Long Overdue, eh?

Well aren't I just a horrible little blogger? I must make a new entry now before it becomes *gasp* a month since I last posted. I'm sorry Mr. Blog, I promise I haven't forgotten about you; actually I think about you every day. Nothing seems extremely blog-worthy (you know... like taking down my bulletin board... *sigh*), but I'm afraid that if I don't write in you soon I will stop writing completely!

Things that are new:

- I am no longer a lowly intern, now I'm a lowly samples receiving employee! I got hired full time and I have things like a salary and benefits! I even got my little insurance card today, and it doesn't have my parents name on it or anything.

- Due to an unfortunate storm that rolled through Austin a few weeks ago I have decided to start looking for an apartment closer to where I work. It took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get to work that day. Without traffic I could get to work in 20 minutes, most days it takes 40-45 minutes, but I couldn't wrap my head around an hour and forty-five minutes to drive 17.5 miles. It also takes me about an hour to get home everyday, and I don't want that to be my life.

- I finished The Hunger Games the weekend I got it, and have since bought and finished the rest of the series. Casey has read the first one and I'm trying to get the others to her. It is so fun sharing books!

- My Grandmommy fell and broke her arm. :( I went to Katy to visit her, but mostly I spent my time with Jane running around everywhere. I don't know how she was upright at the end of the weekend... she had to take care of Grandmommy, baby Dylon, help paint my cousin's house, cook for everyone, and she didn't even get to go to her scrapbooking class she had planned. Grandmommy seemed to be doing well, she worked on a puzzle all weekend and kept forgetting not to move her arm.


- I gave my final presentation for school, which means I have completed my advanced certification in Biotechnology! I was a little shaky at the beginning (there is nothing worse than when your voice gets shaky!) but got more comfortable near the end. Everyone asked lots of questions, and I was able to answer most of them without looking like a complete idiot. (Success!)

- I went out with my BFFs and had some Thai food at Blue Bamboo. Stephanie got some pineapple curry that she tried to convince us was really good, but it mostly tasted like a flowery candle.

- I went to happy hour at The Dig Pub with some school friends who I haven't seen since summer school. There was a lot of laughing, I miss them.

- I saw a bug on the bathroom floor at work (I think that's the definition of riveting, don't you?).


- I walked with work peoples in a Mental Awareness 5K hosted by NAMI. I brought Toast and she was a hit! Everyone was obsessed with her, and now people are always asking about her at work. (My dog has a better social life than me. :D)

- I also worked at a Rabies Clinic for TLAC. I love love love Rabies Clinics; they are so fun. The shelter sets the clinic up at a park in a low income neighborhood and give free rabies shots to dogs and cats. I'm always at the tagging station where we clip rabies tags onto collars. It's so much fun hanging out with the volunteers who are so passionate about their animals; they are involved in rally and agility and I love the atmosphere.

And tomorrow I am heading off to Katy to go to Melissa's baby shower!

That's about it... kind of. I didn't want to make this post any longer or duller (google told me that was a word). I apologize! I need to dust off the cobwebs from my camera and become a more diligent blogger. Until then, happy Friday!!

Your Bulletin Board is Showing

When I moved out to go to college I bought this huge bulletin board. And I covered it in many things:

Pictures of my friends, football tickets, and my childhood dog's collar.


It held my Harry Potter glasses and tons of movie tickets.


It revealed my obsession with musicals and House. It held pictures of those I loved.


It pretty much held all the crap I could throw onto it.


And today I decided to take all that down. I've stored most of it away, but kept some of my favorite pictures to be displayed somewhere else. I loved it in college, but I felt like moving on.


Now it is ready for new obsessions and new memories, but I'm sure there will always be room for old friends.

I'm going to have to force myself to throw away movie stubs now; it feels so wrong.

I'm Special!

Lookie!! My momma got me The Hunger Games cuz i is special!!

Special ed!

Man, I'm so tired.

My Eyes Adore You.

I was going to just do a Wordless Wednesday today, but I think I would rather ramble to you about what's been going on. I was also going to exercise, but I'm taking an "I'm tired, my head hurts, It's rainy" day. (You can avoid anything if you have enough excuses.)

Last Thursday a family friend invited my mom and I to go see Jersey Boys. I had heard of the show, but I had no idea what it was about. It turns out it is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I loved it! It was funny, and I suprisingly recognized most of the songs. The cast was so good; I wish I could have bought a recording of their performance. I bought the musical soundtrack, but I don't like the broadway cast as much. I should have just bought the songs from the real deal! Oh well.


My mom and I listened to the soundtrack all the way to the family lake house, which is where we headed for Labor Day weekend. It was beautiful and sunny. The dogs had a blast running around all day barking at the neighbors and I read. and read. and read. I read a little more than 300 pages in two days and finished my book. The end was full of cliffhangers, and now I am waiting in anguish for the next installment. (My aunt informs me that the next one will probably be out in a couple of years. *sad*) That makes number ten for this year:

1. The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell, Ph.D.
2. Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal
3. The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
4. Food Rules by Michael Pollan
5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
6. The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D.
7. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan
8. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
9. A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
10. An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon

I don't know what I'm going to read next. I'm considering Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or The Hunger Games. Whichever I can get my hands on first I guess!

Here's some pretty purple berries at the lake:

Baby Shower Baking

My friend Casey's sister (follow me?) had a baby shower last Saturday. About a month ago her mom asked me to make cupcakes for the shower. My gut response was "oh no, no, no." I mean, I like baking for fun; I can mess up and no one would care. But this would be like... real baking. I eventually warmed up to the request (I usually need to sleep on an idea. I think it's an introvert thing.) and started asking about themes and colors and what they wanted. I learned that the theme was "baby" and the color scheme was "pink." Apparently they weren't picky.


So I set out on Friday to make 24 cupcakes, which was all that was asked of me. I wanted to go with a pink and brown theme since I was told those were the colors of the nursery. I made chocolate cupcakes and homemade buttercream icing. There were 5 different cupcake decorations:

1. My favorite, pink icing with white pearl sprinkles
2. A simple frosted cupcake rolled in chocolate sprinkles
3. Pink frosting with chocolate chips - didn't turn out as cute as I imagined
4. White frosting with candy melt shavings
5. White frosting with a candy melt pacifier


I had never worked with candy melts before, but I've wanted to try something with them for a while. I bought the "baby" candy mold and made pink pacifiers one at a time. It was pretty simple to do, though the candies turned out to be rather thick. If I did it again I wouldn't fill the mold all the way.


Then I was on a baking roll. While I was waiting for the cupcakes to bake I decided to whip up some cake balls. Cake balls are delicious and really easy to make. Just bake a cake, crumble it up, add a tub of frosting, roll them into balls, then dip them in melted chocolate. Viola, cake balls. I made the cake pink, but I don't think I made it pink enough. I wish they had been as pink as my "fourth of July" cake balls. Oh well. I don't think anyone cared.



I also converted a box I had in my room into a cute, pink cake ball holder.


Then I realized I had cookie dough left over from when I made my mom's birthday cake. I got that out and it made a surprisingly large number of onesies cookies. I decorated each one a little differently, and even made some baby stroller cookies with the baby-to-be's name.




I started baking the cupcakes at about 8:00 PM Friday night. I finished baking at about 7:00 AM Saturday morning. I didn't plan to stay up all night, nor did I need to. I know they would have been perfectly happy with just cupcakes. But I kept making stuff and just never went to bed. I think all the sugar kept me up. (Taste testing is important!) By the time I delivered all the goodies (around 9:00 AM) I had the shakes. Casey's family probably thought I was crazy; coming in with too many sweets, all hyped up on sugar. It all turned out well in the end, Casey emailed me later and said that everyone loved everything.

Want to know the best part of all? I slept for 8 hours straight on Saturday, woke up and read for a few hours, then got to jump back in bed for another 8 hours. Sleep is wonderful; I think I'm going to go have some. Good night!


p.s. I apologize for the quality of the pictures. I wasn't too happy with any of them. I had been up for more than 24 hours and I just didn't care.

Assignment: Books

Hi, how've you been? I'm been rreeaaally busy so I couldn't post.

Okay. I'm lying. I've really just been too lazy to post. Though, I did do some marathon baking Friday night that I will tell you all about when I get around to editing the pictures. I did edit one picture tonight, but it has nothing to do with baking.

I like to visit a website called Digital Photography School. I mostly go there to check out the weekly assignments. A theme is picked, and everyone has a week to take a picture that goes along with that theme. I've always wanted to join in, but I've always been too busy or too uninspired or too blow away by all of the great pictures already posted. So without thinking much I grabbed a book (which happens to be the assignment this week), my dog, and my camera. I wasn't out to make an amazing picture, I just wanted to have something enter.

So here's what I ended up with after about 10 minutes of effort and some doggy treats:


Maybe I'll be doing some more weekly assignments. It was pretty fun.

Puppies & Cheesecake (Life is Good)

I haven't posted in a while, sorry! I will make it up to you with puppies. Here ya go:


My aunt Jane and my two cousins, Melissa and Shannon, came to visit this weekend. (They are some of my favorite people in the whole world.) Yesterday was spent running around looking at baby stuff for Melissa who is due in January. I'm really excited for a new baby cousin; Melissa is going to be such a good mom! We were all pretty tired by the end of the day, but we made sure to drive down to my uncle's house where those sweet, newborn puppies have turned into naughty, adorably cute 6-week old puppies. Everyone picked their favorite, then forgot which one they had picked (for they all look the same), and picked a new favorite.



While we were there I served up my newest creation:


It is cheesecake with a Biscoff cookie crust and a layer of chocolate on top. I was too tired to take any good pictures of it, but it was delicious. I found the recipe at bakerella (where you will find deliciously good pictures of how it is supposed to turn out).

(Sorry for the disjointedness of this post; my blogging muscles are out of shape.)