Clover Fields: A St-Patrick's Day Manicure

'Ello 'ello folks! While I'm still waiting on the decision to be made on a new camera, I thought I'd bring you some phone pics of  my current polish. It's a fun little St-Patrick's day manicure inspired by fields of clovers. I wanted to have the textured look to give it a bit more depth instead of settling for a solid colour, since when you look out into a field you don't see a flat shade green.

This is after about four of days of growth and a bit of tip wear. I achieved this effect by dragging the colours through each other while they were still wet, similar to what I did here. I started with OPI Green-wich Village and blended in some Don't Mess With OPI.

Happy St-Patrick's Day everyone!

St-Patrick's Day Food: Irish Soda Bread & Chicken Stew

For the meal I made on St-Patrick's Day I wanted to make something authentic and Irish. Since I'm not too big into drinking anymore I wanted to celebrate in a more delicious way. My best friend got me a really neat recipe book for Christmas called Food Fest 365 that shows a national food holiday for every day of the year and a recipe to go with it.This is where the Irish Soda Bread came from. I'm pretty sure due to copyright I can't post the recipe, but here are some images of the process.

I've only made 2 recipes from this book and they've both been wonderful!

I actually made this bread to go with a stew, which I found here. I omitted the dumplings because I was making the bread. My only qualm with this recipe (other than forgetting to put the chicken in, which was entirely my fault) was only quartering the potatoes. They don't really break down in the broth, so I had to go in and break them down myself afterward, which was kind of a pain.
So - instead of quartering the potatoes I recommend cubing them.

The bread was perfect for dipping. Since its wasn't yeast-leavened it was quite dense and perfect for making the meal even heartier.

St-Patrick's Day Food: Banana Cookies

This is a recipe I made on St-Patty's day, not because it's Irish, but simply because it sounded AMAZING. Cookies that taste like banana bread? I'm for it! I was blown away by how good these cookies were. The were soft, fluffy, and had the perfect amount of banana flavour (I didn't add the extra flavouring, it wasn't necessary). The frosting was quite pleasant too, it complemented the fruitiness of the banana. I would have never thought to make a brown sugar icing before, but now I want to put it on everything. For St-Patty's day I also dyed them green!

I got the inspiration from Dizzy Girl Bakes, but the recipe itself came from Krumkake.

All the required ingredients

Sugar, butter, shortening

Mashed banana!

Egg, sour cream, banana, vanilla

Flour, baking soda, salt

Mix mix mix!

Green. This was actually rather tricky, the dough was quite brown so I had to use a ton of food colouring.

I made mine quite large. I only got 24 when the recipe calls for 36.

Done!

Frosting. After it's melted add about 2 cups of icing sugar. I put mine in bit by bit, about 1/4 cup at a time.

The end result. Delish.

NOTD: St-Patrick's Day!

Here is my long-awaited St-Patty's day mani. I chose to use the green from OPI's Texas Collection, Don't Mess With OPI and I layered Sephora by OPI's Only Gold For Me over top. It's supposed to be reminiscent of a leprechaun's pot of gold! I love the way this glitter shines.

My methodology for this was actually starting off simply applying the glitter polish to the tips, then once that dried I went over the full nail a second time to give it a bit of a faded look. Loving this look!  It's so blingy!