Or, at least, I think they are. =P
They still don't look like an advertisement, but I'm just happy that somehow, they turned nice and fluffy this time, and I made the icing a little runnier so it spread and soaked better. I also piled on the sugar, butter and cinnamon... so much that there is a gooey layer of syrupy sugar-cinnamon-butter in the bottom of the pan...
I'm satisfied. =D
~Lizzie
We managed to leave at 1:17am (only 17 minutes late!). It felt very odd, because I'd spent the whole day getting ready and I was ready to go to bed... but it was time to leave. I was hoping that I'd be ready to go in time to sleep about 2-3 hours before we left, but that didn't happen.
I made muffins and pizza rolls for breakfast and lunch on the way up. (They lasted for breakfast and lunch on the way back too, and we just ate the last pizza rolls.)
Pesto and sun-dried tomato pizza rolls.
Mixed-berry cornmeal muffins and blueberry muffins
Pizza rolls (recipe from Trina's blog). Originally pepperoni rolls... I made these with ground hamburger, and, like Trina, I put the sauce in the roll instead of dipping. Dipping was too messy for a car trip.
I made two pans of the hamburger pizza rolls.
Sadly, I didn't get any pictures on the drive up because it was either dark, or I was driving or I was asleep. Sarah got some. She will post them... or else.
This is the swimming pool at our motel room. We arrived, unloaded, got into our suits, went down the pool... got to swim a little bit and then? It thundered, and started raining, and lightening was everywhere.
This is the view from our second-story motel room of the pool. In the rain.
Joel didn't want to swim anyway.
I failed to get pictures at the rehearsal dinner. I also failed to get pictures at the wedding. I don't know what I was thinking! I was just enjoying it all... Mom and Sarah got some pictures. But Chris and Kristen wrote their own vows, and they were so sweet, I immediately wished that I had thought to get it on video!! *bangs head on desk* I also wish I'd recorded the toasts. The groomsmen were amusingly unanimous in their expressions of awe and shock that CHRIS was married the first out of all of them. And he apparently told one of the groomsmen (AJ) only about a year ago that he would purposefully schedule his wedding one day after AJ's just to make sure he won. And, uh... he lost. AJ said the purple shirt and tie (his groomsman attire) did NOT count as payment for the bet. :P
But I am getting ahead of myself. Before the wedding, we managed to swim in the pool after all. It was the perfect temperature water, and it was a nice sunny day. We all got nice sunburns. So we swam, and then ate lunch, got dressed, packed up and checked out of our motel room.
The wedding was beautiful, and very unique. Kristen carried a bouquet that I believe was composed of Gerbera Daisies. The bridesmaids were in deep purple, the groomsmen in light purple dress shirts and ties, and Chris was in a darker purple shirt and tie. (I really like the idea of having the groomsmen and groom in a color and not tuxes.) The daisies were bright pink, orange and yellow. It was all very sweet and refreshing.
The reception was a full dinner. It was very formally set up, but some people changed into more casual clothes. The men in the wedding party had to suffice with just changing from dress shoes into flip-flops.
The wedding party table.
First dance.
Cutting the cake. (Yes, like a stupid amateur photographer, I cut the cake out of the picture. Get over it.)
Feeding each other the cake. Chris suggested that they step back and try to toss it in each other's mouths... Kristen almost went for it, but didn't want to risk messing up Chris's shirt.
It was a really special trip. I'm so excited for Chris and Kristen. I wish they lived closer so that we could see them more often! Kristen really brings out the best in Chris. He's always been a great guy, and a really nice cousin, but he was usually reserved and Kristen gives him so much joy. I've never seen someone so altered (in a good way) by a special someone. I know they will have a great life together. I just hope they're around enough for me to see it. =D
And now... can you see the "I didn't get much sleep, and now we're going to travel through the night AGAIN?!?" behind Sarah's smile? We left Illinois at 8:30pm for NC. We got home this afternoon at 12:15pm.
I drove a grand total of 8 and a half hours, and 621 miles.
It was fun!
~Lizzie
Sarah couldn't decide on what kind of cake she wanted (as I mentioned before) so I decided to brave the crockpot again and try a Chocolate Sundae Cake. I put it together and let it cook while we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant. When we got home, I turned it off and let it cool for about a half hour and then we ate it with vanilla ice cream on top.
It turned out really good... I was so relieved.
It's a really interesting cake... it was basically just a chocolate cake batter (I think it'd be even better with chocolate chips added!) spread in the bottom of the crock pot, and then you mix sugar, cocoa power and hot water until smooth and pour it over the cake. When it finished cooking, the sauce was under the cake, and the cake was kinda floating! (And that wasn't my mistake, the recipe said it should end up that way...)
Sarah, enjoying the cake (her hair straightened with her new hair straightener...)
~Lizzie
As you may remember from this post that I started growing some flowers... here are the first blooms!
Several little moss roses...
I like the vibrant color...
This one is probably my favorite though. It's such a sweet pink...
These Johnny Jump Ups are cuter than I imagined! They are sooo tiny!
A little moss rose growing amongst rocks... and weeds that I didn't stop to pull. :P
Snapdragon just opening up (and still in a starter pot on the table... he needs to be planted...
And a bright orange Zinnia.
I'm really enjoying my flowers. And I'm really pleased with how well my camera took those shots. It's just a little camera (not at all like Sarah's professional monster of a camera) but it does really well.
It's a good thing I have my flowers to cheer me up, because my cooking skills continue to fail me. (Cooking skills? What cooking skills?) Yesterday I made a crockpot dish for an impromptu potluck/softball evening with some of our friends. I tried a new recipe from our Betty Crocker Slow Cooker Cookbook, "Lentil and Mixed-Vegetable Casserole." We had just opened a 5-gallon bucket of lentils, and we had everything else we needed, it looked very easy (as if cooking in a crockpot isn't easy enough anyway) and it even looked tasty! We had a lot of errands to run during the afternoon, so I could just let it cook while we were gone and then take it to the potluck.
I got it put together and ready to cook, but since we were going to be gone 3 to 4 hours, and it said to only cook it 2 to 2 1/2 hours, I turned it on for an hour before we left, kept it on "warm" while we were gone, and turned it back on to cook once we got home. It wasn't ready when it was time to leave (the lentils were still kinda crunchy) so I plugged it in to cook while we played softball. It still wasn't ready when it was time to eat. Daddy looked at it, and gently informed me that my lentils were actually split-peas, which is why they were taking so long.
Split peas.
Lentils.
I should know the difference! It's not like I've never had lentils or split peas before! I was told that the bucket was lentils, and I just didn't doubt it, or even use any intelligent brain waves on the consideration.
Mr. J kindly said that with another 30 minutes, my casserole would have been superb, Kara insisted that it tasted fine and Sarah said she liked the crunch. It was nice of them to say those things and I'm sure they meant them... but I thought it tasted like casserole with sand. And it needed more salt. Not to mention, it wouldn't have been too bad if they had at least been lentils... instead of split peas.
~Lizzie
I know, I didn't announce that I was leaving. Nor am I going to oblige you with a lengthy and juicy account of all the busy-ness that has kept me from posting for the last month. Hint: it was mostly baseball... baseball game on top of baseball game... and if there wasn't a game, there was a practice. All that on top of everything else I'm doing was too much. But the tournament was May 7th-9th, and now that I've recovered from the team losing, here I am, with PATTERNS!
I splurged on patterns today. I decided about a month ago that I wanted to make a really nice summer dress, because I have two weddings to go to, and my 18th birthday is coming up, so I thought it'd be nice to have a dress to wear to all 3 occasions. (Shh, don't tell I'm wearing it more than once!)
So you might be wondering why I said "patterns" plural. If you are, congratulations on being observant. And thanks for not assuming that I accidentally added the 's'. I got patterns because I couldn't decide which one I wanted, they were all on sale anyway, and the store was getting ready to close, so I didn't have time to decide.
I got Simplicity 2965:
I like the one in red, only they're all kinda short, so when I ever get around to making it, I'll make it longer.
Simplicity 2917:
Either the short sleeve, or the sleeveless.
New Look 6589:
I like the style of the black one, but I've got a plain soft yellow in mind for it that I borrowed from Mom's stash...
It's between this one and the next dress for the dress I'm going to try to make in 2 and a half weeks!
Vogue 8470:
I really like the white one, but I'll probably make the skirt a little shorter, because otherwise it takes FIVE yards! Which I don't have in the pretty yellow material.
And I really liked the Vogue 8489, but they didn't have it:
I like the green, but if I ever get to make it, I want to make it with the accent trim like the tan and brown.
And you're probably overwhelmed with patterns already, but I also got two apron patterns.
McCall's Retro aprons:
And M5358:
For this one, I'm planning on making view C (the lime green at the bottom) but with the tie and pocket in this green checkered, and the main part in the brown. And I also want to add a ruffle in the checkered material.
I was going to go ahead and cut the apron, but I got distracted and did this blog post instead... and now it's late, so I should just go to bed. Hopefully I'll have some "finished apron" pictures eventually!
Oh, and I made the cinnamon rolls Abigail mentioned here for Mother's Day. My icing didn't turn out right, (probably because I didn't want to use our entire bag of powdered sugar... and I didn't have any coffee) but the funny little clumps of sugar didn't dissuade my family. And I thought they turned out okay... next time they'll be better, though.
~Lizzie
and now will be fulfilled... however unsatisfactorily. A new blog post...
Last week, I did school. This week, I'm doing school.
The end.
Just kidding.
Unfortunately, my life has been somewhat uneventful, and there isn't much bloggy fuel. We've had so many basketball games that they all run together in my head, and I can't say more than that Middleschool lost today, and JV and Varsity won. I don't remember how the games Saturday went. That's how bad my memory is. Swimming has been normal. My water polo team won both our games Wednesday. School is school, and I hardly have time to get it done. Voice is getting harder, I have a song that's pretty high for me, and I can't get up high enough on command, so I'm working on that. Dance is fun. Theatre is cool. We don't have the play cast yet.
I've been feeling kind of subdued recently, which could be why I haven't come up with anything to write about (yeah, my life is usually uneventful, just the same things over and over. Which is nice, sometimes). I have my posts where I'm in the "depths of despair" and all I do is whine. And then I have posts where I'm feeling happy and somewhat hyper and I just talk.
Subdued is a new feeling for me. I'm not depressed, sad or angry, but I'm not exactly happy either. I'm just listless.
I made bicuits to go with soup for supper yesterday, and they turned out better than I've ever had biscuits do (biscuits are so awful for me. Sarah's usually turn out lovely, and I just have no natural cooking skill) and I was pleased that they turned well, so I tried them again tonight. And they weren't as good at all. But they have progressed well enough that my brothers still complained that I didn't make enough. That's always comforting.
I've also gotten it into my head that I would like to make a quilt. I have never made a quilt before in my life, but all of a sudden I just want to try one. But I've decided to put it off until I get a collection of material from other, smaller projects. I hardly have time for homey projects though, with all the time we spend running all over the place.
And it's also starting to get to me that I'm going to be 18 in early June. Every since I was 10 or so, I looked forward to 18 as the age where I would probably have everything together, have become the person I wanted to be and be at the beginning of the next stage of my life. But here I am, with only 3 and a half months to go, and nothing is together, I'm nowhere near the person I want to be, and I don't see my life changing any time soon. I'm very much afraid that 18 is going to be just as disappointing as every new age always was. I always hoped that "13 will FEEL different! There's just something about 13..." Now I know that mental change happens slowly, and doesn't have that much to do with age.
I think I've exhausted everything I could think to write about. I'm sorry, Abigail, this was pretty dreary, and probably not what you had in mind... :)
~Lizzie
These are just some things that I’ve been wanting to do. Hopefully they will be much more satisfying than my usual New Year’s Resolutions; which are generally made at 1 o’clock in the morning on New Year’s day while high on chocolate, sugar, caffeine and running on adrenaline, and then dropped after a week of attempting whatever it was. Like, crunches every day. That was a really bad idea. Probably inspired by the insane amount of food I had consumed over the holidays.
Goals have two main differences from resolutions for me. My resolutions are usually something that I HAVE to do every day, or the resolution fails, while goals are either a one-time accomplishment, or something that I want or need to do and can keep working at, even if I don’t succeed every day. And the second difference is, with goals, if I don’t accomplish it I feel like less of a failure, because it was only a goal, and not something that determined the year’s value.
And so, without further ado, my 2009 goals.
Long-term Goals for the year:
Get on a better sleep schedule.
Improve my cooking skills, especially in areas that I don't enjoy.
Find some way of earning income.
Improve my singing ability.
One-time projects:
Finish redecorating the bathroom.
Finish setting up my sewing area.
Finish sewing the shirts Kara, Jess and I began last year.
Get my bookcases organized and neat (this might begin with a post publishing a picture of the very embarrassing condition of my bookcases before and end with a picture of my success... :P )
Begin the skirt I've been wanting to make.
I've been considering these since a little before New Year's, and I've already begun the long-term goals, so I know that I'm serious about wanting to do all these things. Next year we'll see how well I did. :D
~Lizzie
Here's a lot of my pictures... I took about 300. Not including when I stole Sarah's camera and took pictures with her nice expensive camera...
Christmas-y... Christmas is complete, now that we've had snow. :)
Pictures just never capture the moment...
Our dirt road, all covered in snow!
I made orange pineapple muffins.
Then went out and took more pictures.
Our neighbor's red barn.
Our neighbor's little pond.
David and I went sledding on the big hill. (Sarah and Joel wouldn't come... don't know why...)
David getting started.
David made a snow angel.
And ate some snow.
The sun started setting.
We drove down a little ways to get some pictures of the lake and the sunset.
And I got some more sunset pictures at our house.
Snow gear drying by the fireplace.
The view from the window in my room.
Sarah got some good pictures too, which she has put on Facebook... I'm trying to get her to put them on the blog too, but once you do one, you don't feel like doing the other...
I had such a great snow day! It was absolutely perfect.
~Lizzie
