It Started with a Journal

Welp! This should be the last month in which I detail 3 beauty boxes, because I have canceled Ipsy. It's slightly too bad, because they've been doing all right the past couple of months, but overall it's still the one I look forward to the least, and I really don't need 3 subscriptions. I probably don't even need 2, but right now I wouldn't be able to choose between Birchbox or Sephora Play.

( On to August's stuff! )

All of my July boxes just arrived, so it's time to take a look at June's! Because I'm perpetually behind!

( Why does a year's worth seem like so many... )

Just got the last of the April boxes yesterday, so now I'm all caught up!

( Le April boxeez. )

I have a very long K-drama post I've been working on for ages, but I realized I'm totally behind on doing beauty box posts, so I'll do those first! It's super helpful to me to have these to refer back to, actually.

( What February wrought. )

This weekend, adelagia and I made kimchi! :D We are totes ready for when we're dating and/or married to Onew and Seo In-guk, respectively. LOL. (Links go to pics of said celebs, in case you're curious.)

Here's adelagia mixing up our batch. I had a HUGE tub, so there's more kimchi there than it might seem. More than six pounds worth!



I also made buchu (Asian chive) kimchi and dwaejigogi-bokkeum (spicy stir-fried pork), both of which were AMAZING. Soooooooo delicious. I only have a pic of the pork pre-cooking because I was too hungry to remember to take a picture of it after it was cooked. >< Also, I didn't have a pound's worth of pork belly, so subbed some shrimp instead. ALSO DELICIOUS. I think you could easily substitute with firm tofu for a more healthy version... which I may try in the near future. The buchu kimchi is a little too salty, which may or may not be because I didn't have enough chives... I halved the recipe, but I was using older chives, so I had to weed out a lot not-so-good ones. Anyway, I will probably use less fish sauce next time.



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One of my Christmas gifts to myself arrived today, and I'm soooooooooo happy. I love American Giant's stuff, especially their Essential Full-Zip Hoodie. I have several of the Classic, as well, but I like the lighter weight and softer feel of the Essential.

ANYWAY... Recently, they came out with a new product, a stadium blanket. I saw the email about it, but wasn't able to actually take a look until two hours later... and they were all sold out already! GRRRRR. A few days later, they said they'd made a limited quantity available again, and I was able to nab two in the only color that remained at that point, a heather navy. I would link it, but it looks like they're totally sold out now, and have even deleted those webpages. Sheesh. Like all their stuff, the blanket is really well made, heavy with quality material, and very warm. <333333

(I was going to link a promo code for 15% off, but it looks like it can only be sent through email. So let me know if you want it! And of course, I get something out of it as well, natch.)

I'm a big blanket person, kind of like Linus. Even when I'm not cold, I like having a blanket on me. It just feels so much cozier! Anyway, I have a lot of blankets.

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Watched another episode of Descendants of the Sun. I'm actually still OK with the show, despite the fact that, as expected, the two leads are already "broken up." It helps that I like the male lead, and the female lead isn't super annoying.

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I wasn't going to take any time off during the holidays -- other than the days off that everyone gets -- because it's a super quiet time anyway, and I was thinking I'd save my vacation days. Only... it turns out that I have so much vacation saved up (I can only carry over a year's worth, which for me at this point is 200 hours/5 weeks) that I would be forfeiting over 43 hours if I didn't take it! Which would be intolerable. So now I'm going to take Wed/Thu off, as well as all of next week. I still might be sacrificing a few hours, but that's better than 43. I don't work for free, yo.

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Speaking of work, we did a white elephant gift exchange... only I had my annual physical during that time so I couldn't actually participate. I contributed a set of R2D2/R2Q5 salt and pepper shakers and an R2D2 measuring cup set. (I may have little use for Star Wars, but I know other people love it, so that stuff makes for good anonymous gifts.) My manager played for me, and he had told me ahead of time what he'd gotten for the exchange (a cast-iron fondue set). Since they were going to allow "me" to go last, thus being able to nab whatever I wanted, I told him that that's what I wanted. I figured it was a safe bet -- I didn't know what random crap other people were going to bring, and I don't really trust my manager to know what I'd really want, so it seemed the most prudent course of action. I still need to get it from him, though.

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My December beauty boxes have arrived! I know, it's once a month but seems so much more frequent, doesn't it?

( What this month brought! )

Welp, I have reached the stage of my cold that I dread the most... wherein I cannot smell or taste anything. :( Sadly I did not discover this until I was in the shower, using some of the awesome Lush stuff that adelagia got me for Christmas. What a waste!! I held my loofah to my face and was like, "LET ME SMELL YOUUUUUUUUUUUU" but even inhaling as deeply as I could, I smelled nothing. Cry.

In positive news, my sense of melodrama is as healthy as ever.

13oct, I have not yet tried your onion and honey thing. Mostly because it sounds really disgusting. But now that I haven't got a sense of taste, maybe it's time.

So. Whipped feta. How come I never knew that's a thing? I love Mediterranean food, and Greek fries, but until the other night at Vios, I'd never heard of or had whipped feta. It was AH-MAZING. It came with their bucket of fries. I don't know how they get it to be that consistency (almost like ranch dressing), while retaining a lovely, strong feta flavor. Recipes I've searched for online typically call for mixing feta with cream cheese or yogurt, and I actually tried it with Greek yogurt today, but it didn't work. It was just too thick. With 4oz of feta, I should have used maybe 2 tbsp of yogurt... but that hardly did anything to turn it into a spread, so I used a whopping 6oz of yogurt. I even tried to add extra liquid using olive oil and lemon juice, but nothing worked. :/ And the result was something that was far too tart (even with my muted taste buds, I could tell), and still thicker than what I had the other night. I don't see how cream cheese is going to help with the consistency, though this does look pretty damn good. Anyway, now I have what basically tastes like a very flavorful sour cream, which isn't bad, but it's not the whipped feta I was aiming for. Sigh.

You know what's oddly satisfying? Frankenstein soap. You know all the little odds and ends of soaps that you've used down to a small sliver, then couldn't be bothered to use the rest and opened up a new bar? When those slivers (and sometimes I get lazy before the sliver point) reach critical mass, I like to soften them up, then smoosh them into one super Frankenstein soap, which makes it big enough to use again, and has all sort of interesting scents (if you use different Lush soaps like I do!).