Tag Archives: Mushpa

3 Ingredients: All Natural Every Day Cleaner

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We made our own all purpose house cleaner with 3 ingredients we have at home. It will save us some $$$ and it is super environmentally conscious, AND its as easy and cheesy as 1, 2, 3!

One:

Dont throw away your old cleaner’s spray bottle!

Keep it, and fill it half way with white vinegar.

vinegar

TWO:

Fill the rest of the bottle with all-natural tap water! ; )

water bubbles

THREE:

Add about 5-10 drops of essential oil. We used peppermint because it smells oh-so-fresh, but you can do anything from lavender to patchouli!

Peppermint essential oil

THAT’S IT!

You can use this anywhere and everywhere, and according to The New Homemaker there is dozens of combinations that you can use vinegar with to clean everything from your laundry to removing stains and odors!

So why bother buying “green” cleaners when we can make them at home!?

So do it now!

love,

-Mensa

Oh-Organic Marshmallow Fondant, Where art thou?

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Feliz cumpleaños Micaca y Isabela!!!

This birthday cake is dedicated to my crazy cool sister who turned the double douces a week ago…An easy to make fondant added a little color to this delicious chocolate cake, and who doesn’t love fondant? You can really make anything you want with it because its almost like play-dough!

The fondant was ridiculously easy to make, and because of the hype with the marshmallow-fondant recipe, I got caught up in the moment and used ingredients that were not so wholesome for our health. So sorry hermana!

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So the ingredients I used?

Marshmallows= High Fructose Corn Syrup and who knows what  bits and pieces of chicken parts…

Powdered Sugar= I didn’t use any organic or unbleached product…my bad.

Food Coloring= Need I say more?

So here’s the deal. I did a little research and Organic Marshmallow Fondant IS possible.

I found a couple of recipes, yet each of them always had something “off”. So i combined all my research and I think it will be as easy to make an organic fondant recipe without the extra hassle.

So here’s the recipe…

8 oz of mini VEGAN marshmallows (about 4 full cups). They do exist!

1 tbsp of water

1 pound bag of Wholesome Organic Icing Sugar..plus a little bit more for when things get sticky!

1 tbsp of Organic Light corn syrup

1 tbsp of lemon juice

Natural Food Coloring

Organic Butter

* For the Food Coloring there are MANY options. You can buy organic and natural good coloring like Maggie’s Naturals which are made of all natural plant based sources. Your local natural food store should carry some. If you want to experiment and make your own colors you can virtually achieve any of them with any product at the store. Red? Use some beets! Orange? Carrots! Yellow? Tumeric or saffron flowers. Green? You can use spinach or even buy a natural food supplement called liquid chlorophyll. Blues and Purples? Cabbage anyone? Its doable! You might just have to experiment with the recipe.

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The HOW TO:

Add the water to the marshmallows. It usually calls for a minute in the microwave. Skip this step and the extra radiation and heat it the old school way. I will update this recipe when I try it in the oven, but I would start by testing it at 300 degrees for about 10 minutes in a bowl.

Use a WOODEN SPOON covered with butter. This will make the marshmallows stick less to everything and will make it easier to mix. Make sure all the clumps are gone until you have a pretty smooth marshmallow mixture, and add the corn syrup and the lemon. The corn syrup helps make it a bit more flexible so it does not crack and dry so fast, while the lemon reduces the intense sweetness it has.

Start adding the icing sugar bit by bit, and continue mixing it well into the marshmallow mix. Slowly it will start to clump up and it will become hard to keep going further with the spoon. Once you have gone through 3/4 of the sugar, you can transfer the mix to a clean surface and use your hands.

Knead and keep adding the powdered sugar until you have a smooth and malleable dough. If it’s too sticky add a bit of sugar, if it’s too dry then splash water into your hands and knead again.

To prevent it from sticking to the table and the rolling pin, I greased the surfaces with a bit of butter which made things much easier.

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I made some flowers and leaves. Pretty easy! For the leaves I just cut two different shapes and with a toothpick added the lines. For the flowers I used a long flat triangle and started to curl it up from the smallest end. The colors look extremely bright, because they are extremely fake.

So now that I have the recipe and sources, I will make a second attempt to live to what I preach, and make a HEALTHIER and more CONSCIOUS birthday cake, with beautiful organic and natural colors!

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 -Mensa

Re-potting and Re-loving your Plants

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I must admit. I need to be better about taking care of our house plants. So today I got serious! I decided to re-pot them, mix the soil around, add new soil and a little home-made plant food.

The How To’s:

1.Making the Plant Food:

Since we recently started composting, I figured that instead of buying any plant food from the store, I had to put our compost to good use.

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In a blender I added some coffee grinds, a couple of eggshells, and some compost (which included apple cores, carrot peels and other goodies). I added a healthy amount of water and blended it.

A word about plant food:

Many home made recipes call for a mixture of  Epson Salts, baking powder, regular salt, and household ammonia. Whatever rocks your boat. Personally, adding ammonia, which is considered to be a toxic substance, to anything seems a little crazy to me. Its a natural and organic compound produced and used for growth of many plants, but having a jug of ammonia in the house does not seem like the best and most eco-friendly solution. (If it gets in our water ways it can be extremely harmful). So sticking with all-natural, non-toxic, home-made plant food seems like a better solution to me.

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2. Mixing the soil

I took old soil from plants that had died due to extreme heat in our kitchen (whoops) and mixed it with new soil in a bucket. I tossed it and added a bit of the juicy plant food (mostly the water part) to moisten the soil. I added more water to the mix in order to have the soil thoroughly moist.

3. Re-potting your plants

***The most important thing I did through out this whole process was talking to my plants! Call me crazy, but I really felt like they needed to know what was going on. Imagine being pulled out of your warm comfy home and abruptly placed in a new pot! So as I did this I explained the process, was really gentle, made them feel more at ease, and made ME feel like I knew what I was doing (even though it was my first real re-potting experience!)…So it helped us all : )

-Start by having everything ready and clean. I made a mess, so cleaning as you go is definitely recommended.

– Prep your flower pot with a little dirt at the bottom. If there is a hole you can cover it using a shard of an old broken pot making sure you don’t cover the hole completely. Add a bit of the plant food that you have prepared.

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-I took my first plant and flipped it gently until it loosened and came out of its pot. I dug a little around the edges and it helped to get it out. I untangled the roots a bit and watered them slightly and placed it on the pot.

-I covered and filled the pot with dirt and half way through I added a bit more of the plant food. Then I covered it completely, making sure I stayed at least half an inch from the rim (if not when you water it, it can overflow).

-Use a spray to clean the leaves of your plants if they have dirt on them, so they can breathe!

Tell your plants that they are awesome and that this is for their own good even if they hate you… ; ) Sun, water and love will make their day!

Now they will grow stronger than ever and produce beautiful blooms and strong green leaves!

-Mensa

A Little Bit of Self Promotion Never Hurt Anyone

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Mushpa y Mensa

We write a bunch of blog entries about this and that, but I want to focus a bit on our baby Mushpa y Mensa today. I am going to send out fantastically positive energy to everyone to want what we have to offer.

Listen, I want to make it, not just for us realize, but for all the other artists, inventors and nerds who desire their freedom from a job they’ve never really loved. For all those who want to believe that it is possible to be happy in what you do. I want us to be that example where people say, “See anyone can make it if they do the work and believe.” Seriously, that is all anyone needs to do and we will prove it!

Here is my shameless self promotion below.

Mushpa y Mensa Etsy Store –  http://www.etsy.com/shop/MushpaYMensa
Mushpa y Mensa Blog – http://mushpamensa.wordpress.com/
Mushpa y Mensa Twitter – https://twitter.com/mushpamensa
Mushpa y Mensa Pinterest – http://pinterest.com/musphamensa/mushpa-y-mensa-we-are-two-crafty-chics/

Go check out our sites and buy one thing, maybe an amazing tablet case, or plush sweet pigs who think they are elephants and aliens who have no name, and there is even a gorgeous handmade, clay necklace!!!

Please, do us a solid and send an email to all your friends, family, enemies we don’t care who, just do it. It will take two seconds and you will be helping two people who in turn will help millions. You help us and the Universe will help you. I promise!!!!

Until next time…

-Mushpa

The Case of the Tablet – Part 2

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Asus Glamorous

Mensa asked me the other day why what is inside our new tablet case is the best choice currently on the market. She also wanted to know if there was any ethical consciousness involved in my selection, which of course there was!!! :]

Here’s the breakdown on why my new Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 is the best out there! Firstly, it has an android system, open source love, the best screen and processor, and it is lighter than an iPad. It’s also fast as lightning and reasonably priced.

Next, the company is Taiwan-based. Free China. Taiwan is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, and human development. I’m just saying. :]

Also the environment is another factor for me,

Asus even developed a special proprietary chip, the EPU (Energy Processing Unit), in order to coordinate and manage power usage in all of a computer’s major components. In fact, all Asus notebook computers are designed to be Energy-Star compliant. Furthermore, when it comes to the materials used to make Asus products, Asus has made a special effort to be green. There is a company directive that restricts the use of certain known hazardous materials in Asus products, and the list is actually more restrictive than that imposed on manufacturing by the European Union. In recent years, Asus has been developing hardware that can be more easily recycled, as well as offering its own take-back and recycling programs. (source: http://www.roc-taiwan-hn.com/asus.php)

The best part though is how cute it looks its new, glittery case!

Thank you Mensa!

<3

– Mushpa

The American Dream

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The American Dream

Let’s start like this, I made a commitment to write one entry a day, everyday in the Mushpa y Mensa blog. It isn’t that hard. It doesn’t really have to be about anything specific, just vaguely related to Mushpa y Mensa’s philosophy, ideology or really just the general vibe, so why is it that days have gone by and I have not done one entry? This lead me to the question, what is it that holds people back from being successful? More specifically, what is holding me back from being successful? Am I really stopping myself from what I want to do to go to an arbitrary 9-5 job? What is the point? What am I trying to prove? Why is it for others I can go above and beyond? Why can I make other people successful, rich, enlightened, but not for myself? I have better ideas, I will do better things for humanity, I have the skills and ability to do anything, and I am charming, so what gives? Is it the fact that for the formative years of my life I went to school and was brainwashed into believing that success is based on not only my career choice, but on my monetary value? Is it really so simple in its complexity?

I was saying to Mensa last night, what if we couldn’t get a job working for anyone? What if we had to work for ourselves to make money to survive? If this was our only option to have food, shelter, and comfort, well then I know Mushpa y Mensa would already be on Forbes 50 Most Innovative (and profitable) Companies’ list! Question is, why does it seem that I can’t make it successful without the fear of starvation and homelessness?

When we are children we are told and believe that we can do anything we want, that we can become anything we want. Then as we mature we are made to believe that this is a dangerous way of thinking. The funny thing is it is not dangerous for us to believe, it is dangerous for those wanting to make and control the majority of wealth in the world. Greedy children who never learned how to share. I want the American Dream I was promised. I want what I deserve and the only way I am going to get it is to believe not only in myself, but that if I do the work, if I do the right thing and have faith in this universe, I will attain this…happiness…success…serenity. I want to live my life, not just survive it. I don’t want to get to the end of the road and think, “Is that all there is?”, so today guess what?

I did my blog entry. :]

Much love,

Muspha

Don’t Judge a Wine Bottle by Its Cover…Or Should You?

Art, Food and Wine, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So of course you don’t want to judge a book, a person, or a wine by its cover, but we all do it to some extent. It’s a fact of life. (If you believe you don’t then more power to you.)

We recently bought two bottles over at Trader Joe’s, and I left there, like always, very happy. Great selection and variety for really affordable prices, and sometimes you might get really lucky and find some delicious gems without the outrageous price! Just sayin’…

But on our recent trip over there, we bought two particularly aesthetically pleasing bottles. Mushpa picked the Dearly Beloved I Thee Red Wine, which describes itself as having “aromas of dark cherry plum and spicy vanilla oak [that] vow to pair perfectly with bluberry, black currant and toasted vanilla bean flavors.”IMG_6696

I myself went for the Liberté Cabernet Sauvignon which “delivers an exceptional bouquet of blackberries, autumanl leaves and baking spices followed by opulent flavors of clove and marzipan.” Honestly I don’t know where they got the marzipan notes, but since I am no wine expert I will trust the house, Familia Nueva’s palate.

Both have exceptional art and depending on your style, your attention will go to grabbing either bottle off the shelf. The Liberté has a beautiful label with what I believe is an Alphonse Mucha’s Art Nouveau painting, which I particularly enjoy. When I first saw it, it reminded me of Henri Privat-Livemont poster for Absinthe Robette.

I really really like Art Nouveau…So beautiful!

The Dearly Beloved I Thee Red has an image of a skull formed of leaves and flowers surely influenced by indigenous mexican art which commonly uses skulls and skeletons in order to represent death, life and resurrection (and it is silkscreened onto the bottle!).

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I have to confess: I judged both bottles by their beautiful covers. I thought my lady in tan with leaves on her head would deliver a much more satisfying wine than the one with the skull. I’m sorry Mushpa, I apologize I judged your wine too harshly, thinking that for such wonderful art I would have to compensate by drinking a mediocre wine…

Oh how wrong I was!

The Dearly Beloved was spectacular! It filled my nostrils with sweet aromas and when I took the first sip it almost fooled me into thinking it was as sweet as dessert wine! So sweet…until you finish letting it go, and it delivers dearly with a beloved final kick. It had been a while that I had tasted a wine that I truly enjoyed!

And I must say that my Liberté was an alright pick. I am not going to judge it with fancy words because I am not an avid wine connoisseur, but I do have a palate and I know how to taste. I will say that next time I need to buy someone a gift, I would most definitely buy it again for the art! :]

I also ran into this amazing site called the Wine Proof Collective. They keep it real and part of their amazing journey to love and live wine is their Wine Projects, and they get artist and wine makers together to design some of the most beautiful wine labels I have seen! To put it in their own words: “these packages were not made to look good on a computer screen, but rather to be at home in a natural habitat. These wine bottles look best on the shelf, in your hands, in your refrigerator, and on your best friend’s dinner table.” And that, my friends is what art is all about- to keep it close, for your viewing pleasure.

Screen shot 2013-02-14 at 4.10.24 PM

So to all artist, dead and alive, thank you for combining these two wonderful things together! And next time you are shopping for wine, and the bottle is more beautiful than what you expect the wine to be, I say don’t be scared and give it a try. It might surprise you, and if not, you might just have bought yourself a fantastical piece of art!

Cheers y Salud!

-Mensa