Investigating the Purse

In lieu of anything remotely interesting to talk about, instead I decided to pull out that old trend of digging through my purse.

First off, this is what I carry on a daily basis. Yes, I could probably fit a seven year old child in it, but that's just the way I roll.



Yes, not the best picture in the world, but hey, it gets the job done. At any rate, I use those side pockets for lotion, gum, my phone, keys, miscellaneous nonsense, and occasionally I'll throw a drink in there for good measure. Inside, this what you'll find:



Alright, now you see a sneak peak of a current WIP (it's grown since then!), my coin purse, student ID card, knit kit (including various buttons and extra needles), scraps of yarn from when I finished my ocean ripple blanket that eventually will be used to stuff toys, neosporin (because I, ever the brilliant one, burned my entire palm and thumb last week), my favorite pencil, chapstick normally worn by a five year old, a bluetooth that desperately needs to be charged, my wonderful iPod (who knows where my headphones are), lotion, gum, phone and wallet.

On any given day, there's usually a folder of some sort thrown in, or a textbook. Plus, thousands of bits of trash and various receipt. My purse has to be big enough to hold a huge WIP, and normally it doubles for a book bag, so hence the largeness.

Plus it was like $10 at Target. Have I ever mentioned that I'm a cheap date?

Super Duper Zucchini Muffins

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm a vegetarian. Okay, that wasn't really a secret. Anyone who's been around me eating already knows that. But what you probably don't know is that I'm a vegetarian who doesn't actually like vegetables (or fruit for that matter).

I mean, it's not like I hate all fruits and veggies. I don't actually hate many of them. In fact, if you give me a plate of them, I'll most likely eat them. They're just not my favorite (that's reserved for carbs. Mmmm carbs).

Zucchini is one of those veggies I'm just not a big fan of. I throw it in a few of the dishes I make when I'm at my parents house, but for the most part, I avoid them. So when I opened my fridge and realized my mom had snuck most of her stash of the veggie in my new apartment (thanks Mom). After a long debate (actually, like a five second wonder if I could mail them back to her), I went to searching for something to cook them in. I found these:



I made Super Duper Zucchini Muffins, and let me tell you, they really were super duper. I skipped the brown sugar and walnuts, and substituted butter for shortening, and they were absolutely divine.



The only problem? i still have like four zucchini sitting my fridge, staring at me.

Peanut Butter Stuffed Hot Fudge Cupcakes

These photos are old. So, so old. But, whatever, at least this means I'm going to have enough cupcakes photos saved that I don't need to bake for quite some time. That's especially good considering I rarely bake unless I'm at my parent's house. Cook, yes. Bake, no.

Have I mentioned I want to work at an office just so I can be like my mom and bribe everyone into liking me via baked goods?

Seriously.

I probably also shouldn't mention that when I have my own house, I want to to be friends with our neighbors exclusively so I can invite them to dinner parties, impress them with food, and then torture them for hours on end with games such as Pictionary Man, Catchphrase, and Apples to Apples.



Uh, back to the topic at hand. If you were wondering, these cupcakes were awesome.

No, not awesome. The icing was awesome. The cupcakes were mediocre. In fact, they were so mediocre, I actually didn't even bother using the cupcake recipe when I made it the second time. I just used a generic cake mix (shhhh).



See? Look how cute I am. I decorated them with mini Reece's cups. These were for my friend Wonju's birthday. Won's family owns a donut shop that makes the most delicious donuts in the entire world. Amazing. Whenever I'm home and feel like being a good big sister, I swing by their shop on the other side of town and pick up some for my sister. Somehow, my attempt at buying three donuts usually turns into six plus a bag of donut holes.

At any rate, every time Wonju comes over, she brings donuts. Lots and lots of donuts. I love it. So for once, I decided to repay the favor and baked Won lots and lots of cupcakes. Delicious cupcakes. Apparently her parents were baffled by the idea that I was fattening them up.

I look forward to doing it again in the future.



These are my first attempt at the cupcakes. Um, clearly the frosting was suffering from the 1000 degree weather. At any rate, the recipe I used was Peanut Butter Stuffed Hot Fudge Cupcakes. Like I said, I was less than impressed with the hot fudge sauce and the cupcakes themselves, but the frosting was to die for. Our birds (who are freaks for peanut butter and waffles), went crazy when I let them try a teeny bit.

I think the frosting is officially my go to peanut butter frosting!

The hairy bunny

One of my favorite people is my friend Jozy. Jozy absolutely *adores* bunnies. She has a bet bunny (cleverly named "Bunny"). The first piece of jewelry her boyfriend bought her was a bunny necklace. Whenever I'm bored or sad, I search for cute animal pictures, and without fail, the rabbit ones get forwarded to her.

Every time I talk about knitting, or mention that I'm unsure what to make next, she has the same response. "Bunnies"

Why? I have no idea, but the girl is obsessed. I will be genuinely surprised if she doesn't have rabbit-themed wallpaper in her first house.

At any rate, a few months ago, I finally obliged her. This is the result:



I don't quite remember how on earth I made it. I know I knit it out of this horrible boucle yarn that used to be Monkey's grandmother's. It smelled funny and was scratchy as all hell, so I attempted to wash it and let it soak with conditioner.

If I had half a brain, I wouldn't have used the giant vat of conditioner I picked up from Sam's, thinking it would be okay only to realize it left my hair nasty and I hated the smell. So the yarn really didn't improve upon washing.

Whatever, it's a toy. No biggie. It's not like Jozy's going to be snuggling it, it'll fit in the palm of her hand.



I must have used size two or five needles (because those are the only sets of DPNS I have for toys), and the yarn was truly horrible to knit with. Plus, it felt like I was knitting hair. Yuck. At any rate, I'll happily pass this atrocity along to Jozy the next time I see her. I'm sure at least she will appreciate it. In the mean time, I need to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with the other eight billion skeins of that nasty yarn.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

I have to say, this has been an incredibly enjoyable book to listen to. The narrator, in particular really captivated me. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is told through the eyes of a precocious eleven year old girl, and the woman who narrated my audio book managed to capture her essence entirely.

As for the book itself, it reminded me in all the best ways of my childhood. It was like Nancy Drew, Matilda, and the Series of Unfortunate Events rolled up into one thoroughly delightful story. I've always been a fan of mystery books and movies, particularly ones I can predict the ending to halfway through (which may explain why Monkey and I spent our Sunday night watching two horrible movies on Lifetime, but that's beside the point). This book managed to keep me captivated while making me feel intelligent for figuring out the mystery well before Flavia did. By making each turn of the mystery easy to suss out, it also emphasized Flavia's lack of maturity, which added to the believability overall. However, the book had a sufficient amount of twists and turns to maintain my interest throughout.

Flavia's character was entirely believable. From her determination to torture her sisters to her obsession with learning, I demonstrated the same things in my childhood. I can remember hatching numerous schemes when I was a kid, as well as investigating the thesaurus for the most impressive vocabulary to spring on others. The best part of this book, however, is that I would feel comfortable letting a child of that age read it. While Flavia's gruesome imagination runs rampant, the author manages to reign in the gore to an appropriate level without dumbing it down for kids.

Like I said, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I actually applied for an additional library card in my University's town, just so I can download the sequel on overdrive. I'm thinking that I'll probably annoy my sister into giving the audio book a bit of a listen the next time I'm home as well. Two thumbs up on my part!

(5/5 stars)

Dear Blogger

Dear Blogger,

What the hell? If I have a post typed up, it should not take me an HOUR to finally get it to publish. It most certainly should not boot me to a search page when I push the "publish" button.

It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen more often than not when I try to publish a post.

I'm about two seconds to switching to wordpress. At least there I can comment on comments.

No love,
Lizz

Pony!

Hey, guess what?! I don't have anything remotely interesting to write about today. Why? Because my classes (already) took over my life, and I've been knitting the same boring shawl for the past two months. So. Uh, distract yourselves with this awesome version of me as a pony:



Can you tell I like bright colors?

Pesto with Cream Sauce

Oh, I made something. I made something delicious!

I put the teaser up a few weeks ago, and now I'm finally writing about it. What did I make those many days ago? Well, I made pasta with pesto cream sauce. With the first bite, I thought I had died and gone to Italian heaven. My mother felt the same way.



This was so delicious in fact, I made it again, less than a week later, for my dear friend Veronica. Our original intention was to deviously lure a boy into loving her through delicious food. That plan backfired when her boy didn't show up. That just meant more for us though, and her parents loved it as well. I've got to say, the tomatoes really make it, and I'm someone who really doesn't like tomatoes.

The boy will just have to wait until Christmas break. I'm sure by then, Veronica and I will have plenty of delicious recipes to force feed him.



Have I mentioned I'm in love with these plates? Veronica's mom wants to get rid of them if Veronica doesn't want them. I'm resisting the urge to garbage pick if that happens. When I do finally upgrade to real plates (rather than the plastic Ikea ones I use now. I swear, I'm not really five years old), I intend to buy brilliant white ones, but these are so cute. They remind me of tea parties and MeMe Rose. Anyways, back to the food.

I promise you, it's amazing. Try it. If you're particularly devious, try it twice. And with extra cheese if you're making it for my mother. And for the love of food, do toast the pine nuts.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

I finished The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. It was a trial to say the least. When I first saw this book at the local Barnes and Noble, I was instantly drawn to the cover and title.

As is pretty evident by my other blog posts, I love food. I love cooking, I love baking, I love eating, and I love reading about any of those things. I still hold Julie & Julia high in my list of favorite books and movies. So when I first saw this book and read the brief blurb on the back, I thought the book would be entrenched in delicious descriptions of food.

It wasn't.



I was really expecting something more lighthearted and appetite inducing, but instead, what i got was something confusing, and depressing. I have to be careful as to what I read and watch. I get extremely invested in stories, to the point where I have to fight off tears in movie previews and even commercials for banks. It's really quite ridiculous. Subsequently, I've learned to steer clear of the notoriously sad books. While it's great to have a good cry, and one of my favorite ways of inducing such a thing is through the media of books and movies, I still need that happy ending to put be back to right.

This book, it really didn't have it. The characters were incredibly static throughout the novel. In fact, the only person who seemed to change was the main character, and she only changed marginally. I was constantly looking forward to her own story lines, the ones involving her brother and her mother were frustrating at best. Her father was so absent until the end that he didn't even register. But because the mother and brother figure never grew and developed, and had the same problems throughout the entire novel, they were really quite boring.

In short, this books was a disappointment, mostly because I didn't know enough about the book beforehand. If I had gone in, expecting a depressing and meaningful book, I would have been a lot happier with it. Instead, the lack of frivolity just frustrated me. In the end, I'm glad I just checked this out from the library, rather than investing any actual money. I'm sure the book would be more appealing to someone who can handle the seriousness of the novel as a whole, unfortunately, that person just isn't me.

(1/5 stars)

Delay

This entry regarding Make Something Monday has been hereby postponed in favor of an urgent matter.

Namely, my schedule of doom for tomorrow. I tried to write it out, in attempts to make myself feel better. While I am a bit more amused, I'm absolutely terrified about tomorrow. (I'm moving at 6AM Wednesday moving. Predictably, I'm so not ready).

The schedule:

0800-0830 Tear self from bed. Shower. Attempt to not look like a sleep deprived zombie.
0830-0900 Eat breakfast for fear of turning into a ravaging monster. Resist the urge to bake muffins and pancakes to avoid the certain doom
0900-1000 CLEAN ALL THE THINGS from the last minute baking of the evening before.
1000-1130 Pack. Yuck.
1130-1430 Run in terror of the packing, straight to the arms of an LYS. Squish more yarn.
1430-1500 Pick up prescription on the way home
1500-1520 Scarf down lunch. Most likely leftovers and a smoothie, since our fridge is exploding.
1520-1700 Go the the eye doctor. Enjoy the brief moments of relaxation via knitting in the waiting room. Resist the urge to buy neon square framed glasses.
1700-1900 Pack more. Procrastinate slightly by eating a light snack since dinner will be late.
1900-2000 Fall into a pit of despair about the state of packing. Go across the street and mush the kittens there and try to sneak one home.
2000-2130 Make dinner. Crash hot potatoes + something. Do potatoes really need a side dish?
2130-2230 Last ditch efforts to squeeze things in boxes while my father shoves them in our cars.
2230-2330 Give up. Get ready for bed/doom. Sync up my iPod for the trip and try, most likely unsuccessfully to sleep.



This is the aforementioned kitchen.

My To Pack list is ridiculous. I'm so doomed.

Not my original intent.

First off, let me preface this by saying I'm really proud of myself for the continuous posting. That being said, today almost didn't happen because I'm a bonehead.

I originally intended to introduce the theme for Sundays: Start Something Sundays, except for one major problem. I didn't take any photos of anything I started. I strive to provide as many pictures as possible on this blog because that is what I really enjoy seeing on other blogs. Clearly, I'm really shallow. So when I don't take photos, I don't post.

Which quickly because an excuse until I don't post for several months. Uh. Yeah, not good.

So, I'm going to distract from the fact that I don't really have a relevant photo by including a picture of a really handsome cat:

Root Beer Floats

You know what? You know what day it is? And you know what I have photos of?

Nyan nyan nyan

Guess what day it is?

It's Friday! And that means a new theme!

Audio what?

I've got another theme to announce! This time not only am I announcing it the day of, but I also actually have something to write about. So, without further ado...

Monday Monday

What?

Wait, what that?

Oh really, another announcement?! I can't believe it.

If you could imagine a drum roll, that would be great right now.



It's another day in my day of the week planner thing! I love it. I already have my first photos lined up. I'm not going to say exactly what it is, but I will say it involves this girl:



That, and it was delicious. I'm not going to have an event every day of the week, that would be insane, right? Instead, I'm shooting for every day but Tuesday. Why not Tuesday? Because twice a month it's knit night, plus I couldn't think of anything for it. So far you've seen Saturday and Monday, and I gave a hint about another day. I don't want to follow these themes every day, but I figured it would be fun to do when I have the ideas. Plus, it would be a fun way to motivate myself to keep up the creativity.

On another note, guess what I'm still knitting!

If you guessed my shawl-of-death-and-destruction, you were right. Sigh. I'm seriously testing my limits when it comes to resisting startitis.

Announcing a Thing

I'm announcing a new thing.

Yes, a thing. I know, it's so descriptive, but, what else am I going to call it? Anyways, I've always been intrigued by those day of the week tasks. I think it hearkens back to when I used to read Little House on the Prairie and they had washing on Monday, mending on Tuesday, etc. Then it progressed to Finished Objects Friday and WIP Wednesday. I'm just scheduling obsessed. Not that I follow schedules, mind you, but whatever. At any rate, here's the thing:



Okay, I know this is Sunday, but a photo just wasn't going to happen yesterday- I was way too exhausted from standing on my feet for virtually two days straight. Why? Because I was baking these:



Plus about ten million more. You don't even want to know... But you definitely do want to taste!

Falling Leaves Bag

This was my main source of relief from The-Shawl-That-Never-Ends while on vacation. Really, it wasn't that much relief- it was equally boring.

After sampling three different types of market/beach bags, I've come to the conclusion that really, they're all really the same.



The worst part is that I don't actually *use* them. My mom barely uses the one I gifted to her, and my sister took off with the yellow one I made for myself. I'm thinking I'll probably make a few more- not with the pattern for this particular bag, but rather, another everlasting bagstopper. I like the square bottom considerably more.

In other news, I went on a cupcake binge today. Not eating, thankfully (though I did gorge on frosting), but baking. My parents are having their last volleyball that I'll be able to attend this summer, and I wanted to go out with a bang.

That, and I was excited about my recipes. When my mother came home and saw the damage (four different types), she banned me from the kitchen. I'll probably sneak in and make some lemon cookies despite the ban.

I also made a ridiculously delicious dinner on Wednesday. I think I'll probably cook it again some time this week and take a few photos. I need to stop cooking without my camera. Or start leaving my camera in the kitchen. Either way, at least I get fed (too well, unfortunately, by the looks of some of those vacation photos- back to the gym for me...)

We're back!

We're back! And I feel utterly hideous after seeing some of the photos of me in a bathing suit. It's amazing how confident you can feel until you see photographic evidence of weight gain. (Thankfully, it apparently my weight seems to like to hide under clothes)

Ugh. It probably doesn't help my mood that I've been working on the same darn shawl for like a month. I want to be done!