Should I be making a New Year's resolution to write here more? Nah.

So, for Christmas my parents gave me a sewing machine. Oh yes. You know how this is going to turn out. My plan is to set up a little craft area in my basement, because my room is really just too small for me to do crafts in. So hopefully, I will start churning out those angels and demons soon.
I did a lot of cooking for Christmas, and even took a couple of neat pictures. I love deviled eggs, and I got a new cookie-maker-pump-thingy device from my sister. It is my new best friend, and I used it to make swirly centers in the deviled eggs. :D

And (of course) I made cupcakes, too. I was lazy and used cake mix and premade frosting. My sister was happy. She loves the crap stuff. Eventually I will convert her to my delicious baked goods.
This weekend I have some grandiose plans with Heather to make an excessive amount of baked goods, all magnificently decorated. I'm not sure how well it will work out, but at the very least, I'm gonna make some more cupcakes. We're also making a fancy-pants cornish hen dinner for our double date. I'm crossing my fingers for success.

oh hai

So I did make those cupcakes for the company party, by the way. Only about sixty of them. They were gone within an hour, and I was a little too busy at the "special" eggnog table to take a picture of them. But! My peppermint vanilla cupcakes were a hit, despite being my own invention, and everyone was demanding the recipe I used for the chocolate buttercream frosting. Cause damn, son, it was some good frosting. (You can find the recipe on America's Test Kitchen's web site. Really, all of their recipes are amazingly delicious.) Two of my coworkers have gluten allergies, so they were very grateful for my gluten-free cupcakes. :)

Now I'm doing some secret crafting for Christmas (yes, last minute, whatever). Other homemade Christmas presents that I have already made include: Irish creme from scratch, home-brewed raspberry cordial, and delicious delicious fudge. And I'm supposed to make cookies and brownies, too. Mmm. Brownies. I'm not really worried about posting presents here cause the people they're for never read this blog, anyways. Heh.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukkah, Happy Festivus, Happy Yule/Solstice/Dong Zhi, have a wonderful Makar Sankranti and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with His Noodly Appendage this Holiday.

I are wizard?

I don't know what sort of voodoo magic I used, but somehow I managed to get my word count up near 60,000 by the 28th of November. Impressive, right? What's more impressive is that I somehow managed to convince myself that I still had only about 30k words written, and I gave up. That's right, my friends, that last weekend when I should have been rejoicing, I gave up. I knew I couldn't handle writing 20k words in two days without going crazy. And then, on December 1st, I checked my real word count. Head? Meet desk. You're going to be friends for a while.
I don't really feel like I won, though, because my story still isn't finished. So I'm trying to get it done by the end of December. I'm pretty close, I just need to get my lazy tush around to doing it.
And, in my writing spree in that last week, I managed to scrounge up the time to bake a pretty cake for Thanksgiving. I've already eaten most of it, but you can still see two of the three pretty roses. My brother ate the yellow one. Pic will be posted when I get home. It's vanilla cake with raspberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting, and it is freaking delicious. I've got a slice in my lunch box right now, and it's killing me to have to resist eating it until afternoon snacktime. Yes, I know it's old, but I have a magical cake storage device that, despite looking cheap and lame, does a really good job of keeping my cakes fresh!

Right?

I said I would update on Sundays, right? Right? No. =/

So my word count is a pretty pitiful 28, 546. So, yeah, I don't really think that I'm going to have this finished by November 30th. But I'm going to try!

I spent too much time last week making cupcakes for the Thanksgiving party. But hell, they were delicious, adorable, amazing cupcakes. And guess what? I forgot to take pictures. They were pretty amazing, too. Damn. One of my friends, after tasting one, hid one of the containers of 15 cupcakes so that she could take it home. Haha.

Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them

So remember that time when I said that I would be posting my word count every Saturday? Yeah, I lied. You see, it was my birthday weekend. I wish I could pretend that it took me this long to recover from the intense partying, but that would be a lie, too. I had like two glasses of wine. Oh, and I got a zombie (the drink, not the walking dead) on Monday at a Chinese food restaurant for $5. Which was awesome.

Oh yeah, by the way, my word count is 17, 232. Not bad, eh?

I made the gimbap, and it was an epic disaster, so I am not posting the pictures of my shame. Note to self: it really doesn't freeze well.

I told my friends I would make them cupcakes for a Thanksgiving party. Probably 36 cupcakes. That's November 21. I told my family that I would make cupcakes for Thanksgiving. Only like 12-24 of em. That's November 27. I told my coworkers that I would make cupcakes for our holiday party. That's probably going to end up being 144 cupcakes because I'm an overachiever. On December 12. So hopefully, I don't die doing NaNoWriMo. Or die of too many cupcakes. I think that's possible.

Word count update

So, I figure that every Saturday until November 30, I'll sneak in a word count update for NaNoWriMo before bed. Hopefully I will actually do this. >_> Also, at some point I will be posting the awesome cupcakes that I am going to make at some point when I'm trying to avoid writing. I just bought a new digital camera, so you won't have to put up with any more of my whining. Oh, and I'm going to try to make sushi/gimbap this week. I'll try to take pictures.
My word count goal for this week (really, just today) was 1725 words. The churn-out for today? 3205 words. That's almost double! I know, I know. I rule. It's ok. You can tell me about it later. :3
Maybe I'll post an excerpt if I find a good one. Right before I quit for the night, I was writing a description of a dress. One sentence long, but I considered going all Robert Jordan on it. "She smoothed her skirts while pulling her braid at the same time. Her dress was a fine olive green velvet from France, made by little fairies, and embroidered with the world's finest............."
You know what? I can't even fake it. I guess I should be happy about that. Although I did already describe the contents of a trunk, so I guess I've been influenced too much. Ok, I seriously need to sleep.

NaNoWriMo

So, I'm going to do it. I say this every year, but this year, I totally mean it! I even signed up this time! I'm going to take part in NaNoWriMo. I feel nervous and excited, but I already have an awesome idea of what to write. :D Ooh, and if anyone else is doing this, let's be writing buddies!

So... I have to write a 50,000 word novel. There's 30 days in November. Subtract one night (for my birthday, cause no way am I writing on my birthday!) and that translates to about 1725 words per day. Ok... that's like, what? 3, 4 pages? I've written 5 page papers in one night before! Loads of times! OMG I CAN'T DO THIS I'M GOING TO DIE.

This is pretty much my shout out for someone to please check my apartment for my corpse on November 30th. kplzthxbye

(xposted to my eljay)

zomg

I just had an excellent idea, and I wanted to share it because I can't find any documentation of it anywhere else on the internets. I've been trying to think of more things I can make with the unnecessary amount of rice flour I have when I thought of it. What if one were to make ochazuke, but instead of using rice, to use rice flour cupcakes?
I imagine it being soaked in a tres leches cake kind of way, perhaps with a whipped cream frosting that is flavored with myoga or crystallized ginger. Hot damn, that would be awesome.
I know that ochazuke is supposed to be savory, but I don't see why it can't be sweet and cupcake-y, instead! This is now, officially, on my to-do list. And if you make this, you are officially required to let me know and/or taste. :D

ETA: I'm not referring to green tea cake, by the way, the kind where you include matcha in the recipe. Oh no no. I'm talking about pouring a hefty amount of strong green tea on top of a cake, and letting it slowly soak in. Yum.

So hey....

Remember that time when I didn't post for, like, ever? Yeah man, me too! Totally weird.

I haven't really been creating much other than poetry, which I no longer will post on the interwebs (for publishing reasons). I also invented some recipes, which are definitely delicious.

Speaking of delicious, I have made some delicious, adorable cupcakes. Yesterday I tried making gum paste flowers for the first time. (Yes, I spent my Saturday night home alone with two cats and a lot of sugar.) My main successes involved getting gum paste all over my hands (and hair!) and getting powdered sugar all over the floor. I had forgotten my book on making gum paste flowers somewhere, so they are mostly magical flowers of my imagination. Very cute and girly magical flowers.

Today I decided to make cupcakes to show off my pretty flowers, not to mention, I'd been meaning to make gluten-free lavender cupcakes for ages. I made lemon buttercream frosting like two weeks ago for these cupcakes I intended to make, but alas, I am lazy. But the frosting has been a great midnight snack until now. (Don't worry, the recipe I use takes seriously forever for the frosting to go bad. As in, I have never, ever had my frosting go bad.)

So, here we have my adorable rice flour cupcakes, soaked in lavender syrup, frosted with lemon buttercream, topped with cute flowers:
Those little yellow bits are lemon "zest." I fail at zesting, so they are big chunks. And here is the front, so that you can see my pretty rose:
And a close-up of the rose that is positively soaked with vanilla vodka because I don't have any edible glue:
I am going to be getting a new digital camera, because I'm sick of my phone's subpar photo-taking abilities. And my old digital camera wasn't close to being the best, either, and I really don't feel like sifting through ten metric tons of crap to find it.

(Hey, does the excessive length of this entry make up for the fact that I haven't posted in like 18 years?)

Ugh.

Moved recently, so I haven't been able to do much. I'm actually still in the process of moving–all of my craft/sewing/nerd stuff is still at my parent's house. I'm working on it!

Posted a new old poem on fictionpress. I've been writing, but everything I write recently is angsty crap. And you know that when I say it's angsty, hot damn, it's angsty. And it's all way to personal to share on the internets, anyway.

So I'll try to get back to work.

Hm.

So I don't seem to be very skilled at sticking to doing something, like, say, posting regularly on a blog I made. Whatever.
I haven't been making any of the things I said I would (sorry Emily!) but I have been baking! Oh yes.
Last weekend (or was it three weekends ago? I don't know) I went to New Hampshire. During a thunderstorm, I decided it was an excellent time to go berry-picking, and I picked a boatload of wild blueberries and raspberries. And then I made some delicious turnovers! (Raspberry, blueberry, and mixed berry; yum!)
You can get a little preview of the operation I had going:


I made 3 dozen turnovers in a teeny leetle countertop oven. (The only pans that could fit into it are the ones on the table there on the left, with the turnovers on them.) They didn't even last a week. A close up of the raspberry ones:


Tonight I'm making chocolate chip cookies. I'm using my secret trick of throwing in some cinnamon, and I put a dash of allspice in too. The dough is resting right now, because the cookies taste so much better when you let it rest for a while. (I've heard that the optimal time is 36 hours. I'm too impatient.)
The cookies will probably be eaten before I can take a picture of them. Not that you need a picture. You know what cookies look like, right??

New old stuff

So I posted a new poem on teh schweetness of fictionpress. I'm not going to link it. It doesn't count as creation. I mean, yes, I did create it. I wrote it almost two years ago, though. I just found it while trolling through old livejournal entries of mine, and I wanted to share it.

So now you know it exists, but not where! Heh!

Ninja bunny!

So... it only took me approximately 8 million years, but here are the pictures of the ninja bunny. He is just so darn sneaky! He followed me to work, and stood still for .2 seconds in front of my phone. I managed to catch a shot of him with my cell phone.
Yeah, corporate buzzword bingo. I'd be ashamed to go to a meeting without it. I don't actually play, I just look at it and think about playing and then end up doodling all over it cause that helps me concentrate. Oh yeah, and all that origami all over my phone. I like origami. You can also kind of see a little sculpey chibi bunny I made, if you look real hard. Anywho. Here is another picture of the ninja bunny lurking behind my keyboard. You can kind of see his little ninja star. It took me longer to make that stupid origami star than it did to make him! Mainly because I forgot how to make them.He's made of felt and schtuffing, his ninja star is aluminum, and his face is acrylic paint and embroidery.

Next on the list: an angel kitten for my sister. Not like I usually actually do what is on my list, but I told her I would make her a kitten already, so I had better get KRAKEN.

Ninja!

I made a ninja bunny. No pictures yet; he's really fast and really sneaky.

Also in the works: nerd bunny, pirate bunny, hamster angel, and penguin angel. And then a bunch of creepy and adorable demons. I also have some non-plush creations in the works. I should really finish them.

Bunnnnnyyyyy

OMG CUTENESS:I made her in a couple days. Her name is Mercedes. She likes to chill with fishies and eat strawberry cupcakes. Her best friends are two fishes named Phil and Liam.


^______^

Made with felt, schtuffing, acrylic paint, and chalk pastel.

Pictures taken with my cell phone. I have no idea where my digital camera is.

A poem and a demon!

Seriously. I have created a poem, and a demon. Well, three poems. I wrote some limericks a while back, but I decided to edit them and place them on the holy throne of fictionpress today.

And I made a demon! His name is Matt Demon. He is a prototype for a series of angels and demons that I am eventually going to be making. I was lazy and sewed him by hand. (It's a lot of work to drag out the sewing machine, okay?) Here's the little guy from the front:and here is his cuteness from the back!
Matt likes to go on Twitter and eat babies. He also likes to eat salsa. Especially on babies. :3

He is made from an old work polo, felt, schtuffing, and two really old buttons.

New poems

I posted two new poems on fictionpress. I know, fictionpress is the home of emo teens, but I've been there since it was still a part of fanfiction.net, and I'm too used to it to find somewhere else. I wrote both of these bad boys at work about two months ago, but I let them marinate and did (what I hope are) the final edits. They seem popular among angsty teens, so perhaps they are good.

-links removed-

Lazy

Documenting my creations is beginning to prove to be a bit difficult. This is because of two things:
A. I have no idea where my digital camera is.
B. I am lazy, and haven't been doing anything.

Perhaps "anything" is not the correct way to say it. I have been lazing around trolling the interwebs. And baking. Baking counts as creation!

I wanted to know what it tastes like to use tea in cakes, (more specifically, cupcakes), and I was (you guessed it!) too lazy to bake them from scratch. So I used white cake mix, and used vanilla chai tea instead of plain ol' water. Then I whipped up some cream cheese frosting (from scratch cause it's easy, and cause there is an overload of cream cheese and powdered sugar in my house). The result tastes a lot like spice cake, to be honest. When you eat the cupcakes with butter pecan ice cream, though, you can really taste the essence of tea-ness.

So next time I might use something a little less spiced, and a little more obvious. Perhaps Earl Grey, with lemon frosting? Speaking of frostings, I bet Chambord would taste great in frosting! Alcohol is always good with desserts.

And the cupcakes:

Notice that quite a few have been eaten. They are extremely delicious. Sorry for the crap-tastic photo, I suck at taking pictures.

And now it begins.

I don't know why I wanted to start a new blog. I think it would be safe to say that I have enough already. I'm sure some of them are now deleted due to lack of use. Too bad. I'm sure there is a lot of valuable teenage angst there.
I am hoping that with a device to track it, perhaps I will be more inclined to share the things I create. Creation is one of my favorite activities, right up there with naps and eating cupcakes. Baking cupcakes counts as creation to me, so that's all set already.
Anyway, first creations first. My borderline-trademark-infringing power-up mushroom earrings:
They are made with Sculpey and acrylic paint, and glazed with clear nail polish. ^_^