Perfect Friday Night

Yes, I understand that the perfect Friday night for someone in their mid-20s should not be how I am currently spending mine, but I can't imagine a better evening than the one I am currently having. It's been raining for three days here in DC, its pretty chilly outside right now, and I've worked a lot of hours this week. I left work at 7:20 tonight, came home, and curled up on the couch in front of postseason baseball with a bowl of homemade black bean soup and a piece of leftover cornbread. Perfect.

Later on I might watch the season premiere of Psych from Wednesday, but we'll see if I'm awake.

Some exciting news from the weight front: I lost my 5 percent! One of the things Weight Watchers has people focus on when they're starting out is losing a percentage of their starting body weight. I lost my five percent as of this past Tuesday, which feels awesome. It's possible I might be at 10% by Christmas, which is pretty exciting. It was even better because last week was a pretty rough week food-wise. I was starving pretty much all the time and I ate WAY more points than I was supposed to every day. Luckily I got a lot of extra workout points to help balance it out, but I was a little worried when I stepped on the scale. And, as it turned out, it was better than it usually was. Imagine that! Well, I won't question it too much, I'm just glad it is what it is.

Speaking of food, I promise that the pumpkin cupcakes will be posted about. In the meantime, I made more cupcakes that I took into work today: mummy and spiderweb cupcakes. The initial plan was to make all mummy cupcakes, similar to the ones found on the Better Homes & Gardens Halloween site. But when I decided that those weren't turning out very well, I decided to do a little bit of ad-libbing with the leftover orange icing from the pumpkin cupcakes, the white icing for the mummy cupcakes, and the black decorating gel I had bought. It worked out pretty well. They were really popular at work, which is good. One of the problems with bringing in baked goods like cupcakes to work is that I don't eat them, so I don't know if they're any good before I feed them to people.

Anyway, the finished results were made with Duncan Hines dark chocolate fudge cake, Betty Crocker cupcake icing, Pillsbury Supreme vanilla frosting dyed orange, and red and black decorating gels.

 I didn't want to take any home, so I decided to add a note to encourage people to take some.

Finally, because I managed to take my camera into the office, I took some pictures of the decorations. It's nothing groundbreaking. Things are pretty straight laced in the school where I work, but people definitely feel in the spirit when they walk into our suite.

Jade's desk, when you first walk in the door. It's got the jack-o-lantern orange garland that I bought at Michael's. One of the professors walked in the other day and thought we were a little ahead of ourselves on the Christmas decorations and then realized it was for Halloween.






Vanessa's desk, to the left when you first walk in the door. The pumpkin on the left came from Wal-Mart or Target a few years ago when we hadn't had time to carve anything, and the one on the right is from Giant a few weeks ago. They both light up. Vanessa thinks the one on the left is scary, but said it was counterbalanced by the less scary one on the right.

The GA desk, opposite Vanessa's desk. I picked up these foam signs and decorations at Michael's for $1 each. You can see on the bottom jack-o-lantern that they sparkle. The black parts on the skull sparkle and the spiderwebs shines all over.

The door to my office, with the ghost and two pipe-cleaner jack-o-lanterns, from Michael's and HomeGoods respectively. I added on the rest of the foam decorations from the GA desk to my door later in the day after I took this picture.

And now picture spam of my office.

Well, that's the office. I'll hope to have more posts soon. I'm off to a corn maze this weekend, so that should be worth a few laughs on Sunday. And tomorrow is my last PT session, which is kind of sad because I really like my trainer, but I don't have the money to keep going to these sessions. What I've learned, however, I can take with me as I keep working out at the gym at work. And I have nail polish reviews. I currently am wearing a gorgeous purple glitter, but I haven't been able to take pictures because it's been so dark and gloomy every day and I haven't had the natural light necessary to make it look anything but black. Sad. But I'll get them. I promise!

Midterms and Decorations

I had a midterm tonight in my speechwriting class. We had to write a crisis speech, so the idea was that we couldn't have much time to prepare. We got a topic at the beginning of class and had the full class time (2.5 hours) to write a speech and submit it. I finished mine in about an hour and a half and was the first one done (OK, so I finished at the exact same time as another guy, but close to first).

I was actually really happy with what I turned in. I'm not the type of person who frets and fidgets during an exam. I walk in and I either know what to do or I don't. If I don't, I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure something out or remember something I never bothered to learn, so I generally finish those exams pretty quickly. If I do know it, I take the exam, review it once, and then submit it. I take tests pretty fast in general, so unless it's a really long test or I know an extensive amount on the topic and am trying to fit it all in, I usually finish pretty early. But I'm rarely so content with the responses I give as I was tonight. Usually I feel good after an exam because it's over (one of the reasons I prefer final exams to final papers: there's a finite amount of time between when you start it and when it has to be done and there's nothing you can do about it). Tonight, I felt good because I felt I had submitted a quality piece of work. Now let's just hope that my grade reflects that.

No one came in to work today except for me, so I didn't get a lot of work done. There are some things about the office environment that are really frustrating me right now, so I'm trying to relax and be more apathetic toward work. This sounds like it would be counter intuitive -- if I want something to improve, I should work to change it -- but really I'm annoyed and frustrated because I care too much about my job. If I care less about it, if I spend less time doing it, if I really work on improving my personal life outside of my job and just not thinking about work, I'll be happier in the long run. I'm debating whether to start a countdown to when I'll stop working there. It looks like it should be a year or less, but I don't want to start counting down until it's a little more clear.

On a note of making work a little bit more enjoyable, I took all my decorations into the office today. I put most of them up, sharing some of them with coworkers who do not have their desks decorated. Jade currently has the garland of jack-o-lanterns up on her desk like bunting, and I might be talked into giving up some of my foam spiderwebs and jack-o-lanterns for the GA's desk on the other side of the office. Then everyone will have some Halloween spirit when people walk in the door (technically, I have an office that is hidden from view, so people have to come find me to know I have Halloween spirit, thus decorating of the suite spreads the good cheer to people who can't see my office). I'll try to take pictures tomorrow, if I can remember to bring my camera.

I also have to weigh in tomorrow, which might be ok and might be ugly. I ate all of my weekly and all of my activity points this week. There are a couple of food items I may have overestimated, but usually we underestimate, so I'm sure that I made up for it somewhere. I've been really active, but I've also been starving this past week, and I'm not sure why. Hopefully I will have lost some weight, even if it's only a fraction of a pound. Three people at work have commented about my weight loss, plus my personal trainer, which is very satisfying. This is my last week of personal training, so hopefully I can take a lot of what I've learned and keep using it at the gym and keep losing weight. Most of what we've done is pretty easy to remember (not easy to do) and I can translate it at the gym or even at home. We'll see how it works.

I'm currently wearing China Glaze Mummy May I (actually MMI, this time, and not Zombie Zest, which I kept calling MMI in my post last week). It dried really matte last night even with topcoat, but I put another layer on tonight and I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow.

Halloween Preparations!

As I previously mentioned, I have been feeling very autumnal lately because the weather has gotten colder. I've been excited about Halloween and Thanksgiving, Oktoberfest and corn mazes, hot toddies and hot chocolate. But today it was 80 degrees, so I'm feeling less autumnal than I was a couple weeks ago.

That being said, it's beautiful weather outside and it's almost impossible not to enjoy it. Unfortunately, I don't have tomorrow (Columbus Day) off, so I can't laze about outside and soak up some sun, but I did spend time outside yesterday and a little bit today in order to get in some of the late summer-feeling goodness.

Despite the weather, however, I am moving forward with my Halloween preparations. I took in a couple light-up fake jack-o-lanterns to the office, a crystal glowing jack-o-lantern, and a fake orange candle with Halloween silhouettes on it. Today I went to Michael's and went... umm... crazy? Is that too strong a word? No. Sarah gave me a Michael's coupon and so I went to pick up some Halloween decorations/supplies. I ended up getting cupcake liners, garland, a wire cat black cat, a wire witch hat, a hanging ghost with the words "Boo" on it, a foam Halloween house to build, some sparkly foam jack-o-lanterns, skulls and spiderwebs for my office door, some signs that say "Happy Halloween" and "Trick-or-Treat" (made of foam), fake votives, sparkly foam autumn leaves in various colors, sizes, and leaf species, and foam signs that say "Happy Thanksgiving" and "Welcome Fall." All told, it was about $60 word of Halloween supplies. Then I went next door to HomeGoods and bought two adorable jack-o-lanterns made of pipe cleaners (cuter than that sounds) and a gorgeous metal pumpkin in harvest colors almost identical to the one I searched for last year but couldn't find at TJ Maxx (my mom has one like it and that's where she got it).

Successful day for decorating, if I do say so myself. I'm not a crafty person, so I'm not likely to do scrapbooking or make my own crafts, but I am likely to decorate. Most of the stuff I got was $1 or less and is reusable from year-to-year.

I'm going to take the stuff into work tomorrow and start some decorating. I'll try to take some pictures of what the office looks like when I'm done. I have a midterm tomorrow and I have to work on a class project at work (shhhh!) so I'm not sure I'll have the time, but hopefully I'll get some up.

Last week also marked the beginning of my month of Halloween treats going into work. I'll try to put up a post about the pumpkin cupcakes I took in on Friday soon, but for right now, I'm going to work on my project and get to bed early, because I am beat. I may have to work tomorrow, but at least it's a federal holiday so there won't be any traffic, HOV restrictions, or parking enforcement. I can take I-66 in and park at a meter in front of my office for free all day! Awesome.

China Glaze Zombie Zest

EDIT: For whatever reason, despite knowing the name of this polish and telling it to people all week, when I posted this, I said it was Mummy May I, which is the purple. I've fixed it to say the actual polish name: Zombie Zest.

So, I'm still getting the hang of taking pictures of my nail polish. It's actually a lot harder than you'd think and I'm more in awe of the nail polish blogs that I read than I had previously been.

Last week, I read an article in Health magazine that encouraged me to paint my nails olive green. Despite the fact that only one of the colors listed by Health is actually olive green (Butter London Wallis) I decided it was a pretty good idea. Last year, I bought the China Glaze Awakening set and wore two of the three shades, but didn't wear Zombie Zest, an olive green glitter. Let me tell you -- I missed out.

I don't own Wallis, so I can't do a comparison, but there are several sites out there that put the two polishes up next to each other and they're almost the same (I know for real nail polish aficionados that's blasphemy, but I tend to call things dupes a lot sooner than others might). Interestingly, my pictures make it look very green, whereas others make it look very olive and almost the same as Wallis (pictured below). Yet, I think that my pictures are very color-accurate, so you'll have to decide for yourself how close they really are. Also, this only cost me $8 for the set of four, so I saved myself some money. Totally worth it.

Here's Health's picture:

Photo credit: Grace Huang for Health Magazine.

And here are my pictures of Zombie Zest. There are a lot of them because this color changes dramatically depending on where you are and your lighting conditions. Sometimes it's a green foil, sometimes it's a straight glitter. Sometimes it's a rich almost kelly green and sometimes it's a murky mossy color and sometimes it's straight olive. It's beautiful.

Indoors at night:

Outside with overcast sky:

Outside with sun:

Indoors with low light:

Indoors with bright light:

I don't know why my hands look so pink in those last couple. Maybe I was cold, because the polish certainly doesn't make them look pink.

Anyway, that was a crazy amount of photos. I'll have to get better about picking out the good ones. This is four coats over one coat of Sally Hansen base coat/top coat, with the same polish used for one coat of top coat. There is virtually no discernible difference between how it looks right now, a week later, and how it looked when I put it on. You have to stare at it to even see tip wear. I'm not familiar with enough brands to speak knowledgeably about formula, but I thought it went on very smooth and evenly.

Still a work in progress

I've been seriously slacking off on the blogging. More than a week between posts? I do have legitimately reasons for not being able to post, more so than just the usual "I'm busy," but I'd rather just say that I'll keep working on being better at consistency.

I don't have my camera with me right now, so I can't post my newest polish review and I really need to hit the shower and go to bed, but I'm hoping to have a bunch of new stuff to post about in the near future.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I'd like to try to bring in Halloween-themed goodies to work on each Friday of October plus on  Halloween itself (on a Monday). I won't be able to give out candy to the kids (my favorite part -- I dress up like a witch), because I'll be in class, but that's all right, I guess. It's for the greater good. (I got a "check plus" on my speech, btw. Not a real grade apparently.) I'm also working on decorating the office for Halloween/fall, so maybe pictures of that. Plus Halloween manicures and even more fitness/diet stuff. I'm down 10.2 pounds since I started Weight Watchers, plus the 10 pounds I lost before I joined! Twenty pounds!!

As a final note: Today I was in the student union dropping something off on the basement floor (where the ex's department is) and walked to the elevator to take it up to my Weight Watchers meeting. The ex was in front of me and had just pushed the up button and so I stood quietly waiting for the elevator to come. I figured that half of humanity's time in elevators is spent trying to ignore the other people in there in order to not have to make awkward conversation, so it should be easy for us to continue to ignore each other's presence in an elevator. When it dinged, he turned to get in, saw me moving toward it and walked past me and away from the elevators like he hadn't been standing there waiting for it. Really, I don't have any problem with this because I wasn't looking forward to spending quality time in an elevator with him, but it just seems so ridiculous. I understand why he doesn't talk to me. I even understand why he won't even be civil to me. But to not ride in an elevator with me just seems... silly. It's not like I was going to use the opportunity to have a long conversation about my "feelings." Oh well. I went to my meeting, lost weight, chatted it over with Joyce because she could tell I was a little flustered and felt better about it in the end. And no crying, so again a victory.

All right, I hope to have more stuff soon for October, but after a day of work, kickboxing, and class, I need to shower before bed (esp. bc I didn't show last night after work, Zumba, and class. Gross.)

B&BW Seaweed

The Tea Party speech really came together around 5:00 on Sunday afternoon. I was having some serious issues trying to get anything to flow together that wasn't just a jumble of ideas, and then I suddenly got into a rhythm and was able to just power through it. I suddenly had 500 words and a good theme. It took some major reworking after I wrote it, but I think it came out ok for a first attempt. I'm no sure how my professor will like it, having been a professional speechwriter and all, but I think I got a lot of the techniques in that he's been talking about in class. I also think it was a good idea for me to challenge myself and write from a completely opposite viewpoint, because it helped me focus on the elements and not just the ideas. It made me think about how to make ideas I disagree with sound good to me, and I think I did a good job. I don't think it's an A, but a solid B, and that's ok with me, because, like I said, it's my first try. But now I understand how Sam feels when he's having trouble writing.

So, Health magazine, which I am subscribed to as a gift from my grandmother, decided to tell me this month that I should paint my nails dark blue and olive green (not at the same time). They also gave me tips on how to go about doing that: keep nails short and shiny. Thanks, because after years of wearing nail polish, I hadn't figured that one out for myself. That being said, I think I will be painting my nails olive green in the near future (probably this week).

Last year, I got the China Glaze Halloween collection and really loved it. (I'm linking to Scrangie because I don't have my own pictures and her's are awesome.) I wore the purple one and it was great. I wore the orange one and it was great, though it came off in big chunks that looked like stick-on nails (and now is a super-thick goop, which will require some tinkering with Seche Vite Restore), but I never got around to wearing the green one. It's pretty much identical to what Health is telling me I should wear for fall (sparkly olive green) so I'm going to give it a go. I'm definitely in a Halloween mood and I haven't been able to decorate and be Halloween-y yet because it isn't even the first of October.

Currently, however, I am rocking Bath and Body Works Beauty by Nature in Seaweed.

Seaweed indoors with flash.

Seaweed indoors without flash.

I promise I'll eventually learn how to take good pictures of my nails.

Seaweed is a really beautiful dark teal with a bit of a shimmer to it. I would recommend that everyone go out and buy it, except that I bought it in seventh grade, which was... 1999. So, I don't think that they'll have this anymore, but I'm sure that there are other colors out there that would be dupes. I remembering wearing this while I was substitute teaching English a few years ago and the sophomore girls in the class told me I had awesome nail polish on. I'm sure that green nails were enough to make them think I was a "cool sub."

The polish has completely stood up to the tests of time. It's no thicker or thinner than it was when I bought it 12 years ago and it goes on opaque in one coat (what you see here). I still usually use two or three coats because it tends to thin out when topcoat is applied. It dries semi-glossy, thus the use of topcoat. I also use topcoat because it doesn't have very long wear, even when using multiple coats. One of the nice things about this polish, however, is that the color doesn't change based on number of coats, so if you have to do a touch-up a few days later, you can just brush a little polish over top of the trouble spot and you'll never be able to see the difference.

Also, today is my BFF's birthday, so... Happy Birthday, Laura!

Recipe: Slow-Cooker Chicken Tacos

I'm supposed to be working on a stump speech for class, and I'm having serious trouble with it, because I've decided to challenge myself by writing it from a Tea Party perspective (ugh) and I don't know anything about the Tea Party except that I hate them. So, instead, I'm going to post a recipe for Slow-cooker chicken tacos, which are really good and I made on Monday but haven't had enough time to post about until today. (Technically, I still don't have enough time to post about it, but what can you do).

First thing is to gather your ingredients:

• 3 frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 package taco seasoning (in this case, reduced sodium)
• 1 can Rotel tomatoes with green chilies
• 2 cans dark red kidney beans (optional)
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/4 cup olive oil (optional, but good)
• 1/2 - 1 cup water (if not using kidney beans)

Rice is optional, if you want to add it to the recipe, but I don't think it's necessary. It would probably be pretty good.

  

First step is to cover the bottom of your crock pot with the taco seasoning packet, and then place the chicken breasts directly onto the taco seasoning. Chicken breasts should be frozen to start, which makes this recipe even easier.

Flavor the chicken breast by sprinkling the cumin over top of them....













....and then dump the can of Rotel on top of the cumin-covered chicken breasts.

The next step is the kidney beans, if you choose to use them. I really like beans in my chili/tacos, so I would definitely use them, but that's entirely up to you. Also, I'm sure that black beans, pinto beans, navy beans, etc., would taste fine. You could also use only one can if you want to go light on the beans. Add one can of kidney beans, with the liquid, to the beans. Drain the other can (reserving the liquid) and add the beans, followed by the olive oil (if using).

Put the lid on the crock pot and set it on low. After 3.5 hours (or more) it will look something like this:

Using a fork, take out the chicken breasts and move them to a cutting board. They should be completely tender and moist. Shred all three breasts with a pair of forks. Add it back into the pot.

Mix the chicken back in and let the flavors come together for another half hour or so (or longer) before eating. If it seems a little dry, go ahead and add the reserved kidney bean liquid (which has more flavor and nutrients than water) or just add water as needed.

When ready to eat, you can eat it plain like a chili, but of course, you can add anything else you might put on a taco: hot sauce, rice, guacamole, lettuce, tomato, etc.I prefer to pile it on top of a tortilla with cheddar cheese and light sour cream.






Approximate WW PointsPlus value for a 1/2 cup serving of taco filling (with beans, no toppings/tortilla included) = 4.