Friday Fashion: If My Blog was an Outfit

If My Blog was an Outfit by jaythejedi featuring black boots

I saw this post idea on two blogs I follow (Lariats and Lavender and My Life as a Teacup), and I loved it.  The link-up for it is over but I still wanted to make the outfit version of my blog, and I love how it turned out.

If my blog was an outfit, it would be cute, edgy, a little weird, and pretty casual.  This prompt has also made me think of some new blog design ideas.  I also really like the idea of an outfit as a moodboard, even though that wasn't the intent.

Gluten Free Finds: The Best Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix

My mom sent me a care package full of gluten-free baking mixes and other gluten-free foods.  One of the items in it was this pizza crust mix.  If you know anything about gluten-free food, you know that you need to enter into any new-to-you food situation with very low expectations.  I expected this pizza crust to be bland, weird-textured, and thin.  And I was pleasantly surprised to find it was just the opposite.  I can honestly say that this is the best pizza crust I've ever had.  Period.  And I'm including gluten crusts I've had in the past!  This beats any restaurant, delivery, or frozen pizza crust I've ever had.

This is the box for the pizza mix.  It's King Arthur Flour brand, which I've never heard of before.  I can't find this exact one, but on their website I found a gluten-free bread and pizza mix, which might be the same thing.  It's gluten-free, soy-free, and nut-free.  It makes two crusts or one giant crust, and I went for the one giant crust.  The crust takes about five minutes to mix up, then 1 hour to rise in 2 30-minute increments.  It's really easy to make and the instructions worked out perfectly for me.  After it rose for 30 minutes, it didn't really look like it rose at all and I was a little worried, but it turned out great.

This pizza crust turned out thick, golden brown, flaky, and delicious.  I topped it with alfredo sauce, five slices of bacon chopped up, baby bella mushrooms, artichoke hearts, three kinds of shredded cheese (mozzarella, Parmesan, and mild cheddar), avocado, and tomato.  I also added a secret spice blend.  I drizzled the whole thing with the bacon grease before popping it into the oven.  That's how you make a pizza extra good.

Here's a link to King Arthur Flour's other gluten-free mixes, which I'll definitely have to try in the future.  Tell your wallet I'm sorry.

Watching, Playing, Reading #5

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Watching:

Community: (which the picture above is from) I actually signed up for Hulu Plus just so I could watch this show and it was so worth it!  You can get a free trial of Hulu Plus here and if you sign up for a free trial there I'll get two weeks free, so everybody wins!  I love this show so much.  It's about a group of people who form a study group at a community college and all their crazy adventures and crazy professors.  It's zany and witty and silly and sometimes emotional.  And the characters are so great.  My favorites are definitely Troy and Abed.  They play so well off of each other.  I finished watching all of the seasons in less than a week.  No regrets.

I highly recommend this show to everyone who likes shows such as The Office, Parks and Recreation, How I Met Your Mother, and 30 Rock.

Firefly: on Netflix; I watched all of it in one day.  I loved it and I want more.  My favorite characters were River, Simon, and Kaylee.  Simon and River's relationship as brother and sister is so beautiful.  And Kaylee and Simon obviously really like each other but they're both super awkward about it and it's adorable.  If you don't know, this show is about a group of people flying through space together in the future and undergoing various criminal adventures with lots of danger.  It's so much better than my description made it sound, and it's got that great Joss Whedon humor that you might have enjoyed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I would recommend this show to everybody.  Seriously, if you haven't seen it go watch it right now.

About a Boy: a newer series on Hulu; I am enjoying it so far.  It's got an uptight mom, a player neighbor man, and a kid who just wants to do kid things like have fun and eat tasty food.  The kid took quite a liking to the neighbor guy, but will the guy learn anything from the kid?  We'll see.

I won't recommend this one just yet because it's just three episodes in, but I do like what I've seen so far, so if you've got some time it's worth checking out.

Breaking Bad: on Netflix; I thought I should see what all of the fuss was about so I started watching it.  I watched a few episodes but it was too depressing for me, especially with the cancer thing.  I won't be watching any more of it.  However it was a very good show.  It just made me too sad.

Haunter: on Netflix;  I loved this movie.  It was slightly like The Lovely Bones in that the main character is a girl who was murdered and is trying to save a living girl from the same horrible fate.  But that is where the similarities end.  It's a wonderfully creepy movie that keeps your brain engaged the whole time.

I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys creepy mind-bending movies that keep you guessing.

An Invisible Sign: on Netflix; I loved this one too.  It's about a young woman who becomes a teacher but she has some issues and she's slowly unraveling.  She thinks that numbers are the answer to all of her problems.  A little girl in her class has some problems of her own and the two form a bond.  This movie gave me a lot of feelings.  Sidenote: I love all of Mona Grey's outfits.

I would recommend this to people who are fascinated by mental illness.

Upside Down: on Netflix; a really unique sci-fi movie, at least as far as I've seen.  Two planets orbit next to each other, one above and one below and have equal but opposite gravitational pull.  The people above are rich and the people below are poor.  The movie focuses on what happens when a boy from the lower world meets a girl from the upper world and how it changes both worlds forever.  I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  (I really loved it, actually, but I've already said that about just about everything.)

I would recommend it to everyone who enjoys beautiful sci-fi/fantasy landscapes and thought-provoking concepts.

Side Effects: on Netflix; So good!  It's about a wife who is very depressed and turns to a new medication with some very bad side effects.  There's a plot twist too.  I don't want to give anything away though.

I would recommend it to people who enjoy psychological thrillers.

The Eleventh Commandment: on Netflix; This movie is about a man escaping from a mental asylum and tracking down his uncle who put him there.  There is a serious plot twist in this one.

I would recommend it to everyone who likes very cheesy movies.  The plot is really good though.

Misbegotten:  on Netflix; This movie is about a women who gets pregnant through artificial insemination, but her joy is cut short when the psychopathic donor of the sperm tracks her down.

I would recommend this to people who like movies with psychopaths.

The Silence of the Lambs: I finally watched it and I don't know what took me so long!  I loved it.

Sightseers:  on Netflix; a dark comedy that I really enjoyed.  I don't want to give anything away but I can say that there are serial killers.

I would recommend it to anyone who liked God Bless America.

Playing:

Augmented Reality cards on my Nintendo 3DS, which G bought at a Black Friday sale and then realized he would never play it so he gave it to me.  The augmented reality cards are really cool.  You put them on a flat surface and then it looks like that surface is becoming a game.  You can have a dragon rise from your desk and then you have to battle it.  It's pretty cool.

Reading:

Soul Enchilada by David Macinnis Gill:  I bought it on Amazon because it sounded like it could be good.  It could be good with this plot, but I hate the main character!  I really can't stand her.  So it's been slow reading because she actually annoys me.  I will finish the book because I paid money for it and I'm no quitter, but it might take awhile.

Two for Tuesday: Weirdly Cute and Iluxo

Two for Tuesday is a post series where I'll be sharing two great Etsy shops and two of my favorite items from each one.  Click the image to go to the product on Etsy.

I may have featured the first shop on my blog before, but I don't care.  I love this jewelry.  The first shop is Weirdly Cute, which has tons of jewelry, all cute and unique, and sometimes weird (which is coincidentally how I like my men).  These are my two favorite pieces from her shop.

This necklace is so cute and incredibly unique.  And it will last a lot longer than an actual goldfish would.

I'm always drawn to weather-themed jewelry and yet I don't own any.  I can't wear studs but these are still amazing.

The second shop this week is Iluxo, which contains some amazing jewelry, as well as home decor and accessories.  It would have been hard to choose two favorites if I hadn't excluded the jewelry from my choices, in the interest of promoting a variety of products.  But you should seriously check out the jewelry; it's amazing and the wooden pieces are so intricate and lovely!  Here are my two favorite items from Iluxo, and they're both clocks.

This clock is both gorgeously detailed and simple at the same time. (Pun not intended.)

I tend to really gravitate toward things with cute woodland creatures and this stunning modern cuckoo clock is no exception.

It's Time for an Art Sale!

I sell some products with my art on it in my Society6 shop and if you click this link, you can buy any of them (except Framed Art Prints, Stretched Canvases and Throw Pillows with insert.) for $5 off with free shipping!  This sale ends on March 9 (Sunday) at midnight Pacific Time.

This is just one of the photos you can buy as a print, tote bag, mug, phone skin, throw pillow, and more!  (I really want it as a throw pillow!)

Update: The sale is over, but you can still buy my products here if you would like to.

Lately

I've been so busy and kind of neglected my blog, but I have a lot of cool post ideas floating around in my brain.  I've had three job interviews in just two weeks, compared to last time when I was unemployed and had three job interviews in two years!  I had two job interviews last Tuesday, one for a job in a warehouse, a jewelry supply warehouse, but I don't think I would like it very much.  The second interview was to be a video game tester and I really want to do that!  Seriously, how cool would it be to play video games for a living?!  And the third job interview was to photograph products and list them online for a scuba shop.  It seems like a really cool job and the people who work there, including the boss, are all really nice and friendly.  I did the best on that interview and my fingers are crossed.

Aside from that I've been working as much as I can, because my boss got 19 orders after telling her reps to stop sending orders.  So we are filling these orders and then she is out of business.  I even worked on Saturday last week!  The good thing that has come out of this is that my boss gave me a whole lot of free jewelry supplies and jewelry, because she doesn't want to take the time to sell it or haul it away.  So I have been very inspired lately and already sold two out of three necklaces I made this week!  The supplies in the above picture are just a tiny bit of the stuff that I have ideas for making jewelry with but they aren't fully formed yet.

How have you all been?  Despite being so busy, I've actually been having really good days lately, especially yesterday.  I went to work, had a great job interview, hung out with an old friend, made some new friends, gave them some free necklaces and sold others, had a barbecue with them, and got ice cream, plus had a fun jam session.  It was the best day I've had in as long as I can remember.