NFL Nail Art

With the NFL season kicking off this week I decided to do my nails honoring my favorite football team; the Raiders.  

The final product:

For my main nails I used the ombre technique shown here.  You may, however, notice that the orientation of the ombre effect is reversed from the directions shown.  I tried it both ways and I like having the top color near the base of the nail rather than the tip.  If you haven't clicked the link, the directions are basically as follows.

Step 1: Paint nail the base color

Step 2: On a piece of wax paper or a shiny surface paint a stripe of the base color and the ombre      color.  Using a toothpick or orange stick swirl the two colors together where they meet.

Step 3: Use a makeup triangle to pick up the the polish colors.

Step 4: Place the triangle with the polish on it onto the nail.

The ring finger was done using the technique found here.

Again, it's really easy but makes a statement.  And if you don't feel like opening this link either, the steps are shown below.

Step 1: Paint nail the base color

Step 2: Paint a stripe in the middle of the nail about half way up

Step 3: Paint another stripe to one side of the middle stripe, but a little farther up

Step 4: Paint another stripe on the empty side of the first stripe, but not as far up.

Step 5: (Not shown) Repeat steps 2-4 with another color, but not as far up as the first color

Movie Time

These are my top ten favorite sports movies of all time.  As these movies are equally good, and are about different sports, they're listed in no particular order.  Hope you enjoy!

1.  Field of Dreams

This one is a no-brainer.  It's an American classic based on an American pastime, but if you've been living under a rock since 1989 when the movie was released, I'll give a brief synopsis.  Kevin Costner plays an Iowa farmer who plows down his corn field to build a baseball field after a mysterious voice starts giving commands.

2.  Coach Carter

Based on a true story, Coach Carter tells the story of a high school basketball coach who finds his players need more coaching off the court than on it.  After failing to adhere to the agreements made in the contracts the players signed, Coach Carter takes drastic measures to ensure his team become winners in life, not just basketball.

3.  Hard Ball

A man with a severe gambling addiction who is also in deep with a bookie is suckered into coaching an inner-city little league team.  As the season progresses he finds he is learning more from his the boys on his team than he could ever teach them.

4.  Remember the Titans

Set in Virginia in 1971, this movie follows the true story of a high school football team and their impressive first season as an integrated unit.  

5.  Cool Runnings

Track-stars-turned-bobsledders from Jamaica stun the world as they try to make it into the 1988 winter Olympics in Calgary.

6.  The Blind Side

A boy from a broken home and living on the streets is taken in by a caring woman and her family in this heartwarming, true account of NFL lineman Michael Oher.

7.  Win Win

A volunteer high school wrestling coach who's on the brink of losing everything finds a ray of hope after a star athlete stumbles into his life, albeit through less-than-upstanding circumstances.

8.  Warrior

When the youngest son of a former boxer returns home and begins to be trained by his father, he competes in a mixed martial arts tournament.  Everything is going well until he discovers his next opponent is his older brother.

9.  Rudy

Daniel E. "Rudy" Ruettiger's life-long dream was to play football for Notre Dame, but his size always held him back.  Luckily his passion outweighs his size in this epic drama based on true events.

10.  Cinderella Man

During the Great Depression, boxing star James Braddock pulled an amazing comeback to become a champion and an inspiration in this moving, true story.

  P.S.  I know there are other movies that could have easily made it onto the list, but I either haven't seen them, or somehow slipped my brain.  For now, this is the list. :)

Rivalry Week

With rivalry week approaching quickly I'm looking forward to enjoying passion-filled, heart-racing, and adrenaline-pumping football.  But one thing I love almost as much as a good game, is preparing a great game-day menu.  My BYU Cougars played their rival in September, for which I prepared quite the smorgasbord.  I thought I'd share some of the highlights here for anyone else who loves game food as much as I do.

Somehow the evening took on an Italian flair, so we started with an array of anti-pasti dishes; meats, cheeses, tomatoes tossed in olive oil and fresh basil, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, pickled asparagus spears, roasted peppers, artichoke hearts, and breads to dip in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Most of these items were picked up at Costco, while the others were purchased at our local grocery store.

After the appetizers had been enjoyed sufficiently, we had fun creating personalized strombolis.  Unfortunately, we were having so much fun I forgot to snap a picture. :(  Using typical pizza ingredients, and dough purchased from the grocery store, everyone was able to make a stromboli filled with their favorite toppings.  While researching stromboli recipes, I found this one to be the most helpful.

To continue the Italian theme, Italian sodas were served as drinks.  I was adamantly opposed to using anything red during dinner, but most of the yummy-flavored syrups are red, so I caved just once.  We offered strawberry, raspberry, coconut, or any combination of the three as flavors for the drinks.  My mom thought using the small cups would make it feel more special, but it also made it much more of a pain to keep quenching everyone's thirst.  We used 10 oz cups although the recipe called for using 16 oz of fluids.  The modified recipe worked well, but next time I would prefer to use the larger cups.  These recipes are the best I was able to find.

Although it didn't fit the theme of the night, I came across this recipe and couldn't resist.  The original recipe calls for using jimmies, but I thought tinting shredded coconut would give a similar look but would taste a bit better.  My brother, though, doesn't like coconut and convinced me to use a different color of frosting for the end zones and to use regular sugar sprinkles.  I wanted to use blue colored gummies for BYU players and red colored gummies for Utah players, and I was lucky enough to find gummies called "Evil Twins", which come in a variety of colors.  I also wanted my players to be more active than the players shown on the original picture, so I arranged a Utah fumble forced by Kyle Van Noy and recovered by BYU.  The pocky stick goal posts suggested in the original recipe worked well, but they slipped off the tray when pulling them out of the freezer and broke on the ground so we decided to do without them.  

The one thing that helped me get over BYUs loss that night was this amazing Oreo pizza.  A few weeks before the game, my cousin told me about a pizza place by her house that serves Oreo pizza.  She had me at Oreo and I dragged her out that night to eat it.  After studying it thoroughly I figured I could probably re-create it home.  It wasn't quite the same, but it was pretty dang close.  To ensure I was on the right track, I searched for Oreo pizza recipes and found this one that confirmed my thought process and will hopefully help you if you decide to make it.  The one thing missing from this recipe is how to make the icing.  Those directions can be found here.

I hope this helps you when you're planning your game-day menus.  I know for my family the food is almost as important as the game itself.