One of my friends here in Budapest is taking a manicure class, and when she started her course in June, she asked if I would go to the class with her to be her model/guinea pig. Which is SUPER exciting! I used to LOVE going to get my nails done!

But then I realised if she has to do hand nails, then she would probably have to learn foot nails… She called last week asking me to go this coming Wednesday for a manicure and a… PEDICURE.

EEK!

Alright, how do I say this without sounding like a crazy person…??

Ok, well, I have a major issue with my feet being touched.. Actually, even seeing someone else get their foot touched makes me uncomfortable.. Those of you who had the pleasure of living with/near me in school will remember me promptly running from the room when one of my room mates was getting her feet rubbed… *shudder*

Anyway, needless to say, I’ve never had a pedicure before. Just thinking about it made a giant knot form in my stomach.

So my friend came over yesterday, and brought all of her manicure/pedicure bits and pieces with her. She wanted to explain to me what she would have to do – because she knew that I was mildly freaking out about it. Which was actually really nice of her.

She got out this pretty pink case and opened it up to reveal what appeared to be surgical instruments. So I started laughing – a little manically – as she began to explain what scraper was used for what. (“You’re going to do WHAT with that big giant CLEAVER??!? and what the hell are those secateurs for?!?!!?”)

And as she was talking, I kept saying to myself “it’s not going to be that bad”.. Which, if I think about it rationally, is true. I mean, nothing bad is going to happen. (I guess the worst that could happen is me accidentally kicking her… :s) But she did say that she’s only going to do 1 foot.. A semi-pedi!

Hey, I might even like it enough to get the other foot done!

I guess I should explain my little compulsion to those of you who probably think that I should be institutionalised…

I don’t like the feeling of my foot being touched.. It makes me feel nauseous. That is all. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just weird. But that’s how it is.

My boyfriend could accidentally brush his hand past my foot and I will literally jump 2 feet away from him and start squeaking at him “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING MY FOOT??”, while staring at him with full-on crazy eyes. And then he will roll his eyes and tell me that I’m crazy and tell me that its not like my feet are ugly or weird and that I’m being a drama queen. I don’t know..

We’re all a little crazy, right? Some slightly more so than others.. *ahem*

That is all.

No, not really! We all know how much I love to ramble on about totally random things in my posts..

Let’s not rock the boat..

Well, it’s 1:00 am right now. And I sat down to start the embroidery embellishment at 9:00 pm.

So where is this embroidery embellishment, Vicky?

Funny story.. So I started to embroider on the bag, and hated everything that I did. I did flowers, and they looked crooked and weird. I did random curly-wirly squiggles and they looked stupid. So I gave up, and did the lining instead. Which was very successful! Thankfully my obsessive compulsive measuring did pay off. I was thinking of maybe stitching a crocheted flower onto the front or something.. But that can wait until tomorrow.

Bloody life of the party I am, eh! Saturday night and I’m sitting at home sewing.

I remember I was going somewhere one night a few years ago, and my mum said to me “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do”. And I, quite cheekily, said back to her, “Oh, I’ll just sit at home and do some knitting then, shall I?!”. (It’s funny because my mum likes to knit…….)

Well mum, I’m certainly not doing anything you wouldn’t do!! Well, except the fact that I’m using sewing needles as fabric pins.. But we’ll not get into that right now…

Oh, and tomorrow, I’m going to transfer all of the bits and pieces from my big purse to this purse.. I’m curious to see how much I can fit into it. Girl’s gotta have 16 lip glosses in her purse…

And now that this project is semi finished, I can think about starting the next one!! YAY!

I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown last night. I started sewing the bottom of the lining, and got the bottom done. But hand stitching 2 feet of fabric literally took all night – including a lot of procrastinating!

Between grumbling at stabbing myself with the needle and generally complaining about anything that was irritating me, I showed my stitching to my boyfriend. And he said, “you don’t need a sewing machine – look how straight that is”.

Um – no. That’s not how it works at all lol. It’s like me saying, ‘oh you’re so proficient at walking – why don’t you not use public transport or a car!?’ or ‘ you can build a fire – lets not own a stove’. It just doesn’t work like that!!!

So today, we procured an iron and a sewing machine, which made my life marginally easier. But despite the fact that I had to learn how to use a sewing machine (which took a rather long tome) and that I’m so anally retentive that I stopped every 2 seconds to measure my fabric, the lining is done.

And look how cute it is!

Oh, and what’s that inside it? That’s right. It’s a pocket. Not only did I sew the lining together, I learnt how to make a lined pocket too! I finally got it right on the second attempt.

I realized that although I like this flowery crazy fabric, it’s too thick. Like it’s thick, but not sturdy. Does that make sense?! I will find different fabric for the lining for the other purses I make.

So tomorrow I will sew it in. Hopefully all of my obsessive compulsive measuring will mean that the lining actually fits into my crochet purse… I’ll laugh if it doesn’t fit..

Actually, before I do that, I have to decide what embellishments to put on it.. As it’s a bit plain at the moment. But I really have to sleep. So I will sleep on it. Maybe by the morning, I will have some kind of inspiration!

My crochet purse lining is still not done.. So much for it being finished 2 days ago..

I think I caught the crocheting bug.. And instead of doing my lining, I tried out my new yarn.. And attempted to learn a whole bunch of fancy stitches..

Remember I got that colour changing yarn? Well, I tried it out.. It’s pretty intense..

I think an entire purse (or an entire anything) of this yarn would be really intense. A little bit too intense, in fact. It reminds me of those tri-coloured cats.. the calico ones.. And it seemed very elasticy.. but maybe my technique just sucked.. I’m not sure what the issue was.

I also tried out some stitches, to see what they would look like in bigger blocks. (Apologies in advance for the poor picture quality)… The cool one on the far right is a basket weave pattern. I will try that with a wider piece of yarn (and take a better picture). I think it looks really great!

And I will learn colour changing next.

So my lining. My boyfriend went to borrow me an iron.. As it would make my life a lot easier with dealing with this fabric. I have literally been measuring for 2 hours! The fabric is cut, but trying to measure and mark out where to sew on wrinkly fabric is making me crazy. Literally. And I’m so badly equipped.. It’s almost embarrassing.. I’m using one of those paper Ikea measuring tapes.. hahaha.. And those dressmaker’s pins are being substituted with sewing needles.. Hopefully I wont end up with too many puncture wounds…

I really want to finish this crochet purse, so I can start another one with all of my new yarn!! I’m thinking stripes and maybe some different stitches. It will be SUPER cute!

Ok, back to measuring.. Can you tell that this post was purely for procrastination purposes???

My favourite thing to get was these individually packed face masks. They had so many different kinds – warming ones, relaxing ones, exfoliating ones. There was an entire rack of them! Whenever they were on special, I would turn into a crazy Chinese lady and buy a basket full.

Anyway, since being in Budapest, I sort of forgot about my face mask stock piling – until I hit the drugstore this weekend. They had these masks on special for something ridiculous like 150 Forint for a pack of 2 (which is like 50p or 75 cents or something). So naturally, I got 6 packs. (As I’m typing this, I can’t believe how much of a “crap-on-special” hoarder I am.. despite the fact that my skin is VERY fussy as to what it likes and doesn’t like.. which apparently I forget when I’m in the middle of some bizarre mask-hoarding spree.. I digress…).

Even as I was buying them, I thought to myself “what if they’re crap? I’m going to have 12 packages of rubbish..”. But of course my inner hoarder took over and pushed the voice of reason aside, and I went to the cash with my treasures.

A few days passed, and I decided to try out one of these masks. They only had 2 types – reviving and cleansing (the fact that there was only a choice of 2 kinds should have meant something too…). I went with the pretty blue cleansing one. Everything was going perfectly – until it came time to rinse it off. It came off my face, but left me with a few patches of blue.

After much scrubbing, the patches became sort of a bluish tint. It wasn’t overly noticeable, but of course, I thought I looked like an Avatar creature.. minus the sparkly face designs. Sadly/thankfully, there is no photographic evidence.

The moral of the story is… If it can be classified as cheap crap, don’t buy it, because it might actually be crap and you may end up with a blue face. More importantly, don’t stock pile it. Hoarding expensive, high quality crap is fine. But hoarding cheap, rubbish crap is what compels people to label you as a crazy person.

I’m all for saving money. I think the urge to be frugal comes as our age increases.. You know you’re grown up when you start looking at the cost per sheet on the loo roll…

As I mentioned in a previous post about beauty on a budget, only buy things that you need and that you’re going to use. There’s no point saving money on stuff that is going to spend the rest of it’s days hiding in a drawer. Or, as I learnt this weekend, there is no point saving money by paying for a sub-par product. As my mother always says “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”.

I hit a few stores here in Budapest, and ended up in a super cheap fabric store. Everything was 390 Forint per meter.. Which is like 1.12 GBP or 1.84 CAD. I only needed half a meter, so it only cost around 50p!!

Thankfully, I had my boyfriend with me to translate, because while the shop assistant was cutting the fabric, these two ladies came over and were oohing and aahing over my (super unbelievably adorable) purse and explaining how to stitch the lining in, and how to reinforce the handles etc.

They seemed pretty impressed with my crocheting skills! Which, being a novice, made me very happy!

I went with a flowery fabric. I wanted a really bold print, since the purse itself is such a plain colour. I saw this fabric and really like it. Despite the fact that it reminds me of my grandma’s lampshade covers.. Maybe that’s why I like it so much…?? Actually, I think the lady said that this is upholstery fabric.. I  needed something super thick and sturdy, so this is certainly appropriate!

What do you think? I think it’s going to look adorable when it’s done!

I also got more yarn, since I’m down to my last ball. I got some really cute color changing stuff.

I also got some beige and a really dark brown.. I want to try stripes next!

At this rate, I’m going to have more purses than pairs of shoes.. But that’s ok!

So I’m going to get cracking on this lining – hopefully I can have it finished up tomorrow! And I can show you guys the finished result!

But this time, I have something to show for my absence!

About 2 weeks ago, I decided that I needed something to do. Somehow (I don’t remember the intricate details) I landed on crocheting.

So I got myself an adorable little crochet hook and some yarn and hit YouTube for some crocheting 101 classes.

After learning the basic stitches, I attempted to make a flower. My first attempt was rather poor (the crooked looking flower on the left) – it was slightly deformed and the stitches were way too tight. But, nonetheless, it was a flower.

Subsequent attempts were a lot more successful (as you can see from the picture above), and I even managed a more fancy one! And by the end of last week, I was confident that I could take on a bigger challenge. I wanted to make a purse, so I woke up my Google, and it came back to me with a craft blog FutureGirl.com, where the owner had posted a pattern of a super cute purse named “Starling Handbag”! Her site is really awesome, and she had video tutorials for everything, which was a great help! I would link more stuff, but her site seems to be down…

I started the base late Thursday night, and by late Sunday night I was on the final row!!! I couldn’t believe that I finished it so quickly! Actually, it would have been even quicker, but since it was the first thing I’d ever made, I was superly retentive about counting my stitches – which I did every row. So that, plus the fact that it took me a while to learn how to begin the purse and how to make the bridge for the handles, meant that it took longer than it should have done..

And here is the semi-finished result. I still have some ends to weave in, and I have to embroider some kind of cute design on the front and add a lining..

Isn’t it just the cutest thing ever??? I’m so impressed with myself!!

I’m going to hit the fabric store now – hopefully I can find some cute lining fabric and maybe I can finish it today???

Probably very wishful thinking – since I don’t have a sewing machine, the lining will be produced old school style, with a needle and thread.. Ok, so I guess it will probably only be finished by tomorrow..

Ok, so what’s been going on in the last few weeks? Primarily, I’ve been trying to stay cool in the sweltering heat. It’s unbearably hot here in Budapest. There was a very intense thunder storm on Friday night. While leaning out of the window watching the lightning flash across the sky like a strobe light, I thought to myself “surely this storm will make it less humid out”. But no, it did not.

What else? Oh, we got a very cool coffee maker. The deal was that you “rent” the machine for free and just pay for the coffee cartridges. Which is awesome. But, I am not a coffee drinker. So thankfully, half of the cartridges we got were teas and milk and there was even some sort of soup base…

So, I just decided to make myself a nice cup of tea. This, by the way, is how you can tell that I’m English.. Who drinks a hot cuppa on a scorching hot day?! Anyway, so I picked a cartridge and waited for the machine to start doing it’s thing. Sure enough, it started spluttering out what I presumed to be tea. But it was suspiciously dark.. And then foam began to form at the top of the cup. So I started mumbling to myself about being an idiot for clearly having picked a coffee instead of tea.

After having sniffed at the cup and concluding that whatever was in the cup wasn’t tea, I added a spoonful of sugar and hoped for the best (because a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, in the most delightful way). After a couple of sips, I began to question what it was that I was drinking. The foamy part had completely disappeared, it didn’t actually taste like coffee and it certainly wasn’t tea. It actually reminded me of the “Chinese CocaCola” (Ng Fa Cha) my mother used to make me drink as a child. It tasted and even looked like it, with it’s strange bitter yet sweet taste and it’s dark colour.

So I hit the coffee cartridge website and discovered that I was drinking some kind of barley tea. Which apparently has a lot of health benefits and is very popular in eastern Asia. I think that after drinking this tea, I have decided that I prefer my barley fermented

OH! Remember the aloe vera yoghurt? I finally grew a pair and ate it. Thankfully, it didn’t taste like ham *phew*!!! It actually tasted just like peach yoghurt (which really just tastes like vanilla, right?).. What did get at me were the “pieces” in it. They looked like little cubes of aloe vera gel.. But they tasted like peach and the consistency was like yoghurt-peach.. I think I’ll just stick to the banana yoghurt that I’ve grown to love! Yum!

Whenever we find ourselves somewhere different, one of the first things we notice is the different food. I absolutely love to eat, so trying different foods is great experience! And since I’m in Budapest, I have to make the most of the wonderful Hungarian cuisine! Nokedli and paprikas anything.. and rantott hus.. yum!

But then, out of nowhere I’ll see something that I think is very random… Just like with the chamomile tampons, I stopped, and thought to myself, “is that REALLY aloe vera yogurt?!”. Yes, yes it was..

So, of course, I brought a tub – which I have yet to try. See, the thing is, I don’t like the smell of aloe vera. I think it smells like ham. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m crazy.. Don’t get me wrong, I like ham, just not the smell.. And vegetation that smells like ham is just not right at all. And ham yogurt, to me, does not seem like a very appetizing combination.

Despite the fact that I think aloe is gross, it is supposed to be very good for you – not just for your skin but for your digestive system. So, I Googled it, and aloe vera actually has a LOT of uses. Here are a few of the good ones:

• Commercially used in lotion, yogurt, desserts and as a fresh food preservative,
• It’s derivatives are used in makeup, incense and razors,
• It is used as a fish tank water conditioner (because of it’s anti-fungal properties),
• Aloe vera extract is used for the dilution of semen for sheep artificial fertilization.

Well, now I wish that I didn’t Google it.. Sheep semen.. Really?! Seriously, I don’t understand how scientists come up with this kind of stuff.. “Hey Mr. Sheep Fertilization Scientist.. This sheep semen should be diluted.. It seems too concentrated, and diluting it could produce a higher yield.. I know, we’ll use aloe juice from this plant that I have on my desk…”. Do you think that’s what happened? I have to stop typing now.. haha!

Needless to say, I don’t think I can stomach the aloe vera yogurt today (despite it’s awesome digestive properties).. What with the ham and the sheep.. I just can’t!

Watch, when I do try it, I’m going to think it’s the best thing ever! lol or not.. Don’t worry, I will definitely keep you posted.

In Spain, there was the bocadillo – a sandwich made of the most solid baguette you will ever encounter, and jamon – a cured (and VERY potent) ham.

And Budapest. Well, I’ve shared with you my chamomile experience. Now I will share my grocery shopping experience with you.

When I’m in a country that I don’t speak the language of, I find going out and about very nerve racking. I remember the first time I ordered McDonalds in broken Quebecquois French (is there any other kind of Quebecquois French?!), I was SO proud of myself. I remember talking to my mum on the phone and telling her, with much enthusiasm, that I understood when the lady asked me what drink I wanted with my “Trio”.

Couscous? Not so much...

And with grocery shopping, it was easy enough to figure out what was what.

Fast forward to Budapest. It’s been difficult. I’m not gonna lie! I mean, Hungarian is so complicated, and has so many alphabet letters, and the sounds are so different – I still can’t get the “gy” letter right.

Anyway, so you can imagine the time that I have trying to figure out what to buy. When I needed breadcrumbs, my boyfriend told me that they are called “prezli” or “panir”.. So off I go to the store. And I don’t see anything with those words on it.. But I do see a package of what I presumed to be breadcrumbs that was labelled “morzsa”. So I brought it, and cooked with it.. So I’m quite sure that it was indeed breadcrumbs. So I was quite happy with myself.

And then there was the couscous. The bloody couscous. I decided to make stuffed peppers with couscous and cheese and other bits and pieces and it was going to be delicious. And I got to the store and realised that I had absolutely no idea what “couscous” was in Hungarian. So I wandered around the pasta and rice section, and then to the breadcrumbs and flour section, and even the condiment section. And then I finally found a tiny bag of what appeared to be couscous. The words on the bag did not look like anything I could recognise, and there didn’t appear to be any cooking instructions. So after picking it up and putting it down about 50 times, I walked away.. but then walked back and repeated the whole process again, I thought, “I don’t care, I’m going to buy it, it looks like bloody couscous, I’ll cook it the same way and hope for the best”.

So I got home, and spent the best part of an hour on Google before figuring out that I had brought millet. Which isn’t just for winged creatures. At which point, my boyfriend came home and informed me that he didn’t think that he liked couscous. Needless to say, he nearly got covered in a bowl full of it. But I cooked the peppers (after finding a millet stuffed peppers recipe) and it was delicious!

So, the moral of the story is… just buy it and hope for the best! And if your boyfriend says that he doesn’t like something, just make him eat it anyway!!