DIY: Whoopie-Corn-Mallows

For thanksgiving, I decided to make dessert. I don't really love traditional thanksgiving desserts, so I decided to troll the internet and find a dessert that fulfills my chocolate desires. That is where the idea for the Whoopie-Corn-Mallow came from. Basically a thanksgiving inspired chocolate covered whoopie pie. 

The first thing you will need is the base of the treat, the cupcake. feel free to make any type of cake, but because this is "thanksgiving inspired" I used a cornbread mix and just followed the instructions on how to bake that.

The most important part of this process is baking the cake in cupcake tins rather than baking a normal cake. Again, just follow the instructions for baking, and modify cooking time for size.

While cupcakes are in the oven, melt the chocolate. Any chocolate will do, but I usually use semi-sweet chocolate chips because they are delicious and easy to melt.

Add two tablespoons of butter or margarin. This will thicken up the melted chocolate and make it the perfect spreading consistency.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. What this does is melts the chips without burning them. Fill a pot halfway with water and set it to boil. Put the bowl of chocolate chips and butter/margarin in the water and let it melt (make sure you use a glass or metal bowl that won't melt with heat).

If you find that your melted chocolate is too thick to be spreadable, than add oil a bit at a time until consistency is perfect.

Next step is the filling. Feel free to use any marshmallows desired, but ,in my opinion, vegan marshmallows are the best! Once you have had one there is no going back to normal marshmallows.

Take the muffins out of the oven and let them cool down on a cooling tray.

Then, cut each muffin in half and set the tops off to the side.

Take a marshmallow and a muffin bottom, put one on top of the other, and put in the microwave. Time may vary, but I basically put each one in for about 5 seconds/whenever I saw the marshmallow puff up. Then I quickly take the bottom out and wiggle the muffin top till is sticks to the bottom. 

Then comes the messy but yummy part. Cover your muffins in chocolate. This part is open to interpretation. 

Then stick them in the freezer...

... and ta da! Your Whoopie-Corn-Mallows are complete.

Enjoy!

xoxoxo

Nina

Song stuck in my head right now: Twist and Shout - The Beatles

DIY: My Favorite Ideas Online

This week has been absolutely crazy. In school I have been taking tests and preparing for finals which is totally insane. I also have been staying late at school half the week, and then the other days I had either ACT tutoring or band practice. And on top of all that, I have been going to sleep later and later every night, and it is getting so hard to wake up in the morning. I haven't had a normal day in so long. 

So life is pretty hectic, but what keeps me going is the fact that school will be over in exactly a week! I cannot wait to tell you guys about my summer plans and share every day with you.

In the meantime, I have been eyeing a ton of DIY projects perfect for the summer (especially since I will actually have time to do them), and I thought I would share them with you. If anybody ends up doing these, please let me know. You can post a comment below or reach me on any social media available. I would love to know if any of these are actually do-able!

1. Floral Ice Cubes from 'a pair and a spare'

2. DIY plywood jewelry pyramid also from 'a pair and a spare'

3. Color block keys from I SPY DIY

4. Tulle circle skirt DIY from A Beautiful Mess

5. Watercolor mug from Poppytalk

6. Confetti balloons from I SPY DIY

7. Mason Jar pendent lights from The Spring Blog

8. Mason Jar Monogram Light from Oleander and Palm

xoxoxo

Nina

Song stuck in my head right now: Be OK - Ingrid Michaelson

DIY: Photo Printed Candles

Last week was Mothers Day, and usually my mom's birthday is around that sunday also. I knew I had to make her something creative to try and top what I did last year, so, of course, I turned to my trusty pinterest account and search "mothers day DIY". After some scrolling, an image of a candle caught my attention. I tried to find the version of this DIY that was actually doable with the materials we already had in the house. So finally I created my own version of the Photo Printed Candle DIY and here is how I did it!

Materials

Candle (the candle should be white or at least light enough for the image to show up on. Also the surface space of the candle should be big enough for the image).

Tissue Paper (will take the color of your candle)

Scissors

Scotch Tape

Hair Dryer

Printer and Printer Paper

Wax Paper

Step 1

Find the image you want to print onto your candle, and scale it to the size you want. I dragged my image to a pages (aka word) document and pasted it four times just in case one doesn't print well.

Step 2

Cut a piece of tissue paper to be a bit larger than the size of printer paper. Then Wrap it around the printer paper and tape the edges down (this part is very important because the last thing you want is tissue paper stuck in your printer).

Step 3

Print your image onto the tissue paper. If you have a small image you might want to make multiple copies of it on the same page so that if one gets screwed up, you don’t have to start all over.

Step 4

Cut out the image so that the tissue paper is no longer attached to the printer paper. Leave a border around the image (it will blend into the candle). If you want, you can glue the image onto the candle, but I just held it in place.

Step 5

Wrap the candle in wax paper. The wax paper keeps the image in place, and keeps the candle from getting too drippy.

Step 6

Blow dry it. Really. Just put your blow dryer on high and have at it. It’s pretty cool to see the tissue paper seem to disappear. Make sure that you get all of the areas of the image. Try not to focus to much on one spot because my candle got a bit misshapen. When all of the tissue paper looks like it’s gone and you just see the image, you’re done.

Step 7

Unwrap your awesome new candle. Then...

Step 8

 take pictures to show all your friends so they’ll know how awesomely crafty you are. 

xoxoxo

Nina

Song stuck in my head right now: Fix You - Coldplay

DIY: Nail Art (attempt)

Let me start off by saying that I am in no way, and I mean in NO WAY, a nail artist. And If I am being completely honest with you, I am actually really terrible at doing my nails. I tend to get the polish everywhere but the part of the nail that is supposed to be covered. Ok, maybe that is a bit of an over-exaggeration. The point is, I have always wanted to be good at doing my own nails. I really admire my friends who just show up to school with new, colorful, professional-looking nails everyday. So, I have challenged myself to paint my nails more often in order to get better at it (and it keeps me from biting my nails). I also only ever paint my nails one color...black. So I added to the challenge by creating this post to force me to be more creative with my nails and clean up my act.

I hope that this post inspires you to be more creative and maybe even start doing your nails if you hadn't done so before because, like me, you also thought you were terrible at it. But practice makes perfect...or close to perfect.

Enjoy

Tools

- At least 2 nail polish colors of your choosing

- Tape (I used painters tape, but if you can get your hands on nail polish decorating tape than use that)

My Colors
I used three different colors. The first two were base colors and the other was for decorating. 
Base Colors - 147 Lexington Lilac from NYC Long Wearing, No Place Like Chrome from Essie
Decorating Colors - 56 Licorice from Essie

First Step

I pre-painted my nails a couple hours before, so that I was sure they were dry. I painted 4 fingers with the same lilac color and my ring finger with silver polish, but that is just how I chose to do it. Feel free to paint your nails any way you want. 

Second Step

Rip off a piece of tape no shorter than the width of your nail. Place it on the nail wherever you want to create a separation of colors.

Third Step
Paint over the part of the nail that is not covered with tape.

Fourth Step
Wait a couple seconds and then peel the tape, revealing the beautiful crisp line of the design.

Fifth Step

Repeat one each nail doing any technique you want with the tape in order to create interesting patterns on each nail.

Ta Da!

xoxoxo

Nina

Song stuck in my head right now: Everyone is Gonna Love Me Now - Ingrid Michaelson

DIY: Secret Santa

Tis' the holiday season, where gifts are given and food is eaten. One of my favorite parts about the holidays is gifts...more specifically, giving gifts (getting them is great too). I love spending the time and the effort putting together the perfect gift for somebody, and seeing their reactions as they open the gift. 

Since I celebrate Hanukkah, we don't give as many gifts as people do for christmas. I mostly just get gifts from my grandma and give to family members, but even that is rare. The one time I really get to give a gift is when my grade at school, or my advisory, plans a secret santa. 
Secret santa just gives me the best feeling because you can't wait to get your gift from your mystery person, and you also can't wait to see the look on your person's face when they find out their amazing gift is from you.
This year I am doing both an advisory and whole grade secret santa, so I thought I would get a little creative and show you what I did so maybe it will give you some ideas for gifts you might need to give the time of year.

The present I made has two parts to it. the first part could easily be the gift itself, or you can go on to the next half and make the gift even bigger (but it does require a little more work)

The Unassembled Hot Cocoa

Find a mug (or something to hold it in)
Lucky for me I had a ton of extra mugs leftover from my brother's bar mitzvah.
I put the mug in an unused berry basket lined with wax paper. You can make the delivery more simple, but thats the basic idea.

                               

Bagged cocoa powder
Fill one corner of a plastic zip-lock bag with any sort of cocoa powder (I used Nesquik)

Tie the bag closed with ribbon

Tip for curling ribbon: 
Hold the top end of the ribbon and place it on the open blade of the scissors then pull the blade along the ribbon till it is curled as tightly as you would like.

Cut off the zipper part of the bag, and place in mug

Do the same with marshmallows
I used these DELICIOUS vegan marshmallows (from whole foods), because they are probably the best tasting marshmallows ever. I will never taste a normal marshmallow the same way again. Even people who don't usually like marshmallows like these.

Put them in the corner of a zip-lock bag

Tie with ribbon, and curl ribbon

Finishing Touch
Put the marshmallows inside the mug along with the cocoa powder. Then wrap the whole thing in cellophane, and your done!

If you feel like this is enough you can just stop here and this makes a perfect and quick secret santa gift.

But you can also add this to a box I like to call 'the pamper box'.

The Pamper Box
Inside the pamper box you can put almost anything. The idea of this box is to give a bunch of little gifts that are fun when you feel like a little feel good pampering might do you good.

Soap from Whole Foods

 $1 Nail Polish from your local pharmacy
(This brand is the best quality long wearing nail polish that I have found, and bonus! It costs $1)

 Sample perfumes

 Mini Sticky Notes

 Tag (or any card will do)

Wrapping String

 Stamps for card

Of course, Unassembled Hot Cocoa

Tissue Paper

And throw it all in

Merry Whatever-Holiday-You-Celebrate

xoxoxo

Nina

Song stuck in my head right now: Distance - Christina Perri