Update!

After a minor lull in proceedings while my supervisor read over my work, I am stuck, nose pushed firmly to the grindstone in the library making changes and corrections.

Ah the joys! However, in little less than two weeks time I will have a couple of extra letters after my name, a lot more free time and the opportunity to blog blog blog! Upcoming will be posts on My First Franken, the search for the perfect foundation, some lovely days out post thesis and some random ramblings. And who doesn't love a good ramble!

My First Frankenpolish

Ok, so I wasn't overly enthused with my Claire's Accessories green nail varnish. But I though it would be a bit of a waste to leave it languish in my box of polishes, whats a girl to do? I have recently become very taken with a number of nail blogs, one of which is Dr Frankenpolish. So I took inspiration from that creative blogger and decided to Franken my Claire!

I used to do this quite a bit when I was younger, adding crushed eyeshadow and glitter and I ruined many a nail varnish in the process! I knew what I wanted to achieve, make this a deeper, maybe a tealy green. I decided that if I added a deep blue it might turn out they way I wanted... It didn't! But, what I got was much nicer and very unexpected, making it possibly even better.



I added this E.L.F. polish in Dark Navy to the Claire's to get the colour I was hoping to achieve... But here's what i actually ended up with!





This was the most unusual colour, a kind of inky, creamy, greyed out blue-green with a tiny hint of shimmer. (How many more adjectives can I use to describe it I wonder!)This picture doesn't actually do this colour justice... In different lights this flashed green, slate, even grey at some points. Success, albeit unexpected!

Dupe for Audrey??

Having been doing little else other than staring at my nails as I was typing up my Masters Thesis over the past few months, recently I have become a huge fan of all things nail related! So I thought what better way to re-introduce myself to the world of blogging than to pop up a post on my latest aquisition. A potential dupe of China Glaze For Audrey. The original is a gorgeous Tiffany Blue duck egg colour and was inspired by the iconic store and named after the gorgeous Audrey Hepburn. Its not the exact colour of those famous blue boxes, but it is quite close. (Image from China Glaze website.)

I was searching for a suitable dupe and today I cam across something which just might work. Claire's Accessories nameless duck egg green is a very pretty colour. Its not blue enough at all to be a perfect match for the China Glaze offering, but its not a million miles away. In its own right this is a very sweet colour. It's a shimmer-less cream, and there's a hint of matte in this. The colour is nice and summery and would look gorgeous with a tan, unfortunately this did not quite work on my very pale skin... Bit of a lobster hands situation, oh well!



Second pic is best representation of the colour.

Application was pretty good, nice consistency, and a decent brush. No real problems there then. Three coats were needed to achieve bottle colour but this dried in no time.

Being very lazy, I trialed this without base or top coat and it actually stayed chip free for 2 days. There was minimal and entirely unnoticeable tip wear after the second day, but only extreme inspection would show this to the naked eye. Since I generally get sick of a nail polish after 2 days anyway, I wasn't bothered. On to the next one please!

Dolmio?? Nah.... I'll make my own thanks!

Well, this is turning into a bit of a food blog!! I do have other interests other than my stomach I swear!!
So, STILL having some tomatoes in the fridge I wondered what to do with them, a bit of a creative streak came over me. Pasta sauce!


Again with the simple (and affordable) ingredients!
And this recipe, which I'm proud to say is 50% me, (the other 50% consists of tips from The Afternoon Show), is very simple!

1. I added, olive oil, salt, pepper, chilli flakes and three cloves of garlic (I like the garlic, I do!) to a pan.
2. Next I added in the chopped shallots.
3. I left all of that until the shallots were lovely and opaque, then I added the tomatoes.
4. Now, this is where I went mad! After adding a good handful of chopped parsley, I added in a good handful of chopped smoked sun-dried tomatoes.
5. Add a good glass of white wine and leave to simmer for half an hour.


So after it had been simmering, I added three generous spoons of Philadelphia to the mix and blended! And here is what it looked like...

I have been using this as pasta sauce and also it tastes lovely on grilled bread with veg and cheese as a very posh grilled open sandwich...

The addition of the sun-dried tomatoes really added a wonderful flavour to this. As they were smoked rather than regular sun-dried tomatoes, there was a gorgeous depth to the sauce, a really unmistakable but not overpowering woodiness. You could also achieve this with Hickory Smoked Bacon if you couldn't get the sun-dried tomatoes. I think that this would be a lovely simple, but very impressive sauce to serve with anything.

One for the bag of tricks!

Yesterday's dinner, today's lunch??

So after the roaring success of the Jamie experiment I still had a bit of a tomato craving. Which was quite handy really as I had some salad leftover... What to do with it however, that was the million dollar question!

Having forsaken the library for a day of watching Project Runway, I decided to make Bruschetta!



Here's what it looked like before...

1. So, firstly I sliced up some of that a-maze-ing bread and pop it under the grill.
2. Drizzle some olive oil over it and rub some garlic into it.
3. Heap onto the bread, pop on some brie and place under the grill again.
4. Eat!



Have to say, some of the nicest leftovers I have had in a long time!!

Jamie Oliver-esque Moment

Inspired by Jamie Does ... Andalucia today, I decided to take a trip through Cork's very lovely English Market and purchase some chorizo and vine tomatoes to attempt to make his Tomato and Chorizo salad. Did I succeed? Will the kitchen survive my attempts at cooking, albeit salad making!

Here's the before shot:


As you can see, the ingredients are fairly basic and came in quite affordably too.

1. Heat up some olive oil and add in the chorizo.
2. Chop the tomatoes, nice and rough, nothing too neat.
3. To the chopped tomatoes (in a bowl preferably!) add chopped shallot, chopped flat leaf parsley or basil, salt and pepper. Leave to rest.
4. To the now nicley charred chorizo, add some chopped garlic. I added chilli too, but the chorizo is nice and spicy too so depends if you like heat or not. I do!
5. Add the chorizo, garlic, chilli and oil to the tomatoes.
6. Serve!

I served mine with a gorgeous 7 Grain Bread, (Oh how I wish this had been made by me, but no, English Market to the rescue here) and some brie or goats cheese.

Here's the finished product!



I am pleased to say the kitchen though now covered in dishes, smells delicious and is still in one piece!

Adventures in dying

I hate white clothes... In theory they are great, lash on some of the fake stuff, cute white summer dress, suitably summery wedges et voilá! You have the perfect summer outfit, in theory...

In practice oh how different it is! You arrive at your delightful Garden Party (for isn't that where we all wear our perfect white gúna's to??) and the first thing you do is spill Pimms on yourself. Then you notice that your carefully applied fake tan is beginning to turn the pristine white neckline, armline, waistline, everyline of your dress a charming shade of grunge... What to do? Having spent hard earned cash on said dress, it would be quite the pity to banish it to the clothes cemetary. So here are some easy steps to save that stylish dress from becoming a cushion!



1. Remove that tired dress from where it languishes in your armoire.
2. Take a trip to your local fabric store and purchase some Dylon washing machine dye.
3. Continue en-route to a supermarket to purchase some table salt.
4. Commandere the washng machine in your rented student house for the better part of eight hours and follow instructions.
5. Wear your brand new dress with pride and without fear of unsightly tan marks!

And there you have it, 5 steps, 10euro and you have a new outfit in the season's hottest colour whatever that may be!

Flamingo Pink was my colour of choice, whats yours?