February 22, 2015 by gn0mel0ver

Finally, The Best Mascara

If you remember, and why wouldn’t you, it was a monumental declaration, over a year ago I declared that I would go through a giant box of sample mascaras and do an experiment on which one I thought was the best.

And as with all of my best intentions, I managed to document only three of them before I simply resorted to trying them on and then declining most of them forever. Mascara is no joke.

The mascara needs to look natural. It needs to separate the lashes, lift my short spindly genetic shortfalls, from the hovels of my face and mold the shacks of my eyelashes into skyscrapers. I want the structure to last all day but easily tear down at night.

I tried all of the mascaras in Sephora’s 2013 Lash Stash box listed here:

Benefit They’re Real Mascara (which I all ready loved previously)
Blinc Mascara
Buxom Lash Mascara
Clinique High Impact Mascara
Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara
Lancome Hypnose Drama Mascara
Sephora Outrageous Mascara
Make Up For Ever Smoky Extravagant
Tarte Lights, Camera, Flashes Mascara
Yves Saint Laurent Volume Effect Mascara

I also tried MAC’s Zoom Fast Mascara, Clinique’s Lash Doubling Mascara, Maybelline’s Great Lash, Lancome’s Hypnose Doll Lashes, Benefit Bad Gal, and Bobbi Brown’s Everything Mascara through various samples and purchases.

It was quite a task, which is why it took me over a year to complete.

And at the end of it, I had narrowed my choices down to Benefit’s They’re Real Mascara (my old favorite) and Bobbi Brown’s Everything Mascara.

But then something unexpected happened.

I tried one of my last mascaras, Make Up For Ever Smoky Extravagant Mascara.

AND I LOVED IT.

It was everything I liked about Benefit’s They’re Real Mascara without the residual clumping that is hard to remove at the end of the day.

I could not wait to order a full size of it.

That is when I ran into a problem. I was not the only one who adored their trial of Make Up Forever Mascara from Sephora (I believe Sephora gave out samples in their birthday gifts last year). And I was not the only one who had decided to jump and order the full size version. However, before I did, I read the reviews. Many of them declared that for whatever the reason, the full size version did not live up to the smaller size.

Thankfully, you can order a travel size version. And that is what I have been doing for the last six months.

So, oddly, the travel sized Make Up For Ever Smoky Extravagant Mascara is the winner of my mascara trials. It lengthens lashes dramatically without being too stiff. It removes easily. It stays on all day without any flaking. It separates well. It is the mascara I will and have been exclusively buying for myself. Although, my daughter received the same kit. Her heart still belongs to Benefit’s They’re Real Mascara. So, that is the brand I buy for her.

Have you tried any of these mascaras? What is your favorite mascara? Have you done eyelash extensions? Or that eyelash growth serum? Or do you ever use fake eyelashes? I have tried the fake eyelashes once. But I have not perfected it. Maybe one day I will try again.

*This post is based on my own use of the different mascaras. Your experience may vary from my own. All photos here are unfiltered to truly show the way the product looks when I first apply it and the lighting I apply it in.

February 20, 2015 by gn0mel0ver

Brown Butter Butterscotch Monkey Bread

That’s a mouthful!

My kids love monkey bread. They love when I buy it at the local bakery. I knew they would get a kick out of this easy make-at-home recipe.

This was the first thing I ever made in the kitchen. My grandma and I would make it all of the time. Then we moved on to a children’s cookbook. We rarely made monkey bread after that. This recipe brings back such memories of nostalgia, as only the tantalizing scents of cinnamon and sugar together can evoke. Has there ever been a more perfect pairing?

This recipe is fantastic to bake with kids. They love cutting up the biscuits and shaking the dough in the sugar. It is a quick and easy treat. Perfect for those of us who need immediate gratification.

This recipe was adapted from The Pioneer Woman and the butterscotch pudding part was courtesy of my good friend, Kerri. She once made the stuff and I dreamed about it for weeks. The brown butter part is strictly from my gluttonous imagination.

Need:

Bundt Pan

Ingredients:

3 large cans of refrigerated biscuits (I use 2 regular and one buttermilk)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup salted butter (2 sticks)
1 3.4 oz. package of regular (not instant) butterscotch pudding

You can get crazy with this treat! Dare I say, if you monkey around with this recipe in the kitchen, the possibilities might be endless.

Groan.

Let me hang and scratch my embarrassed head.

On to the baking:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Generously grease bundt pan.

Cut biscuits into small pieces with a pizza cutter. I cut one can of biscuits into shapes of four, one can in shapes of six, one can in shapes of eight. I like a variety of sizes in my monkey bread. Let’s call them squirrel monkey, chimpanzee, and gorilla sizes. Because we can? We’re quite passed the point of should. We’re using two sticks of butter and over a cup of sugar here, peeps. Crazy names for biscuits are the least of our worries.

Combine the regular sugar and cinnamon. Add the brown sugar and mix. Place in a gallon sized bag. Or if you reach this step and realize you are completely out of gallon sized bags, call yourself a monkey’s uncle and mix the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Primitive times are these, my friend.

Add cut biscuits in the bag of sugar mixture and shake. If you added it to the bowl, please do not shake, just mix. Of course, you knew that. But if a ~~monkey~~ child is reading this, I want to be specific.

In a small saucepan on the lowest heat on your largest burner on your stovetop melt the butter. Stir every minute or so. When the foam starts to turn a caramel brown (usually about ten to twelve minutes) turn off the heat. Your nose will be able to tell you when the butter is brown because it will smell like the most glorious nutty caramel. The foam will start to bubble up in a gluttonous display of brown surrender. This means it is done. Remove from heat.

Now pour the sugar-coated biscuit dough and all of that glorious sugar mixture evenly into the bundt pan (I have a vintage yellow one from Etsy. You can find them there for around $15. It won’t make your monkey bread taste better but it will make you feel better).

Mix the pudding mix into the brown butter. Edited to add: I do this with a fork. Beat it for just thirty seconds or so like you would an egg. It does not have to dissolve all of the way. It will do that when baking. If there is any bigger bits, just put it on the money bread. It will bubble up in the oven and become one gooey mixture. Oh, take a moment, if you must. This is the part where I get teary eyed. Pour brown butter pudding mixture over the top of all of the biscuit dough. Try to do this as evenly as possible.

And scrape up all of the decadent brown bits at the bottom of the pan and put on top of the dessert.

Place in the oven and bake for 60 minutes. Cover the top with foil after it has been baking for twenty five minutes so that it does not get too crunchy and brown on top.

Remove from the oven. Allow to cool for 20 minutes. Turn over on serving plate. It is easiest to hold the hot pan with a cloth kitchen towel versus the bulk of oven mitts. Say a quick prayer to the monkey Gods. Offer up a banana sacrifice, if you must. This part is tricky. The caramel in the pan will be hot, be careful not to burn yourself. Gently pull up on the bundt pan. If there is any caramel mixture on the bottom, scrape it up and put it on the monkey bread.

Whoooo! Whoooo! Heeee! Heeee! Haaaa!

The monkey bread will pull apart in yummy gooeyiness.

Scratch your underarms and scream in triumph at the magnificent success. And if some of the monkey bread sticks to your pan just place it back on the dessert. Or if it completely falls apart (happens to the best of us, rearrange the pieces in two loaf pans. No one will be the wiser. Besides it will be gone before anyone, or any primate for that matter, would ever notice, anyway.

Enjoy! I don’t mean to brag, but my ~~brain~~ thighs are entirely made of this stuff.

February 19, 2015 by gn0mel0ver

Shifts In A Denim Shift

I started out wearing this little denim dress from Urban Outfitters (sold out. But Old Navy currently has a cute denim dress also available in plus size). With boots. And I asked my husband if he could take pictures of it.

And he looked at the dress and said, “Whoa! That is short!”

But I didn’t believe him.

And then I looked at these pictures while we were out taking the pictures and I had to agree. But I still thought maybe it was the heels and not the dress. Because I had kind of all ready worn this dress around town that day and I really could not bear to think of how many people saw me sans pants. I stubbornly stuck with, “It is a dress and it is long enough.” As all ~~sixteen~~ thirty seven year olds do.

So I changed to flats.

It’s called denial.

And it is my speciality.

It was how I originally wanted to wear the dress any way. And I did. For approximately five seconds.

Before I took a peek at these pictures and decided it was not the heels.

It was not the flats.

It was the dress.

And it was a shirt.

I hate when that happens.

Although, I cannot wait to layer it over another dress like Atlantic Pacific did here.

I put on some tights that I had in my car.

What? You don’t carry tights in your car? What about spare deodorant? Extra underwear? Straws? Salt?

A girl has always gots to be prepared.

I do admit, I felt more comfortable in the tights.

Just don’t tell my husband.

He’ll never let me live it down.

He is all ready teasing me about always being pantless.

There will be no living with him if he learns that I agree with him.

Have you ever been in denial about an outfit? Left the house in an indecent state? I am afraid that I can answer “yes” to both of those questions too often. I need to shift that. Top the next outfit. Ad-dress the issue and move on. For not once, but twice, in school, I left the changing room for p.e. without pants on. If I could get through it in junior high school, I can do it now. It is amazing how things can change and yet always stay the same.

February 18, 2015 by gn0mel0ver

Winner Of The Blog Giveaway And Musings

Congratulations to Lyn for winning the Urban Outfitters e-gift card! Thank you to all who participated! I very much appreciate it.

This month is flying by! I cannot tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I would say, “only time will tell,” but that seems redundant and also wrong. February is a mystery that I am still trying to catch up with.

Here are some things I am craving to wear, do or just share:

One of my goals this month is to make a dutch baby in the oven. I am going to try this recipe from Food Network. Wish me luck! The very scary part of this is that neither myself nor my husband like dutch babies. But they look so impressive that I am hoping one made at home will be better than any others we have tried. I make sense that way.

Speaking of food, this is more of a warning than anything else. We use our microwave a lot. I always thought of it as a relatively safe appliance. So I never really gave much safety advice to my children in regards to it. The oven and the stovetop were the appliances that I taught caution towards. That ended up being a mistake. We have had many mishaps with the appliance. Yesterday was definitely the scariest one. My son microwaved himself some sort of meal and about five minutes later there was a giant explosion. He had left the glass pyrex pan that I keep in the microwave (I have too many cooking vessels) in there when he microwaved his food. Apparently it could not handle being empty with the heat. I am so grateful he was not standing near it at the time. Glass reached the middle of the living room. Now both my kids know to never ever microwave an empty glass container. About two years ago my daughter accidentally hit the power button instead of the timer on the microwave and microwaved the oven with nothing inside of it for fifteen minutes. I cannot believe it did not fry it. It did not work for one day as it cooled down but then it was fine again. I have heard that you cannot microwave water in glass and obviously no metal in the device. Two weeks ago, my daughter microwaved a rice krispie treat on a plastic plate and created a giant burn hole in the plate. We threw it away but it could have caused a fire. And also, don’t microwave rice krispie treats! There is so much more to teaching kids about the machine than I had originally thought. Just an FYI for those of you with kiddos.

Of all of the things that I like in stores, this Free People Summer Winds Dress tops the list. I love it for summer. I would love to buy it in the coming months. It just seems easy and breezy and can be worn an infinite amount of ways. I also like that it does not appear to be too short. Who doesn’t love a white dress?

I had written earlier that I wanted a new couch this year, but then I put on our old white slipcover for this couch after having a dark grey velvet on it for months and my heart was happy again. And I ended up liking the other one in the other room equally. The couch is fifteen years old. But I still love it. It has been vomited on, had food spills, drink spills, crayon mishaps and it keeps on ticking. So, for now, it stays. Of course, right after I put the slipcover on, Ollie went and wiped his jowls on it. The couch is a glutton for punishment.

I asked my daughter if what she was wearing was clean and she replied, “Yes. I got it from the laundry chair.”

The laundry chair!

Oi! The stories my kids will tell their children…

Finally, this was my OOTD yesterday. I decided it was a black outfit and orange lipstick kind of day.

When my daughter got home, I said, “Hey! Look! I went emo today.”

She scoffed. “That is not emo.”

“Yes. It is.”

“No. It’s girly goth.”

I liked that description better any way, but I dare not tell her that.

This photo was taken during dinner last night. Ollie knows he can’t be near the dinner table so he plants his butt on the edge of the carpet so he is still considered in the living room and stares at us. He is not amused by me taking pictures of him and not feeding him. I think he will go wipe his face on the white couch some more.

How’s your February going? If you have dogs, do they try to push the rules like Ollie? Today I am off to get my first pedicure since last May. I guess it’s about time. I just never expected to be wearing sandals in February.

Gnome Lover

Stumbling through life while still having fun

Author: gn0mel0ver

Finally, The Best Mascara

Brown Butter Butterscotch Monkey Bread

Shifts In A Denim Shift

Winner Of The Blog Giveaway And Musings