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.

Piperoni

Isn't she cute?

Weighing in...

I've lost about 22 pounds since January.

The past few weeks have been hard to keep on track with things... I don't know why, exactly, because every time I eat poorly I end up feeling just as bad as what I ate. Like right now, for instance, dinner was delicious, but greasy and fatty, and I'm laying in bed with an upset - and very overly full - stomach.

Was it worth it? No, not really. Not at all.

So, back to the healthy choices tomorrow. It tastes better and I feel better and, really, how can I go wrong with that?

Cruisin'

And finally, a post on my vacation.


John pestered me a bit to post while we were actually out at sea, but I didn't really want to take time out to blog. Plus, what would a vacation post be without the photos? Seriously, I couldn't have described the Aztec dog enough to do it justice. You have to see for yourself.



Anyway, the cruise was wonderful. Carnival is fantastic and I don't think we'll ever try a different cruise line. We had very little rain (a few passing showers), mostly calm seas (one rocky night) and no sunburn! (Okay... John had just a bit on his face for a day or two, but who's counting?) We visited Cozumel in Mexico, Grand Cayman of the Cayman Islands, and Jamaica. I enjoyed each port, but Jamaica was probably my favorite followed closely by Mexico and Grand Cayman.

The main reason I loved Jamaica was the waterfall. We climbed Dunne's River Falls and it was totally awesome. Fortunately, we didn't break our necks in the process. Due to all of the rushing water, we don't have any photos of this part. Here's us just afterward:


In the Cayman Islands we went to a turtle farm, which was half cool and half sad. I couldn't quite understand why they had so many turtles that were crammed into little pools and not released into the wild. Grand Cayman was beautiful and John was into the history of it all. We did a Mayan ruins tour of Tulum in Mexico. We took a ferry from Cozumel to the mainland. It was pretty interesting. Oh, and also interesting? A Spanish tourist went to jail last year when he decided to take a stone from one of the temple walls and in turn collapsed the whole thing. Can you imagine?

We cruised on the Carnival Triumph this trip. It was a beautiful ship and, although smaller than the Valor, we didn't really notice. Carnival also sets up all their ships pretty much the same, so it was cool how quickly we became familiar with the layout.

There were two formal nights. On night one, we matched. On the second, we were a little edgier. :)



It's hard to really blog about an entire week of great stuff. So that combined with the fact that this post is way, way (way) overdue, I'm just going to go ahead and post it as is. If blogger decides to stop being stupid and let me upload some more pictures, you can check those out later.

Happy Memorial Day

There are a lot of things I don't enjoy covering for work, among them council meetings, the Halloween parade and the events of certain unnamed organizations. Today, though, I didn't mind covering events at all. Sure, there was a part of me that wished I could have a break. (I worked Saturday and Sunday, too.) But while I don't consider myself intensely patriotic and would quickly change the radio if "God Bless the USA" came on the air, covering ceremonies on holidays like Memorial Day is a truly enjoyable, satisfying experience.

First thing this morning I went to a brief, yet poignant, beach patrol ceremony. The lifeguards line the beach, the chief talks and the mayor, rowed out to sea by two members of the patrol, tosses a wreath into the waves. The ceremony has been going on for over a century, and this year there was a break from the norm when most of the talking was done be a returning beach patrol member who just finished three tours (and four years) serving in Iraq. It's a simple, brief event that I've covered for the past three years now.

Over the bridge, I shot a parade and attended a ceremony at the Veterans memorial. Personally, I feel this city outdoes all others when it comes to honoring the military and veterans. The organizations over there are incredibly active and the passion and love is so evident at every event. The parade was huge and took the time to honor each group of veterans from wars and conflicts. The cheering was constant, but when the Iraq and Afghanistan vets marched by the applause and cheering rose a few octaves. It's interesting, because you know everyone lining that street does not agree with our President. You know they don't all support the current war. But there was no question that they all support our troops.

I don't think I'll be a writer forever, and I know there will come a time when I'm no longer running around covering events on holidays. But I'm going to always make it a point to attend these types of events on Memorial Day. I'll always take the time to pause and remember. Our soldiers gave their lives fighting for us, and there is no way to ever even begin to repay that sacrifice. The least I can do is think of them, thank them and continue to live my life. They died so I could.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

I've been so busy. Some of it is thanks to my doing, but a big chunk of it is out of my control. (Unless you say it is my choice to work, however, I have to pay the bills somehow.)

Barks on the Boards is Sunday, giving owners a chance to walk the Boardwalk with their four-legged pals without getting a lovely fine from the police. The Humane Society is putting it on, and it's the biggest fundraiser of the year for them. I've been helping by collecting items for raffle baskets and making posters. I still have to make one big banner and, on Saturday, my mom and I are assembling all of the raffle baskets with goodies donated by local merchants. I'm also going to volunteer at the event the day-of. It's fun. I like helping them out.

I've also been corresponding with my new Adopt-A-Platoon soldier. He's a specialist stationed in Afghanistan, out of harms way more so than a lot of troops involved in our current conflict. (Which is, honestly, a relief to know I'm writing to someone who is a bit safer.) It's neat because he's been emailing a bit, and my previous two soldiers I supported I didn't hear from much. You don't need to hear from them - you just inherently know what you do is appreciated - but it's still neat to get the emails. I sent out my first package to him today, filled with some (I hope) good stuff, like homemade cookies, Johnson's Popcorn, Shriver's salt water taffy, Rauhauser's fudge and some games and a football. Oh, and my newspapers. I know. But maybe he'll be interested!

My garden is doing fantastic. The dill and English thyme kicked the bucket - I know the thyme spent too much time out of the ground, but I'm not quite sure what went wrong with the dill. I'm going to replace the thyme with oregano, and maybe some marjoram or sage where the dill was. Everything else is more or less thriving, and I'll have to stake the tomato plants in a couple of weeks, I think. I still have flowers to plant out front and a bunch of weeding to do. I'll have to make that my project for after vacation.

Speaking of! John and I leave for our cruise on May 31! We're doing the Western Caribbean this go round, still with Carnival, on a new ship, the Triumph. It's a seven day stint and I'm très excited. I think more than anything I'm just loving the fact that I'll be away from work for nine whole days and get to spend all of that time with the boy. (I am not happy to leave my pooch for so long, however my super awesome and gracious roommate Ryan will be watching her with some help from her girlfriend, Felicia, and I couldn't ask for Piper to be in better hands. The lucky dog.)

Save for spending a paragraph or two talking about the craziness and stress that is work right now, that's really all that's been going on. So, just consider this a little update post. Maybe I'll have some Memorial Day weekend pictures later on.