New Favorite

So, I may have discovered my new favorite design technique that I will probably use more than a normal person should.  Erica sent me this link the other day from Pinterest and I immediately fell in love with the idea.

You basically paint your nails a base color, dip them in some rubbing alcohol, plaster some newspaper on them, peel it off, and voila!    Love it!

(Mis)Adventures in Baking

I had last night is what I considered a baking FAIL, which is not normal for me.  I'd like to believe I'm a decent baker.  However, I know I am prone to mistakes and failures, with the occasional recipe quite literally crashing and burning. For the most part, though, I can hold my own in the baking realm. 

I first encountered this cupcake a few weeks ago when a lady at church made them for a small group leaders meeting.  It was like discovering a whole new world when I first tasted this cupcake.  Out-of-this-world good.  Being from Ohio, we love our Buckeyes, and I'm not talking about the football team (although we love them, too, we are just having an unstable relationship at the moment).  I'm talking about the chocolate peanut butter candies.  These cupcakes were like eating a cake version of those Buckeyes.  

So, I got the recipe from my friend and I morphed into a domestic goddess last night and decided to give the recipe a try.  The general idea is that it's a yellow cake mix with peanut butter cookie dough in the middle.  Sounds simple enough, right?  That's what I thought.  

I mix them up, stick the cookie dough in the center, and slide them into the oven.  Twenty-three minutes later I'm wondering where I went wrong.  My friend's cupcakes definitely didn't look like this.  They overflowed the edges a little bit, which is fine.  I can deal with that.  But then when they began to cool, they started to collapse.  And then the center got bigger and bigger until I was left with a gaping hole right in the middle of my cupcake - where, in theory, the peanut butter cookie dough should have filled up the space.  Yeah, not so much.  They ended up looking like donuts.  It was like the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when Clark goes to slice the turkey - it looks so great and so amazing and then he cuts into and the entire thing deflates.  That's how this felt. 

So, I'm not sure what in the world I did to botch this one up, but I am going to have to call up the reinforcements and see what my strategy should be for next time.  I mean, they tasted great and I'll definitely still eat them, they just look terrible.  

I included the recipe below, which is from The Cake Mix Doctor Returns cookbook.  I hope yours turn out better than mine.     

INGREDIENTS

24 paper liners for cupcake pans
1 package plain yellow cake mix
3 tablespoons vanilla instant pudding mix
1 cup reduced fat sour cream
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 package (16.5 oz) refrigerated peanut butter cookie dough, chilled

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 350. Line 24 cupcake cups with paper liners and set the pans aside.

Place the cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, milk, oil, eggs and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down teh side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes longer, scraping down the sides of the bowl again as needed. The batter should look well blended.

Set aside about 3/4 cup of the cupcake batter before filling the cupcake pans. Using the rest of the batter, spoon or scoop a heaping 1/4 cup of batter into each lined cupcake cup, filling it two thirds of the way full. (You will get between 22 and 24 cupcakes;remove empty liners, if any.)

Unwrap the cookie dough and slice the log lengthwise into four pieces. Then cut each piece into 6 even chunks. Place a chunk of cookie dough on top of each cupcake and push it down into the batter. Top each piece of cookie dough with about 1 teaspoon of the reserved cupcake batter.

Place the pans in the oven and bake the cupcakes until they are golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed with a finger, 18-23 minutes. Remove the pans from oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans and place on wire racks to cool for 15 more minutes before frosting.

Bucket of Confidence

*3/9 update - SHE PASSED!  :)

If you have followed my blog for any length of time, then you have met my friend Alex.  While I was making the trek to Kenya, she was off to Germany to do research for Ohio State. 

Alex is getting ready to give what feels like the test of her lifetime.  She is in the Material Sciences program at Ohio State (don't ask me what that actually entails - I generally fudge my way through that question when people ask me) and is getting ready for her Ph.D. candidacy test on Tuesday.  The test basically determines whether she will continue on to the Ph.D. program and receive her Masters in the process or whether this is the end of the line for her, stopping with a Masters.  It's a several hour long verbal exam in front of a committee comprised of various faculty from within the program.  The girl has been hacking away at material by studying about 12 hours a day, all while still doing research, and trying to remain somewhat of a normal person who hasn't completely fallen off the face of the earth. 

It's proven to be a challenge. 

A girl I used to mentor, Leah, told me that she had a school teacher who told her one day after battling some insecurities, "Leah, you just need a bucket of confidence!"  Meaning, despite whatever insecurities you have, you just gotta have some confidence in yourself and your abilities!  

I decided Alex needed a bucket of confidence in preparation for her test on Tuesday.

So I put one together.  

I e-mailed friends, family, and colleagues, asking them to write Alex an encouraging note for the upcoming exam.  E-mail after e-mail came in from various people, most I had never met, who offered words of encouragement and affirmation.  I printed them each out, glued them to cardstock, stuck a popsicle stick on the back and stuck them in the bucket.

 I bought some of her favorite bags of candy and stuffed those in the bottom, along with some bags of popcorn and a gift card to some favorite places.  On one of the bags, I wrapped it in a piece of paper that said, "Just remember...you're great at giving hugs!"  The story behind that being one day Alex seemed to be having a bad day and I mentioned to her that she gave great hugs.  We laughed about this and then she said, "So if all of this fails, I should just sell my hugs on the street corners?  Does that make me a prostitute?"  Thus, now every time she tells me she's not sure about how this is all going to work out, I remind her that she's great at giving hugs.  There's always hope, my friend.

So, to you, Alex.  I have no doubt that you'll knock this test out of the park.  Despite whatever misgivings you might have about your knowledge or abilities, I am confident in you and the God we serve.   As one of the notes to you mentioned, you've been a good steward of what you've been given.  And just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said when they were standing before the fiery furnace - even if our God doesn't save us, we'll still worship him.  Even if this doesn't turn out like you think it should, still worship him.   

Scraps of Moments

Sometimes you need some reminders that life is funny.  And sometimes you need to be inspired.  And sometimes you just need to remember.

I keep a notebook for that.  

I started it several years ago and it is now one of my favorite things I own.  It started out as a means to consolidate all of these scraps of magazines and newspapers I had lying (laying?  I still never remember which to use) around my dorm room and eventual apartment.  It's this hodge-podge of things that have captured my imagination or attention over the years.   Some of the clippings make me laugh - I pull those out when I need to do just that.  Some of the clippings remind me of significant historical moments, ones I don't want to forget.  Some clippings are just creative and clever ideas I have saved for my some-day house, things to lock away for future use.  Most items are just headlines cut out of magazines, or photographs I find compelling.  On the front cover I put a quote that I snagged from a magazine, which said, "I surround myself with things I love, anything that inspires me."  It's my collection of things I love and things that inspire me.   

  

There's the one that makes me laugh every time without fail, the one on the left here.  It's a picture of a little black pug and the caption reads, "I enjoy licking faces.  And toilets."  Another page has a clipping from Sports Illustrated, when they interviewed Olympic hurdler, Jana Rawlinson, on why she she had her breast implants removed.  She said, "I absolutely loved having bigger boobs, but I don't want to shortchange Australia either."  I mean, come on.  That's funny. 

Then I've got newspaper clippings, ones about the 2008 election and how Sarah Palin obliterated the "feminist template," how the "Buckeyes unite their faithful like no other team,"  and 'Do ladies love country boys? Not if they're undereducated."  Those things that inspire, make me ask questions.   

Then there's the "stay baseball" ad.  I don't even like baseball, but I like this ad.  It says, "Stay baseball.  Stay our favorite pastime.  Stay the best part of a lazy summer day, or a tense October night.  Stay the bonding experience of choice for dads and kids across the country.  Stay obsessively statistical.  And incredibly poetic.  Stay baseball."  I can appreciate it for what it's ultimately saying even if I can't say much for the game itself.  I also sometimes pull out entire spreads of magazines, the photographs that capture a brief moment in time.  The one on the right is when Zenyatta won the Breeders' Cup Classic in 2009.  I felt like it was such a quinessential moment, with Mike Smith opening his arms up to the heavens, photographers waiting to capture the emotion.   

I like pulling out my notebook when I need a good laugh, when I'm feeling nostalgic and need to remember.  Tonight was one of those nights, no particular reason - and it just felt good to laugh.    And then I'm left to wonder why I'm silly enough to save clippings that say things like "I just want to be me.  Without the hot flashes."  ;)

Footprints of Adventures

Everybody collects something, some more than others. Just watch Hoarders on A&E for proof of that. I know one lady who has thousands of Barbie dolls and every other kind of doll imaginable. I had a middle school teacher that collected frog paraphernalia. You can imagine what her Christmas gifts typically were. Some people collect the intangibles, though. Stories. Memories. Friendships. Adventures.

I've got a few of my own collections. When I was a kid I collected pencils. You know, the really cool pencils with the special tops and erasers. I've got one with ash from Mount St. Helen, another with the word "Coke" written in different languages that I snagged from the museum down in Georgia, and a variety of others that represent my travels.

I've also got a stash of postcards, the bulk of the collection coming from my 4th grade teacher. I had his wife for 3rd grade and then I had him for 4th grade and both of my brothers had them, as well. Well, in 4th grade that teacher introduced me to all things Route 66 and postcards. Ever since then it's been on my bucket list to take a trip down Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, start to finish. Anyway, once I left 4th grade, my teacher and I started sending postcards to each other, one from each place we happened to be traveling to. He and his wife has criss-crossed the country on numerous occasions and were always diligent in sending me a postcard from their travels. We kept it up for nearly 10 years before here in the last several we've just haven't kept in touch as well. But, yes, ten years.

Smashed pennies also join the ranks of things I collect - I've got somewhere around 80 or so, all packed nice and neat in the special smashed penny display binder random stores sell. I think my first one was probably from grandparents (or at least I think it was them) - it was one from the Pearl Harbor Memorial. I've even got a few from Russia. I was in shock when I was in St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow and turned the corner and found a smashes ruble machine. I couldn't believe it. I got a smashed ruble of every design they had available. They've even got an entire website devoted to the hobby. I checked to see if Kenya had any, but no such luck.

But maybe the thing I like collecting the most are the little artifacts of life - places visited, notes written, movies seen, flights taken, football games attended, musicals watched - all represented by ticket stubs. I don't know when exactly I started collecting them, but I think sometime around early middle school, maybe 5th or 6th grade.  And ever since then, so far as I've been able to manage, I have every ticket stub to every movie I have ever been to, every football game, every trip, every museum exhibit, a few plane tickets, etc.  I figure it's better than collecting t-shirts and random things that take up space that I'll probably forget I even have.  I've got two 16x20 frames at the moment, plus two smaller 8x10 frames, chocked full.  So I sort and organize and frame the tickets. And look back and remember the stories, the memories, the friendships, and the adventures.

How do you collect the artifacts of your life?