For Your Shopping Pleasure

Wow! Thanksgiving is a week away and it's blowing my mind. It feels like just yesterday that I was laying at the bottom of the steps at the beach writhing in pain (awesome). I have been completely sucked into the holiday marketing schemes and have been itching to pull out my Christmas decorations since before Halloween. I have issues. My Christmas shopping is nowhere close to finished but help is on it's way. Multiple sites have started up with all sorts of previews for Black Friday. iBlackFriday.com BlackFriday.net and TheBlackFriday.com are three of the big ones. iBlackFriday even lets you compile a list of all the deals you want to take advantage of. Hopefully these sites will help you save some cash while doing your holiday shopping. Enjoy!

VMAs

Yes I'm 28, and on this Sunday night I am watching the VMAs. I actually tuned in to watch the Micheal Jackson tribute that Janet organize but kept it on as I was doing the dishes. The first award of the night was for best female video (or something like that). T Swift won. I think the award should have gone to Beyonce but T Swift was extremely gracious when she accepted the award and I was happy for her and then it happened...T Swift was in the middle of her acceptance speech and before you know it, Kanye is on stage. He had grabbed a mic and was kind of apologizing to T Swift for ruining her minute and started declaring that Beyonce's video was one of the best of all time and that she should have won. He went on for a bit and then took his seat. Through the whole thing Beyonce was clearly embarrassed and was trying to discourage his behavior. Poor T Swift didn't even know what to do. MTV cut to their next segment. T Swift performed shortly there after and was a true professional. She took care of business and seemed pretty confident and for a girl who is still in her teens. I think that's pretty impressive. I think Beyonce should have said something nice about T Swift after her performance but on the other hand, she isn't the one who behaved poorly.
Update: In true ladylike fashion, Beyonce gave T Swift her time to shine. Beyonce won the last award of the night and as she accepted her award mentioned what a big moment it was for her to be at the VMAs when she was 17. For that reason she wanted to give T Swift her moment. It was sweet.

Kanye just added this to his list of stupid things he's done. He is so talented and could make s strong name for himself based on his talent alone. For some reason he feels the need to run his mouth in inappropriate ways. The sad part is that his message is lost in the commotion of his childish behavior. It kind of reminds me of this article I just read about another very talented man who should just keep his mouth shut and let his talent speak for him. Give us credit guys. We're smart. We'll figure it out. You don't need to rub our face in it in such a childish way.

Start out with a bang

As soon as we arrived to the house at Hilton Head I took a small load of stuff into the house and walked around to see where we would be staying for the week. It's a really nice house. I went outside to help unload the car. The rain had stopped just as we were pulling in to Palmetto Dunes. I made it down the first step and then my feet slipped out from under me and down I went. I ended up hitting my back right on the edge of the last step. The Pam rushed to my side and tried to help. I kept screaming "LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE!" It hurt way to bad to be touched. I stayed there at the bottom of the steps for a solid 10 minutes while everyone else unloaded the car and tried to hide how much they were worrying about me. After my outburst people were steering clear. Eventually they helped me up and put me on the couch with an ice pack. I spent the rest of the day moving slowly and avoiding steps (my nemesis). I think this has killed any hope of working out while I'm at the beach. Hopefully it won't cut into my tanning time.

PS. I took a picture so you could see the scrape and swelling but then decided I wasn't ok sharing my back fat with the world.

A Very Good Place to Start

We're talking about the beginning kids. I know it's been eons since I have blogged. Oh well. This is the beginning of my amazing London trip that involved sickness, weddings and livin' it up in the city.

I woke up the morning I was supposed to leave for London with an aching body. It took me forever to get out of bed. Once out of bed I could tell that I had chills and decided to take my temperature. The thermometer read 101 degrees and my first thought was "oh no!!! They aren't going to let me in the country!!!" I took a handful of ibuprofen and finished packing. After a bit the chills weren't as bad and I decided that I would definitely go. There was no way I could bail out on my trip.

Maddalena and Brian were sweet enough to drive me to Reagan so I didn't have to mess with the metro. It was all jammed up since the day before there was a major accident that killed seven people. We left the house at noon since my flight was leaving at 3:30pm. Apparently you don't really need to get to the airport three hours early for an international flight when the first leg is not an international airport. I sat for hours. Luckily, I had a little business to take care of while I waited.

Charlotte was the next stop on my journey to London. The ibuprofen had worn off by the time I landed. I realized I had packed the pills I brought with me in the luggage I checked. As I updated The Pam on my health status I feverishly (haha true in so many ways) searched the news stands for packets of Advil. After I took care of that business I was off to the gate. A long line at the gate had already formed when I arrived. This made sense. I only had about a 45 minute layover in Charlotte. I soon found out that this line was for the meal vouchers that they were giving passengers on my flight since it was delayed for three hours due to engine trouble. I was texting Will while I waited giving him updates. He and Miriam had planned to pick me up at 8am London time when I was supposed to land. They had plans to go sight seeing at 11am and I didn't want to upset their plans.

We boarded the plane and pulled away from the gate and then...pulled back to the gate. Oh yes, another delay. This time there was trouble with the generator. That meant no air while we waited for them to fix the problem. We weren't really getting updates. We just sat there on the hot plane thinking we would be leaving in a few minutes. Three hours later with only one water service, the plane finally took off. After sitting on the plane for 11 hours I was so happy to land at Gatwick. To find out if someone was there to meet me, stay tuned.

Princess of Power

While following links from people's gchat status, I ended up over at Dork Yearbook. I thought I was a pretty cool kid. According to this post...not so much. I'm sure there is a picture of me somewhere but for now we can just pretend that this is me and the little girl. Shouldn't she be in diapers?

What to do when it snows

I checked the weather on Sunday morning and saw that the forecast was calling for 6-10 inches. Miriam, Will and I went to the store to stock up on the essentials. Snow was on it's way. It's what you do.

While we were out I picked up ingredients for butternut squash soup and lamb stew. While at Whole Foods something caught my eye. Key Limes. It's not often that you find key limes. I couldn't resist. I picked up a bag of them and decided I would find some use for them.

The snow came. We had 5-8" depending on where you measured in the yard. This meant I was working from home. After answering a large batch of emails I looked through some recipes and decided that I would attempt a key lime pie. The recipe I settled on called for a graham cracker crust but my graham crackers were stale. I made a pie crust and juiced all 25 key limes. That took a while. It was totally worth it. I love key lime pie but had never had home made. The taste was truly fresh and more tart than mass produced pies. This recipe may have to go in the permanent recipe book. Et Viola. The finished product.

Oscar Winners Don't Eat This

I had some people over to watch the Oscars. I served heavy hors d'oeuvres that everyone pitched in to put together. I wanted to try something new for dessert and came across this recipe. The detail sparked my interest. I won't lie, it took a couple trips to a couple different stores to find all the ingredients. The recipe was so detailed I felt I needed to follow it exactly (which really isn't my style). I sifted all the dry ingedients.Chopped the 85% cocoa bar that was in my Valentine's care package. Then I folded it into the batter. That's right. I'm still using Meaghan's mixer. At this rate she may never get it back. This was the densest cupcake batter I've ever made. It was closer to brownie batter. There was enough batter to fill 15 cups. The recipe calls for the cupcakes to be baked for 30 minutes but I think that was too long.

While the cupcakes baked, I fried the bacon, saved the drippings and browned the butter. That lovely combo went into the fridge to chill. I made sure my dinner guests didn't see the congealed concoction when I pulled it out and started adding all the other ingredients to make the crazy and yet delicious icing. If you take a look at all that goes into these cupcakes, you will see that these are not pre-Oscar diet approved. My guests were tentative yet intrigued. Once they gave them a try, the cupcakes were a hit!

Holly Hobbie: Bedroom Curtains

The creative bug has taken a nibble. I have started to try my hand at sewing again. A set of curtains had caught my eye at Target. I'm such a sucker for their home decor section. When I saw they were on sale for about $10 I figured I would buy one panel and try my hand at tailoring them to my needs. Since I'm a dungeon dweller, I don't have full windows and floor length panels really wouldn't suit my needs. Over the weekend I compared the panel I bought to the curtains already in my bedroom and developed a plan. I spread the panel out on my bed, measured and cut the fabric.
I ripped seams, pinned and sewed the panels and ended up with two curtains for my two bedrooms windows.
The fit in perfectly with my green and pink room. What's up next? Who knows?

I Belong to the Christian Bale Cult

I was watching a piece on Christian Bale the other nigh on the Biography Chanel. It was saying how until Batman, Christian Bale had a cult following but wasn't quite at superstar level. Who knew? I thought everyone had fallen in love with Christian Bale in the early nineties while watching him sing and dance in Newsies.
No? Really? You mean there are people out there who haven't even seen Newsies? (cough...Lis)
Now that he has starred in Batman, Christian Bale is all the rage. Rising to popularity with the likes of George Clooney and Kermit the Frog. Kermit the Frog you say? That's right. Take a look at this montage that someone decided to put up on the interwebs.
Man I love the interwebs. Sigh.

First Day of Class

I just got off the phone with my sister. She was semi panicked because her class was starting in ten minutes. Somewhere on campus in the freezing cold, she was on the phone with me trying to figure out where her class was. We went through two different log in processes and finally just looked the class up on the directory of classes. The class was a religious class on pilgrimages. I decided she was just getting in to character for the class.

The semi panic in her voice reminded me of my first day of high school. We had just moved back to Virginia and I knew next to no one. Our house was being built and we were living in a cramped apartment until it was finished. My mom thought it would be a good idea to drive us to what would be our bus stop and have us catch the bus there as we would for the following years. Clearly my mother doesn't love me or she would have just driven us to school even though we were going to three different schools at that point. For some reason or another the bus was late making me late to school and my first class. Panicked I tried to find my first class. Eventually I did. As I entered the classroom my teacher proceeded to berate me about my tardiness. It felt like eons before I could get the word out to tell her the bus was late. I was mortified. I looked like an idiot in front of a class full of people who I didn't know. Was this going to be how the rest of my high school experience would be. Nope. I ended up being head cheerleader and having the time of my life in high school. Let's hope the end result for the girl's last semester at school in the same!