Vanellope Von Schweetz Costume: Part 2

Candy Hair Clips

Here's the pin that was pinned on the Vanelope von Schweetz board: http://pinterest.com/pin/147422587773391960/

This blog post is my own little tutorial on how to make a candy hair pins with actual candy pieces.  I know these items will not have a long life of use beyond this Halloween and the movie night, but I really wanted to use real candy pieces to give my Halloween costume that nice little extra wow factor. 

• Felt
• Bobby pins
• Candy! I used Smarties, Skittles, Spearmint Candy
• Sealer (I used Martha Stewart Decoupage Glue & Sealer with Brush - bought it with a 50% off coupon at Michael's :D)
• Hot Glue gun

Vanellope von Schweetz Costume: Part 1

Photo Credit: Disney's Wreck-it-Ralph

So I'm pretty excited for Disney's Wreck-it-Ralph coming to theaters November 2.  A Disney movie about video games?  Yes please.  :)  So after watching a few trailers I decided that for my actual Halloween costume I'm going to be Venelope Von Schweetz!  I'm also planning to reuse the costume for opening night at the movies.

While looking around I actually discovered that someone has made a Pintrest board for this costume!  http://pinterest.com/brermatt/vanellope-von-schweetz-costume-wreck-it-ralph/  Great ideas on the board, but just looking around online for a sweater everything seemed to be out of my price range so I decided to rely on my good ol neighborhood Goodwill.  I also put my own little personal touches on the costume.  The next couple of post will be dedicated to how I put together my halloween costume.  Almost must apologize since the camera ran out of battery and I took most of these photos with my phone.  Hope you enjoy the read regardless.

Candy Cane Nails using The Beauty Department's Tape Trick 

Pin Rating: 3

Duration: 30-40 min

• Painters tape
• Wet n Wild White nail polish (.97 cents)
• Wet n Wild Clear Coat (.97 cents)

Remember my red nails from last week?  I decided to repurpose them into candy cane nails to go with my costume.  So I believe this is my first 3 pin rating.  I'm not sure if it was the nail polish, the tape or just my nail polishing skills, but the final results came out a little runny and the lines weren't clean.  It's possible that it could have been a little bit of everything but I'm satisfied with the overall results for my Halloween costume.

I cut up tiny strips of painters tape and lined them up where I wanted them on my nails.

Paint the nail with the white nail polish.  Wait about a minute and peel off the tape.

And after that touch up and top coat and you're done!

Click below for Part 2 & 3 of my costume.

Vanellope Von Schweetz Costume Part 2

Vanellope Von Schweetz Costume Part 3

Bedazzled Pumpkin!

There's only 5 more days until Halloween!  Today's Fast & Simple Friday post is a bedazzled pumpkin.  I got pinspired by this pin here.  There were plenty of other ways to bedazzle and dress up the pumpkin but this one seemed the easiest.  The original pin used a crystal gemstone sticker design which would have been way faster than my method: Glitter glue!  I had some glitter glue laying around after my DIY Spider Web blog so decided to put it to good use.  The pumpkin is still drying so I don't have a final product photo yet.

Pin Rating: Seeing as how this isn't an original project on pintrest, you be the judge :)

• Pumpkin
• Glitter glue (Crayola Glittler glue highly recommended)

The pumpkin my sister brought home from Safeway.  It has a nice layer of dirt on it that needs to be washed off.

Shower time for the pumpkin.  Nice and clean after a good scrub.  Then I let it sit outside to dry for a bit.

No Flour Banana Oatmeal Muffins

Original Pin: http://pinterest.com/pin/231724343298425850/

Pin Rating: 4.5

Duration: 1 hour

I pinned this because it was a nice healthy alternative breakfast muffin with no flour in it.  It does have sugar but it can be substituted with apple sauce or honey.  This recipe was easy to follow, easy to make and not to mention delicious to eat!  Half of the muffins were gobbled up before I even had the chance to blog about them.  The only reason I gave this a 4.5 was because it does take some time out of your day to prep and bake them.  So if you have the time these are great to make.  Beats making breakfast every morning.  :)

By the way, did anyone notice that I'm no longer posting the original Pintrest pictures in my blog?  I found it a little confusing so from here on out I'll be posting my final product photos at the top of the blog post and then linking the original pin somewhere.  Don't like the new format?  Leave me a comment to let me know. Thanks!~

Ingredients

• 2 ½ Cup oats (old fashioned, not quick cooking)
• 1 single serving (or 1 cup) of plain low fat greek yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup sweetener of choice, I used sugar 
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda (not pictured)
• 2 bananas
• Muffin baking tin (Note from Keeping up with the Joneses blog: The paper liners don't work well when baking with a base that does not include flour, they always seem to stick to the paper. I sprayed the muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray or you can use foil cupcake liners or a silicone muffin pan.)
• Cooking spray (with flour is a plus!
• Blender (I only had a food processor and it seemed to work fine)
• Preheat the oven to 400° (Bake 20-25 minutes)

RED nails and RED lips! Inspired by Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift's new album RED comes out today.  Went to Target to pick up my copy this morning and I LOVE it!  I tried to look for some Pinspiration to honor Taylor Swift and what better way than red??  I searched on Pintrest for "Red nails" and the most popular pin was "Red lips and red nails" so figured hey why not, Red Lips are what she's known for right?  Love the combination and how it turned out.  Too bad I don't have anywhere exciting to go tonight but I must admit I'm enjoying myself sitting here blogging and listening to her album (doing a happy dance inside).  Will definitely have to load the songs onto my iPod before I hit the gym tonight.

• Cover Girl Outlast All Day (#572) + Lip Gloss
• NYC Nail Polish: 131 Big Apple Red Creme (0.97 + tax)
• Wet n Wild Wild Shine Clear Nail Protector (0.97 + tax)

For touch up

• Nail Polish Remover
• Eye Liner brush

Since I was at Target already I decided to pick up the nail polish since I don't own any red nail polish. (Gasp!  I know!)  The Cover Girl Outlast All Day Lip stain was something I purchased about a year ago and looking around online just now, they no longer have #572 but they do have #507 Ever Red-dy which is probably what replaced it.  I also own the #590 Faint Hue and I love love love both of these.  I'll admit I went into Target and bought these because Taylor Swift is a Cover Girl and always has the red lips that pop and I wanted the same effect. I picked up the red for the nights I'm feeling a little bold and the fainter color for the every day occasion.  And it really does last a long time!  I forgot to check the price while I was at Target but I think it's worth it and this is a purchase I would definitely make again once I run out.

I don't have too many pictures since it's hard to take photos while your nails are still wet.  Also I figured this isn't a proper pin to actually rate since everyone's level of applying nail polish is different.  This is probably just one of those things that I will say is just Simply Pinspirational.  :)  Happy Monday!

Nyan Cat Saturday!

Hi everyone, it's time for Cat Saturday!!  Does anyone else here read theCHIVE and look forward to Cat Saturdays??  My boyfriend showed the site to me a while back and for a while we made a habit of waking up on Saturday mornings and logging on to see if the Cat Saturday post was up or not.  Haven't done it in a long time now but I thought the title of today's post was fitting since I have a Nyan cat picture up on my post.  (Anyways, here's a link to today's Cat Saturday post for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about.)  So today's post is a little different because I have a big announcement to make.  I've opened up my very own Etsy shop!!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SimplyPinspirational

The Nyan cat keychain that you see is something that I've recently made and decided to start selling online.  I figured with all the crafty things that I have been doing in the past, and will have time to do in the future, I should just go ahead and put it on Etsy and if they sell.  If they do, then great....If not, it's still going to be a lot of fun learning to make some of these items and offer them up for sale.  :D  I only have the Nyan cat keychain up for now, but hoping to have a lot more items posted within the next couple of weeks.  Sooo excited!  Please check out my shop and follow me on Twitter (@pinspirational) for more updates!

Tater Tot Casserole

http://pinterest.com/pin/165296248794584047/

Pin Rating: 3.5

Prep Time: 30-45 min

Cook Time: 45 min

Helped my sister out with dinner on Friday night and changed the original recipe for this breakfast casserole with healthier ingredients and items we had in the fridge. The results of the casserole was tasty but by following the assembly instructions from the website I feel like it could have been assembled better.  I'll put in the instructions I used below and my suggestions for changes if you're planning to attempt this yourself.  I also added in chopped onions and bellpepers per my sister's request.  If you're not great with a knife in the kitchen you can forego this section and it'll cut the prep time in half.

• Ground pork, breakfast sausage, ham or bacon  (I used ground breakfast sausage)
• 2-4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 cups milk
• 4 eggs ( I used 3 eggs and 3 egg yolks since my sister had egg yolks left over from her most recent cake bake)
• 2 lbs of frozen tater tots ( Used 1 bag of sweet potato tots)
• 1/2 bell peper
• 1/2 onion
• Casserole dish

Washed the bell pepper and chop off the top.  Next you want to take out the "pit" of the bell pepper and toss that out.  Helps if you just slice off the pieces connecting the center (shown in picture above).

Cut the bell pepper in half.  As tempting as it may be to lay the bell pepper skin up, it's actually easier to cut it with the skin (outside) facing the cutting board.  Then cut the bell pepper into tiny slivers.  Once you cut them into slivers, continue to cut/chop them into squares.