The Kelly Green Clover

Mmmm smoothies. I love smoothies. And I just wanted to share my favorite recipe:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

1 cup of milk, soy milk, or whatever milk substitute you dig
2 TBL of milled flax seed
2 TBL of peanut butter (best if it's natural and free from hydrogenated oils)
a few teaspoons of your chocolate flavoring of choice (I use Ovaltine)
1 frozen banana

Mmm so good and creamy. And yeah, the milled flaxseed adds a gritty texture, but I'm willing to deal with that-- cus flaxseed are hella good for us! And yes, I just said hella.

So there you have it-- my favorite smoothie recipe. If you just can't deal with the grittiness of the flax, then think outside the box. Maybe you could try wheat germ, or something else to add in some additional nutrition and goodness. That's what's great about smoothies after all-- it's easy to sneak things in that you might otherwise not get enough of.

Here's the nutritional info for the smoothie, as calculated by my sparkpeople recipe calculator dingle-dangle thingy-meh-bobber.

Here's my latest make-up-play-session: re-creating MAC's "lace collection" campaign look. It's an entry to a youtube contest in which you take a "runway look" as your inspiration. So here's mine:




And here's my recreation. It wasn't as tedious as it looks.. or maybe it was and I was just having too much fun to notice?

Several months ago, when I first started my little green revolution, I came across a product known as Egyptian Magic. What lured me to this product was its simplicity in its ingredients: olive oil, honey, beeswax, propolis extract, bee pollen, & royal jelly. Not to mention, Egyptian Magic had quite a following on youtube; beauty gurus continuously uploaded glowing reviews about this miracle cream. It could be used as a moisturizer, an eye cream, a healing ointment, for hair even. Girls would talk about its ability to make stretch marks and other long-time skin problems disappear.

Well, I paid the $40 to get my own jar. And I must say... I think those youtube girls were commissioned to make those reviews. There's nothing magical about it at all. This winter, I used it nightly on the backs of my hands, where I tend to get dry itchy skin. It didn't seem to do much at all. I used it as an eye cream...but don't really notice a huge difference. It works alright as a lip balm...but come on, I paid a pretty penny so I expected a little more... magic.

Now the thing is, I'm well-aware that the ingredients in this cream are in fact very good for our skin. And since it was a simple formula, with ingredients easily obtained from any health food store, I decided to get creative and work my own magic...


Cue my DIY Egyptian Magic: Texas Sass Cream. I considered "Irish Luck" too... but nothing about honey and olive oil makes me think of Ireland. Texas Sass is cute, right? Anyways...here's what I did.

Ingredients:
- 1 little beeswax bar (I think it's roughly 1 oz.)
- 6 TBL olive oil
- 2 TBL raw honey
- 4 capsules of the propolis / bee pollen /  royal jelly extract (only the contents of the capsules)

In a double boiler, I melted the beeswax completely, and removed from heat. Then added in the olive oil and honey, and the contents of 4 capsules. Sirred frequently as it cooled down. Pour into your container that you want to use, and let it set up a bit, but come back and stir it occasionally until it's about as solid as it will get. The idea is to make sure it's stirred thoroughly as it sets up, so there's an even distribution of everything throughout the cream.

I store it in the fridge, since it has "edible" ingredents. I must say, I've used this cream a few times and while it has some improvements to be made, it works a lot better than Egyptian Magic, and so much less money. I've used it mostly as a hand cream. It's a bit too thick/waxy (and grity from the propolis extract) to be used on the face, but I plan to try a new formula next time without the capsules and with more olive oil. I figure, since raw honey has propolis, pollen, and royal jelly still in it, there's not really a need to have the extra grittiness of the supplements added in.

Last night I got creative with the make-up for another youtube contest. The prizes are really great on this contest: Sigma make-up brush sets; these are like, professional quality make-up brushes. I would *love* to get my hands on a set. So I tried 3 different times to make something I felt good enough about putting onto youtube. I was getting frustrated; the first time I tried to make myself look like a painting:

The second time I tried to do a Monet waterlillies look...

And the third time I did this: a pseudo-cubist inspired blue/complimentary color creation that I improvised as I went along.



To be honest, I don't plan to win. But it's fun to hope!

With a blog named The Kelly Green Clover, it'd be a total shame if I didn't make an update today! It doesn't take much to figure out that I am indeed Irish, and my family used to celebrate this holiday by pub-hopping through downtown Dallas and coming home to a dinner of corned beef and cabbage. This year, we just stuck with the corned beef and cabbage dinner. I busied myself with my project of the day: St. Patrick's Day dessert!


Guiness chocolate cake... with Irish Cream Frosting! Talk about decadence! I got both recipes from Smitten Kitchen. Her version was cupcakes, which was quite tempting...but I wanted to make this into a cake project.

The top looks a bit like a pint of Guinness, doesn't it? I didn't really mean for that to be the effect...but I guess that it's pretty fitting, considering the ingredients of the cake!



The basket-weave was hastily-done, and the runny/thin consistency of the icing made it pretty difficult to accomplish. Definitely a note to self: basket-weave needs stiffer icing than this!







The design was inspired by Irish china known as Belleek. My grandmother had a whole bunch of this stuff, and passed a few pieces on to my mom. I've grown up seeing this delicate-looking china around my house, and always thought it was very pretty. As you can see, the basket-weave is a very common motif in Belleek. Not all Belleek has it, but a lot of it does.

Alright, so that was my day in a nutshell! Well, in a cake. My family hasn't torn into this cake yet, but I'm looking forward to it! Mmmm.


UPDATE: Cake was good! Frosting was a little too sweet (see: Liam's Rejected Frosting)

A few days ago, I was watching a youtube video from this vegan-raw-foodist lady and came across her video about using honey as a face cleanser. I thought this sounded intriguing and simple, so I decided to give it a try. I'm glad that I did! For the past 3 or so days, I've simply smeared some honey on my fingertips, rubbed them together to warm the honey a bit, and rubbed it all over my damp face. You might think honey is sticky and hard to wash off, but quite the contrary. And I'm left with soft (and sorta delicious smelling) skin. I've noticed a more even skin tone... so far so good. I love how simple it is... and how if I get a little on my lips while washing my face it's actually a nice little taste instead of a violent spitting effort to avoid nasty soap in my mouth.

Evidently, honey's really great for the skin-- antiseptic, antibacterial, and has healing properties. Also, I've seen mentioned it's important to use a good quality, raw, unheated/unpasteurized/unfiltered honey. If you're interested in trying honey as a cleanser, this is a good site to check out.

My most recent cake was made for my dear friend Amanda. It was her 24th birthday coming up, so I wanted to make her a little something...and what better than a cake right?

From Cakes

I made a devil's food (her favorite) two layer cake, with buttercream icing in her favorite colors: salmon, raspberry hot pink, and teal (think Tiffany's). Amanda's style is classic and girly, and I've seen she likes the whole shabby-chic style quite a bit.

So after searching around on the internet for shabby-chic inspiration, I found this adorable cake and decided to recreate it using her favorite colors, and trading out the ribbon at the bottom for turquoise baubles. I'm glad to say she really loved her cake!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to see my friend Andrea and her husband Sam for a quick lunch at Potbelly's (mmm yeah).