Shock

Horrible things happen to people... I just learned that one of my best friends in high school was arrested for Involuntary Manslaughter, and I saw him couple days before the incident.  Life is very cruel to some people, and all I can do is hope the best for him.

And that's that...

-Mimi

Black Friday Shopping (or rather...the day after that)

  Black Friday was hectic, I went to the mall around 11am with my mother but the mall was way too crowded for me to buy anything.  So, I went to the mall again today with Stuey.  As expected, Forever 21 opened its door at Southpoint on Black Friday to make money off of poor girls like myself selling stolen brand designs.  Well, I have to say, it's freaking AWESOME!  I love clothing, and the more I can afford the merrier.  But, before I talk about things I hauled from F21, I have to talk about buying shoes for Stuey.
   Stuey doesn't like to buy things, well, not for himself.  He acquires on average one pair of shoes a year and wear until they are unbearable to look at anymore.  I absolutely love shoes and always feel bad for him because he wears the same shoes to death.  Today, when we stepped inside ALDO, I spotted some shoes for men that I really liked and bought it for him.  The first one is the VUTURO in khaki.  I like this pair because it is made out of real leather, stylish but also comfortable.  The same pair of shoes come in navy blue, which I didn't like quite as much because it will blend in with the blue jeans Stuey often wears.  Khaki green on the other hand is great in combination with many autumn colors.

The second pair I bought is the Ordando shoes in Dark Brown.  They were on sale with a 30% off of the original $100 price tag.  I REALLY like this pair of shoes because it is one of the softest men shoes I have ever touched!  XD  According to Stuey, they are extremely comfortable.  However, these shoes are not true to it's size, they run a lot bigger than the other ones.  (Stuart wears a 9.5, but he bought a size 8 because of the discrepancy.)  These shoes are more formal, but comfortable enough for casual wearing.  

Now on to F21.  The Triangle area always had a F21 in Crabtree Valley Mall, however, I have never liked it.  It is big, crowded and hard to find anything in.  The organization of the store made it a complete headache to browse and try on clothes.  The new store in Southpoint is smaller, two stories, and has no men's section.  It is still crowded, but much more organized, and with dressing rooms on both floors, the shopping experience is much less of a headache.  Here are some of my favorites that I took home with me...(well, Stuey bought them for me in return for the shoes >.>):

Heritage 1981 dress in Brick/Mint (This one was on display and I fell in love with it at the window)

Black dress with lace bodice and peterpan collar.

Floral dress with mesh sleeves.  The zippers are not great...probably going to break really soon.

Since my waist line is not nearly as nice as these models, the dresses look completely different on me.  They are also not nearly as short on me.  Although there were many dresses in F21, it was not easy finding ones that fit me well.  Here are some that I had no luck with:

Very cute dress on the model, but it was not flattering from the side and the soft fabric made it roll up easily.  

Another dress that I really liked was a white pleated one with lace bodice.  The dress had a fatal mistake where a super hard zipper was paired with soft chiffon fabric and resulted in very awkward behinds.  I couldn't find a picture of it on the internet Q_Q;  Oh well.  Of course there were other things, but since my memory is very limited, these were the only things I remembered.  

Hope all the shopping went well with my readers!!  XD

- Mimi 

Vintage inspired Fall (Thanksgiving!) nails

As promised, here's my Fall-vintage nail tutorial!  (I'm going to wear it for Thanksgiving...so it's my Thanksgiving nails >.>)

Nail polishes used:

OPI Top Coat and Natural Nail Base Coat

ORLY Instant Artist in Solid Gold, Sally Hansen in Sun Kissed, Essie's matte about you, and Sally Hansen's White On

Procedure:

Apply base coat (and make sure you take time to let it dry)

Optional: use tape to block out the places that you don't want to get painted

Two coats of Sally Hansen in Sun Kissed 

Apply matte about you (yes, I jumped on the bandwagon of matte nails.  This is soooo amazing!!!  It dries like how candle solidifies)

Take the tape off and clean the edges.  Then apply top coat only on the areas that are not painted. 

Next step is to make polka dots.  Since I'm cheap and don't want to buy a dotting tool...I just used the back of a round sewing pin.  

Take a piece of paper out and put a little bit of the nail polish on there so that you could dab the pin with it.  I think it's less messy this way.

Add gold line with the super thin tipped ORLY instant artist polish.  

AND you are done!

Enjoy~

- Mimi

Nails :D

Oh I love doing my nails!!  While it is definitely NOT the most relaxing thing in the world, it is lots of fun!!  So here's something I did for a more wintery theme:

Up close, you can see the blue gradating I made.  This is a very easy way to paint your nail, all you need is two kinds of glitter nail polish one in a lighter shade of the color you want and the other in a darker shade.  Apply the lighter shade once on the entire nail, and then a second coat on only half of the nail.  Lastly, put a little bit of the darker glitter on the edge of the nail to make the gradation more prominent.  No mushy diary today because they didn't really grow Q_Q;  However, a vintage-fall themed nail tutorial is coming up!!

P.S. Glitter nail polishes are always hard to get off, so it's good to use MONSTER HAND!! (aka foil- wrapped-nail-polish-remover-cotton-balls.)

-Mimi

Blue Crabs (Explicit content if you are an animal lover >.<)

Ummm...I think it is the season for crabs >.> at least that's what my mother has been telling me.  We paid a visit to Li Ming's Global Mart Saturday to grab some blue crabs for lunch ($2.99/lb).  We did not cook them immediately, instead, we left them out in the garage for one night and cooked them the next day.  Here's our encounter with one of the crabs:

Store-bought BLUE CRAB appeared!

Stuart used HYPNOSIS, but it failed.  

Blue Crab used CRABHAMMER, but Blue Crab missed.

Stuart used CLAMP!

Blue Crab fainted!

and became lunch...

So yeah, basically we steamed them while fresh (note, euphemism.)  

here's the big crab I had

ummm, lots of yummy roes!!!

The cooking process was rather easy, they were steamed for 15min after the water has boiled.  We made a dipping sauce out of rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, and sugar.  

Enjoy~

-Mimi

The Scrap Exchange Dance

So, I went to the Scrap Exchange swing dancing event yesterday and it was a blast (regardless of the unhappy incident that I'm going to talk about).  Here's the outfit I put together for the dance, I thought the dress was perfect for the occasion.

Anyways, on to the unhappy incident that almost ruined my night.  I usually go swing dancing with my boyfriend and ex-roommate Kathryn.  Recently, Kathryn's new roommate Alice has joined us because swing dancing is an awesome form of exercise and way to meet new people.  While meeting new people is fun, it can also go wrong sometimes.  There has been this creepy guy that we occasionally dance with who gives us uncomfortable stares (long long stares from across the room...).  Now, I have no problem with dancing with strangers, and both Kathryn and Alice love dancing with different people.  It's just this one particular guy that creeps us out.  As a result, I have been trying to avoid dancing with him for a while now.  Well, avoiding worked well until yesterday...until he went to my boyfriend and asked why he wouldn't let me dance with other people (completely untrue).  Then he managed to follow us to the refreshments room and pointed his finger at my boyfriend and shouted at him by calling him a jerk.  I'm talking about this fully grown man (in his 50s perhaps?) pointing his fingers at a 22-year-old blaming him for things he didn't even do!!  So, I basically got really pissed off and went to talk to someone about it.  This worked out surprisingly well, because what ended up happening was that I had to tell the guy personally that it is MY right to choose who to dance with, and I CHOSE not to dance with him.  Lesson learned, don't get yourself involved with creepy people by being overly nice to them.  You just have to tell the person to stop when you need to!  So the night went on with no more trouble, and oh how it was delightful!  Thanks to everyone who helped me out!!

- Mimi

Mushroom Diary 3

Growing mushrooms is a very slow process...I think.  My shimeji pieces have not gotten much bigger from the last time I posted about them.  However, they have expanded a little bit horizontally and seem to be forming a web of some sort.

I hope they would grow faster~ >.< oh well, I should be a little more patient...

- Mimi

Great find!

Today, I stepped into Nordstrom Rack for the first time to use a $20 coupon I have acquired recently.  I had less than 1 hour to shop, so I actually wasn't planning on buying anything that required going to the fitting room.  But oh how I was wrong!  There's something magical about a big roomful of clothing that makes me want to dig through all of them to find THE one that I want to take home with me.
First of all, Nordstrom Rack is not cheap.  Definitely cheaper than Nordstrom, but it is by no means Charlotte Russe.  There were many brand names that I couldn't care less about, so the price tags were not all that reasonable.  To me, things are worth more if I could be happy in it, and that depends on the aesthetics, comfort, and quality of  the clothing.  Anyways, I went through the shop once for a general view and found a couple of socks and cosmetics that I could spend my coupon on.  When I finally decide to stop at the dress section and go through everything that was my size, I found about five pieces of dresses that I really liked and had reasonable price tags.  After trying all of them on, I decided to take this beauty home.

without the belt

If you know me, then you will know that the flashiness of this dress is beyond anything I have in my closet.  However, I have to argue that since this dress is perfect for every season (it contains the essence of spring, structure of a summer dress, and the colors of the holidays), it is actually very useful to have.  Oh, and did I mention that I LOVE vintage dresses?  Well, doesn't this look like one of those darling garments that the Mad Men wives wear?  I'm also very much in love with the round soft belt.  

Either way, the best part of the dress has to be it's price tag.  $44.97.  Which means that I only paid $28 (with tax) for this with my awesome coupon.  Life is good when you can find cheap things!!  Anyways, I'm going to wear this to the Saturday swing dance at the Doris Duke Center so I might have some pictures of me in it later. 

- Mimi

Mushroom Diary 2

It is officially 4 days after I "planted" my pieces of mushroom inside cardboard!  Now they have all become super cute little white fuzz balls!!  Aren't they adorable? We will see what's going to happen in another two days.

On the other hand, I have also ordered some oyster mushroom spawns from ebay, but since they are getting shipped from the UK, we will not get to see them until December Q_Q.

- Mimi

DIY Lace Earrings

This is my first tutorial post!!  Recently, I got very addicted to pinterest, which inspired me to do many projects from materials I have acquired over the years.  I found a very short segment of lace couple days ago in my box of goodies and decided to make them into earrings.

Materials I used are: Lace, Earring Hooks, Pearl Beads, Adhesive Pearls, Wires, Scissors, and Pliers.  

1. Lay out the lace to decide what part of it you want to use for the project.  2. Cut the lace.  3. Plan out where the beads go.  4. Put everything together with wire.  (background acquired from HERE )

Voila!

It's a super easy to do project that will take very little time and it is very foolproof.  Have fun crafting!!!! 

- Mimi

Mushroom diary 1

Mom and I have wanted to grow mushrooms for a long time now, but we were always too intimidated by the unfamiliarity of the field.  Then we discovered that growing mushrooms in coffee grounds is rather easy and not very time consuming.  So we decided to grow some Shimeji mushrooms in our house because we could not find oyster mushrooms in the Asian market we went to >.>;

Our long term goal is to grow oyster mushrooms, but since we eat lots of Shimeji in the winter, we will grow this testing batch for fun.  I mean, it doesn't really cost us anything considering that I only used one piece of mushroom to inoculate, and everything else is free.

 
I found a tutorial on how to start the batch online (for oyster mushrooms) by cutting the bottom part of the existing mushroom into little pieces and let them grow in soaked cardboard.  We sterilized our cardboard with hot water hoping that no contamination will occur.

This is what it looks like when all the mushrooms are stacked inside the cardboard

All we have to do from here is to wait for the mycelium to grow by decomposing the cardboard in a dark place which is underneath our sink.  We air the mycelium out once a day to get rid some of the carbon dioxide that have accumulated.  

Day 3:

My patience is non-existent.  We just started this batch on Saturday, and today (Monday) I'm taking a peek to see whether the growing process has started or not.  

Hummm, still very small pieces...

but taking a closer look:

WOW, little bits of hair has started to grow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOOO COOL!!

So, yes, so far the mushrooms are growing!  We will see what happens in a couple of days.

- Mimi 

Miel Bon Bons Patisserie & Confiserie

My boyfriend is very sweet, he has a sweet tooth but also a sweet personality.  Last Friday, when I was the only one left in my office working, he brought me a box of French macarons from Miel Bon Bons in Carrboro.  These little sweet cookies made out of almond flour can be flavored with just anything and have the cutest forms.

  

This box of macarons contained assorted mystery flavors, some tasted heavenly (such as the mango one), and others were a little funky (I could swear that one tasted like playdough).  These macarons are probably some of the smallest ones I have had with ~1inch diameter. They are quite pricey for their size (about $2 each), but will definitely make a wonderful gift.  

Miel Bon Bons itself is a very small boutique-styled shop located inside the Historic Carr Mill Mall.  Other than macarons, they also make cakes and other pastries.  

Below are just my amateur attempt to take some pictures of these cuties.  

 Enjoy!!

- Mimi