I filed this under Wellness because there’s nothing like taking an evening to celebrate yourself and your best babes.
I honestly never knew my friends and I were celebrating Galentine’s Day until I saw it mentioned in Cosmo years ago. I just assumed we were partaking in our annual girls night where we’d put on a fancy dress and drink champagne on, or around Valentine’s Day … as part of our love strike. I’m kidding!
No fancy dresses are actually required 😉
So whether you’re taking some time to cheers to your damn self or to clink with your bests, here’s some things that’ll make your week even more fun. Oh and don’t forget, on the 15th chocolates go on sale babe! I call that retail therapy.
Enjoying a cozy night in? My Gift Guide For Her includes the coziest robe and the cheese platter you see here on my coffee table … piled high with cheeses, crackers, and chocolate. So call over the crew, make this spritzer here, and dance to the 80’s. And that’s what I call a top night!!!
Pink Margarita Spritzer
For you and your best babes here's a refreshing spritzer that you can enjoy with or without alcohol <3
Crush the mint leaves with the lime juice in a tumbler and add in the grapefruit juice and coconut water
Mix together in a shaker with ice until chilled
Strain into an ice filled cup
Top with seltzer water, fresh mint, and a lime wedge. For extra fun add in a splash of champagne 😉
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How will you be spending the evening? Celebrating yourself? Your best babes? A loved one? Tell me I’m not the only one who’ll be noching on cheese and cheersing myself <3 Cheers to YOU xoxo
Step 1: Call up all your best girls (or text, who even calls anymore)
Step 2: Stock up on your go to beverage … I either grab for vodka or wine and one of my favorites right now is a buttery white wine, La Crema.
Step 3: Snack time. The usual suspects are an assortment of cheeses, butter crackers, and some fruit for the wine like pomegranate seeds or blue berries! Don’t forget the chocolates, pairing wine and chocolates is one of the yummiest combinations – preferably ones with almonds in them nommms!
Step 4: Eat, drink, be merry, repeat.
Girls night, date night, time by myself to read or draw, this combination is hands down my preferred method of winding down the day … I mean cheese and wine! All your missing is the bread and ice-cream!
What is your favorite snack/beverage combo for a Netflix and chill night? You can never have too many treats to choose from!
Just in time for the weekend, you know what that means…Cocktails, the ones with fruit! I am so excited to have my partner in crime and Hapa sister, Miya, guest blog for us this week! She is my other Hapa half from our channel Hapa Hour, and today she shares with us her refreshing and healthy twist to the every day cocktail. ————-
I’m hosting a girl’s afternoon this weekend! It’s supposed to be another hot week so I wanted to create a refreshing and more ‘healthy’ version of the cocktail. Since I’m not a fan of really sweet drinks made with artificial flavors, I chose to use real fruit and fresh ingredients to blend together.
I’m picky with my alcohol choices and usually get the best quality possible, to avoid those much anticipated morning headaches we all love. Even just one drink from cheap alcohol and I wake up feeling like, I ran a marathon – in the sun – all day – all while drinking a dozen mixed drinks! No bueno.
I’m not particularly a vodka drinker but I recently found one that is actually mush tastier than your traditional vodka AND it’s the healthier choice! VEEV, an acai liqueur, hand crafted from acai-berries and other natural ingredients. It is the key ingredient in today’s mixer. So here’s what I made for the girls, it was a hit!
Combine the fresh strawberries, pineapple juice, lime juice, and ice – and blend together in a blender or ninja for just a few seconds.
Add in the 1 fluid ounce of VEEV
Keep the cups in the fridge for 10 minutes before serving. Can be garnished with mint or a lime wedge, and VOILA!
This drink is so easy to make and your guests will love it, I promise. Whenever I make this drink I feel instantly glamorous and grown up … like I’m in an episode of Sex In The City or something. Well you know what I mean!
Enjoy and please remember to drink responsibly and be a good friend, don’t let anyone drink and drive 😉
Ah girls night! A time for us ladies to get together with our closest girlfriends, crowd around good food, good music, and catch up! I really love any reason to get together with my friends, but I especially can’t wait to see them when I’ve had one of those ‘longest days weeks ever’ kind of moments. It’s definitely the busy season…it’s the summer season, wedding season, and baby shower season (am I right?!), so I’ve been traveling a ton. An awesome girls night with amazing girls was definitely in order…from left to right, this is Karissa, myself, Sarah, and Whitney. Alexandra is here too, but behind the camera.
I called up my good friend Sarah…I can always count on her. I can also count on her to be organized when I’m feeling flustered so we put together a quick menu, a list of fun things to do for our girls night, and reached out to some friends! We invited Whitney who is a colleague of Sarah’s and whom I’d met many times before and adored. She is sweet and savvy, the girl just knows how to make you smile. We also invited Karissa, who is the girlfriend of one of our mutual friends (who’s just as awesome) and she is the kind of girl you always want to be around because she’s just an amazing energy. And we also reached out to Alexandra, Sarah’s neighbor who is a SUPER talented photographer (all of the photos you’ll see today are works of her). She is the neighbor you wish you had because she bakes home made cookies for everyone in the building AND shares her basil plant with anyone who wishes to take some from her porch! I mean I’ve never even met my neighbors after three years yet alone share a love fern with them. Just an incredible group of girls and our night was set!
www.alexandrabrandlphotography.com
Arrived late having come from a meeting down town, having fought traffic….having moved my life square a bagillion times that day, it was SUCH a moment to arrive to smiling faces and a yummy spread of food! On the menu (and already set up on the table may I add): two kinds of red wines, hummus and chips, peppermint bark, home made pico de gallo, home made chocolate chip brownies, home made crusted zucchini rounds, and my STORE bought cheese platter…womp womp . Note to self: Blue cheese does NOT taste like GOAT cheese, nor does it even sound the same I don’t know how that even happened to me.
We sat around the best food, had the best conversations, and then moved the party into the living room where we popped on some tunes and got lost in girly things. They say that when women get together that all they do is polish their nails, braid one another’s hair, and talk about boys. Well they’d be right ……except for the braid part. Next time. Besides the smelly feet cheese and rosemary crackers… I also brought along with me the new… no light needed Sally Hansen® Miracle Gelâ„¢ polishes, and I brought along three colors; Pink Cadillaquer, Hydro Electric, and Purplexed. We sat around the table, dove into the colors and here is what we did!
The photo above is our model pose…how we would pose if we were hand models…which I mean, we totally could be! Posing, pampering, and giggelfests…I had so much fun with these ladies and I can’t thank Alexandra enough for capturing these moments. You won’t see her in any of the photos because she was the magic behind them!
So I’ve been a long time lover of salon gel manicures. Being so busy, I don’t have time to fuss over my nails, to have them chip or peel on me, or to even deal with the fuss of purchasing a UV light for home so that I could potentially do them myself. However this is a great way to get that salon look, at home, and the polishes were awesome not at all fussy. I’d suggest applying 2-3 nice thick, even coats of your chosen color onto your nail, wait a few minutes and then apply the top coat. The polishes dry pretty quickly, as we learned by doing the ‘test’, where you touch your nails together and if they don’t stick they’re ready. And they were ‘ready’ quicker than I’d expected them to be.
The brush has got to be my favorite thing about the polishes aside from the vibrant colors. It’s not too thick or thin, or too square (you know what I mean here, totally important), it takes the shape of your nail bed quickly, and applies the color evenly. If you choose a more transparent color like Pink Cadillaquer, I’d suggest making a ‘double lined’ kind of pattern on your nail with the color, to be sure that you cover your entire nail and that the polish is distributed evenly. On Sarah is Purplexed, a deep purple, and Karissa is wearing Pink Cadillaquer, an all around favorite- a pastel pink rich in color.
Whitney and Alexandra have Hydro Electric on, a gorgeous hue of blue, and I used both Pink Cadillaquer and Purplexed to recreate my favorite cupcake pattern on my nails but of course! My reason….”sometimes you want to say hi with one color, and goodbye with another color!”. I crack myself up! It’s been a few days now since our pampering party/girls night and my nails have held up really nicely AND I get to say hello with one color and goodbye with another.
I highly recommend spending an evening with your friends, catching up, slowing down, having fun, and just remembering that the world may be moving quickly but we have people around us to keep us grounded. Amen for that! If you want to enter for a chance to win your very own set of these awesome polishes (I suggest you do, I mean..girls night!) simply enter the #PerfectPairSweeps <—- this is the hash tag you’re going to want to use when you submit a photo of YOUR own #MiracleMani to enter to win, and you can submit that here.
Please TAG me also when you enter so that I can see all of your pampering parties, what your nails look like, and can live vicariously through your girls night! I’m @Jess_Lizama on both Twitter and Instagram. I’ve also included all of our yummy recipes below so you can try them out at your next girls night or get together and let me know how it turns out!
Thus my goal for the rest of the year is to each month set aside time for myself, time with my friends, and time to reflect. We all need that sometimes and shouldn’t feel guilty or unproductive when you do. I promise you’ll tackle life so much more refreshed and relaxed the next day when you take a day to yourself. Big hugs to my Sarah, Whitney, Karissa, and Alexandra for spending the evening with me, talking all things life and love… like girls do, and let’s do more of this ladies!
Please check out more of Alexandra’s work here,she is a fantastic photographer and amazing at capturing moments.
Have a great weekend and I hope you get a lil you time in really soon!
xoxo-
Jess
The noms:
Chipotle Brownies (thanks to Sarah!): 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 3/4 teaspoon chipotle powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces 2 ounces peanut butter chocolate chips 3 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped 3 eggs 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/3 cup sour cream 2/3 cup chocolate chunks Heat oven to 325 degrees, butter and flour an 8×8 inch baking pan. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, chipotle powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside. In a medium saucepan bring 1 inch of water to a simmer. Add butter, peanut butter and semisweet chocolates to a metal bowl large enough to sit on top of the saucepan. Melt ingredients, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir until smooth. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, combine eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Whisk on high until slightly thickened, 1 to 2 minutes. Pour in the melted chocolate mixture and whisk on medium for 30 seconds. Add the flour mixture and whisk on low for 30 seconds. Add sour cream and whisk on medium for 30 seconds. Stir in chocolate chunks by hand. Bake at 325 degrees for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes. *best ever- Zucchini Parmesan Crisps (thanks to Karissa): 2-3 medium zucchini olive oil or coconut oil 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan 1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper Preheat your oven to 450 degrees and coat a baking sheet with cooking spray or line with wax paper. Slice the zucchini into 1/4 inch thick rounds. In a medium bowl, toss the zucchini into the oil and in a smaller bowl combine the cheese, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper. Dip each zucchini round into the cheese mixture, coating it evenly on both sides of it, and then press the coating onto the rounds for the mixture to stick. Place the rounds in a single layer on the baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until browned and crisp. Enjoy!
Sally Hansen® Miracle Gel™ At Last! Gel without the light!
Disclosure: Compensation was provided by Sally Hansen® via Mode Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Sally Hansen®.
Oh it tastes even better than it sounds! Welcome to day 2 of our, 6 courses in 6 days, menu extravaganza! Today we’re making a bacon wrapped pork tenderloin with rosemary and cumin, a top a bed of creamy coconut rice, and then topped with mango chutney! Mango chutney! I mean, I can’t even describe how delicious this dish is! When people came over I kept blurting out what it was before Fr. Leo even got a chance to plate it! So wipe the drool and grab a fork, here we go!
So start the rice first so that by the time everything is prepared, you can just let it sit in the pot or in the rice cooker until you’re ready to plate this amazingness! The coconut rice is so complimentary to the savory bacon wrapped pork tenderloin, and the sweetness of the mango chutney just puts it right over the edge. This is great for a dinner get together, or in my case, a birthday dinner!
So for the coconut rice:
-2 1/2 cups cooked basmati brown rice (you can use whichever rice you prefer)
-1/2 can full fat coconut milk
-1 teaspoon sea salt
-1 teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper
-1 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Cook the rice how you normally choose to do and then when it is done, add in all of the spices and coconut milk and stir. Set this aside until everything is ready.
For the bacon wrapped pork tenderloin:
-Pork tenderloin
-4-5 slices bacon
-1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
-2 teaspoons rosemary (adds the woodsy- piney flavor)
-salt
-fresh cracked black pepper
Crack the pepper over the pork tenderloin, sprinkle on the cumin, rosemary, and sea salt, and rub it all into the tenderloin.
Wrap the tenderloin in the bacon by laying out the bacon horizontally next to one another and then placing the rubbed tenderloin at one end of the bacon, and wrapping it to the other end until the tenderloin is fully wrapped in bacon.
Pre heat your oven to 500 degrees and allow the tenderloin to cook for about 10 minutes and then drop the temperature to 350 degrees and cook for an additional 20-25 minutes until the bacon is nice and crisp. Set aside.
Now it’s time for the topping, the mango chutney! You’ll need:
-2 mangoes
-2 oranges
-red wine vinegar
-1/4 cup of VERY finely chopped red onion
-freshly chopped cilantro
-freshly chopped parsley (this combined with the cilantro will be about 1/4 cup)
– 2 teaspoons sea salt
-cracked fresh black pepper
– 1 tablespoon olive oil
– 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar (this cooks the onion down)
Cube the mango and scoop out the squares into a bowl. Add in the finely chopped onion, and the rest of the spices and herbs. Almost done!
Now for the plating of it! Slice your tenderloin and place a few slices on top of a mound of coconut rice, and then top it with a generous scoop of the mango chutney and enjoy devour! This is what it will look like! Mmmmm mmm mmmmmm!!!
This dish was sweet and savory, had a tropical twist with the coconut notes in the rice, and filling but not enough to where you’re gonna want to un button that top fly button! Give this a try and when you do tag me on Instagram and Twitter so I can drool over this food porn photo! I mean, I think this is by far one of my most favorite dishes ever. So tropical, so yummy, so enjoy!!!
Big huuuge thank you to Fr. Leo for coming out and cooking for us all, check out his site, he’s the best cook! I mean he beat Bobby Flay!!!!! haha 😉 http://gracebeforemeals.com/
It’s cook out season! The air is cooler and fresher, and it stays warmer out longer, thanks to Mr. Sun not going away too quickly these days. So what better way to kick off the weekend than with an Asian slider recipe on toasted buns, and home made cilantro aioli! So it was my birthday last week and our dear friend Fr. Leo came by to treat some friends and I to this incredible 6 course meal! So grab your appetite and lets start cookin because today is day one of six!
I’ll be giving you one recipe daily so that each night you’ll have a treat to cook! These were incredible! I mean Fr. Leo did beat Bobby Flay!!! Haha, can’t wait for you all to make these! 6 courses in 6 days! So hold on to something because these are amazing! They were crunchy yet moist, salty yet sweet, refreshing AND satiating!
So what’ll you’ll need for the Sliders:
1 TBLspoon Olive Oil
1/2 White Onion
Sea Salt
Cracked Black Pepper
1 TBLspoon Garlic Powder
1 tspspoon Ground ginger
2 TBLspoons brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
Ground beef (I used 80/20 lean portion)
Saute half of a finely chopped white onion in olive oil, then roll it into the ground beef, add in all the spices, and fry on a pan. You’ll fry them dry since there’s fat in the beef so no oil is necessary.
For the bun, simply take some hot dog buns and cut them in half, this makes them ‘mini’ buns. Then drizzle the inside halves with olive oil and lightly sprinkle them with sea salt, and bake them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 7-10 minutes. Just until they are crisp (not burnt) and set aside.
For the aioli:
2 cups mayo
3 TBLspoons sea salt
Sprinkle of fresh cracked black pepper
1 1/2 TBLspoons old bay seasoning
2 Teaspoons garlic powder
Fresh Cilantro (de-leaf whole, you’ll want the leaves to top off the sliders)
Mix all of the ingredients (except for the cilantro) together in a bowl and whisk well. Put each slider onto a toasted mini bun, swipe on some aioli, sprinkle with the fresh cilantro leaves and ENJOY!!! Badabinggg badaboom!!!
This recipe is so incredibly delicious and if you make it for a dinner party or get together you WILL be the coolest and best cook at the party! So give these a try and let me know what you think!
Tag me on Instagram and Twitter when you do! Here’s another photo of the yumminess you’ll put in your tummy, and of the night Fr. Leo cooked for myself and 9 of my loves! Check out the site for more recipes including the original one of this one!
