Caramel Frappuccino.

           Before the summer was here at my doorstep, I had school. And usually after school, I either hit up the happy hour at Sonic or popped by Starbucks. Usually, though, it was Sonic that I frequented. Starbucks was a special treat that I limited to a once a week thing. When it was quite warm, I would get either get the caramel frappuccino or the Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino, which is a rather new drink available for the summer at Starbucks. The Caramel Ribbon Crunch is most definitely my favorite. After the first sip I took, I was hooked. 

       

 The only thing that I wasn't hooked on was the price. To get a Tall Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino was $4.25 with tax. That's only 12 ounces. To me that is a little pricey. After shelling out the almost $5, I finally had a light bulb shine bright above my head. Why not try to make frappuccino at home? Why I had never even thought of this before is beyond me. But after that light bulb lit up, it was like a whole new world was opened up to me. 

     

        Let's first talk about the basics of frappuccinos. Basically, a frappuccino is ice and milk blended together with syrups and other delicious flavorings. This I knew.  What I didn't know, though, was the ratio of ice to milk. That was my most basic question. 

        The recipe I found was very basic, which was what I liked. It didn't give embellishments so that a reader could be creative on their own. The best ratio of ice to milk I have found is 1 cup of ice to 1/2 cup of milk. This may depend on your taste but this will at least give a place to start.

      Now the next part was the amount of coffee or expresso to add. This I found varied in each recipe I found. So I came up with a happy medium, which I will mention below later. The fun part was finding the syrups to add and the amounts. Of course with a Caramel Frappuccino, you need caramel (duhhh). And with a Chocolate Chip Mocha Frapp.  you need Chocolate chips (duhhh) and coffee. So a lot of the ingredients were self explanatory, but what wasn't was the amount to add. 

    The syrups Starbucks uses are a bit pricey, but you can always use caramel sauce from the grocery store. For the caramel, I make my own and I will be putting the recipe up later. For chocolate syrup, I use the chocolate syrup from Hershey's. For a vanilla syrup, I make my own (which I will be putting up at a later time, too). But you can also just use vanilla extract and a little sugar. For the moment, though, I am just going to put up the recipe up for a Caramel Frappuccino.

   

        Ingredients for a Caramel Frappuccino:

1 cup ice

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup strongly brewed coffee or expresso

3 tablespoons caramel syrup or 2 pumps of Starbucks Caramel Syrup

whip cream (optional)

    Add ice, milk, coffee, and caramel to the blender. Blend together until all the ice completely chopped finely. Put in your favorite cup, add whip cream on top, and drizzle a  little caramel and voila!

As you can see this is so simple to make and so much cheaper. I hope this recipe is as great for you as it is for me! Now sit back and enjoy a cool slurp of your handiwork. 

                                                                       
                                                                                                                          Andrea

A curly do.

Hello everyone! It's been much to long since I have updated anything. I have been super busy with so many wonderful things. One of these wonderful things was prom, I recently had prom, and for my prom I did my hair and three of my friends' hair (which was a lot). And then I styled four more people's hair for a different prom which was 2 weeks after mine. With that alone I have kept busy. But on top of that the school year is starting to wind down (thank goodness!), and with that happening teachers are piling the homework on to us and I am having difficulties with trigonometry which does not help the situation. And about 3 weeks ago, the play which I had been working on for 2 or 3 months was finally over with which was bitter sweet (mostly sweet, though). To make things even better I have this cold or something which is just peachy. And with this cold, I have a solo in my choir concert this week, hopefully I will be better by then (fingers crossed!).

But since the prom season for me is finally over with, I wanted to make a new post. And this new post is about a curly hair style  I did on my sister's hair. She has amazing long soft hair and is just so much fun to play with but she doesn't let me do so very often. But when she does it is like opening presents on Christmas morning (slightly exaggerated). This hairstyle that you will see was for a formal 8th grader thing at her grade school. It was so pretty!

To do this curly do you will need:

• 1/2 inch- 3/4 inch curling iron. Or if you have a curling wand that will work to. (I didn't use a curling wand because mine was broken, so instead just wrap the hair around the barrel of a normal curling iron and don't use the clip)
• bobby pins
• flower or some other cute hair accessory 
• hair spray and a heat protectant (to keep from getting damaged from heat)
• comb to tease hair
• clips to section hair

To do this hairstyle:

1. First start by sectioning the hair to curl. I just did a standard section by doing the bottom section first and then a middle section and so on.
2. Next get a piece of hair 1/2 to 1 inch thick. It depends on how big and thick you want the curls to be. I did most of mine about 1/2 inch thick. 
3. After getting a piece of hair wrap the hair around the barrel. Leave it on the barrel for 10- 30 seconds and this to depends on how hot your curling iron is. Make sure not to leave it on there for to long. 
4. Continue doing this until you have done this to all the hair. Make sure to hair spray your hair after each section or spray after curling it all.
5. After curling all the hair, comb back from the top your head to the crown. Then tease the hair near the crown to give the hair some volume. 
6. The hair that you just combed back and teased at the crown pin back with bobby pins at the back of the head in the middle. Make sure that on each side you take about the same amount so it looks even. Also make sure hair in front of the ears is pinned back with it. 
7. After sufficiently bobby pinning, put the flower or other hair accessory in the middle where the bobby pins are. I placed mine right over the bobby pins so that the pins could not be seen. 
8. Spray hair once more with hair spray with good measure.

And voila you are done!

... It's that easy. And rather adorable. Hope my instruction weren't unbearable and weren't to confusing. Remember have fun!

                                                                          Andrea