Unoriginal.

So, it's a fact: my brother Joel blogs about something cool, I take his advice and check it out, and then I end up being unoriginal and blogging about it a little while later. It happened with Andrew Belle, and cool tree pictures, and Goldmund, and cool design websites, the list goes on... But I've got to be unoriginal and copy Joel once again, because he has shown me, once again, something that I've fallen in love with. Adele.

So, Adele's been around for a while, I was just slow in joining the bandwagon. People have talked to me about her and how great she is, and I've always thought, "I'd probably like her..." but never took the time to actually listen to her music. But after Joel blogged about her, I thought I'd give her a try, and she's great... Really great. I currently can't stop listening to the song Turning Tables off of her new album 21. It's awesome. I just feel like I have a soft spot for her Adele because she's not the skinniest girl in the world (like me), and her live performance is a little pitchy but she's still great (like me, the pitchy part, that is...)! Anyway, thanks Joel, for letting me copy you once again. Keep blogging so that I continue to have things to blog about. :)

Recording: Weekend One

So, as you know I began recording an album with my friends this weekend. I went into the weekend with expectations of some magical moment they show you in the movies (like in one of my favorites: Once.) Well, my expectations were silly. We went in and started recording the instrumentation which meant my job as a vocalist, or at least the vocalist job that I'd envisioned, would be put on hold until next weekend. My job was to sing the "scratch vocals" which basically means I was a placemarker for the guys to keep track of where they were in the songs. Everything I sang over the 40+ hours this weekend was thrown away... That was hard.

I basically battled with myself the entire weekend. I wanted to be selfless, keeping the mentality, "It's for the team! It doesn't matter that none of this will be used on the album." But I'm not going to lie, my selfish side won out more than I wanted it to. Often I thought, "This sucks! Does anyone see how bad this sucks for me?" The guys were patient with me, gave me lots of grace, and built me up more than I deserved... And they did some awesome work on the instrumentation this weekend. It's actually an honor to be able to sing, thrown away or not, to keep them all in sync.

I learned a lot this weekend and expect to learn even more next weekend. I anticipate that actually doing my part, singing for real, and having myself critiqued will bring its own set of struggles, but I'm excited to see what it brings. My friend Rob, the man whose music brought all of this about, sent me an e-mail that gave me some pretty great perspective. He said: "We're just a handful of normal people crippled by self-doubt, pain, and previous failures... united by a wild idea and the pursuit of something greater."

Have I mentioned...?

Have I mentioned that I'm in a band and we're kind of recording an album this weekend? Well, I am. Remember forever ago when I told you that long ridiculous story about how I love to sing? Well, I'm still doing it, singing, that is. I joined my friend Rob about a year ago to start working on his music. Since then we've had two mini concerts and added another guitarist, a bass player, and a drummer. Some friends of ours donated some money to the cause and we are officially going into a studio Friday through Monday of this weekend and Friday through Monday of next weekend. Pretty crazy, eh?

The studio is called Chapman Recording and Mastering and it's here in Kansas City, which is nice. From the pictures it looks pretty legit though. I'm pretty stoked! Here's a link to their site (we will be in Studio A), just in case you're a loser like me and get excited about those kinds of things. So anyway, if you don't here from me in a few days... you'll know why. I'll be recording. :) (cue me giggling here because I'm so giddy and blown away that we're doing this that that's all I do. Giggling and lots of, "It's just ridiculous"s are thrown around when talking about this.) And if you're the praying type, prayer would be appreciated. We could use all the prayer we can get! Tomorrow's the day.

Andrew Belle.

My brother Joel blogged about Andrew Belle a few months ago and I can't get enough. He's so good... He reminds me a lot of one of my favorite artists Ben Rector, but (now, no offense Ben...) he's more interesting and just a better musician.

I love his voice. I love his use of a variety of instruments. Especially the acoustic guitar. I love how his music is catchy but not too catchy. I love how he uses phrases like, "Woe is me" and "Oh my stars." I really do think he embodies just about everything I love in a musician. Such. great. stuff. You should probably check him out. Now.

Clean Bill of Health?

I think my computer is fixed! I'm hesitant to say anything though... it still seems too good to be true. We'll see... It's kind of funny, while being without a computer, I thought, "This isn't so bad. I'm actually impressed with how easily I can give this up." It doesn't hurt that I've been really busy lately and have had the Hunger Games series to keep me occupied, so I hardly noticed my beloved Mac's lack of presence in my life (besides not being able to blog as much, that I missed). But now that I have my computer back... it's sad how quickly I've fallen back into my old ways of dependency. Tonight my only plans were to be home, watch a movie, and blog/stalk/peruse/shop/tweet/whatever I want on my computer.... Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day. :)

So I think I'll spend my evening blogging with Pride & Prejudice on in the background... Yay for being to blog again! You'd think I'd have all sorts of posts stored up over the last few weeks, but I'm not sure I have many. I'm sure I'll find something to come up with...

Baking Post for Sarah

The other day I skyped with my blog friend Sarah. I feel like we are getting closer and closer to being legit friends now that we've skyped though. I had to give her a verbal account of how all the HDG stuff went down, so we talked about that and just life in general. It was kind of great actually... and felt way more natural than it should have. We just need to meet in real life so we can stop feeling like creepers. Maybe someday...

Anyway, Sarah said she missed my baking posts (which was quite nice of her to say.) So, here is one just for her. I made a cake a few weekends ago that was pretty ridiculous. It was a Lego cake. It was a friend from church, and she wanted it to be Lego themed and her son wanted it to be all chocolate. So... I made a chocolate on chocolate cake shaped like a Lego and scattered real Legos all around it. I've realized these kinds of cakes stress me out. I was cursing myself for agreeing to do such a cake. But once I put my headphones on and my world was filled with Andrew Belle (more to come on him later) I got in the zone and actually enjoyed myself.

Anyway, the cake is above. I had a request for a cake for a friend's daughter who wanted it shaped like a ballerina slipper. Really? A ballerina slipper shaped cake? You'd be proud of me (or at least the me that was cursing myself during the Lego cake would be proud of me) because I said no! But I did agree to do a cake that has a ballerina slipper on it... I also agreed to do a cake that looks like the cake below from Annie's Eats. This is for my dear friend Corrie's daughter Gracious, whose cake I decorated last year (remember this one? It's one of my favorites...). I had to say yes... I have a reputation to uphold. :)