Pearl Shoe Clips

Hope everyone had a great week. It's finally the weekend! (If you didn't know)

And since that means no school, I'm obviously going to craft.

But today's craft is semi-school-related:

Pearl Shoe Clips

Since I have to dress up to visit patients at the hospital, I have started wearing flats all the time. The only problem is, out of my 4387538 pairs of shoes, I only have, like, 2 pairs of flats. Promise I'm not exaggerating. I started brainstorming ideas to dress them up or make them different because they get really boring.  I had already made the bow clips for them, but that was just because I'm a tad bit obsessed with bows and I can only wear those with certain colors. This led me to pearls. Pearls are always classy and can be worn with pretty much anything. Just ask Auburn sorority girls, they wear them with their over-sized t-shirts and Nike shorts. ;) Just messin.

Supplies:



White felt
Blank hair clips
Plastic Pearls (52 total)
E6000 glue (or other strong glue)
Scissors

How To:

Cut 2 -1.5" felt circles
They don't have to be perfect - promise

Put a dab of glue on the bottom of your pearls and arrange them in the above fashion on your felt circle. The outside pearls are going to be slightly hanging off the felt, so I put a little glue on the sides of those so they stick to the pearls in the middle. Also, make sure the holes in the pearls aren't seen from the top, unless of course, you don't care. I'm too OCD.
Let these dry before gluing the top layer.

For my top layer, I glued one pearl directly on top of the bottom center pearl and then 6 on the outside of that one. The only difficulty with this, is the pearls on the outside are going to try to fall into the creases of the bottom layer. So, I had to hold them in place until they dried just enough to hold themselves.

Lastly, glue your clips to the bottom. I clipped mine to a piece of paper while it dried so the clip didn't glue shut. (That's happened to me before.)

Finally, you have something to dress up those boring flats!

Told you I only have 2 pairs.

Happy weekend!

DIY Cluster Necklace

I just wanted to post to show you guys my cluster necklace I made during girl's night on Monday. 

 It's super easyto make if you have any patience at all.

Supplies:

Headpins
Pretty beads
6" of regular chain
16" decorative chain
Pliers
2 jump rings

How to:

I followed this tutorial to learn how to make a loop
Put one of your beads on a headpin and use your pliers to cut excess off the top. I left about 1/2 an inch of headpin above my bead.
Then, using your pliers, make a loop and hook it onto your regular chain.
Repeat until you have as many clusters as you want.
At each end of your regular chain, add a jump ring and hook it onto your decorative chain.
Make sure your decorative chain comes with a clasp already attached.

Lastly, admire your new necklace :)

Hope everyone's having a great Wednesday!

Cupcake Palooza

Had my first Pulmonary test yesterday.

Let's just say, the past few weeks I've had Spring Break-Itis and didn't study as much as I should have. That, or I just don't understand how the lungs work. Probably a mixture of the two. C = MD, right? I just probably shouldn't have a career in pulmonology.



(If you didn't know...I'm blonde.)

I spent the beautiful day yesterday (after my test) doing the things I am obsessed with love: crafting and cupcakes. Everytime I make cupcakes, I always bring the leftovers to my classmates. Now, I have roughly 180 classmates and I only ever make 24 cupcakes at a time. Therefore, a lot of people feel left out. So, I finally did it. I never thought I would, but it wasn't as hard as I expected.
I made 175 cupcakes.

(That's not even all of them. Also, I never got a picture of all of them iced.)

It took me 6 hours to bake and ice them all and two of my girl friends helped me deliver them to school last night. Because no one wants to carry that much at 7:30 in the morning.
In between baking, we girls crafted, watched a movie, and ate some Mellow Mushroom.
Basically, last night = bliss
Here's to hoping Spring Break gets here fast

Happy Time-Warp Tuesday

Strawberry Cupcakes

Now that the VDay hype is over and I've bored you to death with all of those projects, I can tell you my recipe for my cream cheese icing I use on my strawberry cupcakes. 

One of these days I'll learn how to make strawberry cupcakes from scratch (because that would be delicious) but for time's sake, the ones from the box will do. This is probably my favorite boxed cake mix.

They aren't kidding about the moist part, either. I also discovered that if you cook them for the lowest amount of time it recommends, they are typically more moist. Nobody likes dried out cake.

Now, for the part that really matters, the cream cheese icing. I don't think there is any icing that goes with strawberry cake better than this one. And did I mention it's super easy?

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)

8oz package of cream cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups of confectioners sugar

*3 cups is a rough estimate, I always just judge by stiffness (for piping)

Beat the butter and cream cheese in a bowl

Mix in the vanilla

Mix in the confectioners sugar a cup at a time

If you want to make them pretty, I typically pipe the icing with the large open star tip. Then I add some of the pretty sprinkles I got on sale after VDay one year. Lastly, I stuff my face (after I take pretty pictures of them).

Now, go make some cupcakes and eat 1 (or 2 or 3). :)

Creamy Tomato Cajun Chicken Pasta

This Valentine's, I was delegated the task of making VDay dinner. (Not sure how that happened)

I figured some kind of pasta would be appropriate for a VDay meal, but spaghetti is too easy and too...blah.  So I searched and searched for some kind of cajun chicken pasta recipe (because that's always my favorite at restaurants), but I could never find one I just absolutely thought sounded delicious. I wanted something with a creamy tomato sauce and none of the ones I came across were actually "creamy" ....they all had big chunks of tomato in them. Yuck. So, I kind of combined different recipes and kind of just winged it. And this is how it turned out:

Here's what you need:

1 box of farfalle (bowtie) pasta

5 skinless, boneless chicken breast tenders

2 tablespoons cajun seasoning

1 red bell pepper

For the sauce:

1-14oz can of tomato soup

1 cup of heavy whipping cream

2 cloves of garlic

Salt and Pepper to taste

Here's how to make it:

Cook the pasta according to box and drain

Cut the chicken tenders into strips

Toss the chicken in the cajun seasoning until fully coated

Julienne the bell pepper*

Saute the chicken for 5-7 minutes on med heat (no pink left)

Toss in the bell pepper strips and saute for another 4-5 minutes

*(For the non-cooking-savvy people like me, julienne = strips)

To make the sauce:

Add the tomato sauce to a saucepan and heat on med heat

Mince your garlic and add to pan

Once this comes to a boil, add the heavy cream

Stir continuously so it doesnt burn

Add salt and pepper to taste

Once heated thoroughly, remove from heat to let thicken

I didn't start my sauce soon enough to have it thicken before serving, so our sauce was a little runny. We also decided the sauce was a little bland and might be better with something such as a red pepper spice to give it a little more flavor.

Pour some sauce over your noodles, add the chicken and peppers, then sprinkle some grated parmesan on top, and voila. Dinner is served.  I also made garlic breadsticks (from the frozen section) and caesar salad (from a bag).

I also made dessert (which I mentioned in my last post but couldn't tell you what it was).

I made none other than the fiance's favorite:

German Chocolate Cake.

I wish I could say I made it from scratch. But all the recipes I found looked way too time consuming and stressful. So I stuck with the box. I cooked it according to instructions, but to keep my cake moist, I always cook it for the least amount of time the box says to.  After cooling, I iced it. I normally just use the German chocolate icing, but since it's not exactly my fave (and we were both eating it for dessert), I also used a tub of milk chocolate icing. I iced the bottom layer and the sides with the milk chocolate, then iced the top with the coconut icing. My type-A personality led me to piping 2 layers of chocolate icing around the outside. Just so it didn't look quite so pathetic.

And there you have it, my "homeade" VDay dinner. Beats going out to eat on such a busy night.

What did you do for Valentine's?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Between all the sweets from my classmates, coffee, and facebook, it has been exceptionally hard to pay attention in class this morning. I can officially show you all my VDay projects I've been working on since I finally distributed them today! But first, I wanted to show you my valentine's "mantel" ....since I never really got around to doing that and I'm kinda proud of it.

I made the topiaries last year and I got the little bears from Hobs Lobs during their VDay clearance on year.

The letters are just chipboard letters covered in paper and stickers

The banner I made from cutting hearts out of paint chips. Paint chips = free!

Last night, I got my Betty Crocker/Martha Stewart on and made some sweets. One of the desserts I made is for VDay dinner with the fiance. So, I can't show you that yet. But, for my classmates, I made strawberry cupcakes (from a box, of course) with homeade cream cheese icing. I'll post the recipe another day.

I also made special valentines for my close friends. I saw the idea on some craft blog a while back and I thought it was perfect for med school. Because it's something that we all use everyday to study. It's a little bit cheesy, but that's okay. 

Highlighters!

This weekend, I bought some Samoa girl scout cookies while I was out with the fiance. I know he likes them, so I figured I'd incorporate a few into his VDay gift. I thought up a super cheesy saying to go along with them (since everything else I made was cheesy). I probably wasn't the first to come up with it, but I thought I was funny so I'm going to pretend I did. Don't judge.

 

For all of the gifts, I just packaged them in ziplock bags, rolled down the tops, cut a strip of festive paper to fold across the top and pinned it all together with a wooden clothespin and my handwritten message! I feel like that's enough Valentine's Day stuff thrown into one post to make anyone want to gag. So, I promise I'll stop now. (But mainly because there is nothing left to show you). Hope everyone is having a great day with the ones they love (whether it's a special someone, friends or family!)

Life Update

Monday officially began our Pulmonary module. Yay, lungs.

I'm loving this organ based curriculum. So incredibly organized compared to last semester.

Not to mention, it makes me giddy to be learning so much doctor stuff.

I'm also one of the course representatives for this module. Can't wait to start getting emails from classmates with all their questions. Haha.

Last Friday was our final for the Cardio module and it went better than expected.  The weekends after a big test like that are practically mini vacations in my mind, so, needless to say, this weekend was full of productivity and fun.

Friday morning I headed to my parents' house to see my mom and do some laundry (thanks mom).  That evening I ventured to Tuscaloosa (ick) to stay the night with my sister and do a little wedding planning while we watched some Harry Potter. And by wedding planning, I mean we cut out a bunch of pictures from magazines. Heh.

Saturday we spent the day visiting dress shops to try on bridesmaids dresses. Except, only one of the stores actually ended up having bridesmaids dresses. Google lied. We eventually ended up getting coffee and shopping around. That night the fiance and I got to visit and have dinner with our college friends. We also spent Sunday watching the Super Bowl with them and by the time that was over, so was the weekend. I always end up wishing weekends are longer.

What did you do this weekend? Or, even better, what are you doing this coming weekend?

I'm looking forward to our school's Little Red Dress party this Friday in honor of cardiovascular disease. As long as I can make it through these next three days! :)

VDay Countdown

I wish I could tell you that a lot of exciting things have been going on lately.

But I'd be lying. As usual, I've just been studying my life away.

Our cardiovascular final is this Friday (yippee!), and then we start Pulmonary. I also remember telling you there would be more cardio adventures to tell you about. I was also lying then, I just didn't know it at the time.

I did get to see and hold some hearts. One was normal, while the others were diseased. We had the task of determining out what disease each heart had. That was pretty cool and it helped put all of the stuff we are learning into perspective.

The main reason for this post is because it's February 1st and what better day than today to show you my Valentine's countdown. I used the same tutorial for this one as I did for my Halloween countdown.

Now I just have to figure out what I'm doing for Valentine's. Probably studying, like usual. :P

What are your plans? Do you have a hot date or do you plan on rebelling against VDay?