Bloody Halloween Nails

Happy Halloween!

I'm sure everyone's thought of their costumes for the Halloween party already, but no costume is complete without spooky nail art! I had a go at blood dripping nails today, and I think it's perfect nail art to go with any creepy outfit.

Scared yet? (Old witch's laugh in the background)

I used Chanel 503 cream nail polish to coat the nail, then Chanel 08 bright red polish to draw dripping blood and No7 100 dark burgundy colour to deepen the shade at the tip of nails. 
Now, I've recently bought Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat and couldn't recommend it more! It dries extremely quickly, you can even apply it on freshly painted nails, and it won't smudge nail art. It leaves a lovely glossy finish and is worth every penny, definitely the best top coat I've ever used. You can get it from here and see for yourself.

Now where did I put my fangs?

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Pumpkin Sunday

I love Sundays purely because it's all about having lots and lots of comforting food, some good wine and watching films with boyfriend (for some weird reason it's always something with Denzel Washington in it). Yesterday was not quite my typical Sunday - it did involve lots of yummy food and wine, but no boyfriend or Denzel. Instead there were a couple of girlfriends and a pumpkin.   
We made chicken and prawn paella, which was so good that Agne and I had to have cheeky seconds and very naughty thirds!  And when we couldn't eat any more, we got down to pumpkin carving business.

 

Here's Polina with her face clearly saying 'this pumpkin is gonna get it!'

Work in progress, lookin' good already Mr. Pumpkin!

 

 

Our work is done! What do you think?

Special thanks to Polina, who introduced us to a pumpkin haha!

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Day in London

My friend and I planned a trip to London - originally it was meant to involve us going to Autumn Graduate Fair, but that just didn't seem as fun as visiting galleries around the capital. So we did that instead! 
My sister lives in London, so she was glad to join us for a day of artsy fun. We headed to Chelsea's Saatchi Gallery, which is a temporary home for The Little Black Jacket photographic exhibition.

113 Karl Lagerfeld's photographs show the timeless beauty of CHANEL's iconic black jacket, modelled on a range of actresses, singers and models whilst reflecting their own unique styles in each image .

 

In the middle of one of the rooms there are piles of posters with three different prints by K. Lagerfeld, and the guests of the exhibition are welcome to take one home.

Lina, me and Agne. Oh wait, it's not Agne, but an overly excited employee of the gallery.  

Take two. Me, Lina and Agne.

Without wasting no time we headed to Shoreditch to grab a quick bite of Caribbean food, followed by StolenSpace Gallery, which is hosting an exhibition of works by Shepard Fairey. 

 

After wandering around in the Brick Lane, and visiting few of it's vintage shops,  we all needed to rest our feet and revive ourselves with a nice hot coffee. We quickly regained our strength, met another friend in town and as some of us were getting slightly peckish and others extremely hungry, we decided to go to Leon in Soho to quench our thirst with red wine while trying out their new menu. We ordered lots of small dishes, which are healthy, hearty and proved the beliefs of Leon restaurants - the food should taste good and do you good.

After some yummy deserts and more wine Agne and I had to catch the train back to Birmingham, which made us quite sad, so we made sure we have a bottle of red wine for the train to keep us entertained! 

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Easy Sticky Chicken

The recipes I enjoy most are the easy and quick ones. This one is inspired by Jamie's 15 Minute Meals. The chicken is truly sticky, crunchy, and tender (and only takes around 15 minutes to make!).

I used:

500g skinless boneless chicken thighs
2 tbsp Chinese 5 spice
a glug of olive oil
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tbsp sesame seeds
pinch of salt and pepper  

Get yourself a large piece of grease proof paper and pop your chicken thighs on it, season with some salt, pepper and Chinese 5 spice. 

Toss it all until it's nicely coated in the spices, then fold one side of the paper over the chicken and pound it with either a meat tenderizer, rolling pin, or empty wine bottle - my choice of gun. This will flatten the chicken pieces - they will cook quicker and also become tender.
Pop them in a hot griddle pan with olive oil and leave to cook for about 5 minutes, turning them when they are nice and golden. Remove any excess fat from the pan and drizzle your chicken with sweet chilli sauce and sesame seeds.

Chicken will look golden, charred, gooey and sticky, now keep it cooking in the pan until the sesame seeds turn golden too, and... It's ready! You can slice it and serve over anything you like - egg fried rice, noodles or a salad, I made noodles dressed with Thai dressing and sprinkled some coriander and spring onions on top.

For the dressing I used:

small piece of ginger
clove of garlic
small bunch of coriander
half of lime
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
dash of fish sauce

Finely chop all the hard ingredients, mix with oil, soy and fish sauce, heat it in the pan for few minutes and poor over your noodles. Yum.

Enjoy! 

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The Hardest Part

Cheers to a new blog of mine. 

 

I was brewing the thought about a blog for a while now, and it took me quite long to sit down and start it, but here it is. 

Getting started is the hardest part, one might say, and I have to agree. It took me so long, because I wanted my blog to be just perfect and every detail to be thought of. On this very foggy evening my mind cleared up and I realised this blog would probably never happen, if all I did, was think  - I poured myself a glass of mulled wine (I'm sure I will do a recipe post for it in near future) and got blogging.

The hardest part is now over, yay!

E.

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