diy college: better overnight oatmeal

Once again, I have crossed the line from the Pinterest imaginary kitchen to the real, fridge-and-microwave dorm kitchen. I made Refrigerator No-Cook Oatmeal as a test project about a week ago, excited at the idea of having a homemade (chocolate-filled) breakfast ready for me when I woke up, as opposed to being forced to spend extra time in the morning making the breakfast. (Hey, I'm a college student, cut me some slack!)

I got extra excited because I found all this in Paws n Go:

Mainly, the excitement came from that oatmeal--Paws n Go never has oatmeal. So I bought some and got ready for the most exciting breakfast ever. I used this recipe for no-cook oatmeal as my starter. And this is what resulted. 

Yummy, but the texture was very soupy. Very soupy. Like applesauce, only with oats and dark chocolate chunks and raspberries. I don't know if it was the substitution of oats or what, but I'm much more of a gloppy oatmeal person (even if that sounds gross), so I tweaked the recipe a little. This is what worked for me, to give me a thicker, more substantial oatmeal.

I've tried it both with and without that extra teaspoon of honey, and it really is good either way. It's just good all around. I've also tried this with raspberries and blueberries (and currently have one with strawberries chilling in my fridge). If you use a larger fruit, you'll want to chop it into fairly small pieces--that way you get them well-distributed!

The blueberries wanted a close up. :)

Chocolate and Fruit Overnight Oatmeal

1/3 c quick oats
1/4 c plain or vanilla Greek yogurt
2 tbs skim milk
1 tsp honey (optional)
2 squares of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate
a healthy sprinkling of fruit (of whatever variety and as much as your fruit tooth--can that be a thing?--would like!)

Finely chop the chocolate. Mix together the oats, yogurt, milk, and honey (if using) in a Ziploc-esque container or Mason jar until well-blended. Add in the chocolate, and mix until well-distributed. Top with your fruit of choice.

procrastination and pretty dresses

I know I should be going crazy because the semester is ending and finals are coming up, but honestly, I'm not. I have one paper and one final that I really need to study for, and I feel rather calm. It makes me feel a little weird being the only one who's still wasting time on pinterest and movies and staring at my toes, but maybe finals week can be calm? After all, I did have a week in early April when I had three major papers, a geology assignment, and two presentations to work on at the same time that I was doing tech week for a dance performance. I already did the stressed out thing!

So now, I'm relaxing and writing a paper about the Titanic (part of the reason you got that lovely post a couple of weeks ago!). And in my spare time, I'm pinning all the lovelies from the 1910s. Here are some of my favorites!

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Of course, the movie is always a solid point to start. So lovely!

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I love the sleeves on this evening dress. I'm not sure if this is at all accurate, but from my research, it seems like the 1910s were not a time to have an evening dress with sleeves that went past your elbow. But these are so elegant!

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I could imagine wearing one of these dresses to class if I went to college 100 years ago! They look so neat and polished.

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And I can't even describe my excitement when I saw that Stephanie had posted this lovely paper doll. It might be later teens, but it's so fascinating!

diy college: grilled everything-in-the-fridge

Pro tip: parchment paper is a decent makeshift lightbox

I've realized something: I am the epitome of an opportunistic cook. It's not in my fridge and I can't get it at Paws n Go? Nope. Just nope. Even when I go real grocery shopping, I usually forget to look through recipes enough to make a real grocery list. I tried last time and all I did was cruise my cooking pinboard, get overwhelmed with deliciousness (and the sugar content..sheesh!), and wind up writing down "tortillas, milk, and toothpaste". 

But when you can make stuff like this, why try?

Honestly, a recipe for this would be somewhat self-explanatory. What I did was use the flatbread I'd bought the night before at the dining hall, some tuna salad (made according to this recipe), some guacamole (made with an avocado from, yes, Paws n Go), and a few slices of tomato.

What I did to make this extra special is iron it.

Nope, that's not my laundry, that's a sandwich!

I used some parchment paper that we randomly had in our room (because we're cool like that and don't have normal stuff like aluminum foil; nope, we have parchment paper) and set the iron at halfway between wool and cotton, as per the Interwebs' suggestion. The result was pretty nice, compared to the refrigerator cold or soft, kinda soggy microwaved sandwich alternatives. I wasn't very patient, but this wasn't a grilled cheese, so there was no cheese to melt. But the bread got crispy warm, while the tuna and avocado stayed cool (as per my desires) so I consider it a win.

Lesson learned: gourmet dorm room sandwiches are made more delicious with the newest kitchen appliance--an iron. 

What kind of random sandwiches are floating your boat? Is there a super convenient fridge option that you gravitate towards? Shoot me ideas to try in my dorm kitchen!

sewing fo: the little (mad) bird

Sorry for the room mess! I am. after all, a college student, folks. 

While wearing this jumper, my friend Alex told me I look like one of those birds who are pudgy and go peep. But aren't sparrows.*

This is the jumper (or skirt) that took me roughly 8 months. Now, that wasn't 8 solid months of sewing. That includes over 6 months of school, a time that kept me roughly 1000 miles away from my sewing machine. So I cut myself a little bit of slack (a lot of bit of slack). 

It's beautifully vintage and makes me excessively happy, Long after having picked out the fabric and the pattern I realized how perfectly it fit Julia's Mad Men Challenge!

See?

I may not have her Joan's figure, but it's something that I imagine she would have worn as a student: subtly sexy, with a nice, nipped-in waist, and cute details. Like suspenders. Oh, and a slit/vent. Yep, I'm channeling the Joan.

In summary:

Pattern: Simplicity 1732, c. 1957

Fabric: roughly a yard and a half of mystery vintage brown fine corduroy and 1 yard of lining fabric

Notions: one 10-inch zipper and bias tape.

Techniques: Seam finishing, the classy I'm awesome way! I zigzagged most of the seams and used bias tape on the facing. And then tacked the facing down, so that for the first time ever, my project guts look pretty. I also put in a zipper (which is maybe the third time I've done that? kinda intimidating still) and did a lot of slow hand-basting and careful marking.

Thoughts: I really liked this pattern, though the mere words "vintage pattern" made me ten times more careful. I took a lot more time than normally on this project. Even if you compressed all the time down to say, a weekend. And I feel like it shows. It looks pretty. The only bad thing? An extra inch in the waist shows. I don't have a 26 inch waist. I'm smaller and I know that and I should've taken it in, but I thought I was close enough that it wouldn't make a difference. It does, but not such a large one that I won't wear it. I love this skirt. I feel so cute in it. I know I'll wear it a ton in the fall, when it's seasonably appropriate (I don't seem to ever really do seasonally appropriate sewing. Hmmm...)

Pretty guts!

Closer to the pretty guts!

CLOSEST TO THE PRETTY GUTS! 

I'm really proud of those seam finishes. Can you tell?

I love the crissy-crossy suspender straps :)

because 101 years is not long enough to forget

As I write this, I am sitting in the main library at my college, crying. I'm supposed to be writing my paper that analyses the ways that the media has affected our perception of and interaction with the Titanic myth, so to speak. This is a fascinating paper topic for me. I love it and I want all the books I checked out from the library to be mine forever.

That being said, some of the "research" that I've done today has led to some tears. And I think rightfully so. Because 101 years is too short a time to forget the night to remember.

This is why we cry. This is why we should cry.

Karl Thorsten Skoog, age 12

The grave of the only child recovered by the Mackay-Bennet (now known to be Sidney Goodwin)

The Goodwin family--all of them held third class tickets, all of them died. 

Jack Phillips, first Wireless Operator

The engineers who kept the lights burning, the pumps on, and the Marconi spark dancing to the very end, all so that other people's lives would be saved 

There are uncountable others, others whose faces have faded away because all who knew them are now dead. Now, they are only a name without italics on a page of victims. But each of those names was a person, one who had hopes and dreams for what the end of this journey would bring them. 

The night lives on. The night will always live on. 

diy college: tuna-hummus salad or making good on the pins

I'm like most pinners: I pin things that I think look fun to make or pretty or yummy. But realistically, I'm a college student with little free time, no sewing machine, and a microwave and mini-fridge at my disposal. Not exactly a gourmet kitchen.

But this week I accomplished a pin, this one to be specific. Not all those recipes. But one, a tuna-hummus salad. I got a little extra creative, but it's mainly the same thing. The best part? Everything for this recipe was available at my college's convenience store-of-sorts, Paws n Go, it didn't require actual cooking, and it was really quick.

Actually, the best part was that it was delicious. Amazingly, wonderfully delicious.

The hummus was some roasted garlic that I found in Paws n Go, to go with the cans of tuna which they kindly sell to meal points broke college students. My roommate bought marinated kalamata olives about a week ago, also from Paws n Go (I know, we're spoiled little children! :), so I chopped a few of those up and threw those in. And the tomatoes in Paws n Go's produce section were calling for a tuna salad home.

Tuna-Hummus Salad

1 5-oz can of tuna
2 generous tbs hummus (I strongly suggest to your creaminess of tuna salad tastes!)
3 olives
2 slices tomato

Mix together tuna and hummus. Set aside. Chop the olives and tomato into bite-sized chunks, for distribution purposes. Mix the olives and tomato into the tuna-hummus mixture, until the tomatoes and olives are well-distributed.