The Return of Project: No More Sugar.

Before getting on with this post, if you're viewing this in a reader, please click over to my blog! My forever-talked-about, much-needed new redesign is up and I'm obsessed with it. I did it all myself with my very limited design skills (meaning, my MS Paint skills). Hope you like it as much as I do!

We’re smack-dab in the middle of March and I am just starting to tackle my goal of cutting back sugar.

Despite giving up sugar for Lent, I have been cheating left and right (sorry God!). Really, though, giving up sugar cold turkey was never going to happen, so “cutting back on sugar” is my corrected Lenten vow.

For those who’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know I was somewhat successful with weaning myself off of sugar last spring. It was right before Easter and I had promised I would keep the habit up through Easter weekend… but then I was presented with my favorite cookies from my favorite bakery and too many clearance candy temptations at Target.

Here’s a breakdown of what I hope to accomplish in the next few weeks:

• For the rest of this week (March 14 – 17), I’m doing my best to choose non-sugary, non-processed snacks, but am not limiting myself in any specific fashion.
• For the week of March 18 – 24, I will only be allowing myself one sugary treat per day after dinner. This will be optional; I’ll attempt to substitute fruit towards the end of the week.
• For the week of March 25 – 31, I will stop eating sugary snacks. This doesn’t include “hidden” sugars in bread, pasta, tomato sauce, etc.

To help me achieve these goals, I will not be allowing myself to go into our basement for snacks. My mom stockpiles chips and cookies and sugary cereal down there – almost like an extended pantry – so I find it best if I just don’t go down there when I’m hungry.

I hope to maintain this habit into April, particularly up until Natalie’s wedding but also past that. Eventually I want to refine my diet so that I eliminate more processed foods, but for now, the focus is on my snacking.

How are your March goals going?

chocolatey goodness.

Folks, it's almost Valentine's Day. That can only mean one thing: time to go all Martha Stewart on random people in my life. Last night I spent some quality time with my (mom's) stand mixer, our finicky oven, and two bags of Dove chocolate. Don't worry if these pictures give you a crazy chocolate craving - the recipe's at the bottom, and they were totally easy to make.

The willpower it took not to eat half of these is really indescribable.

Any batter that includes melted chocolate as a key component is a-okay in my book.

More chocolate!

Confession: I make huge messes when I bake.

Final product in it's perfect form - cool enough to eat, warm enough that the chocolate bits are still melty.

I also made a batch of snickerdoodles, since they were all the rage at my birthday party last month. These are destined to be packed up and sent away to a few lucky folks - half will be in a care package to Lynds and the other half are off to Mark's place, since he's got a humongous test coming up at the end of this week.

Of course, this is just phase one. Phase two has yet to be dreamed up, but will include yummy treats for both my family and my Valentine. And then in a week, I have to figure out what to make for my mom's birthday! I love having so many excuses to bake.

---

Original recipe, found in a magazine (can also be found here, but they use Snickers instead of dark chocolate bits).

Chocolate Fudge Chunky Cookies

Prep time: 25 min.
Baking time: 10-12 min.
Difficulty: Easy

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
• 1 bag DOVE® PROMISES® Milk Chocolate
• 1 bag chopped DOVE® PROMISES® Dark Chocolate
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

WHAT TO DO:

1. Coarsely chop the DOVE® PROMISES® Milk Chocolate and melt them either in a bowl on top of a double boiler or in the microwave for 1 to 1-1/2 minutes.
2. Stir the chocolate until smooth. Add the sugar, butter, eggs and almond extract.
3. Stir in the flour and baking powder.
4. Add 1 cup of chopped DOVE® PROMISES® Dark Chocolate.
5. Drop heaping tablespoons of batter on an ungreased cookie sheet.
6. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.
7. Cool on the cookie sheet.

Makes 2 dozen cookies.

holiday week 2010: day 3.

Gift Wrapping
Okay folks, get ready to point your fingers at the crazy girl because I love wrapping gifts. Picking out presents is a fun journey in and of itself, but there's just something about sitting amongst a pile of successful purchases, pretty gift wrap, and shiny ribbon and bows that makes me so happy. And don't even get me started on how lovely I think a stack of wrapped gifts looks.

(Also, I totally want to gush about the gifts I got, but most of my friends read this blog and I don't want to spoil the surprise.)


Gift wrapping war zone.


All wrapped and pretty!

Cards
This is the second year that I unleashed my creative side and hand made my Christmas cards. I was extremely proud of myself this year, as I adored pretty much all of my designs.


Work station.


More supplies.


Some of the finished products!

Treats
This section is going to provide you with so much evidence as to why my family calls me their mini Martha Stewart. I might've gone a bit crazy this year, but I have so much fun making any kind of food, so it was worth it.


Cupcakes for a bake sale hosted by my cat shelter.


Peppermint bark, nom nom.


Chocolate-dipped Oreos.


Chocolate-dipped Chips Ahoy!


Lots of chocolate and sprinkles.


Chocolate-dipped pretzels!


Finished goody bags!

The Christmas season brings out the giver in me like no other time of year. I go overboard on picking out gifts and giving things a personal touch, hence why I spent so much time crafting cards and dipping everything I could find in chocolate.

What gift(s) are you super excited to give this year, or in past years?

good thing i've got all this chocolate.

Oh, internet. Do you know how tiring it is to be a Google Maps liaison for a traveling boyfriend who is neurotic and calls every hour to find out how much further until his six-hour trek from New Jersey to West Virginia is over? I DON'T THINK YOU DO. I feel like I'm the one who's been stuck in a car for hours. The best part (yes, it gets better!) is that tonight I get to spend a couple hours over the phone prepping him for a medical school interview, then do the whole where am I, how many more miles thing again tomorrow! Relationships are awesome.

(I kid, mostly. I'm just tired and emotionally drained because I had sympathy-anxiety for him having to drive six hours, potentially in snow.)

Good thing he left me with these over the weekend:

And if that wasn't enough Valentine's Day swag, my weekend kicked off with the arrival of a Very Special Package on Saturday morning - the one from my Be My (Blog) Valentine. I was more excited than was probably appropriate when I saw the mail truck pull up and drop it off, but dude, I totally had reason to be that excited because when I opened it? It was filled with awesome.

ZOMG!

Upon opening the package it was revealed that my secret bloggy valentine was Brittney from LaMidge, and she totally pegged me. Included in the package was a pair of adorable and fluffy pajama pants, a custom-made dance music CD, Disney Princess nail polish (!!!), a face mask, a packet of raspberry zinger tea (my favorite!), and a bunch of goodies including some delish cookies, chocolate-covered marshmallows, and chocolate-dipped fortune cookies!

I had so much fun participating in Be My (Blog) Valentine. I loved every single thing in my package (thanks Britt!!) and I also loved putting together the package for my blog valentine.

And now, it's time for a nice helping of all of my Valentine's Day treats in preparation for the stress-inducing interview prep with The Boy.

free ice cream is my favorite.

So if you belong to 20sb (which, if you're not, you totally should if you are a 20-something and you blog), you know that there was a Blog Carnival a while back that resulted in participants receiving coupons to try Ben & Jerry's newest creation, Flipped Out, for free. Yes. For free.

The carnival was a couple of months ago and ever since I received the coupon, it's just been sitting around waiting eagerly to be used up. Then the loverly (which is totally a word, spell check, because there's a song dedicated to loverly things, so, existence proven) Kerri posted this review of her Flipped Out experience, and since The Boy was scheduled for a visit, I decided it was time for free ice cream.

When I first brought them home, I thought, hm, these are mighty tiny. Which was silly, because I'm not someone who eats large portions anyway, especially of ice cream. The instructions were pretty simple and although the perfectionist in me was a bit dismayed that the chocolate shell had broken slightly, I was easily distracted by the OOZING CHOCOLATE GOODNESS.

And oh my goodness, it was delicious. I basically ate off the chocolate shell, then dug away at the ice cream, getting chocolate syrup, ice cream, and cookie bites in every spoonful. The only thing I was unhappy with was the consistency of the ice cream, which seemed a bit dry and was hard to slice through, considering we ate it straight out of the freezer. But that's less a real complaint and more just us being greedy and hungry and too impatient to wait. It softened up as we kept eating.

(My break at the midway-ish point. See? I told you, I can only eat so much at a time.)

Overall, I really liked it. It's perfect for me, since I like small servings of ice cream, and I loved having chocolate sauce and extra cookie pieces. I definitely want to check out the Vanilla Fudge Brownie next time.

And actually, now I'm kinda wishing I hadn't shared with The Boy. That way I'd have another one to eat tonight. Boo.

MCATs and new recipes.

Oh, Monday. This past week went by way too fast. I had off from work since my boss was on vacation (I work part-time out of her house) and it was bliss. Unfortunately, I'm still working out health problems, so I couldn't book every minute of my time to hang out. Mostly I just bummed around, actually. And visited The Boy.

Twice this past week I took the hour drive down to his house to help him study for MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). Now, I know what you're thinking, and you're right - I'm not doctor material and would never consider being a doctor. Plus, I'm pretty sure my hardcore fear of vomiting rules me out immediately.

However, on this Super Scary Medschool Exam there is a verbal section. That's where I come in. I can't really say I'm a pro (I scored a zero on one set of questions), but I'm pretty good. Good enough to offer some advice and a different perspective, anyway. So I've spent two whole days reading MCAT practice passages, and if you remember the SATs or have taken another standardized test recently, these passages are crazy and cover the strangest of topics. We did one about Typhoid Mary, another about how to improve your speaking, and yet another about the bible. Well, at least they're interesting.

We're making a fair amount of progress. Test day is July 30, so there's still a solid week left. I forsee another trip or two down to his house before that. I swear, his parents must think I'm crazy since I drive all the way down there just to help him study. My parents must think the same, actually. I guess I don't see it as a problem because I don't mind driving - I like blasting my music and getting some time to myself.

Other than that, I spent this weekend trying out some new recipes. My full-blown health kick lead me to making a yummy sandwich with turkey, provalone, black olives and lettuce, a blueberry smoothie, and an attempt at making my own tortilla chips.

The tortilla chips were a big, fat FAIL. But at least I know why! I think the oven was set too high, and also, I stupidly placed one of the trays on the lowest rack closest to the flame. So, of course, the bottoms crisped up before the tops did, resulting in them being burnt on the bottom but still soft on top. But it doesn't stop there, oh no. I still had the other tray that was successful so far. I turned my back to pour myself a glass of water and grab something else from the fridge, turned around to check on them, and they were already dark, dark brown. I was so, so frustrated because if I had just kept my eyes on them, they probably would've been really good.

Oh well. At least the sandwich and smoothie came out really well. Gotta take the bad with the good.

cupcakes!!

The other day, my mom mentioned off-hand that a cupcake shop had opened close to my house in a neighboring town. I immediately thought that was awesome, because all the other cupcake places in New Jersey are too far to drive, even for a strong cupcake craving. I've been jealously reading posts about cupcake outings at cool cupcake shops while I'm stuck with a six-pack from the grocery store bakery.

So here I am, Googling the town's community website, and I find the blurb about the cupcakes. I'm expecting some random cupcake place, but much to my surprise and total excitement, it turns out I am now within driving distance of a Crumbs bake shop! How awesome is that?

I think it's pretty cool that I've heard of them before from being part of the blogosphere, and now I'm super excited to actually have a well-known place to indulge my cupcake craving. I'll definitely be venturing out sometime before I go back to school, and you can expect a thorough review when I get back.

happy turkey day!

Oh. Hi.

My geeky boyfriend (trust me, it's endearing) has me up at 5am scouring the internetz for low prices for a new digital camera. I'm stuck between two, and the fun! part is that the one that's more expensive (by $50 or so) is a tad crappier, but skinnier. So basically I'm paying a good chunk of change for less function and a smaller size. Bahhh. This is tough.

Of course, aforementioned boyfriend drove me insane today for reasons I can't go into, and is telling me to buy the camera I want and offering to pay the difference. Thing is, we already agreed no Christmas gifts because we're going to NYC over break and the money we'd have spent on gifts is going toward things to do there. So yeah.

Anyway! I'll be getting only four hours of sleep tonight, it seems. No, I don't need to be up to cook or clean... I need to watch the parade, damnit! I think my favorite part has to be that huuuuuge group of people that get to wear the matching colored sweatshirts and white gloves and pants, and do an awesome dance. Wheeee!

...right. I probably should've planned to get more than four hours of sleep.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Hope you enjoy your day - eat lots of food and let the tryptophan lull you to sleep. Mmmm, sleep. My favorite. But not before I eat pumpkin pie. Mmmm, pie.

you're gonna like what they have cause they'll have what you want.

In an effort to not end up like I did at the end of last semester, I have been spending my fake-money-type things we have here on campus called Points. Points = dollars. Why they don't just call them something clever and simple that includes the word "bucks" or "cash," I'll never know. Anyway.

Eating on campus is a hit-or-miss type of deal, with the misses being really, really awful misses. Cold pasta, flavorless chicken, questionable cream sauces and cheese-based soups.. I could go on forever. Those appetite-killing choices are found at the worst place on campus ... which is unfortunately the main dining hall. Usually I fare better in the food-court-style student center or the junk food haven that is the late night dining hall located in the basement of the freshmen dorm. Although the latter, I'm sad to say, has really gone downhill since freshmen year. There are really only two reasons to go there anymore - the INCREDIBLE chicken fingers and the fill-your-own-bag-of-candy station.

What I'm trying to say is, getting good food on this campus is all about making good decisions. I've learned to avoid any pasta dishes made with "Alfredo" sauce and Questionable Meat available in the entrees section. Today was quite a successful food day. Lunch consisted of Cajun-seasoned chicken, a slice of veggie pizza, but also some disappointing potato wedges. But that's okay. I made up for it with pre-packaged sushi and the remnants of my milkshake from last night for dinner and dessert.

If you do things right, you can avoid strange bouts of stomach cramps and nausea. It's a skill that took me four years to perfect, and my stomach thanks me for it.

[And just in case you were wondering what the title of the post means, it's a mantra that I made up about eating at the main dining hall back in sophomore year, when I still had little faith that it produced anything edible.]

health kick

After taking a half-hour walk around the neighborhood with my brother today, the topic on my mind right now is health. Everyone nowadays is on a health kick, so being the trend-follower that I am, I'm coming along for the ride. Of course, I know being healthy shouldn't be viewed as just a 'trend' or a 'phase.' In fact, my brother and I were discussing how this is our parents' perception of our recent endeavors to be healthier.

Our biggest obstacle right now is that we're still relying on my mother to do the grocery shopping. Neither of us has a full-time summer job, which means limited personal spending money. My brother has tried (and failed) to get my mother to set aside a certain amount for us to shop on our own. See, my mom has a compulsion to buy sale items, which has resulted in an over-the-top supply of cookies, chips, and other junk-food-ish snacks. Not to mention enough cans of food and boxes of cereal to help us survive a six-month natural disaster. She asks us to tell her what to buy, but my brother and I would much rather go into the store, see what's there, and pick out stuff more on a whim. So we're a little bit stuck at the moment.

My own personal obstacle is my affinity for late-night snacking. I'm not a big breakfast person and I usually don't get hungry until later in the day. But because I miss out on all my eating in the morning and early afternoon, my body craves food until the late hours of the night. The problem became very evident when I was trying to get myself back to a regular sleeping schedule. I got in bed around eleven, and by the time midnight hit, I still wasn't asleep and suddenly needed to eat, to the point where my hunger was distracting me from sleep. That's when I knew I had to seriously overhaul my sleeping and eating schedules.

On top of all that, I have minor stomach problems that would probably go away if I ate healthier. I'm thinking of completely dumbing down my diet to basic foods - stuff like plain scrambled eggs for breakfast, salads for lunch, and whatever my mom cooks up for dinner. This is a LOT easier said than done, but I'm going to try.

My two main goals are more exercise and better diet (so unpredictable, I know). I hope to walk for a half an hour every day, eventually mixing it up and throwing in some jogging when I get the stamina for it. Plus, our On Demand has free workouts, so I'll probably start doing one of those every other day. As for my diet, I think I'll start off super basic - cut out all processed foods, including my ever-reliable microwaveable meals. Eventually I'll probably add some things back in, but mainly for the sake of my stomach problems, I really need to go down to the bare bones and figure out if my problems are related to a specific food or additive.

And with that, I suppose it's time for me to get to bed, because sleeping well is just as important as eating well and exercising.

weirdness, work, and weekends

Every so often, I get into a very strange mood where I act like I'm ten years old and buzz around my parents, annoying the life out of them. Literally. I can see the days peeling off of their lives as they look at me thinking, wait a second, aren't you twenty-one now? I really don't know what triggers these moods.

I did notice, however, a few weeks ago I was doing it to overcompensate. It was the day after The Boy and I broke up... went on break... WHATEVER it is that we're doing right now. I don't think my parents expected me to be upset, and yet I bounced down the stairs and into the kitchen, humming and acting like I was experiencing a full-blown sugar rush. And this was after just waking up. I definitely realized that I was thinking pshhhh! This break-up thing is nothing. I'm totally fine! Look! PERFECT EXAMPLE OF FINE-NESS. Ahem.

Not that I was necessarily too broken up about it anyway. But.. that's another story for another day.

*

Sooner or later, I knew that my tasks at work would turn into manual labor. Fun, right? Here's the scoop - my boss runs a small branch of a publishing company from her house. Usually I do a lot of data entry and typing on the computer (while simultaneously wasting my life away on teh internetz). However. Recently she sold her house and has the unfortunate task of packing up not only her own stuff, but all the business-type stuff as well. Enter: me. Especially since there's been a dearth of computer work for me. So this afternoon, most of my two hours was spent putting old files into boxes, checking them for CDs or other disks and throwing those away. Joy and joyness.

I can't lie - I love my job. Although recently, I think it's just that I like the idea of my job. I have very flexible hours and usually go in for only two to three hours at a time. I get to sit at a computer the whole time, which means constant internet access, I can talk on the phone, I can bring food.. basically, I get to do whatever I want as long as my work gets done. The only problem is that the work I do is the most boring stuff on the face of the planet. I deal with it because I don't mind data entry, but there are some days when I wanna slam my head through the computer screen. Additionally, my boss tends to be very unorganized, making her my polar opposite. My organizational tendencies are off the charts and are borderline OCD. So that occasionally frustrates me beyond belief. But you know what? It's a job. It's my only source of income. I think I'll deal with it.

*

This weekend was quite lovely. Saturday was spent with The Boy, and that's all I'm saying there. Sunday I went out with my favorites from my dance school - Ashley, Barbara, and Cort. We're all kinda bummed because Barb's moving to Vegas at the end of the summer, so we're trying to get all our quality time in before then.

First we went mini-golfing in the heat. Guess who got sunburned?!


(LAMENESS FACTOR NUMBER 1: I am incredibly, disgustingly pale.)

Then we escaped to Friendly's for food and stuff. And the waitress took way too long to serve us our drinks, seen here:



And as you can see, we ordered ice cream. Well, sort of.


(LAMENESS FACTOR NUMBER 2: I ordered fruit sherbet at Friendly's. FRUIT. SHERBET. WITH MANDARIN ORANGES. Seriously, WTF.)

That was my weekend. What did YOU do?

a bunch of nothing

Here I am, still not sleeping right. Maybe I'll never learn. Maybe I'll just be forced to become nocturnal and develop highly-sensitive eyes that can see things better in the dark.. like a cat. Yeah. I'll be better than the old crazy cat lady, because I'll actually be a cat.

Now that I have all this time freed up without my silly summer course bogging me down, I've come up with a mental list of about a billion things I want to do. Okay, so by a billion, I mean more like five or six. Exaggeration is a bad, bad habit to break.

I have all these cool secret projects lined up, but I can't talk about them here. Who knows what eyes are reading this blog as we speak. There are three, so here's hoping I actually go through with all of them.

Two things I've wanted to do for a very long time are to put my family photos into albums and put my own dance pictures into frames and hang them in my room. The family albums have been on hold for a good five or six years now - we just have boxes and boxes of photos. It irks me, especially when it came time to do my senior scrapbook project in high school, or the scrapbook I made for Lyndsay's sweet sixteen. The boxes don't really have any order to them (although the pictures are in envelopes). So my mom promised me that now that my course is done, we can do the photo albums. Hooray! As for my dance pictures, I just need one more frame, which I have yet to find. I'm looking for one of those larger ones with many different-sized openings, because it'll be meant for the more casual pictures. I already framed my five professionally done group photos from my "graduation" year, as well as a selection of my favorite solo photographs.

I'm also horribly overdue for hanging out with a bunch of people who have asked me to. Most of these people are old high school friends who haven't seen me for years, although some are my college crew who I haven't seen since school ended. I'm one of those people who is really good at saying "oh hey! I haven't seen you in a while. We should definitely hang out ASAP!" And then never follow up. Which is strange, considering I'm the person who usually organizes any get-togethers. I guess I'll just have to make a list of who I need to see and start setting up dates. I love it when I have (or pretend to have) a social life.

I swear there are more ideas floating around in my head. When I think of them, I'll let you know. Because I know you're just dying over there without this knowledge.

Oh, by the way? I totally temporarily filled my cupcake craving. BUT I STILL WANT MORE. I bought this box on Saturday. I finished them last night. I can has moar?!





(Pssst. How do I make my camera focus more on the forefront of the object I'm photographing? Most pictures I see have the focus in the forefront, then the background blurs a bit more. Mine seems to do the opposite. Is there a trick, or is that just the way it is? Help!?) (I'm obviously a photography newb. I just recently discovered how to use the macro setting on my camera. Speaking of, my camera is shit. Just throwing that out there.) (... I heart parentheses.)

OH AND ONE LAST THING. That I keep forgetting to add. Assuming you read this in the morning, please send good vibes to my... On Break But Not Ex-Boyfriend Yet (that's totally not an over-complicated name), aka The Boy. He's taking his MCATs today and is not so sure he'll pull the scores he needs to apply to med school this year. Fingers crossed, though, because this is super important to him.

And now, this post is officially over. Surprisingly enough? I have other things on the brain, so expect a whole 'nother entry later today.

cupcake craving

So I seem to have developed a very odd sleeping schedule. These past couple of days have been a little nuts - I had a ton of coursework due at midnight yesterday, none of which I had even looked at before Monday of this week. Therefore, a huge amount of cramming was necessary. But! I was able to push out a ten-page paper on male stereotypes in the dance world in just four hours. I'm just that amazing.

Let's see.. after working out the past few days in my mind, I come up with a grand total of thirty hours of sleep since Monday. That's really not bad at all. I thought I was worse off than that, mainly because I stayed up Wednesday night into Thursday, slept from 1pm until 5:30, then again from midnight until 3am. But that's a solid eight and a half hours.

What's really good is that I have to go out today in the early afternoon. So whether I grab a few hours before then or not, I should be nice and tired at a decent hour tonight. Then maybe I'll finally be fixed. Because I've been broken for a long, long time now.

*

I've been craving baked goods lately, and have been completely incapable of satisfying this craving. I keep doing that thing where I think, ou, a cupcake would be DELICIOUS right now, so I skip down the stairs into my kitchen or my basement, looking for a substitute. I already know that we do not have cupcakes in the house, but I keep thinking I'll find something close enough. Melissa and I tend to do this a lot back at school - we're big fans of Food Network, but we always end up with a serious craving for whatever they're featuring on the show we're watching.

Usually we'd end up disappointed, going to bed whining about how hungry we were. However, there is one exception - The 1AM Trip to the Sketch Diner for Pie. It was sophomore year, when the two of us shared a room. We were watching a series of different shows on the Food Network that were all talking about pie, and both of us were rummaging through our stashes of food, desperately hoping to find something that somewhat resembled pie. As usual, we found nothing but microwavable Thai food and granola bars.

Just when we thought all hope was lost, Matt saved the day. Melissa had been chatting with him on AIM, explaining our predicament, and also sucking him into wanting pie as well. So he suggested a simple solution that we had never really considered: going off-campus to a diner or 7-11. Why we didn't think of this, I don't really know. We both had cars on campus. These places were right down the street. I guess the idea just never occurred to us.. or, we were just really lazy. I'm gonna go with the latter choice. Anyway, the happy ending to this story is that we ended up at a really sketch diner, enjoying our pie, and answering trivia questions being asked of us by the old man who owned the place (or something like that).

... this still doesn't help with the fact that I'm in dire need of a cupcake right now. It all started with Jenn's post about her visit to an awesome cupcake place. I tried (and failed) at finding a place around here that specializes in cupcakes, resorting instead to torturing myself by finding and looking over blogs like Cupcakes Take the Cake and Bakerella.

All I know is that we're having a small family get-together for my grandparents' birthday today, and there BETTER BE CAKE. Otherwise I might have to resort to either making my own or buying an entire case from one of the grocery store bakeries.. and in either instance, eating all of them myself in one sitting. I don't see that going well.

social butterfly

What a week.

After resting for Monday and Tuesday (I can barely remember what I even did on Tuesday), I spent the following four days hanging out with friends.

Wednesday I went back to work and then headed over to Danielle's house for pizza and a movie. We watched 27 Dresses which was absolutely adorable. Loved it. I was so glad to see and talk to Danielle, because I had a lot on my mind about The Boy. She's our mutual friend and has been giving us both a lot of advice about this whole thing. It was just so nice to talk everything out and, in the process, figure out some things that had been on my mind.

Thursday was Roomie Reunion day, so Katie (my freshmen year roommate) and Melissa (my sophomore/junior year roommate) came over. We went to Friday's for lunch where I filled them in about The Boy and they gave me some stellar advice based on their own relationships. I actually learned so much from them because I was there for the beginnings of both of their current relationships. The most important thing I gleaned is that, in the early stages, changing your mind is pretty typical. That definitely happened to me, so knowing it had happened to my friends, I made sure to stick it out and realize what I wanted. Good thing I did.

We then roamed the mall, where Katie found a gorgeous shawl for the office. I picked up some earrings for myself and as a gift for Danielle, and got some goodies over at Yankee Candle. Yankee Candle is becoming a tradition with the three of us, and consists of us going into the store and smelling all the candles, deciding whether or not they truly smell like they're supposed to. We learned something new on Thursday - to get the best scent, you smell the inside of the lid on the jar candles instead of the candle itself. Now we know the true secret of becoming Candle Connoisseurs.

Friday was absolutely amazing, I must say - I went to see The Boy. We grabbed lunch at Panera, I met his family, and basically we upped our comfort level with each other. It was wonderful, but at the same time it's causing me to miss him a lot more. He's going to the city for research for about two months, and he'll only be home on the weekends. I'm either planning on visiting him in the city sometime, or driving down to his house when he's home one weekend. Still, it's probably going to be only once or twice over the next two months, which is definitely not enough. Boo.

Yesterday I actually got to sleep in. Thursday and Friday's plans were earlier in the day, and luckily yesterday's plans were for dinner and movie with Danielle and Natalie. We went to Applebees where I ordered that salad with the shrimp and avocado - I kept seeing commercials for it and was craving it. Then it was time for Sex and the City. It was fabulous! Even though I don't regularly watch the show, I have seen a few episodes and sorta know the characters. I thought the atmosphere of the theater was great too - everyone was watching it as if they were on their living room sofas watching the TV show. You could hear chatter, but nobody minded. Of course, the best part was when Carrie opens the doors to her walk-in closet; all the women in the theater gasped, ouu'd and ahh'd. It was great. I love movies that solicit a lot of audience response.

So I finally have a day to hang out and do nothing. Although.. I've already started trying to make more plans. What can I say? I'm in a very social mood lately. I think it's because I was so cut off from my friends, who were all on vacation earlier in the month. Anyway, today's plans would either be dance stuff with Ash and Cort, TV with Lynds, or a movie with Emily, so they would all be very laid back.

Alright, time for some sleep. While I'm catching some Z's and having a relaxing Sunday, tell me about your week/weekend! Did you see SATC? What'd you think?

kiss me, i'm irish

I totally aced my midterm this morning. Who would've thought that actually studying would end up working to my benefit? A-heh.

So in case you were living under a rock, today is Saint Patrick's Day. I wish I had a history lesson for you all, but I don't, and I'm way too lazy to go look anything up. So! I'll tell you superficial things about the holiday, a topic in which I'm very well-versed.

First of all, everthing's green. Your clothes, your bagels, the icing on your donuts, your milk, and of course, your beer. And everything else in between. I think it's one of the only holidays where real foods are dyed a certain color. In addition to all the green, many people decide that just for today, they're Irish, which means partaking in consuming massive quantities of alcohol and the ever-popular catch phrase, "Kiss Me, I'm Irish." (Although, I've seen a new trend of shirts/buttons/etc. that say, "I'm not Irish, but kiss me anyway." There's a special kind of hate in my mind for crap like that. But I digress.) There is, of course, the traditional Irish meal - corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, rye bread, and Irish soda bread. I went through a phase where I was really tired of all those foods, because when the Irish cook potatoes and cabbage... we just toss them in a pot of boiling water until they seem done (read:until they're overdone). Which basically renders them tasteless. But, I've gotten over it, especially after adding copious amounts of salt.

What else? I guess I could talk to you about Leprechauns and rainbows and all that happy BS, but I don't really associate those things with the holiday, to be honest. For me, it's all about wearing as much green as possible and pinching all those who refuse to do the same. And eating green food.

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The people over at Hershey's are doing amazing things, ladies and gentlemen. Today on my trip to Target with Melissa and Rachel, I stumbled upon Creme de Menthe, Coconut Cream, and Orange Cream Hershey's Kisses. They just keep coming up with new, delicious flavors to put in these things. Obviously I had no choice but to pick up a bag of the mint ones and the coconut cream ones. See, I'm a sucker for this stuff - cute things that come in a variety of flavors. I get way too excited when I see something like this, and I'm compelled to buy and try them. Basically, I'm their target consumer: that hypothetical, over-excitable store patron that the marketing people pretend really exists, who finds the bag and thinks, "OH MY GOD! WHAT AN INGENIOUS FLAVOR COMBINATION!"

Seriously though? It's blowing my mind that nearly every time I come across a display of Hershey's kisses, they always have a new flavor. Blowing. My. Mind.