White Chocolate Cranberry Scones recipe!

So, as I said in my previous post, today is my guy's birthday. I had planned on making him a cake last night and scones this morning, but I let it slip before I did, and he suggested I wait on the cake. Reason being, he's planning on inviting some friends over during the weekend, so it might be a better idea to make the cake tomorrow, so people will be around to help eat it. Haha. Good plan

But I still made the scones this morning! He had to go to Chicago for class today, so he took a bunch with him.

This is the third time I've made these scones, and they're soooo good I thought I'd share the recipe here!

Some time last year when Stumble Upon's phone app still worked nicely, (I dunno if it works well now, but it stopped being nice months ago, so I just uninstalled it.) I stumbled upon this recipe which sounded great!

The person who wrote the recipe goofed on a few things, i.e. claimed the recipe was for 6 scones that are 1/2 inch big when it's no where near 6 that it makes and 1/2 inch??? No. Then they didn't even mention the white chocolate chips in the instructions, plus a small mistake that turns 425F to 425C.

ANYHOO... I thought I'd just rewrite the recipe myself.



White Chocolate Cranberry Scones

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cups old-fashioned oats (not instant)
• 1/4  cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cups dried cranberries* 
• 1 cup white chocolate chips*
• 1 egg (slightly beaten)
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (melted)
• 1/3 cup milk

*For the cranberries and white chocolate chips, I personally just use a whole package of each, which, at my store, translates to 1 cup cranberries, and 1 1/2 cup white chocolate chips. The only difference in the extra ingredients is that it gets tricky to keep all the cranberries and chips stuck to the dough, because there's a bit more, and also, it's a bit sweeter from the chips.

The end of Songwriting... along with other stuff

That's right, I've dropped the Coursera Songwriting class. Sunday afternoon rolled by with me still not having  watched the video lectures for week 3. The assignment for that week was due the next day, then I'd have to do peer review, plus the video lectures for week 4 were already up, so quizzes and assignments for that as well....

I got 2 and a half minutes through one of the video lectures from week 3. All my mind could think of was that there was 1 hour and 35 minutes of video lectures for week 3. Week 4 only had about an hour, but no. I was dreading all of it by then. Dreading the video lectures, dreading the assignments, dreading the peer review. I thought long and hard and realized - I had only really tried to do assignment week 1. Week 2 I just couldn't get inspired to do anything, and just sort of threw something together last minute. I got a 20 out of 30 for that, which is like... a D. If I can't even bring myself to actually try, then there's no point. This class was a spur of the moment sign up anyhow. I'm just not interested in it. I don't know if I ever was. Just slightly curious mostly. *shrug*



Moving on to some picture sharing... I felt like taking another picture of my turtle necklace. lol.

My love for the China Girl [image heavy]

So if you followed my blog from the beginning, you'd know that I love ball-jointed dolls. Porcelain ball-jointed dolls especially, but not limited to.

I fell in love with the little China Girl from Oz the Great and Powerful immediately upon seeing her.

The night after seeing the movie I looked up merchandise for this China Girl. I knew that any figures I'd find of her would not be porcelain, and I liked that idea. A "china" doll made of plastic. Ha.

St Patrick's Day and Detroit

So I've been saying over and over that on St. Patrick's Day, I was going to Chicago to watch the river get dyed and to see the parade. I done did that. We left around 7:45 am, picked up a couple friends, and met up with a few more friends in Chicago. Thought I'd share some pictures here, though not as many as the ones I have up on Facebook.

 Craaazy! I didn't get many good shots of the dyeing this year - that's actually something I learned this year.... if you go to an event alone, you're more likely to get much better pics... but you're also alone. A group decides where to go and results in having to settle for what you can get... but you're with your friends and most likely having fun... so I suppose it's an okay trade. lol. Anyhoo, I would have liked to head more west to take pictures of the boat that was dyeing the river, but no one else wanted to go that way.

Double Dare, Library Haul, and other things

Hello and howdy. noxy here, blogging away. I started this post last week, then things got so crazy, I haven't been able to finish it. Gah...

I'll start with a pic I took a few days back of an awful product:

I got these on clearance, and I can see why they were on clearance. They're no good. I hate short nails. I'm actually very compulsive about it. I love long nails, but my long nails only last a couple months before they all reach their breaking point. That being said, I cannot work with nails that are so short they end at the quick. I need even milimeters of a nail or else I go on this crazy bender trying to do everything imagineable that would be easier to do with nails, and then I get frustrated at myself. ROFL. That sounds so bad, but it's true. My fix? If a nail has broken that short, I'll cover it with a fake nail. Sometimes I use long fake nails, sometimes short, but either way, they're still longer than what's underneath.

ANYHOO, I normally use just regular nail glue, but these thingers were on clearance, so I gave this a try. I. Hated. It. From the get go. I used one for a short nail on my left hand. Right off the bat I could tell I wasn't going to like it, but wanted to give it a chance. These adhesive tabs "will not damage natural nails", but they also "will not keep a fake nail stationary". Seriously! I could slide the nail back and forth with the tiniest amount of pressure. I couldn't use the nail, because it would either slide or just feel like it would come off at any moment. I got in to the habit of smashing that fingernail in to the nail bed as often as possible - and most of the times I did it, I could hear air bubbles pop. This stuff was just terrible. I'll just stick to nail glue, and mayhaps use these adhesive tabs to adhere paper together in crafts - because paper is all I'm confident it would adhere. Gah.


Woah... ranted a bit longer than I expected on that one. My bad. Ha. I dunno though... mayhaps I should start this post with the rants/sadness, and then end on happier notes... hmmm....

Flower Beauty Color Play Creme Eyeshadow Review

Here's my review of the Flower Color Play Creme Eyeshadow. This retails for $7.98 at Walmart or Walmart.com.




Additional pics and last thoughts, (if you didn't watch the vid)

Vaseline Lip Therapy Rave Fave

I've talked about the EOS lip balm, and how I can't use it, and mentioned in that post that I switched to Vaseline Lip Therapy, so I thought I'd throw a post up about the lip therapy too.

I adore this line. I started out with the tube of Advanced, and a couple years ago picked up the original lip pot. Cocoa butter pot started popping up in my area not too long ago, so I grabbed one immediately, then I grabbed another. Ha. I recently got the Cherry Lip Therapy tube, and I keep that one in my coat pocket.

 My collection of Lip Therapy.

EOS Lip Balm

BEHOLD:

This....

This is a product I cannot use. And it drives me insane. EOS Lip Balm came out quite a few years ago. I saw these things when they first came out, and immediately had to get one.  It was so round and adorable! I couldn't help it. I loved the shape. I got "summer fruit".

One Year [Image heavy]

Just a post about Saturday. That was mine and my guy's one year anniversary.  I woke up in the morning and hopped in the shower, and he left. When he came back, he brought a whole bunch of stuff with him - all gifts for me.  :) So here's a bunch of pics of what he got me...

 This was the pic I uploaded to instagram, and twitter, and facebook. lol. :)

Another pic, just taken with my camera rather than my phone.

Wet n Wild ColorIcon Nail Polish Rave Fave

 I came across this display a couple weeks ago and immediately fell in love with a color. Care to guess which one? No? Alright, it's the second one in from the left. And it's called Frosted Over. From the Wet n Wild coloricon collection. It's a limited edition line called Toppings.

This is a beautiful color. I'm in love. It seems to have bits of pink and blue and purple and aqua all thrown in with glitter on top.

Cookie pictures and recipe!

My sister in law's sister in law's (That's right, my sister in law's sister in law) baby shower is tomorrow. It has a mustache theme, and while I won't be going, (my guy and I have plans for our one year) I did promise to make cookies.

So last night and this morning I made mustache cookies.

The original plan was to use the mustache cookie cutter I had manipulated in December when I was making all my friends cookies, but...

... I lost every cookie cutter I used in December. I'm positive they're somewhere in the house, but December was so hectic for me I haven't a clue where I could have put them. I looked all over the place and I could only find two cutters - both of which were purchased in December but were not used. lol. So I wandered over to Meijer the other day and grabbed a couple of cookie cutters - they were on sale for $.50 each, so yay! - and brought them home to manipulate some new mustache cookie cutters.

Nails, postcards, and stuff

Just a warning, there's probably going to be three posts today. I was going to do one normal post and one review post, but decided to split up the one post. Heh.

Did my nails for St Patrick's Day! I wasn't planning on doing them until next week, I had planned on wearing a different polish this week - a Maybelline Color Show polish I got in the limited edition spring collection. It's called Blast of Blue, but it looked like there might be some purple up in there too. Had wanted to check it out, but now it shall have to wait until after St. Patrick's Day. heh.

I used Sinful Colors in Irish Green for the main green in this design. I bought it just for St. Paddy's Day, and I do have to say real quick - I hate it. I really wish there was somewhere on the bottle that SAID "matte" if it's matte, because I dislike matte. I wouldn't have gotten it had I known ahead of time. Plus the polish took ages to dry. I waited twenty minutes between the first and second coats, then another ten minutes between the second and third, and it still took forever to dry. To the point where I had to restart half of my nails because they'd gotten ruined when I tried to move on too soon. Ugh.

I have a like/hate relationship with Sinful Colors - I've purchased colors I liked well enough before - though after this last time I'm thinking now I might just stick to their glitters. They're $2 a bottle, but so are NYC, Wet n Wild, and Love My Nails, and I've never had so much trouble with any of those. Be sure to kick me if I ever buy another Sinful Nails that's not just glitter. Heh.

Graphics Cards, Coursera, St. Patrick's Day, and what nots.

So... hey there.

Had meant to write this Thursday, but alas, I was having a lot of difficulty editing my February Favorites video. That was a main reason why I was hesitant to start making videos again - I knew I wouldn't be working with any great software. Right now I use Windows Movie Maker - which is what I used before when I was doing BenPals vids - so I know how frustrating that program can be for editing the way I want to. But the worst part is that WMM doesn't recognize .mp4, which is what my camera and my phone records videos as. There's no changing that. So I have to use a conversion program. When I did BenPals, I converted to .avi, then opened it up on WMM and saved it as a .wmv before I even edited, so it would edit smoother. Now I use a program that converts to .wmv, which is supposed to eliminate a step, but it sometimes flakes out and doesn't convert the videos, which means I have to convert them again and wait even longer to start editing. Converting an 8 minute video takes about two and a half hours, so it's frustrating when it doesn't work. But it's a free program, so I have to work with what I can get.

That being said... I might be putting a pause on videos. Sucks, because I was enjoying making videos again.

What's happened is, my guy is building a new computer. He's got a lot of things for it, but what he didn't get, is a new video graphics card. So he took the one out of this one. Mind you, he bought the one that was in this one - so it makes sense for him to move it. But he replaced it with a crappier one, and as a result, the Youtubes I love watching so much just don't work that great. I have to watch it at 360p quality, because I just can't do 280p - the quality is so bad - and even at 360p, it sucks.  And I film in HD. I don't want to film in regular, because I hate the bars that show up on the side of the video when it's in "fullscreen".  So essentially, I don't know how this graphics card is going to handle editing my videos.  I have one video filmed but not edited, (it's just a random haul video) so tonight when I go to sleep, I'll convert the video and in the morning, I'll try editing it. If it's a no go, I'll have to decide what to do. Sigh. Ah well.

I still have like, three reviews I want to write here, (two lip product and one nail) and there's one more Flower beauty review I want to film.  All on my to-do list. I'm enjoying writing reviews.


Next up, St. Patrick's Day. I most definitely intend to go to Chicago the day before. To possibly see the St. Patrick's Day parade, and to see the river dyed green. Last year we went to my guy's cousin's apartment, and she had a stellar view of the river getting dyed. Don't know if we'll be doing that again. But whatever I do, it'll be fun. :)

I mention St. Patrick's Day because I wanted to share the website for the river dyeing. Some of you may not know that the Chicago River gets dyed green every year, but there you have it. I checked the site to make certain of the date, and got a kick out of what they've written...

"A modern day miracle occurs each year as part of the St. Patricks Day Parade celebration when the Chicago River turns an incredible shade of Irish green. This spectacular transformation ranks right up there with the parting of the sea by Moses and the Pyramids of Egypt."
You can read the rest here if you're interested. lol. :)


On to Coursera. Have you heard of it?

"Take the World's Best Courses, Online, For Free."

My friend Ruth posted on FB that she signed up for an art class there, and I went to investigate. I decided to sign up for a few things. Who knows if I'll stay signed up for everything, but hey, I figured I'd give it a try, right? My courses are:

• Songwriting                                                                    
   -- Starts March 1st -- 6 weeks long
  
• Gamification
   -- Starts April 1st -- 6 weeks long
  
• Introduction to Guitar
   -- Starts April 22nd -- 6 weeks long
  
• Introduction to Psychology
   -- Starts May 6th -- 8 weeks long
  
• History of Rock, Part One
   -- Starts May 13th -- 7 weeks long
  
• Introduction to Art: Concepts & Techniques
  -- Starts May 27th -- 7 weeks long
  
• Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps
  -- Starts June 1st -- 6 weeks long
  
• Online Game: Literature. New Media, and Narrative
  -- Starts July -- 7 weeks long
  
• History of Rock, Part Two
   -- Starts July 8th -- 6 weeks long
  
• Social Psychology
  -- Starts July 8th -- 6 weeks long
  
• Creativity, Innovation, and Change
   -- Starts September 1st -- 12 weeks long
  
• The Science of Gastronomy
   -- TBA -- 6 weeks long 

Yep... and why yes, Songwriting did start on the 1st. I just haven't gone to look yet. I plan to tomorrow though. I'm actually not even sure I want to take the songwriting class, but I was sitting there trying to decide when I realized I can always just drop the class - it's not like I'm paying for it. It's free. So eh. We'll see if I end up keeping up with all these classes. It'll give me something to do anyhow. The classes I'm most looking forward to is learning the guitar and the art class. The others just intrigued me for one reason or another. Wish me luck.



Finally... I have it in my head that I really want to make some throw pillow covers. lol. In my head, they're Doctor Who related throw pillows, that feature a design that's still in my head - and based on the design on the back of my phone. I'd theoretically get the fabric through Spoonflower, and then make and sell them on my etsy account... but alas... money is an issue. I don't know if that idea in my will ever become a reality. I had thought of possibly doing some kickstarter or something to help with the funds to make the throw pillow covers. I dunno... guess we'll see on that again.


Alright. Time to go. Ta!