it's not easy being sugar

How awesome are these muppet cupcakes!?

where are my brothers?

Remember Scherbatsky, this bird we love?! And remember her nest? Well we have an update. The nest is down to two :( We came home yesterday to find no mama bird in sight and only 2 eggs in the nest. She came back but was very easily scared away. She used to sit in her nest staring at us while we walked in and out of the house and even took pictures of her. Something must have snatched 2 of the eggs and completely scared her. Now she scares away so easily, we can only see her from the window inside the house. I really hope whatever it was doesn't come back and those 2 little eggs will hatch soon! The boyf and I are REALLY getting attached to this little bird. We checked on her every 5 minutes last night to make sure she came back to the nest. And we even watched her fly into and make her little butt comfortable on those eggs, it was precious!  

Stay warm and be safe, little eggies!

Every woman should...

Every Woman Should...

know how to use a stick shift;
a plunger;

understand the difference between

don't tell a soul and

don't tell a soul I mean it;

know her mind; change it;

have protection handy;

but not too handy;

use special china;

and special underwear

for no special reason;

over commit; come through;

refuse to do it again; do it again;

be able to discuss first and ten;

have better things to do;

set boundaries; go camping;

grow something; dance crazy all alone;

stare at a phone;

get dressed in five minutes;

be a princess, get over it;

believe in the perfect man,

get over it; read; walk; flirt;

shock; listen; sing; thank God;

be single and like it- a lot;

raise a child- or not;

see a wrinkle and be reminded

of her youth; not her age.

breakfast

How sweet would it be to start off today with this?

twin birthdays

Check out these adorable birthday cakes?! Made here for 5 year old twins. 

If the twin and I had cakes, Andrea would be:

She even has the shirt to prove it. And I guess I'd be a combination of:

Or of course we could be:

Mama birdie

Came back into town to find Scherbatsky sitting on her eggs! And I found her exactly like that this morning on my way to work. The boyf looked up some info and apparently eggs only take 14 days to hatch so it should be any day now! Can't wait to see the little chicks! 

home away from home

I'm heading to my favorite little town in the whole entire world for the weekend!! Blacksburg, VA for the Spring Game. Can't wait to see all the alum, baby sorority girls still in school, and everything I love about campus! 

Hope you have fun things planned for this weekend!!

morning little birdies

Check out this adorable bird's nest that is in the bush RIGHT next to the boyf's front door! The mom tweets at us every time we walk through the door. She's so cute sitting on her eggs. We've named her Scherbatsky (after a certain awesome TV show- How I Met Your Mother). She is so cute! I hope the birdies don't hatch while I'm away for the weekend! The boyf will have to keep an eye on it for me.

love the earth

Happy Earth Day people!! 

link

sticky rice and mini golf

This past weekend the boyf and I went on a double date with his roomate. We went out to H Street ( a pretty sketchy area of DC), but had a great time! We went to Sticky Rice for dinner:

And enjoyed tator tots with special sauce (yes, we ate them with chopsticks), tempura teriyaki mushrooms, a variety of sushi and some mongolian noodles. Everything was pretty good! And of course we finished the meal off with some:

Then we went across the street to H Street Country Club for some mini golf! IN A BAR! I know, it's really cool! And they have delicious drinks, such a fun place to go! There are 9 holes, each with it's own DC theme. They had cute names but I don't remember them. haha so here is my own rendition:

And if there is a big hand sticking out of the ground, what do you do?! Sit on it!! (Really fast before the security guy yells at you.) So I recreated a picture the sis and I took last summer after kickball playoffs! 

Super fun night! I highly recommend both places if you are looking for a fun night out!!

tourist in my own city

So the cherry blossoms and all the random trips into the city made me realize just how many times I'm a tourist in my own city. haha looking through all my pictures here are a couple tourist moments, and I'm sure I have a ton more!

(a) view from the Lincoln Memorial, (b) me jumping with the Cherry Blossoms last year, (c) a million people for Inauguration, (d) Hokies for April 16!

Here is our great kickball pyramid in front of the capitol. As you can see, it was a HUGE success. haha, good times. 

Or how about the time we were visiting the Newseum and "ran" into Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Rudd?!? no big deal... Here are some monuments:

And some pictures from the boat:

It's pretty cool living in Washington, DC, The Nation's Capitol!!

Cherry Blossoms

Well I'm about 2 weeks late, but here are some pictures of the Cherry Blossoms in DC! 

They were a gift from Japan in 1912 and 1965 and only bloom for a week every year. There is always a Cherry Blossom Festival with a lot of activities and a Parade (which I danced in, in 6th grade!!). It's a great time to be a tourist in the city! haha 

Cherry Blossom 10-miler

My roommate's boyfriend ran in the Cherry Blossom 10-miler last weekend. (The boyf was signed up too, but couldn't due to his back injury in Park City.) So we went and cheered him and over 15,000 runners on. It was a perfect day in DC! I'm really glad we went and experienced this (and ate delicious hot dogs for breakfast). 

And Dave did SO well! He was right behind the pack of completely jacked runners. We watched him run by at the 5 mile mark, and saw him cross the finish line! Here he is with my roommate (in the tie-dye shirt we made her for her birthday!!) He finished in about 1 hour and 10 minutes, great job Dave!!!

live for 32.. neVer forgeT

April 16, 2007. A day no Hokie will ever forget. 

It started as a regular Monday morning as students in Blacksburg, VA were getting ready for classes. It was early so most of the kids that had classes were underclassmen (senior's wouldn't dare sign up for anything earlier than 10am). My roommate/best friend came into our apartment (less than a mile off campus) to say something was wrong. She had attempted to get on campus before class to study and saw police cars driving around with loudspeakers saying something along the lines of "Gunman on campus, stay indoors."  Immediately we tried to get in touch with anyone we knew that was on campus to figure out what was going on. We turned on the news and waited. Slowly, phone calls trickled in, news stories starting appearing and Facebook/AIM went crazy. There was a shooter on campus and 2 people in West AJ (A huge co-ed freshman dorm) had been killed.  Rumors swirled that it was a guy and a girl in a lover's quarrel, so we all thought the worst was over. Then the news started reporting another shooting with multiple victims. The casualty count rose from 1 to 4, 4 to 6, 6 to 10. We continued to frantically check AIM and Facebook. Anyone who was idle or hadn't updated their facebook, we tried calling. The poor cell phone towers in Blacksburg got jammed (much like football weekends), as family/friends from outside Blacksburg starting checking in on loved ones. My roomates and I sat with our computers in our laps watching the news in shock. Most of us had contact with at least 1 friend/family member outside of Blacksburg so they were assured we were safe. The greek community sent emails out to sororities and fraternities in an attempt to account for everyone. We received an email from someone whose dad was a police officer in Blacksburg.... it said to brace for the worst, that the casualty count on the news was was lower than what had really happened. Then the news jumped to 32 victims and we all just sat there. How could this be happening in our little town? Why here?

 The news immediately named it the "Virginia Tech Massacre" as the deadliest mass shooting in America. We watched the news for the next couple days completely in shock. We walked around campus, congregating on the drillfield to contribute to various impromptu memorials. We watched the news until we wanted to puke, then felt guilty when we weren't watching it. We stayed up as late as we could, sleeping in each other's beds for comfort and woke up thinking, "When we we feel normal again?". We heard gruesome and heroic stories from survivors. We cried for days on end, mourning the Hokies we lost. We held our friends close as we went through a range of emotions together. Some students immediately left campus for home. For me, a senior, I couldn't have been paid to leave. It had been our home for 4 years,  the greatest little town on Earth. I didn't feel any less safe. It could have happened anywhere. The University took a lot of heat for staying open after the first shootings. Many believed closing campus could have prevented the second shooting. I completely disagree, if he really wanted to do it, he would have done it the next day. And he could have done it in McBryde, an auditorium that held 500+ students. 

The Hokies showed the world how to come together as a community. They were impressed by our school spirit and kind nature, but we were just coping as best we could. We watched Air Force One land in our backyard and attended the convocation as Nikki Giovanni gave the most moving speech I had ever heard. We shocked the world by cheering "Let's Go Hokies" at every event -- it made us feel good. We are a football school and that is our way of showing our support. I had never loved Virginia Tech more. 

Looking back, it's hard to believe it's been 3 years. It's hard for me to actually sum up the impact it's had on my life. I am SO extremely proud to be a HOKIE every single day of my life. I honestly think these quotes embodies my feelings: 


"While Tech is so much more than that one moment, it is a part of who we are. We are all stronger and better because of it. We would like to think we're no longer as selfish, and certainly ready to willingly carry the memories of those we lost on that day with us forever. We have started to move on, but we will never, ever forget."

"While 32 of our friends and classmates are in Heaven trying to explain what a Hokie is, I stand here sure in the fact that I wouldn't want to be anything else." What is a hokie? I AM. 

So in closing:
"I ask each of you to take the time to be a Hokie this week. Appreciate life a little more, take in every moment around you, count your blessings, tell the people around you that you love them, slow down, remember what's truly important in life. And live for those 32 that do not have that chance."

We will prevail

Transcript of Nikki Giovanni's Convocation address

Delivered April 17, 2007

Professor Nikki Giovanni speaks
at Convocation, April 17, 2007.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

[link]

we remember

In Memory of All Those We Have Loved and Lost: video. 

Disclaimer: This is VERY moving. The song is so sad and brings back so many memories (good and bad). Be careful watching this at work. I can't watch it without crying. But I love it nonetheless. 

fake cake

Ice cream or a cupcake? Looks delicious either way!

And check out this sandwich cake pan! Perfect for the PB&J lover in all of us. 

words to live by

color outside the lines

Cerulean - TOTALLY my fav crayon color. Can't pronounce it, but still love it! 

creamsicle cookies

This weekend I made these delicious cookies!! They are actually from Risa's super cute blog, a KPMG coworker who works with my old roommate! I can't wait to make some of her other recipes. These cookies are SO good, everyone was obsessed with them. The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of orange zest for the creamsicle flavor, but as 2 friends stated "These would be bomb / baller ass F-ing sugar cookies without the orange." So I may be making these again soon without the orange and with different colors. Here is the recipe: 

Creamsicle Cookies (a.k.a Orangebursts)

recipe adapted from Guittard 

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 firmly packed brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons orange zest

2 cups Guitard Choc-Au-Lait Vanilla Chips **

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and creamy. Beat in egg and vanilla until smooth. Gradually add flour mixture until combined. Stir in orange zest and chips.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 8 - 10 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Cool for several minutes on cookie sheets before transferring to rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container.

** I couldn't find these at Harris Teeter so substituted vanilla flavored chocolate discs (the ones you use to make chocolate lollipops with molds - SO fun as a kid!) It worked well by just breaking them up, and they come in every color! I found them at AC Moore. 

friday!

YAY, I'm so happy it's Friday! I have lots of fun plans for the weekend: happy hour/dinner/going out tonight, errands and relaxing Saturday, and supporting the cherry blossom 10-miler and my roommate's birthday wine tour on Sunday. Can't wait!! Hope you have fun plans too. 

v-day present..

The boyf was gone for Valentine's Day so I completely forgot to blog about the awesome present he got me! Check out my sweet new apron. I've already decided I'm going to wear it for Halloween this year and be a housewife!

 He got it off Etsy, check out the other cute aprons from the same shop:

She makes super cute ones for little girls too!