Aviator Sunglasses Trend

Aviators look? It is very cool, confident and really flattering. I stumbled across the aviator sunglasses while I was looking at the online (NM) store. Nowadays, not only pilot, policeman, military but aviators shade trend has crossed over from hot celebrities to anybody who wants to be stylish. The aviator’s eyewear looks great with everything from jeans, t-shirt to a suit. Some pictures below showing women celebrities with aviators.

Ray Ban is one of the popular brand and first aviator sunglasses introduced to the market since 1936, but now there are numerous brands, designs, types and fashionable that you could choose to fit with your style. These two are Ray Ban design.

Wearing sunglasses isn't just protective from harmful UV rays and it also makes us look fabulous and smart during summer. Here are some of my favourite's aviator designers. 

 

Those designs are the coolest ever! The price range is about USD100-500 excluded shipping. I got hardly to pick one because I love them all.

Happy Wednesday!

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Dog and toys

A dog is an amazing creature. Besides regular exercise, proper diet and medical check up, a dog need toys. A bored dog will find a way to entertain itself. It may be chewing shoes, socks or furniture. Giving the toys to a dog will

• Avoid boredom
• Help to stay busy
• Make them exercise and healthy
• Let them relax and happy

The toys can be something to chew on like hard rubber bone or something to catch and grab such as frisbee, rope, tennis balls and stuffed animal. Babe's most favourite is rubber bone and he also plays a stuffed leopard toy. Snuggling, shaking it with his mouth and carrying around are part of Babe's behaviour on his stuffed animal.

Eventually he loves destroying the toy just like the children tearing apart of toys. He chews the rubber bone into pieces and he ripped off of that leopard's ears to pieces. But dogs aren't same as children. Dogs will be the dogs. The dogs generally have predatory instinct. They will chase, catch and kill cats, rabbits and anything that moves unless they are trained to get around with those animals while they were puppies. I could relate that Babe practicing his killing instinct by grabbing and biting the neck of stuffed leopard when he is playing with it.

The toys sometimes becomes his best friend when he fall asleep.

Have a good day!

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Pigs In A Blanket

The title sound funny to me but it is actually about hot dog recipe. In the USA "Pigs in a blanket" is mini hot dog or sausage wrapped in biscuit dough or croissant dough and baked. In the UK, it called "kilted sausage" or the same pig term but it wrapped in bacon. It's also popular in Denmark which is known as "Pølsehorn".
Basically most of the recipes from internet used ready made of refrigerated biscuit dough or a can of refrigerated crescent rolls which you can find it at the store. But I used pancake mix as a biscuit dough. This recipe is so easy and quick. I might use crescent rolls next time. 

Here is my American-style cheesy pigs in a blanket:

Ingredient

• 1 1/2 cup pancake mix
• 1/4 cup of milk (optional: water)
• 3 beef hotdogs (optional: chicken, turkey hotdog)
• Shredded cheese

Steps:

1. Preheated oven 350 deg F
2. Combine pancake mix and milk in the bowl and mix well until they become dough. Knead it few times
3. Cut each hot dog into 3 sections.
4. Roll out the dough into rectangular and cut into 10 strips.
5. Sprinkle shredded cheese over the strip
6. Wrap the strip around each hot dog 
7. Put on the cookie sheet
8. Bake it for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown

Other sample recipe here (click)

Servings: 2 person (8-9 pigs) 

Let them cool and serve with mustard/ketchup

Three little pigs on my plate

Have fun trying!

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1st day of Summer Solstice

Today June 21st is an official first day of summer. It's called Summer solstice in Northern Hemisphere when the earth's axial tilt is most inclined towards the sun. It is also known as the longest day of the year and a mark of the beginning of summer season.

Most of the shrubs, flower plants are drying and toasting due to the hot weather but those tiger lily flowers amazingly growing and survive in the heat.
 

 Another close up

 

" Happy first day of summer!"

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Top 10 lists to hit the beach

Ready for summer season? Speaking of summer which is 3 months duration (Jun-July-Aug), most Americans especially families have planned on vacation. Definitely the top destination is to spend time at the beach to enjoy the sunshine. Soaking up under the sun for hours on the beach with lots of activities are wonderful. Sometimes you miss the important items that you should have at the beach. Basically the list below is the top 10 must-have stuff before you leave home:

1. Umbrella - Stay in the shade while you are chilling on the beach

2. Beach chair - They are foldable and backpack. Offering you comfort.

3. UV sunblock - Protect your skin from UV sunrays. SPF 30/40/50 is required

4. Cooler/Icebox - Drinks stay cold for hours with icepack. Bring snack too.

5. Beach towel - It will be your friend when you are wet after swimming

Activities? You need those beach gears

6. Shovel set - You can build sand castle and dig the sand

7. Frisbee disc - It is fun when you catching/throwing the disc with barefoot. 

8. Snorkel and mask - Help you see pretty fish and corals under the water.

9. Swim fin - Rubber. Great for surfing,snorkelling and underwater diving.

10.Body board/Surfboard - You would love riding the waves.

I bet you wear sunglasses everywhere when you go out so you shouldn't worry about it. Let's rock the beach.

The picture below was taken in summer last year. We built a big sand-turtle. 

Have fun!!

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Tea or Milk?

Time for refreshment? I bet everyone very please for treats after meals between 3 pm to 5 pm. Cakes, cookies or brownies are the famous food to be served during that time. Some people eat variety of snacks with tea and some people not. Robert eat those dessert with a glass of cold milk all the time. He told me that was American way to eat cookies/cakes and British people serve it with tea. I've tried once to drink milk along with my crave dessert but I think I am more into tea. How about your favourite combination? Let's vote.

What is the perfect match for cookies/cakes/brownies?

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Weekend Wrap-up

Hey, what did you do last weekend? We did few things on the last weekend. We had some arrangement in our living room by replacing our 32" flat screen tv to a new 40" flatscreen tv. We put the 32" in other bedroom.

On Sunday, we drove out to movie theater to see Kungfu Panda 2 movie. We also decided to ride a bike to the pier after watching movie so we took a bicycle with us and put on the truck when we left home.

It was great movie and lasted long about 90 minutes. Have you seen it?? 
Then we rode a bike on the bicycle path and it almost dark when we reached at the pier. Some people came for fishing there and some people came for leisure and watching the scenery. It was so windy on the pier and my pictures came out blurry. Definitely I didn't like the pier picture. Windy beach or my camera suck ??

I tried not to snap picture of people on the pier eventhough there were many people walking by and sitting for fishing. We walked to the end of pier, watching the ocean, the waves, the beach, the moon on that night.

 We had a great weekend and below is the picture of the pier in a day time

Have a good week!

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Cold treats in a hot day

A temperature has been reaching almost 90 degree Fahrenheit (32 deg Celsius) since two weeks ago. Sun rays made your skin dry and you will feel burning so never leave home without a bottle of water,UV sunblock lotion and sunglasses. This crazy hot weather also getting me dehydrated easily. I think everybody satisfies and comfort with cold drinks, cool place, cold shower during hot weather for sensory reasons. Definitely I prefer to get some ice lemon tea or lemonade or smoothies or ice blended or feel just to plunge into a pool. But I changed my mind and I stopped by at the store. Looking for cool drinks?? Nope. I walked to frozen section...

That store have 4 rows of different frozen food section and the picture above is one of the rows for frozen dessert section. This giant fridge on my left side contains a variety of ice creams and on the right side is for frozen fruits, juices and other kind of dessert.

Finally I stopped at my favourite section..here it is. Ice cream section.

There are a lot of choices, brands and flavours. I do not know which one to choose and I just grabbed two of them 

.

I guess those are my favourite. I love it!

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Spinach Salad and Citrus

Spinach has been my most favourite vegetable since I was a kid. My mom always buying few bunches of fresh spinach from market and boiled them with seasoning. When I go to the store here, it is very hard to see fresh spinach that sold loose. Maybe they were out at the time when I went there. Mostly I found them in canned, frozen and pre-packaged bags (Fresh-prewashed spinach). Certainly I pick the fresh baby spinach in pre-packaged bag like in the picture.

It’s already prewashed and ready to eat. Anyway I still wash them before serving.  Is it better to eat raw or cooked? I like both ways. There are many recipes to eat them raw and I made it simple as below:

Ingredient:

1 cup fresh baby spinach

1/2 cup mandarin orange

1/4 cup raisins

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp orange juice

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp honey

salt and paper

* optional dressing: balsamic vinaigrette

Preparation:

Mix olive oil, orange juice, lemon juice and honey in small bowl. Set aside.

Combine spinach, mandarin orange and raisin in medium bowl.

Pour dressing over the salad and toss.

Add salt and pepper for taste

This is for single serving. You can double it up.

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Dark Nail Polish Trend

Choosing dark nail polish is kind a cool, wild and sexy. Many celebrities wearing dark nail polish as their fashion trends and obviously I am really into it. I just got a dark nail polish two days ago. The color is kind deep red burgundy-almost black shade. I think the color is too dark for summer and it would be good for fall season but I can't be patient to try it on. Great color and shiny on my fingers and my toes. Let's take a look at some pictures of model and celebrities

Victoria Beckham

You can see more celebrities with dark nail polish in this site (click here)

And now my pictures with dark nail polish on my fingers

  

 My toes,

  

 Personally I feel fabulous and I love it!!

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Baked Zucchini

Zucchini is summer squash vegetable. It is one of popular dish in Italy, France, UK, USA and other countries. It has similar look like cucumber but it is usually cooked before serving. It can be prepared by a variety way of cooking including steamed, boiled, grilled, stuffed, fried and baked. I usually bake them in the oven.

Preparation? I made it simple,

*Preheat oven 400 deg Fahrenheit

*Wash them, pat them dry and cut in half

*Brush their white flesh with butter (optional: olive oil)

*Sprinkle them with pepper, salt and garlic powder

*Optional: add some parmesan cheese

Baked them 25-30 minutes or until it tender. 

It's really great dish and taste good. I love it.

Have a good week ahead!

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Towards Summer Season

Sunny, heat and dry.Those are the signals that summer will be arriving soon. It's been weeks that we have no raining at all. Temperatures getting warmer day after day. Feels like burning in the microwave outside. It turned me off to drive in hot weather. We also having less night time when the daytime period currently longer than 12 hours.(14 hours-sunrise 5.30 am; sunset 8.35 pm). Since the weather is consistently warm around May-June, some unexpected guests just popped up in the yard without warning. What a particular month!

I found a turtle crossing the front yard. It was a big turtle. He got into his shell when I came closer to him.

Then he started moving when I walked away from him,

The wild rabbits, they like to hop around and having meal by eating grass in the evening. Their ears are really sensitive and they will run away in a second if I go to near them. So I snuck out through window to take their pictures.

The most thing I hate is snake. I found it under the truck and I moved him away with a long stick. Even it isn't poisonous snake but I don't really wanted to be my unexpected guest.

I wish there will be rainy day in sometime soon. Have a good weekend!!

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Easy fix biscuit

In UK or Europe, a "biscuit" is a hard baked sweet, flat and hard but in America; they called a "cookie" or "cracker". I used to think biscuits in British term when Robert said "biscuit". American biscuit is different thing. It is small bread made with baking powder without yeast. Since I have been living in the US, I have to twist my thought of the "biscuit" term and I think I get used to American term now.

I used to make American biscuits from scratch but today I made easy biscuit from pancake mix (picture above). I got this recipe from this site (click here) but I modified it by adding some onion dip powder. I skipped butter. It is only 3 main ingredients.

1st thing to do:

Preheat oven 400 deg F

Spray the baking pan with cooking spray

Ingredient as the picture (excluded water& paprika)

• 1 cup Pancake mix
• 1/2 cup sour cream (I used 4 Tbsp)
• 1 tsp of onion dip powder
• 1 Tbsp water.
• Paprika

1. Mix sour cream + water + onion powder until well blend
2. Add pancake mix and stir it until dry ingredient perfectly moist.
3. Spoon them into the baking sheet
4. Bake for 10-11 minutes. 
5. Sprinkle with paprika

Serve while it still warm. Enjoy!

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