Sunday Morning

I had this crazy idea to make some fancy donuts. Kind of like fancy cupcakes but in donut (or square) form and in donut dough. I told Chris the idea and like the awesome, driven, motivated man he is we made them, just like that. I've got a few pictures. It took us all of Sunday to prepare the dough (most of the time took for the dough to rise). We were a little bit skeptical how the donuts would come out other than not looking like traditional donuts and surprisingly they were all three delicious! We made a bacon donut with bacon pieces in the dough with maple cream cheese frosting, a banana walnut donut with fresh banana and walnuts in the dough and topped it with a crumb topping, and then the most adventurous was the Chili (or siracha) chocolate donut with a siracha cream cheese frosting. We executed the flavors nicely, now we just need to make them look like donuts!

Preparing the dough

The Siracha cream cheese frosting

The maple cream cheese frosting

Crumb topping

Our mess

Our final product! Next time: actual looking donuts!

Kids

Kids are funny. I work at an after school program facilitating kids with homework, projects, etc. but most of the hours of the day are spent outside having freeplay.

I was out by the handball courts just monitoring, making sure the kids weren't getting into trouble and just watching.

A group of girls (all third grade) were on one side of the court and a group of boys(looked like third to sixth grade) were on the other side.

One of the girls happened to go over to the other side of the court and noticed this "really hot boy" (of course the oldest one), and the teasing, attention grabbing, ball throwing began.

It reminded me of when I was that age. I remember finding a boy cute and my friends would immediately run over and say "Yeah, that girl over there? She thinks your cute!" and I'd try to hide, run away, do anything so he wouldn't know it was me, but at the same time I would want him to know it was me hoping he'd think I was cute too.

This went back and forth for about thirty minutes. The girl went to the extent of wanting to write him love notes. She kept running around, giggling and acting silly. Finally the boys had to leave. The girl watched them leave looking a little sad but then went on with her friends laughing and being silly with the girls as if nothing ever happened.

Ah, young love.

A Few

Of my current favorite things!

1. Pureology Shampoo & Conditioner
2. Moroccan Oil
3. Nars blush in 'Orgasm'
4. Mac Lipstick in 'Angel'
5. Revlon Lipstick in 'Berry Haute'
6. Mac Lipstick in 'Aco'

As obsessed as I am with clothes(like having my denim substitute as the backdrop) I am also obsessed with beauty products. These are my current obsession!!!

5 weeks ago...

I was school free!

School has started and now I am going to be busy.

Happy days!

Pictures lately

I've been trying to take more pictures and document life in the present. I realize there should never be an excuse why I shouldn't take pictures so these are photos from my iPhone as of late.

 Sassy Cassie and me

Wine, wine, wine!

 Wavy hair!

Mapping out our adventure in Europe

A city in London named Bradford!

Babays!

Being weird and taking pictures of myself

Chris making cocktails!

We had fun shopping for alcohol

 

Chris and me

One of the drinks Chris concocted!

Chris and I were talking about how ketchup is slowly leaving restaurants and then I found this article and want to try to make some foncy ketchup!

MMM! Healthy pizza!

My good friend Jessica is a wonderful artist!

Got a cool new app that simulates a photo booth and Brad and I obviously having fun!

Vintage

My mom and I went over to my grandma's to chat. It's nice catching up with her, stories are always told from her youth. She's 91 and I could listen to her talk for days and days. She's such a lovely lady! My grandpa passed when I was 13 so I didn't get to know him as intellectually as I would have liked but do remember few conversations from his wise mind. 

Yesterday my mom and I got the pleasure to go through a few vintage photos and I wanted to share because that time of era is just so beautiful!

 My lovely grandma on the far left with her two sisters

 My grandpa John as a baby. He was born in 1911.

 Grandma Mary and her brother

 My handsome grandpa John

 Grandpa John....tall, "You got the Palmer genes!"

 Grandma Mary (second from the right) and her siblings

Grandma Mary...a pilot in the U.S. Navy during WWII, she's awesome!

 A little blurry, but an amazing photo! My mom (bottom left) and some of my uncles. I've had the pleasure to hear exciting stories from their youth!

 My handsome grandpa John's profile

Grandma Mary, not sure how old she is here but I definitely see where my mom gets her looks from!

A little Scared

So even though it's five months away I am hesitant to by my round trip ticket to Europe NOW.

I can't figure out exactly why....maybe it's because I'm scared I am going to run out of money

or that my energy level will be depleted and I'll be the sad person holding everyone up from the world

or because I have never been away from home for five weeks (lame I know, I'm 24, I should be more cultured)

or that I'm also going to be away from my loving boyfriend of forever years, I've never been away for so long

or that I'm scared to take that ten hour flight because I'm not a very big fan of flying

or that I won't get time off work and will have already purchased the ticket, and then what?

BUT

the pros are:

I finally will be able to see Europe!

Five weeks. FIVE WEEKS! To explore the countries and understand the culture

I mean, backpacking through Europe....I'm only young once and really how many people can say they have done that?

The food, oh my the food....especially in Italy and probably Greece and okay the baguettes in France and the beer in Germany and...oh MY!

Being able to experience the world with my friends of over 10 years, when will I ever be able to do that again!?

Finally become independent and spread my wings a bit, understand that I do need to grow up....just a bit

I feel like if I take this trip not only will I learn a lot and a lot about myself, but from what many say who have gone it can be life-changing and absolutely ah-may-zing!

You're UP!

Hasn't happened yet but we have been seriously talking, sorting, exploring, planning, and researching....

for our amazing, wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe.

We plan to go this summer but need to sort things out now to ensure getting the best possible prices. To be honest it's not quite a reality yet because we haven't purchased anything but also because it's still so far away. We plan to stay a little over a month and EXPLORE!

Haven't experienced anything like this...will be an adventure of a lifetime!

Texas for the Holidays!

I went to Texas for Christmas and pretty much the rest of the year. I got to hang out with Chris and his family. I took my camera to intentionally take pictures and being the horrible 'take pictures of everything' person I am, I realized I had not gotten a single picture until the fourth day in Texas. So I grabbed the camera and we headed out to the Aquarium in Houston and I got a few photos and a few after...

Okay, so I was able to take a photo of Chris and I before we took off to Texas, but otherwise all the others are from 4 days into the trip...

 

Downtown Houston

 

Chris and I in front of the pretty neat water fountain near the entrance of the aquarium

They had an exhibit of the Louisiana Bayou and we came across this crazy thing, and then it surprised us and snatched a poor turtle and of course I had to take a picture because that's some cool stuff!

Chris checking out the really cool coral reefs

Pretty!

Chris liked the jungle theme

At first we were like "how pretty, a glitter fish!" and then realized they were piranhas!

We were in awe over the lion fish

We were confused because we were at an aquarium, but oh my that white tiger is a beauty!

Chris giving the tiger a high five, me looking a little frightened but happy

We paid 5 extra dollars to see this silly 360 degree shark tank, we thought it'd be cooler, but this Saw shark was pretty neat!

So I had to take a picture of this because if you look closely you'll understand why. HAHA! And they paint this on kids?!

Another view of Downtown Houston

Chris's family took us to this AMAZING Tex-Mex restaurant called Pappasito's.  Best fajitas I've ever had. Anyway, Chris and I went back again for lunch and instead of taking pictures of the food, I took a picture of this beautiful senorita which reminded me of a pin-up girl which I am obsessed with, but I'll save that one for another post

Last time Chris and I went to Texas we were able to go out to lunch on our own and I just wanted to take a picture of him. Again, we were able to go out to lunch on our own, so to live on the tradition I wanted to take another picture. I know he's smiling on the inside :)

In honor of being together, Chris's mom and dad took us all out to a really nice dinner at a really nice steak house called Del Frisco's. We all dressed up and had a nice, delicious dinner. I wanted a picture of us dressed up looking nice, but again didn't take any pictures during dinner. I guess I was enjoying myself too much to think about bringing out the camera.

Last day in Texas we all went to BBQ of course. It was absolutely delicious, but I think I was more excited because it was called Rudy's and was a silent homage to my dad who resides in Arkansas. I took a picture and sent it to him right away. I'm also glad the food was AMAZING because I'd be bummed if it was called Rudy's and was only mediocre.

Dinner in the airport, before we knew we'd be staying in Phoenix for another day.

Yes, I am weird. Hot soup!

So after sitting on the plane for about 30 minutes on New Years Eve (we should have taken off 30 minutes prior) the pilot informed us that our plane had been cancelled for the night due to extremely heavy fog in Orange County and that the airline would give us a voucher for a motel room. Great. Just what Chris and I had planned. We spent another 45 minutes trying to get a flight the next morning on New Years Day, and things weren't looking too good....like we weren't going to leave Arizona till 6PM that next day not looking too good. Finally with a few strings pulled here and there the lady was able to book an 8AM flight to Long Beach, but again we were a bit nervous wondering how the fog went. After we sorted out our next day flight, we went down to get transported  by shuttle to our swanky motel. We waited about 20 minutes before it came, saw it and climbed in. I got a glimpse of what would happen if the Apocalypse really does come this year, because people were in full force like "I've been waiting an hour for this shuttle, I better get in there!" and "You should let us who have children on there FIRST!" which we gladly would have but realized it would not benefit them in the slightest because there were two of us and five of them, and the shuttle was at capacity. Finally we made it to the "close right by the airport motel but really was about 15 minutes from the airport".  There was only one concierge working and that poor guy had no idea that a million people were going to bombard him with rooms for the night. Since there was only one guy working, and we were tired and desperately needed a drink we, yes, were a little deviant and poured ourselves a beer from the tap and later poured a pitcher, because dammit it was New Years and all we wanted was a drink! We finally got up to our motel room, and this picture is of Chris, toasting our unexpected celebration of New Years. We hated the situation we were in, but were so thankful we were at least with each other.

Toasting to the New Year!

We had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get our tickets for our morning flight and go through security to ensure we'd be on. that. plane. So we were able to watch the sunrise in Phoenix. As much as I would have liked still sleeping, it was pretty to see something I usually miss.

We took off! And this picture was taken up above right before landing. Those last two days were strenuous, but we were together and the trip overall was pleasant and it was really nice to reconnect with his family!