Happy 4th of July!

     Here are some super cute, thematically dressed babies because yesterday and today are also Jen and Amanda's birthdays, so I've been busy.

Cinco de...well, no, not really.

     As you are probably aware, today is the 5th of May, aka Cinco de Mayo! While as a person of your typical hodge-podge European descent I have no cultural ties to the holiday, I observe it in the same way I would any other holiday belonging to a group I'm not a part of. Kind of a general "Cool, that's cool." In this case, "Good for you Mexico, I'm glad things came up your way at the Battle of Puebla and you eventually won independence. You do you." A friendly hat tip and I'm on my way. That said, though it's not my holiday, I got a ton of emails from various recipe newsletters saying "MAKE THESE DELICIOUS-LOOKING THINGS FOR YOUR CINCO DE MAYO PARTY!" and I'm only human, so it did make me want Mexican food. Here's some of the recipes I tried out!

     For the main dish I picked these spicy pork kebabs, which were delicious. They were served with homemade guacamole, pico de gallo (store-bought because I didn't want to stand around chopping things for that long), and warm tortillas, so you could just unskewer the kebab directly into fajita-town. Mmmm. 

     Then I made some grilled corn inspired by this recipe. I say "inspired by" because I mixed up the mayo mixture that it talks about, but then forgot about it while I was cooking other things and playing with Ollie and Evie, and I let it sit on the counter a little too long. I wasn't sure if it was ok or not, but I've already been sick more times this year than I'd like, so I wasn't about to risk it. I just used butter instead, grilling the corn then buttering it before rolling it in the crumbled cheese. This one got good reviews from the family too, but then, it's corn with butter and cheese. How could it not. 

     I also assembled this glorious-looking "salad", which is only a salad in the loosest definition (it does have a layer of lettuce).

Side note: Why are these grape tomatoes called "Cherubs?" Are they trying to tie in with "Halos," those little clementines? Dear marketers: I don't need my produce to be spiritually superior, you can take it down a notch.  

     And I can't forget the appetizer, which was this tasty tasty dip. 

     I wanted blue tortilla chips like they have in the recipe picture, because those look delightful, but I live in an area where the only chips you can buy are official partners of NASCAR, so it was not meant to be. 

     Thus ends our feast! All these recipes were winners, but particularly the marinade on the kebabs and the dip (but I'm biased, I love all forms of dip. Except if you're including in that the sort of slang term for chewing tobacco because OH MY GOD THAT IS SO DISGUSTING HOW DARE YOU DEFILE THE GOOD NAME OF DIP WITH YOUR DEBAUCHERY). One of the things I love about Mexican food is that it gets you to eat more vegetables than you otherwise might: in this meal there was corn, black beans, tomatoes, green chiles, avocados, red pepper, and onion. So underneath all the cheese there's actually some nutrition present. Speaking of nutrition, I couldn't end this post without showing what Amanda made for dessert: 

    Yeah, just kidding, there's nothing nutritious about these. But they sure were tasty and good for my soul. They're a box variety, Duncan Hines...filled cupcakes of some sort? I dunno, but me likey. They tasted like Hostess cakes, but fresher and better. And in case you were wondering, they were nicely frosted, all piped out, but then I said they looked like the smiling poop emoji and when I came back they had been squashed. I didn't mean it as a bad thing. Whatever.

     I hope you all had much delicious eating over the weekend! 

Happy Easter...Monday?

     AKA "Jacki spent Saturday working and Sunday driving and hanging out with family and playing with babies and eating delicious things and driving again and by the time she got home and sat down to write a post her brain had already pretty much checked out for the night and this was all that was left because it's weird in there and no one was around to stop her."

     I regret nothing. 

Happy New Year!

Hope you're all enjoying your holidays! Regular posting will be back on Monday!

Oooh, look at this completely unnecessary skill I learned this weekend!

     Bonus points: not only is it totally unnecessary, it's hysterically time-consuming! Like, twenty minute chunks of my life, ske-plosh, down the drain. Don't get me wrong, the end results are super pretty and impressive. It's just that in hindsight I realize there are probably more exciting ways I could have spent my Friday afternoon. Oh well, now I can whip this out at parties to impress people with my papercraft wizardry. Check it! I present to you: wrapping paper sea-urchin-type pointy spike bows!

     They're so, so pretty in person. Way more of a statement than any old squashed little bow you dug out of your attic five minutes before the party. I used this tutorial here, so I won't go into detail on how I made them, since that blog does a really good job of explaining it. The only thing I did differently was use hot glue instead of Elmer's, because I do not have the patience to hold eight hundred little cones of paper together while they dry. Once I'd gotten the hang of it and switched to hot glue, they took about twenty minutes each from start to finish. So I wouldn't recommend planning your whole wrapping scheme around one of these on every present (unless you're just feeling like a few hours of something crazy tedious would mellow you out -- no judgment, you do you), but if you need a real show-stopper for one present, then yeah, definitely give it a shot. They're not hard to assemble once you get into a groove. So hey, why not? 

Gift wrapping and gift snacking!

     Christmas is creeping up like a sasquatch in the night, so I finally got around to wrapping up some presents! 

     I put it off for way too long every year,  but I actually love wrapping presents. Not so much the whole bit with wrangling the paper and trying to keep all the pets from stepping on it and putting holes in it before you ever get a chance to slap on the first piece of tape, but the tying up with ribbons and bows. It's satisfying to turn a bunch of cardboard boxes into pretty little parcels for everyone to appreciate for approximately two seconds before they tear into it with the might and ferocity of a hungry raptor. 

     In other festive news, I whipped up a beauty of a cake the other night for my dad to take to work to celebrate the holidays! Check it out:

     It's a simple two-layer 9x13 white cake (I always recommend good old-fashioned white cake whenever you're feeding a group, because nobody doesn't like white cake. And if they do, keep an eye on them, they're weird), frosted with whipped buttercream (mmmm, buttercream) and decorated with ice-like sugar sprinkles and a big red fondant bow.  And it turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself!  

Friday Fail

     Because I know we all like to laugh together (you are laughing with me, right?) at our failures sometimes, I thought I'd kick off the weekend with a classic tale of "this was a way better idea in my head." 

     Whilst I was digging around in the attic for Christmas decorating supplies that weren't already earmarked for another location of the house, I came across a set of big plastic lighted snowflakes. Oooh, I thought, those would look so pretty in my closet window! See, the window in my closet is the kind that's round on top and right in the center of the house from the outside, so it would look really nice to have something lit up in there. So I dragged them downstairs and asked around about whether they had a predetermined place. Nope, they were free for my designs! So, with my mom's help, I got them hung up in the window using a combination of tape, command hooks, and yarn. From inside, they looked so pretty! Then I went outside...

Sorry for the picture quality, I can't hold my hands steady enough to take a better night shot, and I don't have my life together enough to use a tripod. 

     Light-up blobs! They were totally indistinct clusters of lights. It kind of looked like maybe I had started to hang lights in some other configuration, but they were too badly tangled so I left them that way. I had to admit defeat on that one. So I took them down, and I've been brainstorming what to put there instead. I have an idea involving a rope light, a wreath, and some string lights, but we'll see where it ends up. 

     Enjoy your weekend, everyone -- hopefully it will be failure-free for you! 

The Christmas-ification, Part II

     I told you I wasn't done adding holiday spirit to my room yet. Apparently my method is "more lights, more sparkle!" until everything feels appropriately cheerful but still doesn't involve too much stuff (mostly because I don't want to have to put a million things away after Christmas, because that's depressing). 

MORE LIGHTS

     I needed to add some more lights because the room was a little lopsided -- all the lights and all the blue on one side, and all the pink and...lack of lights? on the other. So I wrapped another strand of blue lights up with some sheer shiny ribbon and blue tinsel to create a garland to drape over my desk, and added a short strand of white lights to my mini-tree (because obviously the tree needed lights. This is a fact). 

     Ahhh yes. That's the cozy glow I was looking for. 

MORE SPARKLE

     First I did a simple switch-out of the decorations on my wreath, re-using the white flowers that were on it before and adding a few festive bits and bobs to give it a frosty winter look. 

     I have a weird affinity for things like those little silver glittery grass-like sprigs because they remind me of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. That's the only part of that story that really stuck with me, actually. I couldn't care less about the sneaking out to dance with cute princes or whatever, but I always loved the trees with silver and gold leaves.

     The final addition to my room came in the form of a box of 12 glittery blue snowflakes (I feel like there's a clever segue to be made here based on the number twelve, but I can't find it, so...just pretend I'm cleverer than I am). I sat in the floor with these in my lap for a good long while, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with them, until finally inspiration struck. Ten minutes and a bit of tape later...

     I love this so much! The snowflakes tucked geometrically into the polka dots remind me of a Nordic sweater somehow. It also vaguely reminded me for a dark second of how in the nineties everyone had horrible wallpaper borders all over their houses. Why was that a thing? Bleh. 

     Anyway, with the snowflakes up and the lights a-glowing, this room is really starting to feel cheerful and festive! I'll have to enjoy it while I can, because Christmas is coming up way faster than it has any right to. Or maybe that's just me getting older and inheriting the grand tradition of insisting that time goes by too quickly. 

It's beginning to look a ... little...like Christmas?

     I started the Christmasification of my room yesterday! I started out light with a couple of little changes here and there (mostly because I don't have many decorations that match yet -- I want to hit up the pink candy-themed Christmas section at Hobby Lobby), but it's enough to get my holiday spirit going. Have a look at some of the changes I made!

     First up, I swapped the roses above my windows for some silver, white, and blue tinsel, plus some blue string lights ($2.50 at Target!).

     The blue lights are really pretty in the dark, too. 

     Then on the other side of the room, I added a mini Christmas tree! I've had my eye on this little white tree with iridescent pink bits for a while, and it was the last one on the shelves at Target today, so I figured I'd go ahead and get it before it was gone. 

 

     I also stuck a sprig of wintry-looking berries (?) in the vase on the left and wrapped some extra tinsel around the bottom of the storage box there, just cause. The pink unicorn isn't actually holiday-specific, I'm just really into unicorns, and it kinda makes sense there. 

     The last little change I made was to wrap some silver garland around my wall mirror and stick a few bows on the corner, just so I'd have a little extra holiday-ness right before I go out the door. 

     I dunno what that face is, don't even ask. 

     Anyway, so that's what I've been up to, but I'm just gearing up in my quest to make everything cheerful and cozy! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

The purpose of this post is twofold: First, I wanted to just do a quick little post to check in, since I know most of us are going to spend all of Friday recovering from our food comas anyway, so nobody wants to read a big long post about like, studding your ceiling fan or whatever. Second, I wanted to tell you what it's like inside my brain. The other day I woke up to find that at some point during the night I had added to the "Ideas" list I keep on my phone the item "turkey hunger games." I have no idea what that means. I have literally no recollection of adding it to the list at all. Sleepy me had just apparently thought "yes, that's enough information to remind waking-time-me of this perhaps brilliant idea" and left it at that. Hopefully it's not some kind of cryptic warning from a prophetic dream.

Halloween-ing the house!

     Halloween is rapidly approaching, and around here we're spookifying the house in preparation. Here's a quick, easy, and cheap way to bring a little creepiness into the home (I say this as a total hypocrite -- I can practically hear Morticia Addams saying "...but Debbie....pastels?" every time I walk into my room. Oh well. Split personalities for the win!). 

Step 1: Raid the woods. 

     Take a walk through your local foliage and collect some nice twisty twigs. Try your best to keep them away from your giant dog who is comically obsessed with sticks. 

As a side note, this picture reminded me of a children's book my mom used to read to me that had ragdoll children and they had to go through a thicket at some point and it wasn't supposed to be scary but I always found it tremendously upsetting for some reason (I still get anxious thinking about it) and now I can't remember what it's called and I can't find it on Google and I've been looking for over an hour and I'm worried it may just be a manifestation of my anxiety that I invented as a child and it's not a real book at all and I'M FEELING VERY AGITATED is what I'm getting at.

Step 2: Paint it black. Then add glitter.

     Throw down some newspaper or a dropcloth or what have you and hit the sticks with some black spray paint. Then, while the paint is still wet, sprinkle some glitter on top. 

I wish I'd seen that smudge on the lens earlier. Let's just pretend it's a ghost, in the spirit of Halloween. Oooh, a lost soul who wants me to have poor quality photos -- scaaary.

Step 3: Arrange fittingly. 

     These particular sticks were destined to become a nest for this fine fellow here.

    
     And of course I couldn't resist a spookified version:

     And done! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. The best part about this little Halloweenification is that you don't have to worry about storing this from year to year. It takes a tiny smidgen of spray paint and glitter that you probably already have, and sticks. You can't get much cheaper than free, so go ahead and toss them when the season of creeping is over.

Halloween Sneak Peek!

     I know that for some people it's still way too early to think about Halloween, but not me. This is partly because Halloween is one of my very favorite holidays, but mostly out of necessity. See, when you insist on being something weird and making your own costume because it has to be authentic, you have to start planning pretty early on. You can't just run to the store at the last minute to pick up a costume if you're gonna be zombie steampunk ax-murderer Minnie Mouse or what have you. So I'll be keeping you updated along the way as I put together this year's costume, but for now I just wanted to give you a little sneaky peeky to see if you can guess what I'm scheming.

     I don't think it's that hard to guess, but then...I already know the answer. If you're stumped, don't worry, I'll be back to show you how it's going soon!

Friday Favorites, 4th of July Edition!

     My favorite things this week were decidedly more explosive than usual.

1. Fireworks! This year we got to watch the fireworks on the James River from inside the Dominion Virginia Power building. It was amaaazing to A) not get stuck behind the same damn tree that's blocked our view there for the past two years, B) not have to deal with any traffic, rude people standing in front of where we were sitting, cigarette smoke, or other people-related issues, and C) not sweat ourselves half to death in the balmy heat! And the fireworks themselves were beautiful. The whole thing felt like a finale, they were so huge and loud and sparkly and bright!
   
   
   
   
   
2. Tomb Raider. I started playing the newest Tomb Raider game yesterday, and although I've only played an hour or two, I've been enjoying it. There's lots of climbing and collecting to be done, two of my favorite things in a videogame. It's also nice to have a Tomb Raider game in which Lara Croft is actually likeable (YEAH, I SAID IT) and seems like a real person, rather than the robotic, "Oh, let me just climb up onto this ledge by grabbing it and pulling myself into a handstand like I'm trying to win the gold on uneven bars here" Lara of games past.
   
   
3. The "True Facts" videos on Youtube. I may or may not have watched all of these, one after another, without stopping, for like an hour (yeah, I did). They are hilarious and delightful and still somewhat educational. Go watch them!
   
    

4th of July nail art!

     I love when a holiday rolls around and I get to paint a bunch of weird things on my nails. The whole ordeal ranges from meditative to cathartic for me, depending on whether it goes smoothly or ends up being super frustrating. This time it was a bit of each. Here's what I ended up with for my Independence Day nails! 

  

     I wanted to try a mix of patterns, so I went with a blue nail art stamp of stars over white for the pinky, silver, blue, white, and red (though you can't see it in this picture) fireworks over black with a sparkly top coat for the ring finger, red confetti glitter for the middle finger, and a red, silver and blue gradient on the pointer. I attempted red and white stripes on my thumb, but they were a bit of a hot mess, so I cropped that out for the sake of my own dignity. 

     But overall, I'd call this a success. I know it's a little wacky and over-the-top, but hey, that's my style. And if you're going to do a nutty manicure, it may as well be in celebration of America, right? 

Best Carrot Cake Ever?

     I ended that with a question mark because I don't consider myself a connoisseur of carrot cake and, having not traveled the world tasting all the carrot cakes that each nation has to offer, I don't feel quite confident enough to say that this is the best carrot cake EVER. But it's really, really good. 

This rabbit looked way less threatening in real life.

     The recipe I used can be found here, and for once I didn't end up making any major modifications to it as I went. The buttermilk glaze on my cake was about 1/4 cup short on sugar (ran out. Oops!) but I don't think it made a lick of difference, and obviously I doubled the recipe for the frosting. "Obviously" because I always, always, always double the amount of frosting suggested. I'd much rather have too much frosting than not enough, and honestly, maybe "too much frosting" is a thing that exists in technical terms, but surely it's like black holes, where we're just taking science's word for it even though none of us have ever seen it ourselves. 

     Inside, it's got coconut and pineapple and nuts for a nice variety of flavors and textures, and grating the carrots yourself, though time-consuming, lets you choose how carrot-y you want your carrot cake. Personally, I only even eat carrot cake because I can lie to myself that it's a serving of vegetables instead of just cake, so I grated the carrots super finely so that they almost disappear into the other flavors. 

Just how I like my cake: moist and crumbly almost to the point of compromising its structural integrity.

     Overall, this recipe gets a definite green light from me. It even got moderate approval from Amanda, who said "I don't like carrot cake, but that is the best carrot cake I've ever had," which, coming from her, is a rave review.

    

How I plan to spend Valentine's Day

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had an enjoyable New Year's celebration! But now that it's over, you know what's coming. Yep, that's right. I'm talking resolutions.  Here are mine!

I put on my serious face for this post. My serious face wears two types of glasses. It's a look I rock sometimes.

1. Work harder on this here blog and my youtube channel. 2012 is over and I still don't have a "real" job (My "fake" job, of course, is Senior Crayon-Namer for Crayola). And I'm not gonna lie, it scares the crap out of me. I've spent more than my fair share of hours crying at my laptop after looking through every job listing in the state (and some out of the state - I hear Austin is pretty nice), or laying awake at night thinking about the future until I get so anxious and scared I throw up. 2013: year of the gritty truth!
   
        But that's my life right now, and other than trying my damnedest to find a job, I can't change it. I can't just will my life to make sense. But in the meantime, writing and making things is the only thing keeping me sane. My ultimate fear is not doing anything with my life, and when it seems like I'll never find a respectable grown-up job, it's easy to feel like that's what's happening: I'm doing nothing. So I'm going to try to put all the energy I would otherwise use panicking about the unknown into writing and creating. I need to be able to say "This is what I've been doing. It may not be much, but it's something."
   
   
2. Get on a normal sleep schedule. I'd love to be the kind of person who wakes up bright and early every morning feeling chipper and rested, but I'm not. I have a hard time falling asleep in the first place, let alone staying asleep for a whole night without waking up shaking the imaginary Alaskan King Crabs out of my duvet or something equally deranged (I want a pin that says "Ask me about my sleep disorders!" and then in smaller print "No, really. I have fun stories" to wear on my jacket).
   
        You never know if I'll join the world of the living at noon or greet you creepily from the breakfast table at 6:30 because I never went to sleep. So it's pretty ambitious for me to aim for a good night's sleep at all, but I'd really like to get to a point where I'm falling asleep at a point in time generally classified as "night" and waking up within the confines of what is technically "morning." I feel like it would do wonders for my mental health. And would probably also help with resolution number three...
   
   
3. Be more positive. Creative people with anxiety problems are the worst, because we can think of a downside to literally anything.
   
        It's a nice sunny day? The thinned ozone layer leaves us all more vulnerable than ever, meaning every second we enjoy the sun's warmth on our skin increases our risk of skin cancer and accelerates the aging process that will claim us all one day because even the beautiful things in life can destroy us.
   
        Won the lottery? What if people try to take advantage of your new wealth and you become increasingly paranoid until eventually you invest all your money in gold bars and bury them in various places around the house but someone finds out and they break in and murder you so they can find them all, and no one will notice you're missing because you got distrustful of all your friends and family long ago and self-isolated?
   
        And so forth. I'm pretty good at being optimistic for other people, but when it comes to my own situations, I let myself get carried away imagining all the ways everything could go wrong. I know I'd be happier if I let myself be optimistic, but I always feel like it's stupid to hope for and expect good things because I'll only be more jaded when something falls apart. Somehow I convince myself that bad things won't feel as bad if I can say "I saw it coming," but it really doesn't help. So I'm going to have to force myself to have that faith that naturally optimistic people have that it'll all work out in the end, that it's going to be a good day, that people are going to be nice to me, and all that jazz.
   
        And if I can't manage full-stop optimism all the time, I'm at least going to try to say to myself "Ok, this might suck. But my hair looks bangin' today." Baby steps!
   
   

Happy Holidays!

Hope you're all enjoying the holidays! In celebration of the season, here's a drawing I made of what  I'd like to be doing: playing in the snow, building a snow Tardis and snow Doctor. Alas, we don't get nearly enough snow here to make my icy dreams come true.

Regular posting will be back soon!