Nastia's Blog

My lunch!

2012-05-17T13:31:00.001-06:00

So my mom is outside the country, and she thought I was going to be hungy, but I was like believe me, I'm going to cook delicious stuff. So yeah, this post is dedicated to my mother and to show her what I cooked today.

In the pictures above I cooked the chicken and the rice, my sister did the salad because I asked here to do that. The idea of broiling the chicken came up to me yesterday when I found there was chicken in the freezer. Also we have brown rice, and last time I cooked it, it was really weird. So I looked up in the internet tutorials of how to cook rice, and broil the chicken. (the rice was really good)

This lunch was really delicious, and you know, I'm not a great cook, I used to hate cooking, but when I met my boyfriend, I started to be interested in cooking because he told me he wanted to be a chef.

And the moral of this story is that, if you don't know how to cook, look for recipes in the internet. That's what I did, and the feeling of making something delicious and healthy is really great.

You can do whatever you wish for!

P.S. Haha I think this blog is becoming a cooking blog, but it isn't. It's about the things I do in my life that are really joyful for me to share.

Mediterranean Trip

2012-05-03T09:20:00.002-06:00

Hello there! Last year I had the coolest experience to go to a cruise in Europe. I didn't like the cruise, but I loved the places! Here is a video of it.

Venice, Italy (it isn't in the video)

Vegan Birthday Photos

2012-03-31T21:59:00.001-06:00

Check out the photos of the vegan food for my mom's birthday. I did the cake, and with my sister the pizza. I hope you like it, and you if you liked the cake and want the recipe, you can click here.

Vegan Cake

2012-03-31T21:50:00.002-06:00

As you can see, I made for the first time a vegan cake. The reason I did this one, it's because we have a tradition of fasting. And in this one we don't eat anything from animals, like meat, milk, eggs.
So today is my mom's birthday, I decided to make her a birthday cake because it's not fun if she doesn't have one in her special day. And I decided to share the recipe :)

I hope you like it.

Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups flour
     1 cup sugar
     1/4 cup cocoa
     1 teaspoon vanilla
     1/2 teaspoon salt
     1/3 cup oil
     1 teaspoon white vinegar
     1 teaspoon baking soda
     1 cup cold water
1/2 baking powder
1 banana

And the explanation is that I mixed everything, and put it in a container to bake it. Of course you have to put oil in the "metal" container in order to add the mix. And I baked the cake to 500°F for 45 minutes. Also I added choco chips and smashed the banana when I was creating the mix. I baked two units, so I could make it big and more layers. Each of the two baked and rounded shapes was cut into two layers. Between those layers I added jam.

Also, as I didn't want to make the cake boring, I decided to create a vegan cream for the cake. So I used 3 cups of soy milk, vanilla, sugar, and corn starch.
I boiled the soy milk with the vanilla and sugar first, once I boiled them, I added the corn starch mixed with cold water. I have to warn you guys that you have to be careful when you mix the corn starch and cold water, because I made a mistake, the corn starch turned into a lot of little "rocks". Then I waited until it cooled down and I added sunflower oil. When I finished to make the cream, I added it on top of the cake and later added chocolate powder arround the cake.

So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this =)

Birthday Dinner

2012-03-24T08:40:00.000-06:00

Here I'm sitting next to my dad

Yesterday my dad took my sister and I to dinner. We wen to a mexican restaurant called Huaraches. If we want mexican food we go there.

The food was delicious, but as I was telling to my family, it needs to be cooked with more love. Check out the pics of what we ate :)

My sister

This is the soup my dad requested. I like this photo :)

My sister and I asked for the burrito with chicken, but I don't know if the chicken was bad, or if it was a bad choice xD

Then.. we shared a gringa :) It was good

I love how meat is prepared by this process, it's really delicious!

From my perspective, the best mexican food is the one that you buy on the streets of mexico! I believe that, it's more flavoured I guess. So yeah, what's your favorite mexican dish?

Rapunzel

2012-02-24T19:26:00.003-06:00

We had a project to make in class. It was to illustrate a children book. I picked Rapunzel. My illustration was inspired in Benjamin Lacombe. I used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I hope you like it. :)))

Morning Nikki

2012-02-17T09:30:00.001-06:00

Photos I took today of my precious cat Nikki, I hope you've enjoyed this.

What you can find in a turtle's stomach

2012-02-17T09:24:00.001-06:00

So today I was searching the web as usual, and I found a really good Costa Rican website about organic food, and products. It's really good website because I want to help the environment, but at the same time is hard because in my house, we don't have a good program to make it happen.

So while I was looking for products and places to buy stuff, I found an article that talked about a turtle that was found in Argentinian costs by environmentalists and they opened it's stomach. Turtles confuse plastic with jellyfish and other food, so they eat it and eventually die.

This is really sad how the world is like that, full of garbage. Seriously, if you want to help, you should start with your family. And this is something I want to do: recycle or reuse all the packages that are left for food, and use organic products.

All the governments should have a law that make people recycle.

Objects inside the turtle

Original source: www.rainforestradio.com/2011/03/28/lo-que-te-puedes-encontrar-en-el-estomago-de-una-tortuga/

LWM Photoshop- GIF Images

2012-01-12T22:09:00.001-06:00

Hello there! In this post I'm going to teach you how to make a gif image. It's a graphic format to use specially for web. Images with this kind of format, have low quality. It could have from 2 to 256 colors. So be ready to open Photoshop CS5 and start to do your own GIF Images!

Step 1: Choose your images that you want to create the sequence of them. In my case I chose 5 sets of photography that my friends took me for a final potography work. Here I look funny and weird haha.

Select all of them and drag them to the Photoshop window.

Step 2: Make sure those pictures don't have a high quality, in my case I change my images from 300 pixels to 75 pixels.

Step 3: Click the Arrange Documents button and click to the Tile All In Grid, all of the images will appear. After that, you should drag each ot them to the first image in the order you want to have the GIF Image.

Step 4: Go to Window> Animation

And then you can see something like this at the bottom.

You can change how much time will each picture have, and if you want to make the animation of the image to be moving forever.

Step 5: You should duplicate the frames, for me I made 5 frames. Then you click each frame and in the layer box you should make visible the image that is going to be visible in that frame (to make the others unvisible you should click to the eye).

Step 6: Go to File> Save for Web and Devices..

Final work:

And the job is finish here!

I hope you enjoyed this, good luck!

LWM Audio Visual Techniques First Lesson

2012-01-11T18:07:00.000-06:00

Hello my lovely readers! This is the first post, so I'll do my best.
Here I'm going to talk about what are the requirements and a little bit of the vocabulary that need to know for the next works.

This class is about designing for the web. It's very important that you should know how to make it pretty and interactive.
It's very important that when you use essential programs that will help your work on Flash CS5 like Photoshop or Illustrator, make sure that the color mode is RGB.
RGB means Red, Greand and Blue light, it is used for screen graphics. For example images for web, TV, etc..
You should know that CMYK is for printed works like bussiness cards, flyers, etc.
Also when you work on those programs you have to work on 100 dpi (dots per inch)..

Frames per second (fps): It refers to the number of images in a second.
For different formats, they need different fps:
Web: 12 or 15 fps ---> This is the one that we will going to work with.
Film: 24 fps
NTSC: 29.97 fps (this format is for American continent)
PAL: 25 fps (For Europe and Asia)

The standard web size is 800 x 600 pixels.

When opening the Flash CS5 program we have to make sure that there is the tools, properties, library toolbars. Obviously the workspace, the timeline and the motion editor. It should look like this:

Thank you for reading, soon I'll continue this post :)

Learn with me tutorials

2012-01-10T11:40:00.001-06:00

Hello there! Welcome to my blog in which I forget to write about because my life is not really interesting, but I got a great IDEA!!!!

I'm going to post everything I'm learning in class for free. All the steps, homeworks, etc =)
It will help anybody that wants to learn or are having the same classes with me, or for future students. Also, If I forget something, I can go back to my posts and remember.
In this quarter of university, the programs that we'll learn to use are: Flash CS5, Photoshop CS5 and After Effects CS5.
So wait for the first class soon!!

Rice milk

2011-12-01T19:17:00.000-06:00

Don't pay attention to
the container lid xD

So today I made rice milk. I've never had rice milk before, so I don't know if it tastes right. I took the recipe form HealthyVegan. I didn't do the exact recipe that she said. Like 1 cup of rice and simmer it with 8 cups of water, I did half of it and at the end when I blended it, it didn't look as the one that she was making.

But at the end, I made a banana milkshake with it, I don't know if it was the right way to make it, but it was really good!

So yeah, if you don't want to buy rice milk at the store, you should make yours!

Going Vegan for a Month

2011-11-30T07:25:00.000-06:00

Hi there! :)

As I said I will try to post more every day, and here I have a topic to talk about.

I will try to be 100% vegan the whole month. I'm not a vegetarian or something, but it's a good challenge.

There are a lot of food that I would like to discover and delicious. My mom makes sometimes some vegan food and I don't like it. The food looks boring and undelicious (needs more spices or something :D) But she does delicious vegan soups, but I really would like research about vegan food and make it.

Everytime I make something different, I will post it here.

As I said before, I'm not vegan, I like meat, but I like promoting vegetarianism. I'm not one of those people that criticize vegetarians just because they think theyare not eating for real.

I hope you got me and follow me in this journey :)

Hello there!

2011-11-29T21:19:00.000-06:00

So today I got mail! =3

I know I haven't blog for a while, and I want to do it everyday. I want to do so many things in this life that I have no idea how to make them real. The reason I don't blog it's because I do a lot of things that I get really tired. I want to change that, because I know that many people may be tired but they do more things that I can imagine.

For the next days I will try my best to blog more, but I can not promise anything because I have to do final projects for university.

So yeah, basically that's it.

I found a butterfly!

2011-10-25T16:44:00.000-06:00

Today while I was cleaning in my house, I found an interesting bug that looked like a butterfly, but somehow different.

It was hard to photograph because it moved a lot and my small camera didn't want to focus.

So I leave you some pictures of it, and I hope you can recognize its name. =)

Can you see its atennae? So beatiful!

Behind the scenes part III- Photography project and more

2011-07-16T09:09:00.004-06:00

This photoshoot was the hardest, maybe because we had to build a pool that it took a lot of time to do it.
But the pool wasn't completely finish, we just needed it a little bit of water, because you know, wasting a lot of water is not cool at all.

This is the pool that we used lol... looks weird haha

Taking photos, poor my friend the water was really cold.

Showing my friend Emi the photo

Also we had to take some photos for other legend, and we went outside to look for some dogs.

Photo taken by my friend Emi.

And here are some randomness lol

These are my friend's pets. Mandi and Billy.

So yeah, this was behind the scenes for our photography project. If you want to see the other parts, click the links below:

Part I

Part II

Take care everyone!

Saving money

2011-07-15T19:55:00.004-06:00

Like a month ago or more, I decided to save money to buy a gift to my boyfriend.

I don't have a job, so the way I get the money is by the money I receive for my college materials, so I keep what's left of it.

I want to buy him something really special, or make something special for him.

A month is left for his birthday, so I still have time to plan something perfect.

Also, like two weeks ago, I started to sell cosmetics and skin care products by catalog.

I live with my mom, brother and sister.

It's normal here, not like in the USA, that young people go away to live and study.

Here everything is so close that I don't need a new apartment, but when I finish my studies, I'm hoping to have my new own apartment.

The question for you is, do you save money for something special, and how do you do it?

Take care everyone.

Randomness..

2011-07-13T17:50:00.005-06:00

So I was navigating the internet lol, and I found this website.


You can go to the website, if you click on the image.

And I was wondering how to get those nailpolish that look really cool.

Also.. I'm obssesed with a song from the band 2NEI1, they are from South Korea.

I'm not feeling lonely or something, but the song is good ^^

My lovely cats

2011-07-11T22:36:00.002-06:00

Hello everyone! Yesterday I posted a blog saying that I'm going to introduce you my cats. So here they are.

I'm going to start with the boy.

His name is Sultan.

He loves to sleep, play and call everyone's attention.

He looks funny here ^^

Nikki

She loves to sleep and clean herself.

She is really adorable, but also really shy.


I look terrible here xD

And the last one is Shaki xD

Funny is that I don't know why she has that name lol.

She is a very smart cat that hides all the time when she doesn't like something.

This cats are brougt from Ukraine, and they are 9 years or more.

So yeah, those are my cats :)

New Post Tomorrow

2011-07-10T23:42:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow I'll make a post about my cats.

Get ready to meet them.

But first, let me present you this random photo that I took from my webcam.

Since I'm working at the kitchen...

My cat decided to sleep on the table..

Not the best photo, but oh well... memories :)

How nice of him..

Behind the scenes part 2- Photography project

2011-07-07T19:03:00.005-06:00

This is part 2, where I had to be dressed like a bad nun, and my friend Emi like someone that was so thirsty to death. Here are some photos.

Emi, looking hot! ^^ I actually think that she looked awesome! I loved her simple make up that made her look like she was actually sick and about to die. I believe that in the photos she was the best part.

The cigarette was for the photoshoot

I think that he is a sweet guy, always being motivated, helping and working hard. That is a really good thing. Cheers to him :)

I forgot to change the ISO of the camera, that's why they look like that.

Behind the scenes part 1- Photography project

2011-07-07T07:39:00.006-06:00

So my group of Photography II from my university are making a photoshoot inspired on Costa Rican legends. This is a sneak peek, when we have done the photoshoot (that is not finished yet), I will show it in my blog.

Have fun watching these photos :)

I'm such a disorganized person

2011-07-04T08:21:00.004-06:00

Seriously, I'm sick of my mess. This is going to be like a diary or something. But I'm just sick of trying to work on my desktop, and I have a mess, or if I want to lay on my bed, there are a lot of stuff on it.

Also the way I do my university stuff plus the things I want to do for myself, need to be scheduled.

If my organization gets to success, I'll blog about it, and give advice too?

Oh well......

My first t-shirt design

2011-06-23T14:22:00.009-06:00

I did before a design for a t-shirt, but it was when I was starting college. I don't actually like it because of the transfer people made on that shirt, it was just horrible.

This one I did, was one that I think that I'm improving in design. I know I'm not the best, but I'm working hard to be better.

I don't like to compete with other people, I like to learn from others. Just that simple. The reason I'm saying this, is for those who may criticize me in a negative way, but oh well.. they don't care about it, so why should I be talking about this? =)

Now back to the subject. Yes, I did the illustration for the shirt. I had to be inspired of my university values and make a design according to the university people.
They are young people and I see them like wearing shirts with interesting designs.
Obviously I know that not everyone would wear my t-shirt, but that's life is about, nobody will like the same stuff you love.

The proccess of making this was crazy. I looked for every place if the people that do transfer on t-shirts make it in big size, so I realized that nop, just letter size.
I bought the transfer paper and did it by myself. It was the first time, and I don't know if I got the instructions right, but I screwed up some parts of the illustration.

Yep, I just high lighted my mistakes here. In class I didn't, and nobody realized that.
The interesting part that I made was the video. I thought a lot of what ideas for the video should I do, and well I got the idea of sharing the message through paper and acting "cool" while talking about respect. When the video was presented in class I was nervous, I don't mind if people see my videos of me acting crazy or something, but watching their reaction is what makes me more nervous lol. So, I would like to share my video about this t-shirt. It's in spanish, so.. sorry about those who doesn't understand this language.

History of Makeup!

2011-04-20T18:09:00.006-06:00

So some videos that I've been watching inspired me to talk about make up and show you some videos that I like because they were really interesting.

We have to know that make up started like centuries ago. The first prove of make up was found in the Ancient Egypt. But it's obvious that before that, people used it.

Makeup is everywhere, used in a different way, according to their time. For example, the Geishas in Japan, or the Native American that painted their faces before any ritual.

So the videos I wanted to show you, are from lisaeldridgedotcom in youtube. She is a proffesional make-up artist. In this videos she's showing us a huge collection of antique make up that you can be attracted to. If you are a make up artist, or some kind of designer, it could help you for inspiration. So, check out this videos, they are really cool.