Water Marble Manicure

My nieces and I did this together on Sunday afternoon. They were thrilled with the results; I'm little less excited.  It took a long time to tape up our nails, but that step is absolutely vital unless you want to spend an hour cleaning up your fingers later.

My 4-year-old niece's nails. She picked different colors for each nail. Her manicure took the longest.

 You can find some great youtube tutorials for this technique. Basically, you take a cup with room temperature water, drop small drops of nail polish on the surface, use a toothpick to swirl/marble them together before the polish dries, then dip your finger in the water to transfer the pattern to your nail. It can get a pretty messy, and it takes a fair amount of practice to get good at creating patterns. But it creates a unique look. I thought my nails looked awful, but I got a lot of compliments on them. We used a white base coat to help the patterns show up better. I'd like to try again with different colored base coats. 

My 13-year-old niece's nails. I think hers turned out the best.

Mine. I really like both pinkies, but other than that I wasn't too impressed. 

Total Cost: Around $4, including base and top coats, polishes for swirling, tape, and toothpicks, and a disposable plastic cup for mixing.

Brioche

On Saturday night, my brother and I had plans to watch soccer together. We're both big Real Salt Lake fans and we alternate between each other's houses when we watch the game. I like to bring something with me when I go (although I'm lazy and I don't always get something made), so yesterday afternoon I got out some cookbooks and started thinking about something to make. A commenter at Jezebel  recently alerted me to the existence of pound cake cupcakes. I really wanted to make them but it was 7:00 and I was supposed to leave by 8:30 so I figured I might not have time. With new recipes I like to read the recipe several times and it still takes me longer the first time.  So I pulled out a brownie mix to take to my brother's. It did the job, though it wasn't great.

But. 

While I was looking for a pound cake recipe, I came across a recipe for chocolate chip and raisin brioche.  I have a brioche tray that I've been dying to use, so I resolved to make them for breakfast on Sunday morning. 

They turned out well, although not as moist as I'd have liked. Next time I'll bake them 2 or three minutes less. 

I adapted the recipe from 500 Cupcakes, by Fergal Connolly. 

Total cost: about $3, most of which was the chocolate chips and raisins. 

Before I die chalkboard

About two weeks ago, one of my friends told me about Candy Chang, an artist who created (among quite a lot else) a giant chalkboard on the side of an abandoned house where people could record their hopes for their lives. I was inspired by the idea of giving people a space to make their dreams public.  So I decided to make something similar for the place I work.
I'm a therapist at a drug treatment center. Most of our residents are veterans; virtually all were homeless before they moved in.  A major task for the men who come here is to develop hope for what their lives could be like without drugs or alcohol.  So I showed photos of the original project to my boss and she said I could have some wall space to hang my chalkboard.
I originally planned to just buy a chalkboard and stencil it, but I discovered that it's nigh impossible to buy a large chalkboard in a store anymore. I went to Staples, Office Max, Target, Walmart, and several craft and teacher supply stores. I considered ordering one online, but they were expensive (the cheapest suitable one I found was 24 by 30 and cost $60) and I'm an impatient kind of person. So I followed the suggestions of coworkers and craft store employees and bought some plywood and chalkboard paint.

I also bought some white spray paint, though I ended up not using it since I was worried about overspray. I had to force myself to use primer (again, I'm impatient) but I suppose it was a good thing I did. I let the board dry overnight and then used stencils I had persuaded my grandmother to make with her die cutting machine.  We originally made a large "Before I die..." stencil for the top and a smaller "Before I die I want to______" stencil for the rest of the board. Later I decided since it was a fairly small board (2 feet tall and four feet long) that we'd just use the big stencil and leave the rest  blank.

A few of the guys helped me hang it on Monday morning. Here's what it looked like that night when I left. The guys seem to like it, and I'm glad I didn't use the smaller stencil, because people have started drawing pictures  on it too.

Total cost, including several boxes of chalk and an eraser: about $35.