Category: photography

My recipe for Crunchy, cinnamon-Sugar Almonds

On By VanelyIn food, kitchen, photography1 Comment

If you’re excited for the end of 2020 – clap your hands.

I don’t know about you all, but I am so ready to welcome the new year and – hopefully – it is a million times better than this one.

Anyways, I’m sure not many have noticed but I was on a short hiatus from my blog. Life itself had become overwhelming as I’m sure many of you can relate.

Even so, during the last couple of hectic months of this year, I managed to try new things (mostly in the kitchen), and I’m quite happy with what it has yielded.

One of those things is my recipe for crunchy almond treats!

Now, without further ado, here’s how I made them:

Ingredients

  • 2 cups of whole *unsalted* almonds
  • 1/2 cup of water
  • 1/2 cup of cane sugar
  • 1/4 cup of brown sugar
  • 1/2 tbsp of cinnamon (or more, if you prefer)
  • 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
  • 1/4 tsp of salt

Instructions

  1. In a large pan, pour the water and set to medium-high heat
  2. In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients (except for the almonds) and stir in the bowl to fully combine them.
  3. As soon as the water starts to boil, add the vanilla extract to the water and lightly stir to evenly distribute it.
  4. Pour the dry ingredient mixture evenly on the pan (think about covering the entire bottom of the pan with a nice layer of the sugar mixture)
  5. DO NOT stir the sugar into the water – leave it how you poured it
  6. Let the water and sugar mixture boil for about 30 seconds, then, pour the almonds in.
  7. Let the almonds sit on the sugar/water mixture for a minute
  8. Begin to lightly stir the almonds and mixture
  9. Continue to stir until the sugar thickens
  10. Once the sugar has a moderately thick consistency, pour the contents of the pan onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
  11. Spread almonds evenly on baking sheet and let cool – Enjoy!

Bullet Journal Tracker Section + Blog Ideas and Brain Dump

On By VanelyIn Arts, Blogging, Bujo, crafts, creativity, Decorating, Humor, Journal, photography, Productivity3 Comments

Hello, my lovely nocturnals and diurnals! I hope you’re all doing well. The past two days have been a big blur – it doesn’t even feel like it’s been two days – and most of that can be attributed to the fact that I did not sleep for 48 hours thanks to my obsession on writing this guide for Animal Crossing’s new update.

Thanks to the lack of sleep, I currently look extremely similar to this:

Yes, I am – to say the least – an Animal Crossing fan. So, you can expect more posts like those to come. I was thinking about showing some neat tricks as well as showcasing parts of my island. Let me know what you’d like to see!

Jumping right back to this particular post, I just wanted to share my bujo tracker along with other sections that I will [hopefully] be filling out as the days go by.

Here they are:

Bullet Journal Tracker

Bullet Journal Tracker

Now, I don’t know if everyone is just super fast, or I am super slow [or both lol] but, it took me a good hour for me to make this.

And even then, it’s not even complete because I am not sure what else I’d like to keep track of other than my moods – but I’d like to use a whole individual section/page for that one.

I want to know, what do you put in your bujo tracker? By letting me know, I might get inspired and want to add it to my own. Right now, I have 4 empty spaces and I’m at a loss on what to write in them.

You’ve probably noticed some new items…

Yes, I got new items from Ali Express and I’m so excited to try them all! I’ve already tried one of them, however. And they’re in the picture above – can you guess what the new item I tried is? I also ordered letter stamps from Ali Express, and made a blog post about my thoughts on the products, so go check it out for yourself!

My Blog Ideas / Brain Dump Section

Bullet Journal Tracker Ideas

It’s pretty minimalistic and somewhat vintage-y in a way [which is exactly what I was going for]. Now, I know this is a far cry from my October Monthly Spread Theme, but after spending 3+ hours working on that cover page alone, I started to seriously consider if it was worth it to have a migraine for the rest of the day if I kept on doing those detailed spreads. Now, that’s not to say I won’t ever do a schmancy, cute spread again, but I won’t for a little while at least.

Another thing about this particular section is that the number 10 keeps bothering my eyes. I dislike the fact that the zero is so far apart from the one.

Anyway, I’m getting the hang of the letter stamps, I promise!

Printable October Calendar

I know, right? I can’t believe I actually created this from scratch.

I am weirdly proud of it.

Do you think I should make more printable calendars? Or should I stick to writing and call it a day? Lol

Welp, that is all for tonight! It’s currently 2:01am here in Germany and I should get some sleep.

Leave a comment and say hi? ♥

Happy October, everyone!

Nocturnal Blogger ♥

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I ordered letter stamps from Ali Express and here are my thoughts

On By VanelyIn Arts, Bujo, crafts, creativity, Decorating, photography, Productivity, Review7 Comments

Welcome, my lovely nocturnals and diurnals! As I sit here at this precise moment, writing these words, I have to the right of me some letter stamps that I have been anxiously waiting for ever since I placed the order.

I still haven’t tried them out! So I am noticeably excited to get to it and to write down my thoughts on all of them.

Before I do, however, let me just list exactly what it is that I am reviewing:

  • An A to Z Rubber Stamp Set
  • A Monthly Rubber Stamp Set
  • A Days of the Week Rubber Stamp Set

I will be trying them out now and taking pictures for you to see! I am crossing my fingers and hoping that I won’t be disappointed.

Be right back!

It really did feel like an eternity.

Results✨

To start off, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the A to Z stamp set came with its own little, square ink pad.

However, I’m happy that my stamping didn’t rely on that ink pad because, well, it was a bit difficult to get a solid letter using that ink. You had to apply considerable pressure to cover the rubber stamp and, even then, the ink was inconsistent. It looked watery.

Here is a comparison between the two ink pads – the one on the left is the ink pad included in the stamp set, and the one on the right is one I bought separately.

Comparison between two ink pads picture

The same pressure was applied both on the ink pad and afterwards on the paper. Evidently, the ink pad included with the stamp set is of less quality than my individual one. However, I bet you could achieve a solid letter if you pressed hard enough.

Nonetheless, it was a nice surprise to see that the set included the ink pad – I will no doubt be using it at some point.

The other stamps:

You can see that, in the second picture, both November and December don’t show completely – I didn’t press them correctly 🤦🏻‍♀️.

Overall, I am excited and happy with them! I cannot wait to start incorporating these stamps in my bullet journal!

If you want to buy these:

Here are the links to the same ones I ordered:

I am currently in Germany and my order took around 2 weeks to get here. Hopefully it gets to you quicker than that! I still have plenty of Ali Express orders that I haven’t received yet.

What do you think of my post? Do you want to see more blog posts like this one? Let me know in the comments and I will take it into consideration for next time I receive another order!

Or, just drop in and say “hey” 😜

And, as always, thank you so much for reading!

~Nocturnal Blogger ♥

Photo of my cat looking straight up into the camera.

I gave my cat a professional photo shoot, and these are the results

On By VanelyIn cats, Hiccup, photographyLeave a comment

Look through your camera roll.

Just do it.

If you have taken upwards of 100 photos of your cat in just a single photo session, I hereby officially declare you: cat-crazy [same rules apply with whatever pet you have].

Hiccup and I welcome you to the madness with open arms.

So, in the past week, I made it my personal mission to take as many photos of Hiccup as I could. I followed him around the house, with blatant disregard of his personal space, just to get shots like the one I set at the beginning of this post.

He didn’t seem to mind though – Hiccup loves the spotlight.

This was a pretty straightforward blog post, I know. I just had to post the results to this impromptu photo shoot! Of course, there’s like a million and one more photos on my DSLR camera, but I couldn’t upload them all or else the whole internet would crash lol.

And as always, thank you for reading ♥

||Nocturnal Blogger ♥