Third time's a charm?

So my nail art doesn't seem to be the lucky charm I thought it would be, but I'll keep rocking their colors on my fingernails anyway.  Here's the latest design.

This one is super cute and super easy!  It's just layers of polish placed strategically.

Step one: Paint all nails with silver polish

Step two: Starting at the base of the nail, paint about half-way up with black

Step three: Paint entire nail with small glitter polish

Step four: repeat with small glitter polish, but begin about 1/4 of the way up the nail

Step five: switch to chunkier glitter polish and apply where the black polish meets the silver

Step six: Add one more layer of the chunky glitter polish from 3/4 of the way up the nail.

Nail Art Part Deux

I'm showing my Raider love again this week with more black and silver nail art!

For these nails  I painted a coat of silver paint on each of my nails.  On all but the ring finger I used a black crackle paint over the top.  For the ring finger, I cut a 'v' shape out of masking tape and placed it on my nail.  Then I painted a stripe of black on a postcard and used a makeup sponge to soak up the paint to put on the nail.

Hopefully at some point my nail art will be a good luck charm and my team will start winning a few!

One small step for women, one giant leap for womankind

As the Ray Rice situation is taking a new turn I feel it is too important for a self-proclaimed female sports fan not to comment on.  Along with other sports fans, I too was outraged when I heard that Rice's original two-game suspension was so trivial, especially when compared to Josh Gordon who was suspended for the entire season for drug charges.  The NFL, whether intentional or not, sent a very clear message to its female supporters; violence, even violence against women, is fine but drugs are the real concern.

In recent years the NFL has made a big push to increase its female fan base.  I didn't understand how a league could even begin to attempt expanding their female fan base when they seem perfectly fine letting those fans get knocked unconscious.

Female sports fans have finally begun to find some footing and a place to call their own in the arena typically filled by men, but incidents like this remind us what a man's world it really is.  Not only fans but the wives, girlfriends and reporters have felt the misogynistic undertones of this incident.  The original two-game suspension of Rice was like a slap in the face to every female in the NFL world.

With the new vido evidence released today and a much harsher punishment doled out to Rice, I finally feel like the NFL really has embraced its female supporters.  I feel like the league is now as loyal to me as I have been to it.  While there is still a lot of work to do this is a huge step toward equality in the sports world.

A shout out of praise should go to Roger Goodell and the Raven's organization for understanding how serious domestic violence is and that they can help change the way our society thinks about these issues.  To have revered and prominent leaders begin to put their foot down about these issues not only empowers women and helps begin the healing process but also hopefully makes men realize how wrong their actions are.  It was long overdue, but Goodell did well in enacting a new domestic-violence policy.

Should Ray Rice ever be allowed to play another down of football?  Is this punishment too harsh?  Tweet me and let me know what you think @felicelilly

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

Super Bowl Food!

This post is almost as super late as the bowl itself is super...That was a bit of a stretch, yeah?  Bottom line-I know it's late, but I wanted to still get this up.  So here it is.  The big game is often tricky for our family because we have to figure out how to make and serve dinner before kick off while still attending church.  This year church let out at 4:00 pm, giving us exactly 25 minutes to get home and get served.  So anything that could be made ahead of time, or cooked while we were attending services was on the menu.  

I first decided to build the menu around slow cooker pulled pork.  

The recipe for this can be found here.  It's a sweet pulled pork and has lots of steps, but is so worth it.  The recipe calls for a bone-in piece of meat, but we found boneless cuts at Costco so we used that instead and increased the recipe by 1 1/2.

The pulled pork recipe also calls for serving the meat on hamburger buns, but we thought the pretzel rolls (also from Costco) would compliment the sweetness of the meat nicely.  We were right. :) But we also provided regular steak rolls (from Wal-Mart).

You can't have barbecue without some baked beans and mac and cheese.  The baked beans simmered in a smaller crock pot while we were at church, then I added some brown sugar and bacon pieces (from Costco) to the top before broiling for a few extra minutes.

The mac and cheese was prepared using a basic roux with some cheddar jack cheese melted into it.  The macaroni was cooked, the cheesy roux poured over it, then sharp cheddar cheese and bacon pieces (the same as the ones used in the baked beans) then broiled in the oven for a few minutes.

As you can see, it was quite a hit, with most of it getting eaten before I could get a picture.  I also sliced some green onions for anyone who wanted to put them on the macaroni.  They were an excellent addition.

Not to forget that this should be a somewhat balanced meal, a veggie tray (yes, from Costco) was also put out.

For dessert I wanted to do something that would show my allegiance to the Seahawks.  All right, I'm not really a Seattle fan, I'm just really not a Broncos fan.  But I thought, what better way to celebrate Seattle's road to the Super Bowl than to pay homage to Seahawk's Running Back Marshawn Lynch?  Thus, I give you a Skittles cake.

And the Skittles theme continues on the inside.

All in all the food was great, and was much appreciated by everyone at our Super Bowl party!

Bowl Food

Football just isn't the same without good food.  When it comes to big games I like to go all out, so when my team made a bowl game appearance I had to go big.

When doing event food, I find it necessary to keep a theme in mind.  A theme could be anything from a flavor, a color, or regional.  For this event I went with a Concession Stand theme.

Popcorn bags from the dollar store provided excellent serving containers.  Regular popcorn is in the bags on the left, and caramel popcorn is in the bags on the right.  I got the recipe for the caramel popcorn here.

Next option from the Concessions Stand is pizza.  We ordered the Perfect Pizza from Papa Murphy's, which is half pepperoni and half Hawaiian.  

No Concessions Stand fare would be complete without fries, corn dogs, and soda.  The fries are ranch parmesan oven fries from a recipe I found here.  The recipe says it takes an hour and a half, but with cooking time it took me just over an hour.  The corn dogs were purchased from Costco.  Various soda cans were also put out.

The pretzels we bought frozen from the grocery store.  They're the cinnamon sugar variety of Super Pretzel, and were super delicious.  The icing/dipping sauce, however, came from a pack of Rhodes Rolls cinnamon rolls that we never used.  They paired well with the pretzels.

Overall it was super easy (I needed it to be with the game being right after Christmas) and it was a lot of fun.  Everyone enjoyed the offerings.

Also, all the decorations came from the dollar store.  These are: the tablecloth, balloons, balloon anchors that were used to separate the different foods, the crepe paper, and the poster board used to make the concessions banner.

They lost!

When your team loses you go through a range of emotions.  Whether they lose the championship game (*cough* ), or they lose the game that would have kept them in the playoff race (*cough* ), or they can't win a game to save their lives (*cough* ) the cycle remains the same.

The first phase is pure, uninhibited anger.

If they played a particularly frustrating game, or one of great significance, or a game against a rival, this anger is often accompanied by:

Once the anger has subsided you're ready to move into the next phase.

Reasoning

You begin to make excuses for your team.  You say, "Well, if our star player hadn't gotten that paper cut before the game he would have scored more points."  Or, "If the refs hadn't been so biased, we easily could have won."

After reasoning, you realize it doesn't matter what could have happened because your team still lost.  You then move into the third phase.

Depression

The reality of the loss hits, and the sadness sinks in.  

 

You wallow, you moan, you drive your co-workers crazy, then one day you wake up and realize there's still the next season or the next game, and you're ready to move into phase four.

Acceptance

That moment, just before game time, when you realize you love your team.  Win or lose, you're their fan and you will be there to cheer for them.  Every game.