Oy, my head...

I woke up with this throbbing headache around 8 a.m. I took Piper outside, popped a few Tylenol, and (since I don't have to work today!) went back to bed for a couple more hours.

I woke up at 10:15 a.m. with that same headache. And now it's been almost an hour and it hasn't subsided. Maybe a migraine? I'm not sure.

But I was planning on a nice day of working on some artwork, crafting and coffee. Now I think I may just take Piper for her walk and lay down in the dark with something cool on my head.

This is really killing me. I'm re-reading the Harry Potter series, and I can't even keep on with book two right now. It makes my head feel like it's going to explode. Speaking of which, typing on the computer isn't all that much better.

So off I go.

...just about as happy as can be.

Counting Crows, Maroon 5 and Sara Bareilles put on such a phenomenal show Friday night in Atlantic City, I honestly couldn't see how they would be able to top it Saturday night in Camden. And while they didn't necessary top it the next night, the show was just as amazing and high energy.

I took the photo above of Adam Duritz Friday night, and let me tell you having photo clearance at the concert of one of your favorite bands is just about as cool as it can get. I was literally standing a mere foot away from Duritz while he rocked out "Mr. Jones." It was hard to concentrate on taking the photos - I wanted to just stand and stare and sing. However, since I was the most inexperienced one at the show, I kept clicking away and ended up taking over 700 shots. I think this one is my favorite and really captures the intensity of the Counting Crows performance.

I'm not a huge Maroon 5 fan, mostly because I'm not all that familiar with their music aside from singles. But even if you're like me and aren't total Maroon 5 diehards, you have to see the band in concert if you like their radio hits. Adam Levine and crew are absolutely awesome. The A.C. show was marred by some technical problems and - more importantly - the band leaving the stage because of their disgust over fighting fans, but they still pulled off a great set. Saturday night Levine was totally more in tune with the crowd and had us all on our feet for well over an hour.


And Sara. She played the exact same set both nights, which I thought was kinda' odd, especially considering how close the shows were. Regardless, I loved it both times. She is definitely one of my favorite artists at this point (I listen to her CD constantly - all thanks to the wonderful boyfriend who got it for me!) and I wish she played more than a half an hour. She's also beautiful and charming and I really hope she makes it in the music business. You could tell Duritz thought the world of her, too.


This was such a great weekend. Not only did I get to see two out-of-this-world concerts with some of my favorite people (John, Ryan, Felicia and my little bro) and get the chance to take photos of these wonderful musicians, but it was also my brother's birthday (Happy birthday, Johnny!) and I got to see one of my other favorite people today, Miss Amy B., and meet her terrific dog, Djudju, albeit for a very brief amount of time.

Ah, happiness. Let's hope this lasts deep into the coming week.

Farmers Market

Every Wednesday, I go to the Farmers Market with Stef and her little guys. Afterwards, we usually indulge in a scone and coffee at Fourth Street Cafe on First Street. (You'd understand if you lived here.) Here are just a few of the gorgeous fruits and vegetables available this week. It's such a great way to start a stressful deadline day.

Mmm... 104 mini cupcakes!

So, I bought these super cute mini cupcake wrappers at the craft store and I discovered Ryan had purchased adorable mini muffin tins last spring. What's a girl to do? Make mini cupcakes, of course!

I promised Sean some birthday cupcakes (no, it's not his bday - it's a recipe from the Cupcake Doctor cookbook) because I needed to use my leftover icing from Sunday. Well, several hours after I began this process, I had 104 mini cupcakes in too cute wrappers sprinkled with blue, purple and pink.

They are delicious, however it turns out mini cupcakes are not a mini workload.

Happy Baptism, Finn!

I made Stef and Bill's gorgeous little one's baptism cake over the weekend. He was baptized at the beach and there was a festive party afterward. Finn opted to spend the majority of the party sleeping, but who could blame him? He had a very busy morning, getting splashed with ocean water and all. :)

Here is the cake:



And a few details:




Everyone seemed to love it and it tasted pretty much as good as it looked! It was vanilla cake with a buttercream frosting and, of course, some cake glitter and sprinkles. I'm going to make some cupcakes tonight to go with my leftover frosting. I felt too bad throwing it all away!

Cupcake Pops!

I made cupcake pops!

I was inspired by Jiv5932's post on craftster and, in extension, her inspiration at Bakerella.blogspot.com. It was a very long process, but I'm pretty happy with the results. And all I've gotten are rave reviews, which must be a good thing, right? I'm still torn on whether or not all of the time and effort is really worth it for thirty-some pops, but in any case it was a lot of fun and they turned out nearly as expected!

Here are a few more pictures. I'm not going to copy down the directions, as to not copy from Bakerella, but you should really check out her site whether you want to make cupcake pops or not. She makes awesome and tasty-looking things.






*Special thanks to my boss, Dave, for taking these cool pictures!

Amish Friendship Bread

My good friend and college roomie, Jess, passed on some Amish Friendship Bread to me last week. The bread - which can only be started by the Amish - is passed on in small bags of the dough. You have the dough for 10 days, doing something to the bag each day before dividing it into five. You use one batch to bake your bread, and the rest are then passed on to other friends.

It was fun, and I was interested to see that my bread turned out very differently then Jess' had. I guess it all depends on what you add and the accuracy of measuring. It was pretty tasty - I made mine chocolate - and now Ryan, Joan, Mrs. Lovett and my mom will have their turn to spread the Amish bread love.