Merry Christmas!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season filled with food, family, and of course SNOW! 

(how else are you going to build an igloo?)

Christmas Time Is Here!

I ♥ my new Christmas tree!

It looks super cool in the dark

I went with a silver and white theme for the ornaments

I wanted to hang the amazing ornaments my Aunt Leslie
gave me for christmas last year, but they were too large
for my tree... so I hung them on the wall instead!

Really Amazon? Really?

This is why I don't like Amazon...

Tomorrow, Amazon is going to give people a 5% discount if they use the Amazon Price Check phone app to compare prices for things like toys, electronics, sporting goods, music, and DVDs in stores vs. on Amazon.

The deal doesn't work for books, but is just another way to encourage people to do what they are already doing in bookstores (browsing and finding books to buy in a bricks-and-mortar store, but actually buying them from Amazon, or other online competitor, rather than the physical bookstore).

Amazon is seriously trying to take over the world.

Needing Some Encouragement...

I'm seriously lacking the knowledge to finish my final exam and research paper... 

Here's hoping those voices start whispering in my ear before 10 p.m. tomorrow night!

I'm Weirdly Excited For This Movie

So the other day I read this statement in one of my shelf awareness issues...

"Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. I still vividly remember reading this book when I was 11; it cast a spell on me like nothing ever had before. For days afterward, I felt feverish, disoriented, changed. A sense of simply not knowing what to do with myself. Even today, those symptoms follow after I've finished a great book."

That was author Paul Russell's response when asked to name a book that had changed his life.

I mildly embarrassed to say that I've also felt (although way less intensely) the same way after reading a book before. Now, that statement in itself isn't the embarrassing part, rather, it's the fact that The Hunger Games books are the ones that gave me those feverish disoriented feelings.

But it happened.

Last summer, I finally gave in to the Hunger Games craze and read those books. And when I say I read them, I really mean that I devoured them.... like non-stop, can't put it down, dreamed about them kind of devoured. I got so into them (especially the last book) that I got all cold and clammy (I know embarrassing, right?) and had to go outside to read because I was literally shivering in my only moderately air conditioned house.

Geez. 

Now, there's a trailer for the movie and I'm kind of excited by it. 

Are you?

Birthday Cake Art

My cousin Megan and I made this amazing cake for my brother's birthday last Saturday.

We tossed around the idea of making him a gun (he has a lot of those), but didn't like it. In the past we've made him a racoon (when he shot one in my aunt's backyard) and a deer (he's shot one of those too).

And then, my aunt suggested we make him a kayak cake... and a genius idea was born.

We decided to create a kayaking scene!

Megan molded the kayak using orange starbursts
(I thought Mitchell's was orange, but apparently it's actually red... whoops)

We thought it would be funny if we depicted Mitchell crashing...
He loved it.

We used balloon candles as the paddle... it broke in the crash
and the arm (which belonged to a Bratz doll my aunt had lying around)
represents Mitchell struggling to grab one half of his paddle.

The rocks are made out of chocolate raisonetts and donut holes.
The trees are icing-, sprinkle-, and dyed-green noodle- covered ice cream cones.
We also used Swedish fish 'cause we thought they were cool.
The cake itself is funfetti cake (best. ever.) with rainbow chip icing.
We used a spray to "paint" the icing blue and green

A side note: The Bratz doll that I cut the arm off of is now a resident of my apartment because my aunt refused to let me leave it at her house... she thinks it's going to haunt me and has advised me to dispose of it some where far far away from anywhere that I am.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

On Saturday, my family (mom, dad, brother, grandparents, cousins, cousin-in-law, aunt, and uncle) and I drove down to this cool cut-your-own-Christmas tree farm and picked out our Christmas tree! Well actually Christmas trees plural... we left with three.

We picked out my grandparents' tree first... it was pretty tall 

So after they cut it down, they cut off the bottom.
Apparently they didn't cut off enough though,
because it was still too tall to stand up in the garage... 

Then we picked out the McDonald tree

My cousin Megan was concerned that it was too skinny...

We had to cut that one down to size too...
Pretty (and unintentional) sunburst in the picture!

Then my super clever family decided that the best way to get the trees out of the woods was to put them on a tarp and drag them with down with the car... so Peter devised a "trapezoid" with bungee cords to do the job

And of course, they took about 100 years to attach the trees to our cars.
Megan and Nate's tree (never pictured here) was the best, because it fit in the back of the car!