Birthday cake!
Posted: January 26, 2012 Filed under: Recipes, Uncategorized 1 Comment »Once again, a large lapse has befallen my posting. So what better way than to start the new year with my birthday post? Lol, this past weekend was my birthday (1/21) and also the ringing in of the Lunar New Year! Hehehe, it’s my year (and Kunku’s!) because we’re both dragons ^_^ Dede tried to plan a surprise party for me .. but failed to keep it a surprise <3
Friday, we started off at my place with Sangria and cake. It all started out with a new cupcake I was making for the holidays. I’ll be posting these recipes on my other blog, so if you want the recipes, check out http://shlieka.blogspot.com/
The Sugar Cookie Cupcake
This cupcake was kind of an accident. I was messing around with the measurements of the vanilla cupcake recipe and didn’t quite know what would turn out. The result was a sugar cookie cupcake. It taste and looks just like a fluffy, soft sugar cookie on top. I had so many cupcakes, and nobody to eat them. Fast forward a few days later, and I’m thinking ‘hey, I need to figure out what to do with these cupcakes without wasting food. ‘ The fantastic part is that I had just dug out 3 jars of Trader Joe’s Lemon Curd. I love this stuff, and it was getting close to it’s expiration date. I just knew that I had to make a trifle, to put a little moisture back into the cakes, they would soak this lemon curd right up. But when I opened it up … the consistency had thickened over time. I wasn’t sure how I was going to spread it over crumbled cakes. Thankfully, I also had a bag of Meyer Lemons in the fridge that I’d been meaning to turn into homemade Lemon Curd.
Mmmmm lemon curd ..
The left jar is the homemade lemon curd, and the right is the lemon curd from Trader Joe’s. I ended having having extra homemade lemon curd, which I whisked in a bowl with the Trader Joe’s lemon curd. The homemade curd was very thin, which helped thin the Trader Joe’s lemon curd to a perfect consistency. I used the rest of the heavy whipping cream and made whipped cream with a little lemon curd whipped into it.
The first trifle ^_^
The first trifle I made was so delicious. Layers of sugar cookie cake, lemon curd, blueberries and whipped cream. Dede went crazy over it which is why we decided to make it for my birthday. We used canned peaches, strawberries between the layers for my birthday cake and dotted the top with blackberries before decorating with piped chocolate.
Me making a wish! This was my first time piping chocolate ^_^. It was so much fun! I made hearts and shoes and swirls. We got the gold candles from Party City and the freaky thing is that when they melt, they’re still gold on the inside!
After cake and drinks, we headed to the The Smith for food, and ended the night at Santo’s Party House! I’ll be posting a birthday post 2 with pictures from the rest of the night/weekend as soon as I get them n_n.
Nail Tips for the New Year!
Posted: January 19, 2012 Filed under: Fashion, Nails Leave a comment »Yes, I know I’m doing that thing where I’m MIA for a long time again. But to make it up to everyone, here is a post I wrote a while back on some tips I follow for nailcare. Happy new year!
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Nail Polish Tips by Aileen
These are tips that I have gathered throughout the years from being a huge nail buff (haha, get it??). These are all rules and actions that I myself strictly follow for healthy, beautiful, just-out-of-the-salon-looking hands. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned. Give ‘em a try!
- REMOVING NAIL POLISH — Instead of rubbing polish off with cotton balls, use a cotton pad. Cut up the cotton pad into little squares and saturate with nail polish. Place over each nail and press down. Wait a minute. The pad should eventually stick to your nail, and you can do other things while you wait (check email, text on phone, etc). After a minute, press down hard to remove polish in one glide. Your nail should be completely clear! Saves time, energy, and leaves the nail infinitely cleaner!
- SEAL THE MANICURE – At the end of your manicure, swipe your top coat across the edge of the nail to “seal in” the nail polish. This prevents your nail from chipping at the edges.
- ALWAYS USE – ALWAYS use a base coat and (when applicable) top coat. The base coat protects your nail and prevents stains on your natural nail (especially from darker polish). The top coat seals your polish and provides a protective layer to keep your manicure looking better for longer (unless you are wearing matte nail polish, then obviously don’t use a glossy topcoat!)
- DRYING NAILS – When doing your own nails (or going to a salon), ALWAYS make sure you have ample time. It takes at least ten minutes for most nail polish to dry FULLY. Even though your polish may feel dry to the touch, you can tell if it is truly dry by lightly tapping one nail against the other. ONLY try this test when you are fairly certain they are dry (so they don’t stick together completely and ruin your manicure). If they are truly dry, your nails should tap against each other smoothly and feel hard. If not, they will stick slightly and feel wet.
- DON’T CUT YOUR CUTICLES – For the most professional looking home manicure, pay special attention to moisturizing your hands afterwards and fixing your cuticles before applying nail polish! I can NOT stress this one enough. Smooth hands with clean cuticles really make a huuuge difference. Instead of cutting your cuticle (they will grow back thicker), PUSH your cuticle back and use cuticle oil. If you do this enough, your cuticles will diminish on their own. I have been doing this for years (never cutting cuticle, always pushing) and my cuticles are barely there now.
- FILE NAILS, NOT CLIP – If you have the time, always try to file your nails instead of cutting them (with a nail clipper). Nail clippers place stress on your entire nail (when you clamp down to cut) and can break the nail and weakens it, especially the tip where the nail will be left jagged and thus will be more likely to peel and splinter. Filing will ensure a cleaner line (no breakage) and will leave the tip of your nail healthy.
- CLEAN YOUR NAILS — Wash your hands with soap and water if you’ve just used nail polish remover. Make sure there is no nail polish remover or moisturizer on your nails before applying your base coat and polish. A clean, dry nail provides for a smoother, longer-lasting manicure.
- MIX TEXTURES — Remember, nail art is ART! It’s not just color that matters, but texture is important too. Try mixing matte colors with glossy colors, thick glitter polishes, thin glitter polishes, and shatter polish, etc for amazing textures! A smooth nail is overrated!
japanese 3d nail art, uv gel, london 2010
japanese 3d nail art, calgel, new york city 2011
opi shatter and opi alpine snow (matte white)
newspaper nails, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mint Sorbet
What I feel like saying to some girls in my college
Posted: December 8, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 Comments »
Sightings on the Road
Posted: November 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Slight creeper status but I love her look. The grungy hipster look is kinda gettin out of hand but zomg I want her shoes. Spotted outside a rest stop en route to Boston:
Posted: November 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
NY to Boston to New Hampshire? And back to South Hadley for some quality alone time 
Happy Thanksgiving Day!!
I’ll be having a vegetarian feast the year I break my vegetarianism. But so excited!
Give thanks, I’m grateful for these lovely ladies and all the other people and strangers who make my life colorful and meaningful when I’m in doubt
Random quote I was obsessed with 3 years ago:
“Our inability to live entirely in the present (like most animals do), combined with our inability to see very far into the future, makes us strange in-between creatures, neither beast nor prophet” – A. Roy
Posted: November 20, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
Today is November 20th and I have exactly a month till I am done with my undergraduate career!! It is SURREAL! <- my favorite word to describe the indescribable. The other 3 have reflected on their Moho experience earlier in the year.. I didn’t think my time would come this fast. I’m still grappling with the floods of memories and random situations we’ve landed ourselves and the valuable lessons I’ve learned along the 4 years in my New England Education. However, today I’ll just focus on the not so distant memories.
Halloween this year was definitely extraordinary. It was the first time in my life that it snowed in October. The east coast blizzard was insane. Still feels unreal. This was the first weekend I actually decided to be socialy engaged as I had taken it upon myself to be a recluse in my last semester. Since Halloween fell on a Monday, the Halloween weekend began on the 29th and I found myself at Lit in Amherst. With never any excitement to dress up for the occasion, I wore a sparkly white dress and a tiara made out of cotton.. which came to a conclusion that I was “snow” or “heaven.” You can kind of see my fail attempt at the Ombre Hair.
The next night was my friend’s thesis performance at Amherst College . And ironically enough, it started snowing around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and by the time I got on the bus to Amherst, it was a major blizzard but it didn’t seem to phase me. It was a Winter Wonderland with NO ONE AROUND. The play was excellent and I was on my way back walking across campus with a friend. Oh dear lord, it felt like I was in one of those adventure movies with snow flying in my face at every direction and branches falling off trees around me. Then electric lines getting struck by falling branches lashing out a blue-ish/green lightning across the sky.
It was quite beautiful but also extremely dangerous to be out. Needless to say, I was stranded in Amherst College for the night. Luckily my wonderful friends had my back.
There was a blackout across campus and the whole valley actually, so the party I found myself in turned out to be a nice hang out with a diverse group of people. We stayed up all night chatting, listening to music, conversing in various languages and even created a new drink which I proudly call the “Snowman.” A huge drop of freshly fallen snow into a well blended cocktail. Slushie galore. Heres us demonstrating the making of the “Snowman.” Eugene (pictured below) themed the night as “The Winter Wonderland of Amherst Hipsterdom” which was pretty genius in the moment haha:
You can’t really see what I’m wearing but I wanted to wear the flower piece on my hair, and wore a pink dress, a theme for spring as my costume. Since I had on a striped cardigan, we decided that I was pollination. And oh yea, bumped into this couple dressed as Helga and Arnold (from my childhooood!!) at some point in the night, before the blackout:
I was able to get back to Moho the next day and we still had no power. I am TERRIFIED of the dark. But I am also terrified of leaving my door open at night and have random strangers walk in. So the blackout made me go to bed early. As I lay in the dark, it dawned upon me that time jumped at an accelerating rate that I couldn’t fathom!! It would be November on Tuesday! Which would mean, I’m graduating soon, still unemployed and I’m going to turn another year older -_-. That mini panic attack kept me up for awhile but I got through it. Its like I needed the light to go out in order to process what I needed to grapple with the immediate reality that felt so faraway. Anyhow, fast forward about a week later, and I was on my way to a birthday celebration/work event in NYC! One of the roughest weeks of my life. Anyhow, it was a cupcake filled birthday this year! Started with Ashley’s yummy homemade cupcakes for me (which I unfortunately do not have photos of ]= ), then Aileen and my traditional Baked by Melissa mini cupcakes, Jacs delicious vanilla homebaked cupcakes at the Prohibition event and finally the morning/breakfast cupcakes a La Amritha . Prohibition in Ella Lounge was a success (supercute venue with a live jazz band upstairs and a speakeasy downstairs), here are some photos from birthday/event. Also yay for Aileen and her polaroid camera, and Shirley for her photos <3.
Dirty thirty, only because I’m in denial of my real age -_-
Twas a good event and happy birthday . I’ve definitely developed an appreciation for cupcakes at this age lol.
Its that time of year!!
Posted: November 10, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »So today is 11/10/11 the eve of 11/11/11 aka my birthday!!
Heading down to NYC to meet up with Aileen and other friends to celebrate getting old ANNND to attend this cool event. I had going to a speakeasy on my bucketlist for my bday and I’ll be helping out so it all comes together. If you’re in NYC, do come check it out if you can .
Whiskey G1ass Studios and Dress Royale present PROHIBITION (prohibition-nyc.com):
Its 6am and I’m exhausted. Went through a process of retouching my new ombre hair and ended up with some ridiculous spotty, horrendous dyed hair. Not such a good idea on the eve of an event and one’s birthday. Oh well, I’m semi blondish and have some interesting stuff going on in my hair. I’ll post pictures from the event, worse comes to worse, I’ll resort to wearing a beanie as a sign of desperate measure.
OKAAAY, so I’ve been hooked on this Counting Back to One number by Beautiful Small Machines. SO catchy and fun. Makes me get pepped for the day. And dance. Stumbled upon this pretty fun mash up with Breakfast at Tiffanys. Gives the classic a hip spin. Although the movie is a complete bore (and racist) with the exception of the amazing costumes and a few gorgeous people (excuse me for sounding so shallow). Watch the video! The beat’s contagious
Happy November!! (my fave month)
xx
The First 48 and our Criminal Justice System
Posted: November 3, 2011 Filed under: Racism, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Being out of school has been a weird time for me. Before I could let out my frustrations with our world and this society through student activism–but now all I can do is tweet about it. Sometimes, as I sit in my warm cocoon of Northern Virginia suburbia, I feel so distanced from it all that i almost forget. Can you imagine? All those ECAASU workshops I organized, all those books on institutionalized racism I read, all of those lectures and panels on the prison industrial complex i’ve attended…how could I block it all out like this?
Today in an uncharacteristic move, I switched on the TV while eating lunch. I flipped through the channels and finally settled on Criminal Minds (I’m a sucker for psychological crime shows). Half an hour later, Criminal Minds was over and “The First 48″ came on. Apparently, it was a “real life” account of the first 48 hours following a homicide (the most crucial window to catch a murderer) as conducted by the police. The episode that followed was called “Shell Shocked/Cradle To The Grave.”
I had never seen the show before, so left the TV on. Unsurprisingly, the two cases featured were from urban areas around the United States (Memphis and Miami). Both centered around homicides involving impoverished black youth. Both contained references to drugs/narcotic dealings.
One of the cases (“Shell Shocked”) struck me in particular. It involved three young African American males. Robert was involved with an altercation with his childhood friend, Buck. And apparently, Buck’s cousin Raphael shot Robert in the commotion. The altercation had started over an argument over the price of a little bag of marijuana. Robert threatened to kill Buck and Raphael, and Raphael, shell shocked (he had been shot in the leg just a month earlier), panicked and pulled the trigger on Robert, unintentionally killing him.
I watched as the officers questioned a tearful Raphael, who was handsome, clearly regretful, and only nineteen. He admitted his guilt and explained that he was shell shocked from being shot earlier, so he had panicked when Robert angrily threatened to kill him and his cousin. In his ragged T-shirt, Raphael began to softly cry, all the while insisting that he and Robert had been long time friends, and that it had never been his intention to kill him.
My heart cried for him. Raphael was a boy. He was 19. He fought over a three dollar difference for a tiny bag of marijuana because three dollars meant that much. Because selling drugs was the way he lived. Maybe it was all he knew. He was born into a world, a society, a system that set him up for failure. In his hole-punctured t-shirt, he broke down because he was scared–he didn’t want to get shot, he had gotten shot once–so he pulled the trigger out of fright at Robert’s (most likely empty) threat.
But he received 20 years in prison. In twenty years he would be forty. And then what? The kid needed help. He needed psychological, emotional, mental help. Could we take the money in his court fees and prison fees and put it into finding him a therapist or counselor? Put him on a different track of life? Maybe education?
There are too many examples of similar cases, where underprivileged youth who may have so much to give, are trapped in a never-ending cycle of petty criminality and prison. Here in this black hole, their lives become ruined and their futures sucked from them. Then it’s just rinse and repeat.
I turned off the show after the announcer victoriously announced the 20 year prison sentence. So the police caught the “bad guy?”
Well, it wasn’t satisfying at all.
Just Stay With Me: Sai’s Debut in Kud Kheo Su!!
Posted: October 28, 2011 Filed under: Music, Uncategorized | Tags: emotional, jear, kud kheo su, laos, laos hiphop, sai, southeast asia, xay 1 Comment »One of my really good friends from high school recently began her career in the music industry. She’s the featured artist in Jear Pacific’s latest single, Kud Kheo Su. The video was shot over the summer in Vientiane, Laos and there are some great shots when the camera is focused on the two of them. She’s always had a great voice and was the guitarist for our Affirmation performance during our senior year at Madeira, I’m really excited for her .
If you’ve followed the trend in the music I post, you probably know that I’m a sucker for emotional songs, (for someone who is pretty warm most of the time, music really does bring out my sensitive and emotional side, so please bear with me 
)this has a good blend of hip hop and a ballad-y feel with an Asian flavour. Its very similar to Thai music but still special in its own way.
The song is about moving on from heartbreak. Its coming from a third person perspective. Jear raps about how you shouldn’t be sad and crying your eyes out for the guy who broke your heart,though it may seem like the end of the world, its really not.
The literal translation of Sai’s part:
What’s left is the heart that’s been crushed that it’s weak.
And the never ending tears that will help sooth the pain to open up new ways.
To get up again and fight, Open your heart to new people, new love.
And you won’t have to bear again … the sorrow that we have today…
if he/she wants to leave you, then just let him/her go already.
I’d like for you to move on. Just stay with me and be strong.
The emotions in both their voices make me feel the pain and sadness emoted despite not being able to understand Laos. Maybe its the familiarity of her voice which is comforting because we’ve been through a lot together, but I’m pretty sure its her talent and the quality of the song in general that makes its so amazing!! I honestly cannot STOP listening to this song. Check it out!! I’m hooked.
I hope its infectious to you as I found it .
The official MV:
AND heres an audio if you want to skip the dramatic video and just listen to the song on a playlist:
(I titled the post Stay With me because thats my favourite part of the song when shes singing in Laos and says “stay with me”, its the only part I understood so I captioned it that way)
