Busy weekend...

I haven't really stopped going since I woke up on Friday morning (I guess 11:00 am is closer to afternoon, isn't it?) I got right to baking and have been going non-stop since.

Friday afternoon I baked a Peanut Butter Cup Cake (recipe courtesy of one of my favorite baking blogs, Bakerella) for a dinner with some friends of the family. I decided to try out a different peanut butter/chocolate cake to see which one I liked better (the other being this cake). Verdict is still out. Mom prefers this one, Dad prefers the other... I don't know what I prefer. Thankfully both recipes turned out really well!

I also baked a cake on Friday afternoon for a guy that I sing with at church. It was his birthday on Saturday so I thought I'd bring a cake for him for Saturday night service. Really, I'm not that nice... I just jump on any excuse I have to bake a cake. This cake was decent but not spectacular... I used this yellow cake recipe and this chocolate frosting recipe. The yellow cake was great, but with the frosting it turned into just ok. (I must mention that Jessie stopped by with a Diet Coke from Sonic which made the afternoon of baking so much better.)

Saturday I baked with my good friend Corrie. Her daughter Gracious had a party for her 5th birthday this weekend and Corrie recruited me to help with the cake. She had a Princess and the Frog themed birthday so we made frog cupcakes and a Barbie Tiana cake. I've never made a Barbie cake so it was interesting... I'm really pleased with the end result though. I never tried any of the cake (we just used devil's food box cake and added buttermilk instead of water to make it a little more dense), so hopefully it tasted good. If not... she looked great, so who cares?

Tonight I baked some peanut butter cookies for my parent's Bible study and some sugar cookies for my Spanish class. It's getting late so I'll have to leave the frosting for tomorrow...

WHAT a weekend...

Lamps.

I love lamps. (Ha, that reminds me of that quote from Anchorman when Brick is like, "I love lamp." Ron: "Do you really love the lamp or are you just saying it because you saw it?" Brick: "I love lamp. I love lamp." What a stupid movie... I shamefully admit that it's one of my favorites.) I think I grew up in an anti-overhead light kind of family, so my love for lamps and distaste for anything overhead especially anything overhead and florescent just came to me naturally.

My favorite lamp is in my room. It's a floor to ceiling lamp and I'm pretty sure only one of the three lights actually works (or maybe two work, but the bulb went out on one of them...) It came from my grandma's house when she died. That's probably why I like it so much. It reminds me of her small house in Dodge City, Kansas that magically fit our entire 30-some person family. Anyway, for some reason this lamp gives me creative energy. Whenever I turn it on, I'm always inspired to create something special. Tonight as I was turning it on to give me inspiration for this photography project for work I thought to myself, "Man, I love this lamp. It makes me feel like I can create anything..." The truth is I can't, and it's just a lamp, but I love it anyway.

P.S. My friend Valeria wrote a blog post about lamps a while back. I feel like if I didn't send you to her post that I would be cheating as a blogger and a friend. Plus Valeria writes way more beautifully than I do. Go read about her take on lamps here.

British, Period Piece Romance Movies....

I've mentioned before that Pride & Prejudice is one of my favorite (if not my very favorite) movies. Lately, I have furthered my passion for Pride & Prejudice type movies. It all started when I watched PBS's Emma with Jessie. That kind of got me hooked, now I can't stop watching British, period piece romance movies. I think I like them because:

1. They wear the coolest clothes (I'm still pretty convinced that I want my wedding dressing to look something like Elizabeth Bennet's white dress in the most recent Pride & Prejudice.)

2. They speak with intelligence and grace. If they want to slam someone, they do it with their wit - no cuss words needed.

3. They don't have to be sexual to show romance. The most touching these people do is a kiss on the hand.

4. The romances always seem to be with the guy that the girl never expected because she either hated him originally or thought he was way out of her league (while this is not real life at all, it's fun to watch.)

5. They have great accents.

So, I shamefully re-activated my Netflix account and have watched these movies non-stop (or BBC miniseries): Persuasion, Daniel Deronda (I didn't really like this one that much), Sense & Sensibility, North & South, Wuthering Heights, and Emma. (Yes, I know... I watch a lot of TV but it's always after everyone else goes to bed so I'm not THAT anti-social.) Anyway, next on my list is Great Expectations... If you're looking for some good clean, fun I encourage you to watch some too. (Emma is streaming on PBS's website and it's sooo good.)

Delicious? or Disgusting?

I have been looking forward to today ALL week because today was the day that I got to bake something for a party I'm going to tonight. I was even more excited because I decided to bake a cake which I don't do very often. For some reason, cakes, to me, seem to be for more special occasions. You can bake cupcakes or cookies any time, but cakes, cakes are for something special. Not that tonight is that special, it's just a dinner party for church... I'm rambling, let's move on.

I decided to go with the Reese's Cup Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake from my favorite food blog Annie's Eats. I made this same cake a few weeks ago with a friend, and it turned out well, but when baking with other people you can never do things exactly like you would do them when it's just you. So I tried again, and the picture above is what I came up with. All along I was thinking, "Man, this is going to be so good. Chocolate. Peanut buter. Cake. Reese's. How can you go wrong?" But after putting the finishing touch of sprinkled Reese's on top my thoughts changed to, "This just became the richest cake ever. Did I just turn something delicious into something disgusting?"

I'm hoping that some people with some serious sweet toothes (or would the plural be sweet teeth?) come tonight or I'm going to have a lot of crazy rich cake on my hands. (P.S. I didn't realize until after I took the picture that there is a Weight Watchers point counter in the background... Something tells me that this cake isn't so WW friendly.)

La inspiración...

Tree swings.

Recently, I've started reading my brother Joel's friend Cassie's (did you follow that?) blog. I don't know Cassie, all I know is that she is an art teacher (at least I think so), she lives in Dallas, and she's friends with Joel. I'm pretty convinced after reading her blog that we would be friends if I knew her. Well, at least I would want to be friends with her if I knew her. She's creative, and fun, and I've decided I like her. (Hopefully I don't come across as creepy...)

Anyway, she blogged recently about things that were inspiring her. So I thought I'd steal her idea and also blog about things that have been inspiring me (and in some cases re-inspiring me, because I have been inspired by them in the past.) She called her post, "Inspiration." After looking at my old posts, I already have one called "Inspiration" (it was about cupcakes... surprise, surprise.) So, I decided to return to my Spanish roots and creatively entitle this post, "La inspiración." Brilliant... I know.

Birdcages.

Benches. (And trees.)

Ben Rector's new album Into the Morning.

(Especially this song, "Moving Backwards.")

My favorite so far...

As I've mentioned before, I've been making a lot of cards lately. I realized the reason why is because my room is already crowded enough so I can't make something to hang on my wall, so instead I make little pieces of art that I can send to people. Plus, I love getting mail and I'm sure other people do too. That's why I've decided to focus on card making... at least for now.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I sent one of my favorite cards I've ever made to my friend Valeria. I never got around to taking a picture of it before I sent it so today I made a variation of it. Valeria's card just had a tree on it, this card, for my friend Corrie, has trees AND swings (one on the front and one on the back). (P.S. I may have added swings to my list of objects I love: trees, benches, cupcakes, now swings. You will likely see a lot of swing inspired art/cards in the near future.)

I'm not the hugest fan of the color scheme of this card but I like that it's simple, has a tree, and has a swing. And I like that I'm sending it for no reason at all. Birthday and holiday cards are fun... but just because cards are the best. That's why I think this is my favorite card that I've made so far... Just because.

Olympics 2010

The other night some of my extended family got together for dinner and to watch the Olympics opening ceremony. It was pretty cool to see the family gathered around as we watched the ceremony. And how excited we got when the United States team finally came across the screen. We stopped watching after Nelly Furtado and Ryan Adams had their horrible lip syncing debut, but it was fun to watch it up until that point.

I have loved watching the Olympics so far. I love being American and I love cheering for my team.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This year I had good intentions of making and sending out Valentine's Day cards. I made about two and then got distracted and never came back to them. This card was meant for my aunt Georgie and uncle Dave. Maybe I'll send it out next year. Or in a few months with a side note that says, "I loved you 3 months ago on Valentine's Day, and still love you now." Ha, probably not, that's cheesy.

Anyway, happy Valentine's Day! I hope you have the chance to tell the people around you how much you love them and that you hear it in return. If not, call me, I'll tell you how much I love you. Because it's true, if you take the time to read this silly blog of mine, I guarantee that I am sending some love your way.

Relapse.

Last week I said that I was going to switch my focus from baking to crafting. Well... I must admit, I've had a bit of a relapse. I don't think I've done anything crafty all week but I've baked a ton.

So far I've made:

-Stout cupcakes (for my friends the Cunninghams)

-Strawberry cupcakes (for my friend Dana, but I never got them to her, so my family just ate them)

-Brown Sugar Pound Cake cupcakes (for Cory's journalism class)

-Sugar cookies (for a celebration for some family friends the Wilts)

A couple good things that came out of my shameful baking:

-I finally conquered the Brown Sugar Pound Cake cupcakes. These cupcakes were formally known as the "ugly" cupcakes. They tasted good, but they looked pretty hideous. I finally figured out how to make them taste good AND look good.

(Ugly cupcakes.)

(Pretty cupcakes.)

-I got to expose my sugar cookies. I've been thinking about starting to sell some of my baked goods from home and see where it takes me but I didn't really know where to start or how to get my name out there. Today my mom brought my sugar cookies to church for a party and it may have given me the exposure I need to start something! Woohoo...

The week is over now, I have no more excuses to bake things for people. Back to crafting!

What an honor...

My friend Katie from school recently started her own blog. I love reading people's blogs... I've mentioned this before but I just love it. I love seeing everyone's individual interests and creativity come out through their writing. Anyway, I was lucky enough to land on Katie's blog today. I made her some fabric flowers and she decided to write about me... How cool (ha, more like undeserving...) am I! Here it is, if you're interested.

Katie is way too nice to me in her writing. I love her to death and love making things for her. Her awesome sense of style inspires my creativity. :) Thanks, Katie, for the shout out! Love you, girl...

Less baking, more crafting.

Today was a great day... For many reasons, but one being that a book that I ordered online, Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts, FINALLY arrived after 3 weeks of waiting. A few of my friends have this book and I wanted one of my own. I asked for it for Christmas, but my brother accidentally got Martha Stewart books confused and bought me her cupcake book instead (which you better believe I already own...) Anyway, I finally got around to ordering it, and it finally came, and I'm happy.

I have decided to kind of refocus my efforts from baking to crafts. After gaining weight instead of losing it this past week, I've decided that I need to cut back on the baking... With crafts, I still get to be creative and I still get to give things to people, but I hopefully won't gain any pounds. (Don't worry, I will still bake, a lot, I'm just going to split my time with calorie-free crafting...)

Anyway, I love my new book. It already gave me the inspiration to make this thank you card for my grandma. Thank you, Martha Stewart!

"Previously on LOST..."

I just finished watching the season premiere of LOST. I was going to write about how much I love that show, but then I realized that I already did here.

So instead I'll say this. This is the final season of LOST. Only 16 (ish?) more episodes to go... I both dread and cannot wait for the final episode to air because I'm hoping for clarity. I guarantee you the day after it airs its last episode I will start from season 1 and watch it all over again. It's that good.

Check out these cupcakes! My friend Bethany brought them to my attention... They're incredible. Unfortunately this bakery, Sweet Avenue Bake Shop, is in New Jersey. Maybe I'll visit it some day... or maybe I'll just try to make my own.

Cousins.

Today I went and got coffee with my cousin Julie. It was great... We had some great conversation and we laughed a lot... It was just a positive experience to hang out with her. I know I've said it before, but I'm incredibly thankful for my family: especially my cousins. They are some of my best friends.

I hadn't blogged in a while so I thought to myself, "Hm, what have you really enjoyed lately?" And I thought, "Being with my cousins!" (and my aunts, uncles, parents, and brothers...) So thanks to: Laura, Mike, Chris, Jacob, Hannah, Sara, Cameron, Natalie, Hallie, Eric, Christina, Dana, Marc, Julie, Anthony, and Brad. (Boy, I hope I didn't accidentally forget someone...) You guys are the greatest....

(P.S. I couldn't find a picture with all of the cousins so I had to settle for a picture of me and the cousin that I happened to see today, who sparked this blog post to begin with.)