Easy Noodle Salad Recipe for the Wannabe Skinny Girl

I've been feeling a bit under the weather lately with school so I'll compensate but posting a delicious recipe! Alright readers, I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm not born skinny like those other lil scrawny girls that can eat five Big Macs and stay a size zero. In fact, I had to work my butt off (it never did come off though) to get this way. I was actually quite unhealthy and I started dieting hardcore through puberty (which you definitely should not do). I was pretty toned until I stopped eating healthy and working out in my late teens. I was in love and as all love birds do, I ate everything in sight and gained a significant amount of weight. Now that I'm going past my teenager years, I'm starting to work out and eat healthy again. Its nice to see all those extra pounds shed right off!  I don't like to use the word diet because diet implies that there is a start and an end whereas you should always find time to eat healthy and exercise. 

It was incredibly hard to find a good balance between exercise and food as I did not want to over compensate delicious food for some stale crackers. So here I'm going to share with you a super quick and easy recipe that I make and keep in storage for those days when I'm super tempted to eat some fatty ramen. You can put this in the fridge and store it since its served cold :)

So for the sauce here are the ingredients:

• Olive Oil ( 2 tbs)
• Light Soy Sauce (2 1/2 tbs)
• Black Vinegar (1 tbs)
• White Vinegar (1/4 tsp)
• Chili Oil (1/2 tsp)
• Sesame Oil (3/4 tsp)
• Brown Sugar  (2 small packets)
• and Sriracha!!!!!!! (2 1/2 tsp or 3-4 large squirts)

(You also need garlic cilantro, lemon, lime, and ginger)

You can skimp out on the white vinegar, chili oil, and the lemon or the lime (one or the other you cant miss both!) if you don't have those ingredients but everything else in this recipe is essential (especially the sugar which balances out the acidity)

Some fresh ingredients we'll be chopping up

• Cherry Tomatoes & Bell Pepper 
• (You can substitute this with whatever raw veggie you like)
• Lemon & Lime (one and a half)
• Ginger (around 2-3 table spoons)
• Cilantro
• and Garlic (3 cloves)

Don't forget the pasta! I use whole wheat pasta because the texture of it is delicious for this recipe. Plus its filled with fiber

So step one, boil your pasta to a little past al dente and drain. Set it aside till we are done.

Chop all your ingredients so they are nice and pretty!

Grate the ginger. I like to also zest the lime/lemon because I might as well use all the lemon up. Plus it smells better.

So now you dump all the ingerdients except for the bell pepper and cherry tomatoes in a bowl. You dont need to dump the in a particular order but I find that if you let the lemon/lime zest, cilantro, ginger, and garlic sit in the olive oil for a five to ten minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients in, its more flavorful.

 

Now arrange your cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and whatever else you want to put on it and its done! This recipe is really good with some shrimp or chicken but I don't like eating too much meat nowadays. I usually keep the pasta and the sauce in seperate bowls in the fridge until Im ready to eat. One word of advice though -- NEVER REFRIGERATE YOUR TOMATOES. They get all mealy and taste less fresh. You might not notice it but I'm a tomato fanatic so it really bothers me >:

Stay tuned for an upcoming giveaway!

Until Next Time,

Mint

Faux Gel Nail Tutorial

Just like I promised, a super easy nail tutorial of epic proportions on how to get gel-like nails without spending that extra cash! (plus it keeps your nails super healthy as well!) This was extremely fun to do! I forgot to include that if your nails aren't rounded, feel free to file them to the appropriate length and to dab the glitter nail polish to make a gradient. Light dabs! Any nailpolish that has colored glitter is fine to use for this tutorial.

Until Next Time,

Mint

Fucking Legit Photo Tutorial

Alright I've had a lot of requests (& I mean a lot) about how I take my photos so I decided to do a small tutorial on how to make your photography more kickass. I was going to do a chain of tutorials but I know that I'll never have all the time in the world to cover natural lighting, artificial lighting, lenses, etc. so I'm going to give you a few tips to begin with

First off, I am going to ruin everything you think you know about photography with this: camera is not everything. OH NOS!! But its true. Most people like big cameras because you can get these cool bokeh effects and what-not but bokeh is only pretty when used correctly. You need to adjust your fstop (if you have a dslr) accordingly to make the best photo possible. Now look at these two photos, which one do you like more? 

If you said the first photo, you're wrong!! No, just kidding. Theres no wrongs to photography haha. But really what you should be looking at is the composition of the photo. The first photo is dead center, with a "whatever" background, and is not incredibly sharp where it should be whereas the second photo has a very interesting background, amazing lighting, and has the perfect amount of focus. See what I am trying to teach you is that bokeh isn't everything, composition is! So it doesn't matter what type of camera you are using (well okay... it does but only to some degree), because you can have an amazing camera and still take shit photos.

Being said, in today's lesson (haha I feel so cool being a teacher), I am going to teach you how to make some interesting photos. Think to yourself a time when you wanted to take a photo of your food (yuim yum) and think about how you take the photo. Most of the time you take a photo straight down of what you are eating, right? Well now imagine your food is a whale. This is what it probably looks like

Oh god how unappetizing! This photo is so flipping bad, I'm not even gonna watermark it. So whats going on here? First off, our whale is kind of in a weird place. Its sort of in a corner but not really. Alright now imagine you are taking a photo of the same whale or food with an angle.

Much better! Now see, our whale's face is positioned into the third part of our photo. If you make an imaginary line that splits our photo into thirds, you'll know what I'm talking about. The rule of thirds is a key concept to making your photos more interesting. Combine this with some angles and you'll be set! If you are still confused, imagine this as something like a piece of cake. Instead of shooting the cake straight down, shoot it off to the side at an angle. Makes sense?

Alright now say you want to make it a little more interesting. Playing with your foreground and background can enhance that. Int his photo I'll be playing with the foreground of the photo.

If you are wondering what that is, those are dangling necklaces I put near the camera so that its out of focus. Okay we're not done yet because now that looks like I made a boo boo! Now I am going to position more crap in the foreground of this photo.

Bam! A much more interesting photo. Now this photo looks as though it has more of a story to tell instead of looking like I put a whale in a random place. 

I'm going to end with, its really really hard to photoshop a shitty photo to look better. Its easier to enhance an already amazing photo with photoshop. Trust me on this part! And guess what? If your photo is kickass you can do whatever the fuck you want with it and it'll still look amazing. To demonstrate I'm going to photoshop the lighting a bit and then write some random blurb on that photo and it will still look deep/insightful/overall amazing .

See? it makes no flipping sense but it looks good! (well at least i think it looks amazing) Imagine trying to shop that on the first photo of our whale up there... it would look like a piece of shit with a creeper message. Anyways, I hope these tips help you in your photography adventures & if you need any help with your cameras or anything you can always comment or tweet me!

Until Next Time,

Mint

p.s. I don't follow these rules all the time but its the simplest way to get your photos looking more professional :) :).

First Make-Up Video in 3 Years

FUCK YEAH FINISHED MY VIDEO .. I can't believe its been three years since my last make-up video. When I did this video three years ago, I told myself I would stop making videos until I'm pro enough [make-up wise & filming wise]. Then recently I posted a random video up for an interview & people started commenting PLEASE MAKE MORE VIDEOS.. Its been three years so if people still want me to make videos after three years then thats saying something! So I bought a t2i sold my old camera [well... listed on ebay] & then I finished editing my video.

... idk if you guys are really interested in how I did it but I like explaining these things anyways... so I was going to render it in After Effects and make all these epic effects and what not but as soon as I saved my 2gb video --> 120gb LOL WTF BBQ... So I mean I understand why its so big since usually you would film it into sections but I didn't really write a storyboard for this.. .LOL I was just like hay thug lyf gonna make this shit happen.... which isnt really a smart move when you edit since I had two 12minute segments and a bunch of 3-5 minute segments. A total of 40 minutes of footage.. Thats pretty long mind you!! for a 4 minute video?!? So I was thinking dude... I need to cut these segments before I do any effects over it... So I brought it over to Premiere and cut my video.. which took me approximately 7 hours. Not too bad. There are around 60+ cuts in this video. I stopped counting.

So I did effects in Premiere but they were mostly just color correction/lighting correction because honestly, I don't know how to do all the cool effects on Premiere as I do on After Effects. But myeh I'll know what to do differently for the next video!! I coordinated my whole video with the music. DADALIFE!!! haha! I exported it as a MPEG2 & tada... my video.WATCH IT & SUB PLZ. I'm quite happy with the results & I think people are too since I got 100 new subscribers yesterday :)

Until Next Time,
Mint

Super Dramatic Make-up Tutorial

A photo of what you`ll get after my tutorial! LOL.

Okay, so I don't think I've ever said it but my favorite model is Sakurina. Why? Because she looks like a sexy ass alien and that is what I aspire to be: SEXY FUCKING ALIEN. I actually do my everyday make-up pretty similar to the way she does it I decided to do a simple tutorial on how to achieve that big alien eye.

A lot of people have been asking me to do a tutorial on my make-up I made one instead of my usual nerd post on Sundays! This is my "everyday" makeup (3-5 days out of the week). Now I don't think this look is good everyday for a lot of people because its pretty dramatic so maybe some of you guys would like to reserve this look for a night out.

Here is a not very good, but exceptionally funny photo of me (with men's underwear on my head) without make-up to compare.

I skipped a lot of elementary, self-explanatory steps in the photos because I think its more important to show the process quicker rather than showing a bunch of in between steps. 

Step 1: So first off, prime your eyes.

Step 2: After priming your eyes apply eyeshadow like shown. You want a smooth gradient so blend well! In this tutorial I used my Visee Blackish Forming Eyes palette.

Here is a photo of my eye without my drawn on directions. If there is fall out, don't worry about it because we can clean that up later! 

Step 2.5: This is an optional step but I enjoy a lot of sparkles so I use some glitter all over my eye. Sometimes I will use Urban Decay's Heavy Metal Liner in Glam Rock. I dab it gently and sparingly on my eye (more concentrated on the highlight & inner corners). Other times I'll just use some loose glitter and pat it on.

Step 3: Line your eyes! Here, I used Kate's Gel Liner which is a good consistancy between pencil and liquid. Note: You do NOT want to line the bottom of your eye with liquid liner for this tutorial because its TOO DARK which makes the make-up look less enticing and less feminine. If you don't have gel liner use liquid for the top and pencil for the bottom.

You want to line the bottom of your eye so its thinner near the inner corner and gradually thicken it. Don't worry about it being "too thick" because thats' how you blend your eyelashes in. During the day, the eyeliner should fade a bit to the perfect consistency.

Step 4: Apply mascara. I used Dejavu's Fiberwig Mascara. Sometimes I`ll use Kate's ontop of Dejavu's for extra oomph! Apply more mascara on the inner corner of your bottom lash because you want your lower lashes to "blend in". It looks fake (in the bad way) when its really obvious where your bottom lashes start.

Step 5: Apply your bottom lashes. When I have dramatic bottom lashes, I apply those first because its hard to get them in place. After applying your bottom lashes, put more mascara to blend them out. IMPORTANT: DO NOT USE DARK COLORED EYELASH GLUE FOR YOUR BOTTOM LASHES. Its so easy to mess up and get weird clumps of black eyelash glue across your face ):!!! Also, when it dries it looks too dark, making a less feminine eye. Try to find lashes with an invisable band for the bottom. I used Diamond Lashes here.

Step 6: Apply your top lashes and you are done! Its important to pick lashes that are both thick and long with varying-length "tips". I used Diamond Lash for my top ones as well but I used to get the same effect by layering my eyelashes.

Here is a photo of the side to show how my lower lashes "blend" with the fake ones.

The finished look on me! I complete this look by using a nude lipstick because I really want to emphasize my eyes. Having any color lipstick would draw attention from your eyes.

A front view of how it looks. 

I hope this tutorial answered any questions you guys have about my make-up. This style is pretty simple... It usually takes me 15-20 minutes to do my full face make-up and 30 minutes when I want to look especially good. I'm the type of girl who doesn't like to experiment TOO much so when I think I look good with this style, I stick to it.

Until Next Time,

Mint