FingerPaints Fall Fashionista

Haute Taupe. Pretty, but I've got a million colors like it. It is a gorgeous taupe, and has great application.

Purple Pinstripe. A very pretty purple taupe. A little bit dusty, I like it.


Cordur-orange. A gorgeous slightly burnt orange. When I say slightly, I mean SLIGHTLY. It's just barely barley burnt. I love it. It's dreamy.


Catwalk Queen. OMG. I love this dusty mustardy yellow. It reminds me of dijon mustard, only dustier. This is such an ugly/pretty color. It's quite possibly my favorite from this collection.


Military Green. Love! What a gorgeous dusty camo green.


Vintage Velvet. One coat. Ok, let me say it again. ONE COAT. Look at how gorgeous and saturated this color is? A dusty teal, leaning a tiny bit green. Wow.


To-teally Chic. Also one coat. Beautiful blue. Aaaah....

I really thing FingerPaints hit it out of the park with this one. I really like this collection. There are a few snorey-borey colors, but if you didn't already have them this would be a good opportunity to get them. I think these all had great formulas, a few one coaters, the rest were two coats.

What do you think?

Banana Coffee Cake

There can't be a thing wrong with coffee cake throw in a banana or two and you have a GREAT coffee cake. I found this recipe in a book A Sheetcake Named Desire by Jacklyn Brady. I tweaked it a bit to suit my own tastes, and I hope you love the results as much as we do!

Ingredients:
2/3 c packed brown sugar
2/3 c walnuts or pecans (optional)
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 c butter, softened
3/4 c granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 1/4 c ripe banana, mashed
2 Tbsp greek yogurt (can use sour cream)
1 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8x8x2 pan ( I used a long loaf tin).
In a small bowl combine brown sugar, cinnamon and nuts. Set aside.
In a large bowl beat butter, sugar and egg until fluffy. Add bananas, sour cream, and milk. Mix well. Beat in dry ingredients until just blended.
Spread half the batter in your pan, cover with half of the cinnamon sugar mixture. Carefully spread the remaining batter over the cinnamon sugar. Top with the remaining cinnamon sugar. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, between 40 and 50 minutes. Cool in pan. Can be served warm or room temperature. Can also be frozen.


Brown sugar.

Add in your cinnamon and nuts if using. Set aside.

Cream together butter, sugar, and egg.

Add mashed bananas, greek yogurt, milk, and vanilla.

Mmmmm banana....

Add in the dry ingredients.

Mix until smooth.

Add just over half the batter to your greased pan.

Cover with half the cinnamon sugar.
Repeat.

I added some butterscotch chips to the top on my cake. You can omit these, or use chocolate.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes.



Enjoy!

Jambalaya

I love comfort food. And one pot meals. And anything that is quick to make. This dish is all three. It seems involved... but it's really not. This is basically just making a stew. Not a whole lot different than that. I love jambalaya for it's richness, it's a simple dish, with a whole punch of flavor.

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, diced
2 bell peppers, diced (I used green but I'll be red would be lovely too)
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
6 oz sausage andouille prefered, I used Hot Italian
1 c uncooked, long grain rice
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp garlic salt
1 bay leaf
2 c chicken broth (one box o' stock)
3/4 c water
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes, juices too
1/2 lb peeled and deveined shrimp
2 Tbsp chopped parsley

In a large pot saute sausage until almost done. Add in onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Saute about 5 minutes over medium heat, until veg is softened. Add rice and the next 7 ingredients (through bay leaf), cook about two minutes. Add tomato paste and warm through, get it a nice brownish color. Then add your chicken broth, water, hot sauce, and tomatoes. Bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer about 20 minutes. Stir a few times, to make sure your rice isn't sticking too much. Add shrimp and cook about 5 minutes until they're nice and pink. Let stand 5 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.


The line-up.

Browning the sausage.

Get the veg in the pot.

Saute about 5 minutes until nice and soft.

Add the rice.

And the spices.

Saute about two minutes.

Add the tomato paste. Get it nice and warm.

Then in goes all the liquid.

Insert pictures with shrimp here... apparently none of mine turned out.




Sprinkle with parsley and enjoy!

Do you have a favorite one pot dinner?

FingerPaints Merry & Bright Holiday 2011

Ok... I have to be honest here... this collection doesn't WOW me. It's a perfectly lovely collection, don't get me wrong. But I don't feel any pizzaz. It's very... meh... been done before.

The glitters in this collection are kind of awesome. They're very fine glitter, so they give a little bit of a different look. I used two coats and also did single coats pics foryou so that you can see how they cover. The colors are reminiscent of the Color Club Glitter Vixen collection. Onto the pics!


Frosty Night one coat.



Frosty Night two coats. Overall I really like this glitter. It's a nice bright silver. These are shiny, but not sparkley. If you are looking for sparkle... look elsewhere.



Yule Be Merry two coats. While this is not a color I would wear, it is very pretty. A coral leaning pink base with bright pink micro-shimmer. This is quite glowy in real life, in fact I don't know if you can tell, but it sort of freaked my camera out. This would be gorgeous with a tan... which I obviously do not have.

Santa Kisses one coat.




Santa Kisses two coats. This is the most "Christmasy" color in the collection. It is a gorgeous red glitter. Very very reflective. You can see in a few of the pictures there is a little bit of a gold reflect? That is actually the sky outside my window... it's that reflective. Reflective like metal, these just do not sparkle unfortunately.


Comet's Collar two coats. This could probably have used a third coat, you can see a bit of VNL. Probably the most original color in this collection. A yellow toned olivey green. Lighter than we saw in any of last years christmas collections. This is a bit glass flecked, and a bit micro shimmery. I can't quite tell which overpowers the other. The micro shimmer is multi-colored, looks to be a darker green, gold and rust to me.

Drummer Boy one coat.



Drummer Boy two coats. Another glitter. A gorgeous sky blue. Same coverage as the other glitters.




Winter Sky one coat. Yeah you read that right. One coat. This one was a little goopy to be honest. It needed thinner right off the bat. Although I did not thin it very much. One coat was perfect and wore nicely with no bubbling. I really dig this color. I'm surprised to find it in a holiday collection though. This doesn't really scream winter/christmas to me. The shimmer was very hard for my camera to capture for some reason, but it is very subtle.

Overall I liked these. I don't think they were super original, many are colors I've seen before or close to. I do like how fine the glitters are, but I also have those colors of glitter already. I'm honestly a little bit disappointed in FingerPaints. The last two years had totally bang-up collections so I feel like this year is a bit lackluster compared to those. I mean... can you beat Icy Iris and Mistletoe Mischief? I thought not.

What are your thoughts?