Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is such a fun holiday! My family doesn't really do anything for Thanksgiving anymore since some of us live pretty far away, so instead of celebrating with my family, I have dinner with Brandon's family, and a group of their friends. It's always a lot of fun, with tons of good food, and competitive board games.
This year I decided that I wanted to contribute to the meal, but I didn't have a lot of time between work, so I decided to make a very simple (yet delicious) broccoli salad.

Yum! I used this recipe from Jam Hands, which includes broccoli, cheese, onion, dried cranberries, and bacon mixed together in a dressing. Instead of cooking my own bacon (since I don't currently have a stove) I just used Oscar Meyers Real Bacon Bits, and I also added sliced almonds to the mixture. Gotta say, it was a big hit. I didn't come home with any left overs. 

As proof once again that I have too much free time, I also painted my nails for Thanksgiving using a white base coat, and about 6 other colors. I didn't have a toothpick at the time, so I used a hair pin to make the zigzags. I finished it off with a matte top coat, just because I love how the matte makes the colors look.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too!

Mother-daughter Day

Today was definitely a no-makeup kind of day.

(Check out those raccoon eyes haha)

I woke up at noon. I blame the rainy weather.

But today was actually a really lovely day. I spent the day with my mom. We had a really nice lunch at a local pizza place (Avanti's)
Check out this hot delicious, cheesy, saucy Country Sweet Calzone.

YUM.

We stopped for a quick shop at the grocery store, and then we went around to a couple of little greenhouses at the side of the road. Between my me and my mom, we have a very serious plant buying problem. We just can't get enough of them! There's always another and another and another that catch our eye, and clearly we must have them all. So in the end, we came home with quite a few plants

Most of them are being planted in the gardens either at my mom's house, or at the Old House, but with some of the smaller ones, and a couple of rocks as well, I made a little mini garden, of which I am very fond.

Cute right?

And then we did a little scrap-booking with some old-timey family photos.

So..pretty decent day, considering how short it has been for me. (I've only been awake a little over 7 hours)

But now I'm going to curl up and watch a movie with miss Riley.

A Taste of Exotic

I decided that I need to try more things. Foods specifically. I'm going to start cooking more, making a larger variety of foods, and trying new recipes. As a sort of kick-off to this new resolution, I went out and bought some of the weirdest fruits at the grocery store to try.

I chose three different kinds.

                                         1. Rambutan

Clearly a very strange looking fruit. Just wait. 

Opening this fruit is actually really easy. You just find the seam..

..and pop it open.

I think it looks like an eyeball inside, and there's very little flavor to it. My mom thought it just tasted like a peeled grape.

There's a big seed inside, so watch out when you bite into it.

2. Star Fruit

Now I'm sure you must have heard of this one. It's not quite uncommon, but I'd never tried one before.

To cut it, first you cut the green (or sometimes brown) edges off of each point of the star.

Then you just slice it up into little star slices.

Make sure you pick the seeds out.

This one was by far my favorite of the three that I tried.

3. Prickly Pear

This is literally the fruit from a cactus, and definitely the most annoying to prepare. 

I would recommend wearing gloves when you cut this. Though it may not look very cactus-like, there are tiny invisible needles that get in under your skin. Very. Annoying. 

So first you cut off the ends

..and then slice down the side of the fruit. Just peel the skin right off. 

As you can see, there are a ton of little seeds inside.

The seeds are okay to eat, but they're a little too hard to bite for my liking. 

Supposedly this fruit is supposed to taste like bubblegum and watermelon. Though it's not super flavorful, it definitely does have a hint of watermelon to it. Since it was kind of boring to eat though, and there were waaaay to many seeds to avoid, I ended up putting it in the blender and turning it into juice. I mixed it with berry lemonade to make it less thick, and then used a sieve to filter out the seeds and extra pulp. 

It wasn't bad as a juice

My mom and I did decide though that what it really needed was to have some Sprite mixed in. That would have made a pretty darn good drink. 

In the end though, after trying all of these new things, I finished up with a nice, normal, familiar Kiwi.

Yum..