Coffee Break

I'm having a very difficult time waking up this morning, so I thought a mid-morning coffee break was in order:

Starbucks French Roast coffee and Queen of Sheba Torte

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . that's better!

The Queen of Sheba Torte is Hubby's favorite; I make it for him a few times a year. It's a dark chocolate and almond torte, with a dark chocolate poured glaze.  Not as difficult as it looks.

Oh, yeah!

I had the good intuition to make this for Hubby the very first time I had him over for dinner, 17 years ago.  At that time, I didn't know he was a dark chocolate fiend. Needless to say, he fell deeply in love with me.   How could he not?

The recipe is from The Greyston Bakery Cookbook by Helen Glassman and Susan Postal.  When I looked it up on Amazon, I found two results.  Mine is the older one, published in 1986, but there is also another, newer book of the same title by a different author.  I may have to check this one out too!  This book is one of my go-to books for baking, the other one being the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts.  Both are chock full of excellent recipes.

OK, now that I'm awake, let's take a look at my nails, shall we?

CND "The Look for Spring 2011"
Perfectly Bare polish
Perfectly Bare shimmer

I love this; for me it's the perfect almondy-peachy-pinky-nude color.  The polish is pretty on its own, but the shimmer adds a beautiful, subtle glow.  Just lovely.  I did have some trouble with the application though.  On the opaque polish, I think my brush must have been wonky, making it difficult to apply neatly.  The shimmer was fine.  But I have to say, I'm not in love with the new brush.  This is the first "new" CND I've tried - back in the day, it was one of my favorite brands, and I thought the old formula and brush were great.  And they used to do a set of minis for every collection that included one of each color  (hear that, OPI?) - I think I bought every one!

The shimmer has gorgeous silvery glass-like flakes, which I tried to capture slightly unfocused:

This is two coats polish and one coat shimmer with a coat of CND Speedy topcoat - no shrinkage.

My fantastic idea for the red polish was a failure.  I had intended to stamp on baby blue polka dots, to go with my blue yarn, but none of the light blues I have were opaque enough, so the whole thing just got ruined.

I did start The Jan Sweater this morning, but there's not enough on the needles at the moment to merit showing it.   So here's another picture of my pretty nail polish.