25 Hours

I swear I say at least once a week that I wish there was an extra hour in the day. Well, yesterday was the one day a year that I do get that extra hour and boy, did I put it to use.

November is going to be crazy. Not only prepping for the holidays, which is something I love to do, but also work. So much work. On Saturday afternoon I started thinking about how much busier it could get depending on a few other moving pieces. When I get really busy, I also get lazy. When I'm busy I feel like I need all of my extra energy to just survive, so a lot of things get put on the back burner, including meals and cleaning.

So first, I got up early on Sunday and spent about an hour planning my month in meals. Nothing exact, but I did try to think ahead for the month and took into consideration what I already had, which actually wasn't much. Then I made a list and went to the store.

I deviated very little from the list. Some of the deviations were forced, because they either didn't have what I needed or didn't have the quantity I needed and some of the deviations had to do with sales, because I enjoy buying things on sale.

Then I came home and marathon cooked.

I made a lot, but I made quite a few recipes from my new found favorite Laura In The Kitchen. I plan on talking more about her later, but..

I love her, I love her, I love her! One of the things I love about her is that it is kind of like cooking with my mom. My mom loves to cook and gives me recipes all the time, but I know my mom and I know that to her a recipe is more of a guideline (except in baking). The older I've gotten and the more I've cooked and gotten familiar with cooking in general, the more I've used my mom's recipes as guidelines,  the way she does. I love Laura in the Kitchen because she cooks like my mom. If you watch several of her videos, and yea, I've watched pretty much all of them, then you'll notice she says over and over again "use whatever you have on hand" or "you can substitute this" or "I'm doing it this way today because this is what I have, but usually I do it this way" and I love that. She makes sure you know in every recipe that it's customizable to YOU.

She also has a Vlog channel and I've watched that channel a lot too, because my favorite thing is to see how she makes her own recipes in every day life. She will say things like "well I had this leftover from Monday, so I decided to use it to make ****, even though I'd usually use ****". I love watching the Food Network and stuff, but I've always wondered how often any of them use their own recipes in real life. With Laura, you can see her cooking her own things and you can see what she eats almost every day and how she prepares things. She's also a big supporter of cooking things ahead of time and freezing them.

Which brings me to yesterday. I made her chicken enchiladas with shredded chicken I had leftover from last week. I made two 9x13 pans and put them both in the freezer.

I made my grandma's meat sauce, which honestly, started as my grandma's recipe, but I've changed so many things and written so many notes all over the paper, that I can hardly call it her recipe now, but whatever. I love it and it makes a ton. I froze 4 quart sized bags of that.

I made Laura's basic marinara recipe. I will also be freezing this is some quart sized bags, but right now it's in a big thing in the fridge, because I'm actually going to be doubling it tonight and I'm just going to mix it all together. Don't try to understand my thought process.

I made my grandma's vegetable soup, which I plan on freezing some of too, BUT I screwed up because I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and I over-salted it. So now it's so salty that it is inedible. Right now it's just in my fridge, because my aunt thinks she has some ideas to fix it. I'm hoping I don't have to throw the whole thing out, so we'll see. I might be remaking this sometime this week. Thank heavens it is so cheap!

I browned up 2 lbs of ground chuck with onions that I separated into bags and froze. I needed 1 lb of ground chuck for my grandma's meat sauce, but all they had left of the good kind were the 3 lb packages, so this was one of those deviations. BUT, I'm sure this month I'll find a use for them.

I also made Laura's granola muffins, mostly because I've really been wanting to try them, but also because if they were easy I was going to make them a regular thing. They are not only easy, but they're freaking delicious. Like amazingly delicious! Look at the pic, I took it after I already ate one. They're so good. I didn't use her homemade granola though, I went to a local bakery (scholar's inn bakehouse for you locals) and got their granola. It's the best.

As for the sauces, I made those because they're delicious, but also pasta and salads are like the quickest meals I can think of to make when I'm busy. Also, the marinara sauce is so versatile! I've already got a few things in mind for that.

In between cooking, because a lot of things had to simmer for several hours, I was cleaning. I got most of my cleaning done, but didn't get any laundry done. I don't have a washer and dryer, so I usually take my laundry to my parents' house, but I couldn't do that yesterday because I couldn't leave with things simmering on my stove. SO, I need to figure out a time to get my laundry taken care of, because it'd built up a little.

This ended up being long.
Whoops.
I guess this is what happens with you don't blog as much as you used to
You word vomit all over the place.

See you tomorrow, folks!

Mundane.

Most of my blog post ideas come to me when I'm at the gym in the mornings. Mostly because I put all of my brain power into thinking about anything other than my workout because I just hate it so much. No, I still don't like working out. No, it isn't fun. All those damn healthy-living, weight-loss, workout bloggers are liars. Don't believe them.

Whoa, tangent.

So this morning while I was trying to pretend I was having a great time, even though my arms felt like they might fall off, I started thinking about the mundane. Bloggers don't talk about it, but it's one of the things I'm curious about the most. We're so busy trying to make our lives "blog-worthy" that we leave out some of the mundane details, and damnit, I love those mundane details. I'm overly curious about a bloggers LIFE, as in how they actually live and those little things they do.

Here's some of my mundane this week.

>>---> Speaking of "mundane", I love that word. If you've been reading this blog for a while then you know I have a "thing" for interesting, uncommon words. I heart them so much.

>>---> Sunday I took the hose attachment to my vacuum cleaner and cleaned all of my vent covers.

>>---> Sunday I spent a couple of hours editing a friend's paper for her persuasive writing class because I always tend to be everyone's go-to to edit papers. My mom was my go-to, so I guess everyone has to have one.

>>---> Sunday night I watched the movie Drumline on vh1. Okay guys, I know, Drumline is kind of terrible and Nick Cannon is.. really terrible, but I LOVE THAT MOVIE SO MUCH. I did remember however that watching a movie on TV is the most annoying thing. They stretch the last 30 minutes of the movie into an hour+ and it is so frustrating.

>>---> Monday night vh1 premiered the new sequel to Drumline - Drumline: A New Beat. In the most geeky way possible, I was pumped. BUT I didn't want to annoyingly sit through all of the commercials again, so I got smart and decided to DVR it so I could watch it another time and fast forward through the commercials. I outsmarted you vh1, and damnit, it feels good.

>>---> Monday night I also made a chicken and rice bake from a recipe my grandma gave me that never turns out as good as when she makes it. She doesn't add veggies, but I added a shit ton of broccoli, because I'm really into trying to add veggies everywhere now and eat them constantly. Small changes and all.

>>---> Tuesday I went to get a coffee at 2:30 in the afternoon because I thought I was going to fall asleep at my desk. Caffeine is the name of the game these days.

>>---> Tuesday night I got a little overwhelmed with the number of shows on my DVR that need to be watched, so I decided to watch a few shows live so that I didn't back up my DVR any more. I went with NCIS (8pm), Supernatural (9pm), then Chicago Fire (10pm). Of course, I still had 3 other shows that recorded while I was watching those, so my DVR still feels full. Sigh.

>>---> Wednesday I spent the entire day at work by myself, so I blasted my Spotify Christmas music playlist as loudly as possible. It. Was. Awesome.

>>---> Wednesday night I volunteered to work an IU volleyball game for "pink night" for Breast Cancer Awareness. The IU pep band played Talk Dirty To Me and Rebeeca Black's Friday. Which would have been even more hilarious had it been Friday, but it was Wednesday, so everyone (under the age of 25) just looked confused. Actually, everyone over 25 looked confused too, because.. obviously. But I liked it and I was amused.

>>---> Oh yea, and because I worked on Wednesday night, my Wednesday night shows? Didn't get to watch any of them. First of all, my TV watching and the number of shows I watch is beyond pathetic. It truly is. Feel free to talk shit about me. Second, my DVR is SO FULL. I have no idea when I'm going to get caught up.

Make-up Brush Cleaning Routine Update

Yesterday as I was getting ready to do something I do frequently, I realized I never tell you guys about it, so here I am, telling you.

About a year and a half ago I blogged how I clean my make-up brushes, and it is one of my most popular posts. This is kind of a follow up to that and a discussion about make-up brushes in general.

In my previous post I cleaned my brushes with a hot water, vinegar, and dish soap mixture. I still use that exact same thing. I know a lot of people use baby shampoo to clean their brushes and I have definitely done that (johnson & johnson tear free baby shampoo, in the yellow bottle, is what I used) and it works great, truly. I don't really ever notice a huge difference in how clean my brushes are between my cleaner and the baby shampoo. The biggest difference is that hot water, vinegar, and dish soap are things I always have at my apartment. Baby shampoo is something extra that I have to purchase.

*ProTip: When I'm cleaning all of my brushes, I go ahead and make up 2 jars of the cleaner. I know I'll need to refresh it at least once, so if I already make 2 then I'm saving time.*

I clean all of my make-up brushes every other weekend. Some brushes actually get cleaned a little more frequently than that, such as my blush brush, my foundation brush, my bronzer brush, my face powder brush, and my eyeliner brush. Those just get cleaned any time I feel like they need it, which sometimes is weekly, sometimes a few times a week. You never know.

My friends think I'm crazy for cleaning them so often, but about 10ish months ago when I started cleaning them every other weekend I noticed a huge decline in my breakouts. Those brushes are dirty and then we put them on our faces. My friends can think I'm crazy all they want, I'm still cleaning them obsessively.

Now, I haven't noticed anything wrong with my brushes since I've started cleaning them so often. It's not like I'm running them through the dishwasher. I'm cleaning them gently. Cleaning does not equal ruining.

As far as my brushes go, I have Bare Escentuals, Bare Minerals, Mary Kay, and e.l.f. brushes. I love them. The e.l.f. brushes are so good for the price, honestly, however they have the most fallout of all of my brushes. It's nothing crazy, but especially my face brushes you get some fallout. But again, for the price, they are so worth it. Mary Kay has the least fallout, except for one particular Mary Kay brush and it drives me absolutely crazy, so I have like 4 back-ups of that brush. The Bare Escentuals and Bare Minerals brushes are fine, but there's nothing amazing about them. I didn't buy any of them, they were all given to me.

I did have a Sonia Kashuk brush that I loved, but I dropped it in the toilet and there's just no coming back from that. I watch a lot of make-up tutorials on YouTube and honestly, a lot of them use the Sonia Kashuk brushes. Most of them do use the Sephora brushes, which I would love, but I also don't want to pay $20+ for each brush. Sorry.

So that's that.
Clean your make-up brushes.
Buy me some Sephora and Sonia Kashuk brushes.
Catch ya on the flip side.
Happy Monday!

Things That Are Unfortunate

It's unfortunate that my DVR can only record 2 shows at once. Which means if I am recording 2 shows, then I can't watch a 3rd program. So for instance, last night I missed the first 30 min of a show that started at 8pm. But I couldn't start the show at 8:30pm, because I have 2 shows that record at 9pm, so I wouldn't be able to watch the 8pm show while the 2 9pm shows were recording. Super unfortunate.

It's unfortunate that I put that much thought into my DVR.

It's unfortunate that my work schedule for November looks absolutely ridiculous. It's actually laughable how little of a social life I'll have the entire month.

It's unfortunate that for the month of November I'm mostly worried about how behind I'll get on my shows and not how little of a social life I'll have.

It's unfortunate that not everyone was in on the text conversation I had with my stepdad the other night. An hour and a half of only texting quotes from Ocean's Eleven back and forth. "Ted Nugent called. He wants his shirt back."

"he doesn't make me cry"

It's unfortunate that I have written a proper blog post to insert the following gif into, so I'm inserting it here, because it's amazing and amuses me and it just needs to be shared in general.

It's unfortunate that I'm not a huge fan of the Chandelier song by Sia, because it is played approximately 82,239 times on the radio a day. This is why I pay $10 a month for Spotify, because I can choose my own damn music to listen to 82,239 times a day. Also guys, the way she says "chan-DUH-luh-hhhhheeeerrrrreeee" and all the other parts where it sounds like she's actually losing her voice because she can't hit the high notes? Drives me bananas.

It's unfortunate that I have to end this blog post here, because I didn't realize what time it was and now I need to go not-so-fun adult things.

Catch ya on the flip side, friends!