Wearing lolita: Summer picnic style

It´s been such a long while since I looked in my closet and drawers and actually felt like I could wear lolita out again, and feel fabulous despite the stares. Last Sunday was one of those days--I had a picnic!

Yes, yes, lots of picnicking going on.....but I love picnics. They´re (usually) a bit cheaper than going out, and you get to enjoy the grass, the sun, the breeze....and horse around with your friends, without bothering about people staring at you because you´re supposedly being too loud. Oh, and you can lie down while talking, hahaha. Definite plus.

So, here´s the outfit. I used "Red, white and blue" as an inspiration....take that however you will, but the truth is that those colors look really good together.

You can´t really tell, but the blouse is white with blue mini-polkadots. And that little purse that attaches to the skirt is the best invention in the world.

The ribbon on the hat is the skirt´s waist-ties, pinned, tied and placed on my favorite sunhat. It looked really nice, if I do say so myself, and shaded me from the worst of the sun (especially useful while waiting for the bus to come).

I know that lolita requires socks to be worn at all times, but I decided that the rules were made for bending a bit.....especially when it´s 32ºC outside in the shade. Plus, outside of Japan, socks+sandals is still considered a fashion faux-pas (and I tend to agree).
 

I noticed that you can´t really see my shoes in the pictures, so I took a picture of these lovely red wedge-heel sandals of mine when I got back. They make me even taller. But I love them.

What do you think? I´m pretty pleased with the outfit as a whole. Even the fact that I used the thin petti that came with the skirt, instead of one of my poofier ones.

I´m going on another vacation tomorrow, so my updates will be even more sporadic than they currently are...but I do have a bit of a backlog of entries I want to post (from pictures to book and drama reviews), so there will be news.

Until then, see you soon!

Balconeando

Well, I´ve been missing since June, right?

Between my laptop deciding that the repair wasn´t going to stick (now it seems to really have been fixed, it was a BIOS problem or whatever), and going off from the 7th to the 17th on vacation... I haven´t made any posts. That will be fixed.

This time I´ll leave you with  nice little picture I took of one of the sunnier days in Montblanc, taken from my balcony. Gosh, did I spend hours on the balcony, lying on my back and looking up at the sky......

Megpoid Gumi: Skyrocket!

She´s my favorite Vocaloid.

This is today´s themesong for me; I´m going to tackle the day with lots and lots of energy!

How Tagled should have ended...

This seriously made me laugh. I wondered the exact same thing during the movie. Poor Flynn. XD

Summer nails!!

This weekend, I went out with some friends to buy a bit of cloth for some cosplays and just making a plain old skirt (in my case). I wore a nice little flowery MILK JSK, and I wanted my nails to match, at least a little bit.

The blue and green nailpolish were both a bit sparkly.

Since the JSK was printed with small blue and pinkish-red flowers, I decided that that´s the way my nails had to go. Spring-to-summer-like.

My left hand flowers didn´t end up looking that bad....

It´s the first time that I tried to draw flowers on my nails, so I think that a few of them look a bit like failures as flowers....but I can´t deny that I had fun! Well, fun except for when I had to patiently wait for one hand to dry so I could paint my other nails without damaging them.....

Thumb closeup.

Thursday is my last day of work before summer--I´m really looking forward to it. I found these really cute nail art stickers recently, and I´ve decided that I´m going to use ones that I bought to make myself some panda-themed nails for the last day of class. I can´t wait! Now I just have to decide on the background color.....

Summer has started!!

Summer has officially started for me: I ate my first cherries!

This is an absolute tradition in my family; there´s no way summer has started until the first bowl (or kilogram, hahahaha--we love ´em) of cherries is eaten.

I sacrificed myself valiantly for my family and had the first bowl around dinnertime last night.

Yep, delicious cherries in my really-darned-old Mickey Mouse bowl.

 I also had a sign that my luck is going to improve soon: I found a triple-cherry mixed with the others in my bowl.

And all three were delicous.

I don´t know if it´s just my family or if the idea is more widespread, but like I said--triple cherries are considered lucky. Is that the same in your family or country?

That´s all for today!!

Cooking with Laia: Chicken Parmesan

Hello there again!

If there is one thing that I really enjoy eating, it´s cheese. I´m a fan of a lot of different varieties, but if I had to pick a top three for cheese, I´d choose Cured Manchego Cheese, Red Cheddar Cheese and Parmesan Cheese. As you can see, I´m a fan of stongly-flavored, aged cheese.

I also like chicken much more than any kind of meat (or fish).

This weekend, I wanted to make breaded chicken, one of my favorite dishes. I always accompany it with salad or french fries (depending on whether I´m feeling healthy or naughty).

Then I thought......"We have a wedge of Parmesan Cheese in our fridge. Why not use it to combine two things you like best?" So, I did.

Behold, Breaded Parmesan Chicken!

It´s quite easy, you just have to mix the grated cheese with the breadcrumbs and that´s it. You should put in enough cheese that it tastes like cheese, but taking into account your own personal proportion--just how cheesy do you want it to be? (My answer was: Very cheesy!)

I also cut the chicken thinner than usual, to make sure that the cheese didn´t burn or melt too much while the chicken was cooking in the fryer. 

Oh, and a recommended ingredient when breading: I´ve discovered Japanese "Panko"! It´s very cool, it´s normal breadcrumbs but treated somehow so that they´re still crunchy even after frying! You can absolutely tell the difference, and it´s also a different texture and crunchiness than when using corn flakes or regular breadcrumbs in the breading process. It was a very interesting change from my usual "breaded chicken".

Would you like to eat this? Are you also a "cheese fan"?

Crafts and fun: Letter Bookmarks

Hello  there everyone!

I´m writing from my father´s computer, since my poor laptop´s power cord died on me.....and I have to wait for the new one I ordered to come. It´s actually quite strange, not having a laptop to use whenever I feel like it. Thank goodness for my smartphone: I can actually check my email.

I thought blogging was definitely out of the question until my father brought his work laptop home, though. A big thank you for him, since he was nice enough to lend it to me for awhile----

Now, these past few days I´ve been feeling "crafty". I´ve seen what wonderful things some of my friends have made, and decided that I wanted to do something creative (that doesn´t involve cosplay in any shape or form, hahaha). However, it´s not like I usually have many materials on hand--quite the opposite. Ask me for a gajillion sewing supplies, and I´ll probably have them and shove my surplus in your direction. Craft supplies? Not so much.

That´s when I saw my pride and joy--my letterbox. I had the greatest idea flash!! Being the lengthy letter-writer that I am, I am forever buying letterpaper. However, most writing paper brands seem to think that the acceptable length for a letter is 2 pages--when I write a 5-page minimum amount on principle. Not to mention those writing paper brands (Western, all of ´em) that for some strange reason make envelopes in which the paper doesn´t fit because they´re too effing small. The result should be quite obvious: I have a lot of leftover unused envelopes lying around, doing absolutely nothing. Well, nothing but existing and being there and completely useless and taking up valuable space..

Besides being a letterwiter, I´m also a reader. I read a lot. Most of the time, one or two books at the same time (not literally!). I use lots of bookmarks. But.....I am a complete disaster and always end up losing one or twobookmarks for every six or seven books I read. That´s just not fun! I like cute ones, but end up using pieces of paper because I don´t want them to disappear randomly.

Combine these two situations?

Yes, that´s it! I decided to use the extra envelopes I had to make bookmarks. After all, it´s not like I was going to use those too-small envelopes, really. As an experimental procedure, I decided to use two differnt kinds: one bunch of envelopes with a flower (daisy) theme, and another with a Tinkerbell theme, since those are the ones I had the most of.

Here are the original daisy envelopes (no pictures of the Tinkerbell ones alone, sorry!):

And here is my "Daisy bookmark", compared to the envelope. I made each side of the bookmark "different", trying for an "opposite" look, to make it more interesting and use the envelope material in the most thrifty way:

Side 1, the "front"

Side 2, the "back"

I used three envelopes to make it, as well as half of a soft thin cardboard card that came as "support" in the pack of writing paper.

The Tinkerbell envelopes had a lot less decoration on the original envelope, so they had less "creative possibility". I ended up making a cute Tinkerbell "character bookmark".  I also switched where her name was from one side to the other, because I thought that it´d be boring otherwise.

Side 2, the "back"

Side 1, the "front"

I used two envelopes for this bookmark, since there weren´t any particular designs that I could "thrift" as it were. Also, the other half of the soft cardboard "backing".

I wanted to add tassels to the bookmarks too, but I thought that it might be a bit too much.







What do you think about these designs? Do you like them? Which one do you like better?











Which sides do you like best? Have you ever done anything like this? I´d love to know! I really enjoy getting comments! <3

Baking materpieces: Banana-chocolate chip muffins

Hello everyone!!

I´m in the middle of correcting my kiddies´ third term exams at the moment, and calculating their final grades, but everybody has the right to take a moment to rest, right?

In my moment this weekend, I took the time to make some delicious banana-chocolate-chip muffins.It was a bit of a celabration for me when I actually found some chocolate chips--for some reason, they´re not easy to find here in Spain. I guess because it´s not really traditional to use them in our cakes and cookies and such.

The muffins!!

The kind I found was semi-sweet dark chocolate chips. I like milk chocolate better, but--beggars can´t be choosers. In the end, the semi-sweet dark flavor worked out best with the natural sweetness of the ripe bananas I used. They were Canary island bananas, by the way--they´re smaller and sweeter than the average bananas (so I had to use 5 instead of the 2 that the recipe indicated).

They looked good; quite professional!

Biting into them when they were hot and the chocolate chips were gooey was bliss.

The batter made 12 normal-sized muffins. With what I had left over, I made 12 mini-muffins. I could have made 6 more normal ones, but I really wanted to try out the mini muffin cups I bought at IKEA way back in February.

So tiny and cute!

The design on the small ones--the larger muffin cups were plain.

I had lots of fun with this quick project; it also enabled me to use up the overripe bananas that none of us really wanted to eat! I´m definitely going to repeat this recipe again; it´s been more popular than the banana-blueberry ones.

What´s you favorite kind of muffins?

Book fair weekend plans

This weekend is the Annual Book Fair in Madrid. I´m going to be going down to "The City" on Saturday or Sunday--probably Sunday, since there´ll be less people, but it really depends on the weather--to check it out.

Who knows, I might go ahead and buy a few books while I´m at it, if there are any good deals. I´m keeping my fingers crossed; it´s been awhile since I bought a physical book, and I´m really looking forward to feeling that weight in my hands, reading an unread adventure and smelling that unique "new book" smell.

Am I a bit of a book geek? Yep. Definitely and without a doubt.

Delicious cooking: Sausage, pepper and onion emapanda pie

I did promise that I´d put up pictures of what I´ve been cooking.

This is my latest creation: a sausage, green pepper and onion pie. Well, it´s translated to english as "pie" or "pasty", but it´s called an "empanada" in Spanish.

Yes, it´s quite large. Those two other visible things are plain sausage pasties.

 
I decided to make this because I had a lot of dough sitting in my freezer waiting to be used--and we all know that as soon as dough dries, it just doesn´t taste (or rise) the same.

Empanadas are quite thick. Do you like the stripes?

It´s actually very very easy to make this pie. You just need:

-4 long chistorra sausages (red sausages, uncooked)
-3 medium-sized green frying peppers (they can be other kinds too; I just don´t like other colored peppers)
-2 medium onions
-A pinch of salt
-Half a glass of water
-Dough (easily bought at the supermarket)

You cut everything into small pieces, and sautée it together. Peppers first, then onions, and when the onions are tuning transparent--add the sausage. To make the empanada filling a bit "juicy" instead of dry, just add half a cup of water after everything has cooked, and let the whole mix cook a few minutes.

Meanwhile, you prep the dough--roll it out, prepare the oven (220ºC) and make sure that it doesn´t stick to the baking sheet (I use olive oil to coat the foil when I´m cooking savory food). The dough should be divided into two sheets--one for the top, one for the bottom; or more if you want to put some dough apart for "decorations" (like my stripes).

Spoon the mixture (it doesn´t have to have cooled; it can be hot or cold or lukewarm) into the center of the dough. Spread it out evenly, leaving approximately 2-3cm of space between the filling and the edge of the dough (so that you´ll be able to close the empanada). Once you´ve put all the mix on, close the empanada by putting the "top" sheet of dough that you reserved onto it. Seal the edges using a slightly wet finger and a fork.

For the last step before the oven, you can go two ways: you can use a beaten egg to coat the dough so that it´ll get a certain "shine" and look toasty in the oven. Or, you can do like I did (absolutely improvising) and use some of the "sauce" that had been left over from the filling (because I made it a bit too liquid) to coat it and the decorations. That way, it takes a bit of a reddish tinge from the red sausage, but doesn´t become "shiny", just toasted.

Pop it in the oven and wait for however long it takes to cook--it really varies depending on the dough´s thickness and how long it´s been in the freezer. This time, it took approximately 15-20 minutes.

Let it cool a bit or completely, depending on whether you like your pies hot or cold (I prefer mine hot).

Ta-da!! Lunch!!

As you can see, I baked two things; the empanada and an experiment: I wanted to see if I could replicate the puff pastry I ate a week or so ago at a bakery. It was stuffed with a whole chistorra sausage.  As you can see, the dough is a different, flakier kind than the one used for my pie (which doesn´t rise). It was a delicious success as well.

The filling.

I was afraid that the pie might turn out a bit dry since I didn´t include any type of sauce/the traditional tomato sauce in it....but the onion and the extra "sauce" made from the water and sausage drippings did a great job keeping it just right.

My family loved it, I´m happy to say, because it was the first time I made this kind of pie. I totally winged it, hahaha.

Dior inspiration

Sometimes they say that the haute couture brands nowadays are only coming up with extreme unwearable things, and that they are starting to lack creativity in the area of wearable outfits and coordinates.

I disagree. Today I fell in love with a dress made by Dior. I would wear it, and wear it with pride (if I could ever afford it...which I doubt).

Diane Krueger, a German actress, wore it to the Cannes Film Festival.

I absolutely adore it. it´s like a mix of fairytale princess and chic 1950s coloring all in one. What do you think about this dress?

Dior, I am in awe.

My Kawaii Space Giveaway!!

Girls, are you interested in wining a plushie? How about an ULTRA CUTE Hello Kitty Union Jack plushie?

Too adorable for words!!

I´m sure your anwer was "yes", right? Who couldn´t love a plushie like this one?

Well, all you have to do is head over to  "My Kawaii Space", a blog dedicated to all things cute and adorable. You just have to do a few things to participate in the raffle giveaway, it´s quite easy.

Juat hurry hurry hurry! The giveaway ends on June 8th.

I´m participating.......are you?

Check it out here!!

Cuteness!! Cooking song

I really like this song as background music while cooking! (tomorrow I´ll share what I cooked)

Last thing to say....Who put Pippi Longstocking in my Kpop video? XD

Yummy snacks!

I´ve been trying to cut down on the amount of snacks I eat in-between meals. Occasionally, they´re alright for cravings. I tend to crave savory things over sweets, so the switch over to no-snacks or "healthy" ones such as carrots and celery or no snacks isn´t too bad. I do love potato chips, though.

I´ve discovered that the best method of not eating unhealthy snacks is to not have them in the house, hahaha. I couldn´t resist buying a few ones on Jlist, though. I´m always curious about strange new flavors.

Don´t they look delicious??

They´re spicy chicken flavored (bottom left), strange soup flavored (bottom right) and cheddar cheese flavored (top--not as wierd, hahaha).

I´ve tried the soup ones already. They´re not as great as the chicken tandoori ones I tried a while back (someday, I´ll find those again....), but they´re quite good! I´d absolutely recommend them.

Eating chips that are hard to get also encourages me to keep my snack portions small, so as to make them last.

What kinds of snacks do you enjoy eating?

2 months

It´s been exactly two months since you left us, but I´m sure you´ve given us a great gift.

Today I got the results for my teaching exams (the final ones); I´ve been placed 15th out of 185 people in my Autonomous Community. And those 185 are out of the over 3.5k people who did the exam.

I feel happy; I feel accomplished, and I know you must have had something to do with it, up there in Heaven.

Thank you, Mom. I know that you were really worried about the results; I know that you left convinced that I would make it. I have, thanks to your support.

Today at your old school they did an even commemorating you. It was so touching. I want to become a teacher who touches the hearts of as many students as you; that´ll be my future goal. You´re still my role model, no matter what.

For everything.

Con haul

Last weekend was the Expomanga in Madrid. Between having to substitute for a sick teacher the whole week (I worked enough for two people--since I had my own classes as well) and putting the finishing touches on my cosplays (an in one case, not-so-finishing), I barely felt like doing anything but sleeping.

Sorry, blog!! You weren´t my highest priority.

I´m pretty satisfied with the haul of what I bought at the con: a figure and some manga.

The figure is from the Detective Conan series. I´m a bit of a mystery geek (I´ve only recently realized this); I love mystery series, whether dramas, books, TV series or manga. Detective Conan is one of my favorites. So, I was really happy when I found this figure at the con.

I saw other figures of Conan as well--dressed in a tux, and as a pirate--but I liked this one best. I´d also give my left eye for a Magic Kaito figure....

I think it´s a very cute detail to have the box "decorated" on the side with Conan´s trademark phrase: "There is always only one truth". That said, I need to find a spot for my figures....they´re all in their boxes at the moment....

I also found some manga, like I said, from the series Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro--yes, another detective series. It´s particularly great; I love the wierd relationship between the two main characters, Neuro and Yako. It´s a bit sadomasochistic.....

This manga apparently wasn´t too popular here in Spain, or was published several years go, because it´s quite hard to find. 

It was great, because I got them at a discount--only 3 euros, which is half-price!! I´ve only ever found them at the Expo, so I´m keeping my fingers crossed that I can complete it all, eventually. I´ve got 9 out of 23 already.....

The covers always confuse me, though. They´re all upside-down (on purpose, of course--Neuro spends half his time on the cieling, after all), and I always somehow end up opening the book wrong-side-up.

Buying this manga marks the one-year anniversary since I last bought any manga (coincidentally, it was numbers 4 and 5 of this same series). Recently, I´ve been much more interested in figures. My passion for artbooks continues; it´s just hard to find ones that I don´t have/that I like lately at cons.

I´ll make a more detailed Con-post tomorrow or the day after; depending on when I update my cosplay blog with pictures and such.

Ciao!

Avengers, assemble!! Just for Laughs.

I´ve been searching for nice funny things these past few days, and here´s yet another one. This time, related ot the Avengers: what would happen if they had a group and profile on Facebook.

Here´s the 9Gag link so you can see the image in all its full-sized glory: http://9gag.com/gag/3982713

The Letterbox Adventures

Hello everyone, it´s me again!

Today, what I wanted to share is my letterbox. I have always been fascinated by the act of writing. Putting a pen to paper, feeling the paper under my hand, even smelling the ink (yes, I prefer liquid ink pens). What is it but a small step to channel my love of writing stories to an enjoyment of writing letters?

I just recently (as in, since last summer) started writing paper-letters. Before, I´ve always kept in contact with my friends through long long long (and may I stress long once again? I´m fairly long-winded) emails. This is partially due to the fact that most of my best friends are located at best in other countries, and at worst in other continents. You can imagine how important emailing each other was, when schedules didn´t mesh easily, Skype was not in use (did it even exist?), and long distance phone calls just weren´t viable.

I´ve always liked letter paper--when I was little, there was a fad in which every little girl bought letter paper and we traded them in order to get the prettiest ones. A bit like collecting cards, only larger. I was naturally part of that craze (and the stationery I accumulated back then is somewhere in my attic, in a large folder). However, we didn´t really use that pretty stationery to write on. It was just too pretty.

Last year I finally took the plunge and wrote one of my friends in Europe a letter, accompanying the birthday present I sent her. I got a reply in the cutest letter paper you´d ever seen. Best of all, it wan´t just letter paper, it had something written on it! I was irrevocably hooked. I´ve been buying cute letter paper and writing letters since. At the moment, I´ve only got one penpal, but I´d love to get one or two more. I promise I´m very prompt in writing replies.

It´s such a shame that cute stationery is so hard to come across nowadays. I don´t want to write a letter on boring normal paper! It loses part of its charm! Like I said before.....If you´re looking for a European penpal to exchange letters with, I´m here! And I write long letters!

Today I´ll be sharing my letterbox, the box where I keep all my letters and stationery in with you. My Usakumyas, being the little devils they are, decided that they wanted to help too. What can I say? We had quite the adventure.

"What a lovely flowery box!! I wonder what´s in it?"

"As leader of the Pochette-Kumya Council, I, Pink Usa, suggest opening it and finding out."

"Gah, do we fit, do we fit?" "No, dummy-Black, your butt is too big!!"

"That worked better--we just had to take out all the stationery!!" "What´s wrong, Shiro-chette?" "*gasp* Can´t breathe!!"

"MWAHAHA!! I´ll just run off with some of the lovely letters now...it´s easy to stuff them in my hood!"

 

 

 

"My good Sir, I might be new around here, but that´s most certainly illegal! Unhand those letters!"

"Victory!!! Mission accomplished!"

Oh, aren´t these BunnyBears the silliest? But apparently the newest family member has quite the sense of justice!  My precious letters are in safe paws.