Mute Math Tonight!!

So I'm seeing my favorite band in concert tonight... I'm pretty stinking excited. After seeing the below video, I'm a bit nervous though. (You should for sure watch it, but I suggest you put your computer on mute before pushing play. It's loud, but you're not watching it for the music, you're watching it to see what the drummer does...)

Crowd surfing? That's terrifying!! If tonight's concert is anything like this one, I'm not sure if I am hardcore enough... No matter how intense or not, it's going to be a good time. I'm going with some awesome people (Joel, Cory, Brad, Ashley, and Bre... maybe more) and the band is awesome so it's bound to be a good time. I'm sure I will post again tomorrow updating you if I survived the insanity or not!

Little Things #3

The sun is STILL missing... It's been over a week. Generally I would be way grumpy by now, but I'm not... Well, maybe I've already hit the discouraged point (Sunday night was rough) but have already overcome it... I don't know. I've been surviving this gross weather with glorious things like mornings at coffeeshops, hot apple cider, long naps, and well, Jesus. :)

One thing that I've come to appreciate as the sky continues to provide clouds and rain is the beautiful image of fallen leaves on a wet, rainy ground. Weird, I know... But the other day as I was quickly making me way through the rain to my car, I was looking at the ground to avoid any massive puddles and I noticed the leaves... They were beautiful. I don't know why... they just were.

I haven't had time to take pictures of my own, but Google provided a few. They don't quite capture it, but you get the gist.

Little Things Post #2

I made cupcakes for the first time in a long time today... I had kind of decided I was tired of cupcakes (...gasp!) but today I was in the mood again. Hurray! So, in honor of fall I made pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and they are goooood. (I can say that because I give all credit to Martha Stewart, not myself, I just follow directions well...)

Anyway, they were way fun to make. I spent too much of my afternoon in the kitchen and not enough time studying for my developmental psychology test that I have tomorrow morning, but I'm pretty ok with that. (We'll see if I still agree with that 9:30 am tomorrow...)

Also, I made too much cream cheese frosting (like 4 cups too much, I

only used about 1 or 1 1/2 cups...) so if anyone in the Columbia area hap pens to want to make so mething that involves cream cheese frosting within the next few days... let me know. It's too good to go to waste.

Smarties!

Life has been kind of hectic lately. School picked up for a while with midterms so I've been a slacker at blogging. Plus it's been cloudy for almost an entire week, so it's hard for me to get pumped about the little things.

I did come back to Columbia after being in Kansas City for the weekend to find a nice, big bag of Smarties laying on my bed... Sara remembered a conversation we had month or two ago about my favorite candy, and bought me some! What a fun surprise!

I love Smarties... No, it's nothing substantial in life, but I'm trying to appreciate the little things this week. In fact, my goal is to blog every day this week about all the little, insignificant things that I enjoy. It may be lame... but at least it will get me thinking about the things that I appreciate...

(Interesting (or not so interesting...) fact: I eat Smarties 3 at a time. That way the 15 piece package always ends up with an even finish. OCD? Maybe a little...)

Orange.

So, I have kind of vowed to not make this blog about me. It's supposed to be about the things that I love, not about me. I suppose sometimes it is about me... Or some could argue that the fact that I write about things that I love and think that it is worthy of other people to read makes it about me. But it's really not meant to be. Sometimes I just think about things and appreciate them, and want to write them down to acknowledge their greatness and give them more than just a mere passing thought... That's why I blog.

Anyway, here's another post about something I baked. I guess it's kind of "Look at me! Look what I made..." but that's not what this is all about. I love baking. I love attempting to make whatever I bake pretty. I love baking for no reason at all and I love baking for special occasions. I love baking for other people.

So here it is, proof of something I love rather than something I've done. Meet Meg's birthday cake. She loves orange, so it's orange. I went a little overboard on the decorating... once I started I just couldn't stop. But I loved making it. I've been looking forward to it all week.

Hopefully Helpful...

I'm hoping this fall-inspired setting will encourage me to be incredibly productive and study for my Hispanic Oral Traditions midterm today. It's pretty doubtful... But a girl can try.

My soundtrack for the day, which also plays a big part in the productivity. A mixture of...

-All three Balmorhea albums: Balmorhea, River Arms, and All is Wild, All is Silent

-The Pride & Prejudice soundtrack

-Part of the Notebook soundtrack

-Wes Townsend's album (an old friend of my brother's who plays some great piano)

Light and Dark

There is something about light coming through a window and the shadows that it makes that makes me all happy inside. I don't really know why... I just find it beautiful. Possibly it's the contrast of light and dark that pleases my eyes (in my psych class we just learned that high contrasts like that are the first thing that babies learn to visually enjoy...) Possibly I'm just easily excited...

My room at the Haslags has a lot of these shadows. And their kitchen and a room off of the kitchen always seems to have a good light/shadow ratio. I took the picture above in room off the kitchen (I don't know what to call it...). Nothing too special... I just think often about how much I like how this looks so I thought I'd blog about it...