Breakfast, brunch, and lunch for two - cute sandwich and other food ideas!

I recently made a little mini tea time brunch for my mother and me (my sister was at work) and wanted to share what I made in case some of you are looking for food inspiration for your next tea party, fancy breakfast time (need to impress a man?), or lunch gathering!

Menu items including:

• Lemon ricotta pancakes with slice bananas and drizzled honey (Original recipe here)
• Mixed greens salad with strawberries, walnuts, blueberries, and raspberry vinaigrette
• Romaine lettuce mixed with cucumbers, pecans, tomatoes, and homemade pesto lemon vinaigrette
• Avocado toast with sliced cherry tomatoes 
• Toasted smoked gouda cheese sandwich with sliced turkey, spinach, and candied walnuts (my mom actually tossed and toasted the walnuts herself!). Strawberry jam toe tie it all together
• French brioche bread with cream cheese spread, cucumbers, and smoked salmon. Garnished with thyme (but really dill would have been better but I didn't have any at the time!)
• Fruit bowl of bananas, cantaloupe, and blueberries
• Lastly TEA! - "Yummy" by Lupicia. This is strawberry and vanilla flavored smooth rooibos tea; no milk added. It's not overly sweet smelling like some fruit teas and really has an amazing taste to it.

Cream cheese and dill is the perfect spread for a cucumber or smoked salmon sandwich so combining it with both of them was a no brainer. Unfortunately I didn't have dill at the time so sprinkled some dried thyme on top instead and it was pretty good! The freshing flavor of the cucumber really balances the salty smokey salmon and the smooth texture of the cream cheese all on a nice slice of fresh brioche (but any bread will do really). I find for this type of sandwich you don't need to toast the bread.

The lemon ricotta pancakes were SO, I repeat, sooo good. I linked the original recipe earlier but there are definitely lots of recipes online to use. My pancakes weren't bursting with flavor but if you have ricotta lying around, these are a good way to put your ricotta to use (if you're not a lasagna type person). I love how the pancakes are super fluffy and not overly sweet. I added in the lemon flavor by squeezing in some lemon juice and adding fresh lemon gratings over the pancakes. Added a side of sliced bananas but any fruit will do, some maple syrup or honey, and boom - sweet wholesome goodness.

Strawberry jam and honey to top off the pancakes and with sippings of the tea? Can't get much better than that! Having these cute little jars of jam and honey really add to the overall presentation which is why I'm so glad I nicked them from a hotel I stayed at a little while back haha! (Okay I didn't really, someone I was staying with had ordered sandwiches and they came with these jars of jam and honey but they didn't use them so gave them to me!)

Here's a close up of my (basically) cheese turkey sandwich. What makes this better than your typical sandwich is the fact that it's toasted so the cheese is all nice and soft, you have the extra sweetness from the strawberry jam and candied pecans (which also gives a nice crunch!), and you get your daily dose of veggie with that one leaf of spinach ;) Perfect right? This was actually my mom's favorite sandwich. Also can I add how CUTE the little wooden board is? I got it from Ikea for only $2.99!

Cheers to a successful tea time bonding with my momma <3 I hope this gave you some ideas for your next home-baking food excursion! The dining and silverware you use really make a difference in the overall presentation of your food so take your time and pick up random bits and bobs that will really tie together your whole table and the food you make. They don't even have to be expensive (cough my wooden cutting board!) and most of our tea cups and tea plates are thrifted or bought from garage sales. A few are from Daiso, our local Japanese $1.50 shop (most things there are only 1.50 including their glassware!) and some others from Hong Kong or TaoBao (the China ebay). Good luck and leave a comment below if you know any tea party bloggers that could give ME inspiration!

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

It's been a while since my last Disney nail art recreation but I definitely struggled deciding what I wanted to do for Snow White. There weren't too many other nail art designs with her as the theme (compared to other Disney princesses) so I had trouble finding "inspiration"/something to base the look off of. In the end, I found two designs (I forget where exactly) that I liked so I combined them to come up with this look below!

My bow was a bit messy but overall I'm pretty pleased with how it all came together. It's a simple french tip with a twist. It was a little weird putting the red rhinestones at the tips of my nails so if you aren't comfortable with that, you can just dot on red circles instead. I think this is a nice look because having red, yellow, and blue (Snow White's main colors) all over your nails can be a bit overwhelming and this was a good compromise.

 The nail polishes I used to create this look are as follows:
-Forever 21 Nail Polish in Ruby Red
-Revlon Colorstay in Coastal Surf
-Orly Nail Polish in Lemonade

I added red rhinestones that I got from a wheel palette off of Ebay for less than a dollar and drew on the bow using a dotting tool and toothpick (either or is fine). I finished off my nails with (as always) a coat of seche vite (and extra at the ends to really make sure my rhinestones stuck). Below is a step-by-step visual of what I did (sorry it's so much harder to take a step by step of my actual nails when I'm painting them!).

Anyways I hope this gives some of you inspiration for any Snow White themed occasion you might have. If not, well, it's still nice to look at right? ;)

Get the [Nail] Look: Floral Friday

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while and apparently all my photos got removed because I think I accidentally deleted the album of photos connected to my blog. So if you notice any posts with broken photos, please bare with me as I am trying to fix them all! It is taking me quite a while to find all the photos again -sigh-.

Without further ado, here is my rendition of my most recent Pinterest find.

 I started off by painting all my nails with Revlon Minted. I let that dry completely before putting 2 coats of the slightly transparent white-pink polish from Julep. I have 3 Julep polishes I got from a free trial for their Maven Box and have to say, they're really quite good! The brushes are a bit fat but the polishes themselves have a really nice gel-like quality. After getting a good semi-opaque coat of the light pink, I let it dry and started drawing on the roses and leaves. I made the roses by mixing two shades of pink and swirling them in a circular motion to make them look like roses. I then used a somewhat smaller dotting tool to make the leaves. I actually used 2 green nail polishes to create extra depth but only listed one below. I let everything dry enough so that I could apply the gold striping tape without lifting up all my hard work if I needed to reposition it.

The nail polishes I used are as follows (from left to right):

-Revlon in Minted
-Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Punk Pink
-Sinful Colors in Easy Going
-Essie in Mojito Madness
-Julep in Ava Bombshell
Overall, this nail look is one of my favorites. It definitely looks detailed and complex but it's really not that bad! All the techniques are quite simple and it just takes some time to let each layer dry. I would suggest watching your favorite TV show or movie while doing this to help the drying phase pass by. I took me less than 2 hours to do this and I finished it off with my favorite Seche Vite top coat. I hope you guys all try this out and let me know how it goes in the comment!

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: Aladdin (Princess Jasmine)

I'm not sure why but I've never particularly favored Princess Jasmine or the Disney movie Aladdin. Not that I didn't like the movie or anything, but maybe it was just I didn't like the genie so much. I'm really not sure. But the reason I bring this up is that the nail look I did inspired by Princess Jasmine is actually my favorite out of my entire Disney Princess series so far. I didn't come up with this look myself, I got it from Pinterest so don't give me credit but I seriously just LOVE the look! The tips with the gold accent and single rhinestone are just.. ooh too much amazingness. I got so many compliments when I wore this so I hope some of you try to recreate this nail look too :)

 

You can see that I didn't do the lines perfectly on my thumb but it still looks nice nonetheless. The steps I took are outlined and roughly sketched below (I'm trying be more helpful for recreating any of my nail looks haha).

I used the striper brush from LA colors gold nail polish but because that gold is too sheer, I would dip the brush into my more opaque gold polish (I used Butter London's The Full Monty but you can use any brand really) before using it. I used a dotting tool to create the circles and also used it to drag the dots inward to connect them with the other lines (see nail image 5 below). I lastly added a green/turquoise gem in the middle and applied my Seche Vite top coat to make it look like shiny gel nails <3

The nail polishes I used were:
-Barry M Hi Shine Nail Paint in Green Berry
-Butter London's The Full Monty Nail Lacquer
-LA Colors in Gold Glitter

Well I hope this inspired some of you to recreate this look! It looks complicated but it's really not! It does take a bit of time and steadiness but practice makes perfect right? :) Also I think it looks nice that my finger nails were somewhat rectangle rounded shaped instead of the usual oval/circular edge that your nails naturally grow at. Which Disney Princess should I do next? Frozen, Little Mermaid, or Tangled? Or any other princess! Comment down below please! ^__^

Manicure Monday: Alice in Wonderland Inspired Nail Art

Happy almost Christmas~! As much as I love the holiday season and painting my nails in the Christmas spirit, I decided to do something different with my sister's nails the other day and wanted to share it with you all for Manicure Monday. Because my sister loves Alice in Wonderland so much, we decided to go with that theme for her nails which constituted pretty bows, gold accented designs, and just basically an overall girly theme. We went blue as the main color because it's my sister's favorite color and also because Alice wears a blue and white dress throughout the movie so we thought it best appropriate. Part of our inspiration also came from another Alice in Wonderland nail design which you can easily find if you just Google "Alice in Wonderland nail art" so you can see where we got the color and some pattern designs from there.

I did all the nail art with either a toothpick or my white nail art deco nail polish which has a special thin tip made for drawing lines/for nail art (as the name so appropriately states) but overall the designs are all pretty simple and easy enough to do. I actually used the toothpick to trace out lines before filling them in with a normal nail polish (like in the case of the white diamond or the white clock on my sister's ring finger and thumb respectively) and for the lace design. Toothpicks are probably one of the best "at-home" nail tools you can use because they're so useful! I used them to pick up the nail gems in addition to using them to create the designs.

I purchased the gold chain from my local Daiso which is sort of like a Japanese dollar store except everything is usually $1.50 unless otherwise stated. It comes in a long chain which you can cut to your liking with scissors. I'm pretty sure you can find it on Ebay for less than a dollar which is also about the same price as the nail gems I used which came in a wheel with multiple colors similar to this. I also added on some cute stickers I got from China which you can also purchase on Ebay for super cheap :)

For the nail polishes, I used..
-Sky Blue: Revlon Core Nail Blue Lagoon
-Pastel Baby Blue: Barry M Gelly Nail Paint Huckleberry 19
-White: Orly Nail Polish White Tips #42001
-Black: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Color 370 Black Out
-White Nail Art: L.A. Colors Art Deco Nail Art 901 White

And as usual, I topped with Seche Vite top coat to seal everything in. I think it was especially important this time because I needed to make sure none of the 3-D things would fall off like the rose or the gold chain. 

Let me know what you think and if you have any nail design requests, just leave them in the comments below~! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday break and spend lots of time with your family! ^__^

Autumnal Inspired Nails

Ah finally the leaves are beginning to turn that beautiful red-orange-brown and the weather is cooling down into the perfect leggings+boots+scarves weather. YES it is the signs of Autumn and I couldn't be more excited :)

Some random picture of Fall scenery that I found online. Doesn't it make you just so happy? :)

Today I wanted to share a simple nail look created with a mix of those more earthy-toned cream shades. I chose all cream colors and it actually looked fine without the gold accented sticker designs (actually better in my opinion but I can't really take off the stickers now sigh..). I was inspired by a nail look I saw online featuring simple colors so I chose out whatever autumn shades I had in my collection and came up with this!

 I kind of hate how you can see the fine details with such an enlarged photo haha especially since you can see all the beauty of my dry cuticles and the lines of the stickers and the bumps in the nail polish (sigh) BUT BESIDES THAT, I love the look! I was a bit impatient on putting the stickers on so I definitely messed up my nails but the overall effect is just so fall-esque and I totally loving it. 

I used the following nail polishes to get this look:
-White: Orly Nail Polish White Tips #42001
-Orange: Korean brand that I can't seem to find the name for so I'll show a picture of a similar shade
-Maroon: Zoya Natural Nail Polish Coco
-Dark Grey (that looks blue tinted but really isn't): Maybelline Color Show Nail Polish Lacquer Impeccable Greys 410
-Nude: 3 Concept Eyes (3CE) Nail Lacquer #BE02

I realized I really need more warm-toned/fall nail shades like an olive green or a dark brown so let me know in the comments if you know any nice nail polishes that you think I'd like and I might pick them up and use them in another nail look!

Cute Halloween Nail Art

Hello everyone! I haven't posted in a while (oh the joys of school) but I thought I'd share a quick post on some fun Halloween inspired nail art. I definitely did not come up with these designs myself (except maybe the pumpkin ones which aren't even that nice) and I got my inspiration from IHaveACupcake and cutepolish on Youtube. They both have tutorials which I semi-followed to get this look but as you can see, I deviated a little so feel free to add your own touches and flare (I sound like I changed the designs on purpose but really it was probably because I messed up and tried to fix it haha!).

I used the following nail polishes (shown below in order listed):
-Black: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Color 370 Black Out
-Orange: Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Color 150 Sun Kissed
-White: Orly Nail Polish White Tips #42001
-Green: Orly Nail Polish Coachella Dweller
-Red: Forever 21 Red Sangria Nail Polish
-Yellow: Orly Nail Polish Lemonade
-Top coat: Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Nail Coat



I used some cheap dotting tools (basically little sticks with circles on the ends) to do the eyes but really you can use a toothpick or bobby pin which I've used before and they work just as well.  Oh and please don't mind the fact that my hands are incredibly dry and gross and that I have a nasty paper-cut-looking cute on my index finger (which I got from my friends broken phone screen .. WHO KNEW THOSE THINGS COULD CUT YOU IF YOU SIMPLY BRUSH UP ON THEM??)


Let me know what you think of these and what you're going to be for Halloween if you're dressing up in the comment section! Last year I went trick-o-treating with my friend (don't ask how old I am LOL because the answer is too old) but she's in Asia this year so I don't know what I'm going to do :(