the first scene with the car. Put my own twist on it and voila! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. 




Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Family Time

Since it's the holidays I have decided to literally do no work for one entire week. During the term it is just go go go and everyone needs a break otherwise I will crash and burn. Hence why I spent today with my family and closest family friends playing fun games and eating good food. We played rummikub. If you havent played this game before its basically like scrabble except with numbers with a little luck and lot of brains. For my first time let me tell you that I was a boss although i was playing with people younger than me hmmm? Can't say the same for mario kart though. I swear I'm a better driver than this game shows me to be. Damn kids these days are so much better at video games than me. Sigh. For lunch I made pasta bake and omg it was so good. Comfort food and hot chocolate on a rainy day always is though.



Music Mania


In music news I am currently loving Be Okay by Oh Honey. I first heard this song on glee a month ago and instantly fell in love with it. It is so bright and cheery and is just a perfect pick me up for my mid winter blues. I highly recommend this song. My favourite line is the chorus "can't complain about much these days, I believe we will be okay" and damn ain't that the truth. 



Fifth Harmony's Boss music video came out yesterday and I can't make up my mind about. The song took me a while to get used to but now I love it. The beat is super catchy, super sassy and just fun. I love their message and I love how they stand for girl power. I've been a big fan since xfactor and I love the girls but I don't think this music video does them justice. I do love their sass in the video though. Also I am a little concerned about how provocative they are dressing in the video which sort of contradicts how they want people to respect them? But I still love them and can't wait to hear their new music. 



One music video I am loving is Megan and Liz's Simple Life video. Holy moly it is so beautiful. I fell in love with the song the moment I heard it. The music video totally does the song justice. They look gorgeous in the video and I'm really glad they kept the storyline really simple so the music and lyrics shone. I've been big fans of megan and liz for a long time but their new music is really good and throwback to their music that they first started writing and putting out which I'm really glad since I think it suits them better. This video is like a giant instagram party! I really love it. My favourite line is " I'd leave this all behind to just live that simple life". In case you can't tell i really love cheesy lyrics but the melody really suits the lyrics. P.S I'm such a sucker for country music and this totally fits that genre. 

 

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

DIY warm smoothie


In New Zealand it is currently winter and in Auckland it has been so cold lately that it is hard to motivate myself to stay healthy. While I love smoothies in the summer i can't say that a ice cold smoothie does the same for me in winter. Until I discovered this warm apple pie smoothie. It literally tastes like apple pie and warms me up in the morning and I love. The smoothie is super easy and totally customisable. It only has 3 ingredients, you can't get easier than that! This recipe can serve two.



All you need is one large apple, cinnamon and a mandarin. 

Step 1
Dice the apple into small cubes and place them into a microwave safe bowl. 


Step 2
Fill the bowl with enough water to cover the apples. Then add 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon depending on how much you like cinnamon. I love cinnamon so I like to add 2 teaspoons.


Step 3
Place the apples into the microwave for 2 minutes or until your apples are soft. 


While the apples are microwaving, peel the mandarin and chuck them into the blender. You can add honey for sweetness if you want.


Step 4
Chuck the apples with the liquid into the blender and blend until smooth.


And voila! It is literally the best thing on a cold winter morning. It warms me up from the inside and tastes like apple pie. Who doesn't like apple pie! 





Monday, July 7, 2014

Nail Polish of the day

Finally got round to painting my nails. Had a great day relaxing, painting my nails and watching re-runs of Elementary! I'm such a sucker for Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Watson. Can't wait for season 3!
Here are my nails with one of my favourite lilac polishes by Ga-de. This is the shade 434 lilac bloom. It dries so fast and never chips! I love it.


DIY acne treatment

This is a treatment that I used to use when I was 13-14 years old when I used to have bad forehead acne. Recently my face has been breaking out really badly due to stress with exams. I had forgotten about this treatment and had been using a number of fancy face products to try and clear my face. However none of them seemed to be working and so I came back to the good old salt treatment  and it has done wonders for my skin. 

Sea Salt is a natural detoxifier so it absorbs all the bad stuff from our skin leaving it healthy and clean. This makes sea salt perfect for reducing the size of your pores, getting rid of blackheads and even healing wounds faster.  I've found that this treatment has made my skin softer, smoother and reduced scarring on my face. Furthermore it has helped with my oily skin.

I like to do this once to two times a week depending on how bad my skin is. This salt treatment is the easiest thing in the world and is super quick! I swear by salt for reducing acne! 


Step 1
Boil some water. I prefer to use a deep saucepan and boil 3-4 cups of water but you can use a shallower pot with less water. 




Step 2
Add 4-5 teaspoons of salt. Sea salt is preferred but I have done this with table salt and it works fine. Keep in mind that if your skin is super sensitive use less salt.



Step 3
Take the pot off the heat and place a facecloth in the water and completely submerge. 




Step 4
Let the water cool until it is just cool enough to put on your face but still hot enough to work its magic. Then take the cloth out of the pot and let it sit on your face for 20 minutes. If the cloth cools down quickly you can place it back into the water to let it reheat before placing it back onto your face.

Step 5
Feel how clean and smooth your face is!

Notes:
It is important to keep in mind that while salt is great for acne too much can dry out the skin. Therefore it is important to always use a moisturiser after doing this treatment. I prefer to use a sheet face mask after this because it allows the goodness to really seep into my clean skin.


These are my favourite ones to use. These are the Tonymoly Pureness 100 snail mask sheet. My friend got them for me from Korea and they make my face super soft!