princess for a day: ariel

Not to be confused with Arial, the font, which is what I first typed. Ah, font nerd jokes.

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Happy Halloween! It's time to dress up like whatever you want! For me, this will probably mean a sleep-deprived college stude..wait, that's what I am everyday. *sigh* If only I could dress up like a princess!

Ariel's not the easiest princess to dress up as in her "normal" state. It might be because she has a mermaid tail, and we have people legs. Well, most of us have people legs; I don't want to offend any mermaids out there. But can we say that it's the challenge that makes her interesting? But for those who have an affinity for not wearing mermaid skirts, she fortunately gets to wear that pink 80s monstrosity lovely 1980s-inspired ball gown. I'm not a big fan of the 1980s, especially the formals (except, of course, for my mommy's wedding dress; that was beautiful).

Ariel doesn't wear too much in the clothes department as a mermaid, just a little purple shell bra. Of course, for we humans, something greenish is also necessary to camouflage our lower appendages. 

When I first approached this, I thought instantly of 1940s playsuits. The tops on those are absolutely darling!

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If you mentally add a long mermaid skirt, with ruffles and maybe a train to act something like a tail with fins. Something like this, perhaps. 

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But of course, with the right coloring (which is essentially the major component in redoing a princess constume), a different silhouette could be used and still be Ariel! What about a crop top and a maxi skirt in a purple and green (respectively)? I could imagine a modern Ariel wearing just that. Or even a high-low hem skirt with a green chiffon overlay--it'd be kinda floaty like a mermaid tail, dontcha think? 

For Ariel's ball gown, there are a multitude of eras to pull from. Of course, you could embrace your inner vintage Molly Ringwald and go eighties.

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You can even sew it yourself from all the ruffled, puffed sleeve patterns on Etsy!

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I'm going to have nightmares about that one. 

You could also bring out your inner Cosette and rock it 1830s romantic style. They were all about the giant puffed gigot sleeve with the narrow long sleeve underneath.

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Or you could be really, really, really ambitious and break out the 1660s. They also loved the puffed sleeves, full skirts, and tight bodices.  (Which is about four more layers of ambition than I have, frankly, but I'd love to see someone else do this--maybe for Costume College?)

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Honestly, I'm pretty sure the make or break element is having that bright red hair. Fire engine red, anyone?

dorm room diy: des oeufs gastronomes

*title in French to be all fancy pants*

There are many ways to do microwave scrambled eggs. But I've come to realize, there's a barely acceptable, get-food-in-my-tummy-now way (which I, on my dorm room gourmet pedestal, will call the wrong way) and there's a delicious, deluxe, I-feel-like-a-fancy-pants-chef-person way (a.k.a. the right way).

Wrong way:

Right way:

(We might also note that, while still nothing special, my food photography skills have increased minimally.)

Assignment: The Incredible, Edible Microwave Egg Project

Every college student with a microwave, a coffee cup, and a Pinterest knows about the basic egg-in-a-cup. It's fast, easy, and actually tastes like what it's supposed to. But. This is the boring, unreliable method. We want to step this up a little because we're fancy. In making a couple dozen microwave eggs, I've figured out how to finesse the basics into something a little shnazzier.

Hint 1: use a bowl, not a mug.

Yeah, I know all the recipes say you can make it in a mug. But the thicker something is, the longer it takes to cook in the microwave, just based on how microwaves work. I use a fairly flat bottomed bowl and my eggs cook a lot faster than they ever did in the coffee mug. Plus, you can get fancy like I did and call it a frittata.

Hint 2: spice up your ingredient list.

Basic recipes (if you can call them those) call for an egg, some milk or water, and some salt. If you keep some simple spices on hand, like oregano and basil or cayenne or cumin, you can turn your egg from basic to awesome in about two dashes. Plus, you'll have spices on hand for all kinds of awesome cooking activities. And you know you want that.

Hint 3: shop the salad bar. 

Does your dining hall have a salad bar? Good. Go there and fill up a box with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, olives, shredded cheese whatever you like in your omelettes. Throw them on top of your eggs to really jazz up your eggs, while upping the healthiness too! Look at all those fresh veggies just sitting there smiling at you.

With all my acquired knowledge, I made some eggs today. And you know what? Instead of merely "interesting", they were delicious.

a suspiciously similar picture...wonder why?

Eggs Florentine Frittata*

1 egg
1-1/2 tbs cream cheese (I got mine at the dining hall convenience store)
1/8 tsp dried oregano
1/8 tsp dried basil
4-5 leaves baby spinach
4-5 cherry tomatoes
1 tbs sliced mushroom (very much estimated)

Whisk the egg and cream cheese together until fluffy and uniformly colored. Stir in the oregano and basil. On top, place the spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Microzap for 1 minute and 15 seconds, then let cool before eating. Enjoy!

Grade: C for the regular way. A for the jazzed up way! 

Have you tried microwave eggs? Do you like/hate/eat them? Do you have any tricks to turn the ordinary into the fantastically yummy?

*Florentine just means with spinach. But it sounds super fancy, right?

top three tuesday: halloween edition

Two days to Halloween! Do you have your costume? Sadly, I don't, but I'm sure I will! Here are some of my favorite Halloweeny things.

...costume idea posts

Marie's little black dress procrastinator costumes. These are so simple, but a great twist on something that almost everyone has in their closet--a little black dress! It actually started giving me an idea for my own costume. Hmmm...

this owl costume from A Beautiful Mess. Oh, for the time to actually make a costume, even one as simple as that...

doing a thrifted Breakfast Club costume like this woman did for New Dress a Day (though I'd totally be Ally Sheedy's character--I want to just run around and act crazy!)

...Halloween foods

Campbell's Harvest Orange Tomato soup with pepper. It's orange and black! (plus, it's a great college student, I-don't-want-to-leave-my-room-'cos-it's-Saturday-but-I-need-foods lunch)

pumpkin bread--specifically, this pumpkin bread from Humblebee and Me, because I love chai and I love chocolate. Mmmm...

any and all candy recipes, but especially the Twix and Butterfinger ones. I'm also hoping to make some Butterfinger cookies next weekend, if I get the candy on sale at the after Halloween candy sales I'm counting on the grocery store having!

...Halloween candy (definitively ranked)

Reese's (hands down, those were the one thing I never traded)

Hershey's bars--the ones with four separatable little pieces, not the miniatures. Receiving miniature Hershey's was a bit of a sad event, except for dark chocolate which was the best. 

Dum Dums. Those things are delicious, especially Mango! 

no honorable mention given to: 

candy corn--the stuff is ucky in my book. 

anything that tried to be healthy--I'm looking at you Halloween pretzels and boxes of raisins. Sure, I love pretzels and raisins. But the point of Halloween is to receive enough sugary goodness to cause a fleet of kids cavities.

all the soft candies that went hard on me because I was only allowed three or four pieces of candy a week and I always went for the chocolate first (the real chocolate, not the Tootsie Rolls). 

What were your favorite Halloween memories? Favorite candies? Favorite costumes? (I dressed up as Jane Eyre one year. I thought it was so clever. Everyone else thought I was a sad Victorian lady.)

top three tuesday

Today, I decided to take a slightly different tact and pin down some of the more abstract things unpinnable things in my life, instead of just gathering up the best of the Internet in the past week (or two, 'cos mid-semester insanity hit during last week).

...ways to challenge myself creatively

('cos we at still a chispita here are all about being creative)

fashion sketches (I've shared a little here, but it's a big part of my attempt to be more creative. I'm trying to teach myself the basics of fashion illustration so that I make my vague ideas something of a concrete reality.)

pick a random object or ingredient in my room and make something with it, whether cooking or sewing or crafting or what have you--tonight it's cream cheese and eggs :)

I use my wall to save pictures, playbills, quotes and drawings that inspire me

surrounding myself with cool things and people who do awesome things, creative or otherwise (my university is great for this--there's so much out there to involve yourself in and so many amazing people who do things  I never even considered, which is all super inspiring)

...favorite comfort foods

beans and tortillas (I used to say I could live off them. I just might do that when I become a real person with a job and student loans to pay off)

microwave chocolate mug cake (it might be kind of a now thing, but I eat this more than I should...)

spaghetti, the way my mommy makes it ('cos there's something special about the way mommies make everything)

...ways to use a three-day weekend

(This was actually my weekend last weekend. As my ballet teacher likes to say, hidden agenda. :)

look at the pretty little muffins posing on a bowl!

muffin-baking (Friday's adventure, with strawberry-oatmeal-dark chocolate muffins)

a little bit of service (Saturday's adventure)

hitting the books (all weekend/Sunday's adventure, 'cos I'm still a full-time college student!) It may not be my favorite use of a day, but it sure beats the mid-week late nights because none of the studies got done on the weekend.

That said, I'm off to go read more French--this time a love-sick couple with strength of character issues (she has all the spine, he has none of it). Have a great week!

dorm room diy: chocolate-pb-oatmeal-microwave goodness

I do this thing where I get a slight obsession with a blog and then I read all their posts. This summer it was the Dreamstress (which honestly made me sad about my life and its lack of gorgeous dresses). Since coming to school it's been Chocolate-Covered Katie. Oh my gosh, that girl is a vegetarian/vegan inspiration. Quite literally for this.

I read about her Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Baked Oatmeal and kinda fell in love. Except. There is not an oven in my dorm room. And I don't know if my stoneware bowl is oven safe. So I can't just make it all the time, if at all. Enter the mighty microwave!

Assignment: The Oven to Microwave Transformation Project

unfortunately, everything made with dark cocoa turns out looking like mud

This requires some heavy math. Bring out your Pythagorean theorems and rhombuses and fancy math terms. 

Actually, all it takes is some basic oatmeal know how. I'm going to call my recipe a little more inspired by than actually copying her recipe (because for one thing, I'm not going to go the processed fake sugar route), but she definitely gave me the idea! I made this for supper for the first time the other day and I kinda fell in love with the idea that something as nummy as all that could also stay fairly healthy for me. Under 300 calories, protein, fiber, it's pretty good for you. 

Microwave Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal with instant oatmeal (adapted from Chocolate-Covered Katie's)

1-2 tbs peanut butter

1/2 cup instant oats*

1/2 cup milk

1 tbs dark cocoa ('cos why would you ever do normal?)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1-1/2 tsp brown sugar

dash of salt

Put the peanut butter in a microwave-safe bowl and zap on full power for 40 seconds, or until soft and gooey. This makes the peanut butter a lot easier to mix in. 

Add in (quickly now, 'cos that peanut butter will solidify back up!) the rest of the ingredients. Microzap on full power for 45 seconds, stir, then microzap for 45 seconds. Let cool or risk burning your tongue. Or don't wait and dive right in to all that piping hot ooey-gooey chocolate peanut butter goodness. But don't say I didn't tell you so.

*For old-fashioned oats: add an extra half cup of liquid (milk, water, almond milk, what have you) and microzap for 3 minutes, or until cooked to desired consistency. Let sit a minute and then dig into that chocolatey peanut buttery goodness. 

Grade: A+ all around! Amazing original recipe! Amazing yumminess! Amazing microwave!

Except...probably a regular A, because of my original transformation and its dried out edges. 

Extra credit ideas: Hmm, how do you make a chocolate-peanut butter oatmeal better? Katie frosted hers with a glorious-looking fudge frosting, but I'm of the opinion that though breakfast is allowed to get pretty darn sweet, there is a line that it crosses that takes it into the dessert camp and you can no longer justify it as a healthy meal. The ideas that come instantly to my mind are pieces of chocolate and/ or Reese's peanut butter cups. Or maybe melted Reese's on top (someone in the comments of Katie's post suggested that). Once again, dessert camp oatmeal. But! I also thought of sliced fresh strawberries. Wouldn't that be nummy? Or maybe skip a step and use chocolate peanut butter spread. Or Nutella for chocolate hazelnut oatmeal.

Or just be a cool kid and bake the thing. :)

What do you think? Do you have any blogger obsessions (food or otherwise) at the moment? Do you cringe at the idea of that much chocolate for breakfast?

top three tuesday

This is super late in the game, but I'm really only doing this because I want to have nothing to do with my French paper*.

...things I wish I could cook, but can't because of ingredients/appliances/supplies

coming from the time-wasting buzzfeed

all those pancakes (except for the red velvet because I'm allergic to red food dye).

buttermilk chocolate chip crumb cupcakes

cookie dough dip with garbanzo beans (darn you lack of food processor!)

It's kind of just not fair that I don't have access to all these ingredients and a gourmet kitchen in my building. I mean, I have a whole pinboard of things I want to make. :(

...things that are sew inspiring (aren't I clever, using the oldest sewing pun ever) in blogland

this pattern book from 1940 posted by Lucky Lucille--it's absolutely beautiful.

Anna's entire blog--I've been procrastinating on my homework taking long well-earned breaks reading it, working my way back to the beginning. I kinda want to be her best friend. In a normal, well-adjusted kind of way.

this gorgeous magazine page about appropriate dance clothes by none other than the lovely Irene Castle (dance nerd smile)

...favorite ravelry finds

Susie Roger's Reading Mitts--I actually have these just barely started because I have extra yarn from my sad, shrunken sweater. 

Aidez--my mommy wants a cabled sweater and this just looks like it might be it. 

Faerie Wings--why don't I have a pattern for knitting fairy wings?

...goings on in chispita world

getting a cold and then not sleeping which really does wonders for the cold

silly, silly French papers

The Mark of Athena, by Rick Riordan--from my recent fantasy-literature-for-kids presentation, I know this book is roughly a fifth to sixth grade reading level; my eleven-year-old sister reads them. But. That didn't stop my college kid self from reading it in 12 hours over the weekend, completely enthralled. I have super mature tastes in books. 

*I actually like the book this time, and I usually like French. Honest. I'm just struggling a little bit this semester. 

dorm room diy: the one-minute chocolate cake of promise

It all started with that microwave brownie mix. It caught me. It made me buy things like cocoa powder and flour and sugar, even though I'm a college student with no business buying those things. Why? Because I know that I'm smart and capable enough to make brownies without a mix. And also because Pinterest has five million recipes (exact statistic, folks) for brownies/chocolate mug cake/chocolate dessert/chocolateyness in the microwave. So of course, the microwave chocolate thing of choice had to be my first class project.

Assignment: The Microwave-Chocolate-Goodness Project 

this is a horrible picture of a delicious mug cake

I chose Chocolate-Covered Katie's One Minute Chocolate Cake. It had the benefits of not requiring fancy things like egg yolks or yogurt or butter or chocolate chips. It also looked like it would fit in the mugs that I have (which are fairly normal sized coffee cups, as opposed to the larger coffee cups that hold I think about two cups). Why is this important? Because I saw a lot of Buzzfeed articles about failed pins with the exact recipe of my dreams (oh you silly chocolate peanut butter mug cake with peanut butter pie mousse) that showed the cake overflowing the cup, making an enormous mess. Point of fact: I don't like cleaning microwaves. Smaller recipe it was. And for good reason--it rose quite a bit while cooking.

I mixed it up with few substitutions: I used dark cocoa powder, 'cos it's what I bought and 2.5 tablespoons of oil (because it was in the middle). Both, I think, good calls. My bad call came when I decided to microzap my cake for an extra 15 seconds because it looked a little underdone at 45 seconds. Dorm Room DIY tip of the the week: things will keep cooking after you take them out of the microwave. And in the case of Katie's cake, there's no eggs, so you could eat it raw if you wanted.  No need to nuke the bejeezers out of it. It still came out fairly moist, but I imagine it would have been better at optimum cooking time. A few days later I stopped at roughly 50 seconds, and though it had a gooey top, it was better in my humble opinion (fighting the initialisms!)

Just for kicks, I dropped dollops of peanut butter on top (read: scooped peanut butter off spoon with various fingers and shook finger like crazy until the peanut butter fell off) so that it melted and made a kind of ooey gooey peanut butter frosting. Totally worth it, folks. Adds a little salty, peanut buttery kick to the cake.

Grade: B+ for my cooking, A for the recipe. 

I'm taking off a few points for my choice of extra time, but I think the extra credit move of the peanut butter frosting gives me a few back. But the recipe really reads well. Plus, it doesn't require separating eggs or something complicated like that, which I like.

ignore my horrible camera skills. focus on the luscious melted peanut butter

Extra credit ideas: Want to take this to the next level? Katie's recipe is fairly simple, but it's a great base for more complicated microwave cooking ventures. I'd love to see a chocolate raspberry cake, with a center of raspberry jam (maybe add it to the center at 30 seconds?) or a salted caramel version (I'm thinking poke a few caramels into the center and then sprinkle extra salt on top) or a double chocolate cake with some chocolate chips or chocolate chunks stirred in. Super nummy, right?

Got any ideas for chocolate goodness of your own? Found/made a recipe to die for? Think that this is a load of hooey and chocolate baking should stay in the oven? I'd love to hear about it (though I politely beg to differ about the hooey; we can have a class discussion if you'd like)

top three tuesday..

(I kinda feel like making this a Tuesday thing. A, 'cos I love alliteration. B, 'cos nothing really goes on in my life on Tuesdays, except Mass and Soup and leading a discussion group of freshmen, which is not the same thing as exciting sewing/knitting/foods stuff.)

...pins of the last week

I actually have all the dry ingredients for this granola mixed, sitting in a baggie on my desk.

I'm pretty sure I already considered Mrs. Depew a genius, but this way of sewing darts seems just so...wonderful.

I love journals! I kinda want to cover every single one I own like this.

...recent/upcoming projects (kinda a teaser of the forthcoming)

re-working oven/stovetop foods for the microwave--like this nummy oatmeal recipe, so get excited! :)

reshaping the guy's button-down I got for free at the campus trading store

the granola that's based off the recipe above

...thoughts I've been a-thinking

why is this a required text if we're only reading 70 of the 360 pages?

is it necessary to fold the laundry or can I just pull out of the bag, cleaned? (I will fold it, guys, I'm just thinking it)

how can I put off doing this reading/writing this essay/being productive? (Answer: write a blog post)

(wow, it really sounds like Procrastination Central round here. I am getting some reading done I promise.)

...new fancy projects I wish I was working on

before it got felted by some careless college student :(

another Lepidoptera (probably in a dove grey)

Simplicity 1587 in forest green (either rayon challis, which just sounds fancy, or cotton)...but that pattern is sitting pretty at home :(

the Three-Hour Sweater pattern--it seems so classy

...things I've been listening to

this song from the musical Bonnie and Clyde (yep it's a musical; yep I'm a musical theatre geek; also I want to choreograph to it so badly!)

Regina Spektor, because I'm trying to convince myself it's good study music/I love it more than studying

the cricket in my common room--oh you stupid, confused cricket!