New Phone!

Its been a long time coming, but on March 25th I am finally making the upgrade to an iPhone! 

My first smartphone was a Blackberry Curve 8900 junior year in high school. Since then I have had androids and have really liked them. Right now I have the HTC Incredible 2 and I really like it, but everyone in my family and my boyfriend has an iPhone and the seem to work so much better! Plus my sister lives over seas and she has an iPhone, so if I get an iPhone we can iMessage! Well as long as she is home with wifi we can. 

As you can see, I have already bought five cases for a phone that I dont have. But who cares! Im prepared. Haha. 

I cant wait to get my iPhone! 12 days to go! Lets just hope they dont have to order it in for me...

Perks of being Short

Well, here we go. I bought a maxi skirt, or dress or whatever it is. Its meant to be a skirt but its so long that I can pull it to to be a strapless maxi dress. I spent a few minutes in the dressing room seeing if I could make it work as a skirt and still be able to wear flats or sandals, and I can! Finally! I have a maxi skirt that doubles as a dress! Bonus!
I have had this problem my whole life. I am a whopping 5'2" and nothing fits! You might ask, "Why not just buy the "short" jeans instead of the "regular" length?" Well, jeans are cotton, meaning they shrink when washed. So over a few months of being washed they become to short. So I have to buy the regular length jeans and cuff them to make them fit. Not a big deal. But when it comes to dresses and skirts I have a big problem. They never hit me in the right place on my legs to look nice. This is why I never buy new clothes!

Shopping

So I hate shopping for clothes. Like really hate. I find a ton of cute stuff to try on, then once its on I hate it! I haven't bought new summer clothes in a long time. The newest shorts I have I bought like four years ago and they aren't that great.
My boyfriend took me shopping for my birthday this last weekend and all I ended up getting was a few pairs of earrings, a headband and eye shadow. I have like no tank tops, no skirts and one pair of sandals. Now that I am done with school I can actually wear clothes again so I really need to get some! I will probably just end up getting stuff at Target, which isn't bad, they have lots of cute stuff.
I really want maxi shirts and dresses. Here is the valley summers are super hot. Average temp is around 85. Perfect for skirts and sandals! I do need shorts for work though. Working at Jamba it gets pretty warm on the line with everybody in such tight quarters so jeans aren't an option.

Cake

So I could not figure out how to get perfect cakes, like the one above, at home. I had no problem getting perfect cakes at school though. I figured it was just the oven and I was going to have to deal with it. That is until I found this nifty little pin on Pintrest. All you do is take strips of towel (I used paper towel) get them wet, not dripping but fairly wet, and wrap it around the cake pan. It took two strips of paper towel so I held them together with paperclips, then bake as directed.
My cakes came out so much better than they had! The wet towel keeps the sides of the cake cooler so they don't bake as fast. The reason you get mounded cakes is because the sides of the cake bake faster and don't have the time to properly rise with the inner portion of the cake. Also, you want to make sure you have a thermometer inside your oven. I couldn't figure out why my stuff wasn't baking correctly until I bought a thermometer and found out my oven was baking 50 degrees hotter that the dial said! That's a lot!
Also a little tip for perfect cupcakes. Bake them 25 degrees cooler that directed and a few minutes longer. Fill them 3/4 full, not 2/3. Doing this they wont be flat, they will mound like you want them too and be soft and fluffy inside!

Cilantro Lime Chicken

I've really been liking this dish lately, and the best part is you dump it all the crock pot and leave it for 4 hours and its good to go! Minus the rice, again just a dump and go item.
I've really been trying to eat better lately, minus the chocolate covered peanuts sitting next to me. But hey, we all need a treat every now and then. But this dish is super easy, low calorie and low fat! I found the recipe on Pintrest but didn't love it the way its suppose to be made so here is my take on it.

2 cans black beans (drained)
16 oz frozen corn (thawed)
1/2 large onion
6-8 cloves minced garlic
1/2 bunch cilantro, give or take depending on taste
1-2 tsp cumin
1 - 1 1/2 tsp chili powder
1-2 tsp Mexican spice rub blend
S&P TT
2 lbs boneless chicken (I used thighs)
Top with fresh lime juice
Serve over rice

The original recipe said to juice 2 whole limes into the crockpot but the lime was way to much and had an off flavor so I prefer to use it as a finishing touch. It also said it use chicken breast but I like boneless thighs because they are perfect serving size.

Enjoy!

Happy To Me!

So yesterday was my 20th birthday, yay! I never think about what I want for my birthday until someone asks me. My mom called be like two weeks ago asking what I wanted, I have no fricken clue! I told her I would think about it and let her know. And of course I didnt put any thought into it. the older I get the less I care about what I get for my birthday. All I want is to go to my Grammas and have prime rib dinner and spend the day with my family, but thats not enough for my mom. 

This year all I could think about was shoes and cake pans. So as you can see I have included pictures of such items. My mom and her boyfriend got me these for my presents! Well, I ordered the shoes and she gave me money for them. Haha. But a gift non the less. I have been wanting that four piece Wilton pan set for a while now so thats what I got! The only problem is when I took it out of the packaging I notices that the pans had odd circles on the bottoms. I flipped over the pans and noticed there was an indent from the pan that was inside it. I thought it wasnt a big deal until I looked at the biggest pan and noticed it had a large indent and would make quite the difference in the final product. So now I get to exchange it. I just hope the store still has them because I was at Michaels the other day and didnt see any. Fingers crossed! 

I Will Not Be Like My Mom!

My mom is the one standing in the left picture, me on the right.

I don't know how many times I have said that over the years. But as much as I try not to be like my mom, I am exactly like her! I love my mom, but who wants to be like their mom? My mom always told me I will grow up to be just like her, and I thought, "No way!". Well yes way. Everything about me reminds me of her. The way I talk, the way I act, even how I look is exactly like her! I have very little features of my dad, but my sister is so much more like our dad than our mom. A few weeks ago she posted the picture above of her on Facebook. In it I think she is 14, and the picture of me is at 19. Even with the age difference we look so much alike! If I had her wedding picture it would be even better. Minus the big poofy, permed out hair of 1989.
I get a lot of traits from my mom. We are both sensitive, outgoing, loud, always put others first and we try to avoid conflict as much as possible. The first thing that I noticed about myself that was a lot like my mom was the way I laugh. But hers is still much louder than mine!
I was always embarrassed by the way my mom dances around the house, but now I do the same thing! She always said I will do the same little things to embarrass my kids. Again I thought, "No way!", but oh yes! I don't have kids yet but I do it to my boyfriend all the time!
I am sure I will discover many more things I do that are just like my mom in the next few years.

I love you Mama!

Hemi

My cat Hemi does this every night! 2 AM. One minute he is all cute and sleepy, the he gets some wild hair up his butt and take off out the room. In the process he manages to bang the door 5 times and piss off Phillip, my other cat. 

His favorite thing is the closet at the end of the hall. He will play with the doors until he has moved it enough to get a paw in and wiggle it open so he can get in. While in there he tries to climb the shelves, and fails. Then rummages through the bags. By the time he is ready to get out he has moved the door so much that it closed again. Ugh! Bang bang bang! He's stuck. Now everyone is awake. I hear my step-mom get out of bed, "Hemi, you moron! Stay out of the closet!"

Thump thump thump, crash, plop. He's back on my bed, ears back acting like he has done nothing. Over me, onto the night stand and up onto the desk. Crunch crunch crunch, I guess that adventure made him hungry. Slurp slurp, dip dip. He's in the fish bowls! "Hemi will you be quiet?!"

Thump, thump, plop. Now he is curled up in a ball on my legs. Finally! Quiet, until 6 AM.

Trains

100 feet from my front door are train tracks, and there are always trains going by! When I first moved in they would wake me up all the time, but now that I've been there for two years its not so bothersome. The only thing that sucks is when I get stuck on the WRONG side of the tracks.
Like today. I was coming home from a meeting and I got stopped at the crossing, 50 feet from my driveway! You literally go over the track and turn left and your in my driveway. Its so frustrating! Luckily this was a short train but we have had trains that take 5+ minutes pass.
Last summer when my family was having lunch in the back yard I counted 300 train cars before I lost count. Now that is a long train! My little cat Hemi does not like the trains. Whenever we hear one he comes bolting through the dog door all puffy. Little dork. The goats just stair at it until it passes though.
It also sucks when I need to leave for work and the cars are backed up blocking my way out. Either way its a lose lose situation.
All in all, I hate these tracks!

Tires

So while my boyfriend Ryan and I were at the beach a week ago he noticed the tread on my front left tire was starting to show. I didn't know what that meant but I assumed it wasn't good. I've only has the tires for two and a half years so there is no way this should be happening. I looked online and these tires have a 65,000 warranty on them. I went and checked my mileage on my car, 72,000, when I bought my car it had 29,000 miles on it, so I thought, yay! Im covered by the warranty! I went to the place I got the tires and had them take a look. The guy said I would have to buy new tires because a. my alignment is off and b. they dont have record of them being put on my car. He said their records show it was put of a truck at 120,000 miles. How they get my Neon and truck confused is beyond me. Plus I was in there about 4 months prior getting my oil changed and my tires looked at and they didnt notice anything then. I told them I was going to wait until my dad got home to come back with me. I called him and he said what they were telling me was a load of bull and to look in his files at home for the reciept. I found it and sure enough the reciept says the tires were put on a Dodge Neon at 32,000 miles. What morons! My dad will be home this weekend and hopefuly we can get this all figured out!

Non-Dairy

So for the past four or so years I have been lactose intolerant and it sucks! It was really hard to get used to the diet change and to remember to take one of those little white pills that helps digest the dairy. It came on slowly then all the sudden I couldn't do any dairy. Major bummer! The past two years it has gotten better, or maybe I'm just better about my dairy intake, I don't have to take a pill for cereal or a small bowl of ice cream anymore, unless I've already gone overboard in the last 48 hours. Its so much better than being sick all the time!
About a month ago I started going to the gym so I decided to start taking whey protein. I figured one scoop of whey with water instead of milk wont hurt me. Wrong! I looked around for alternative proteins and seeing as I cant have soy and didn't want to take creatien, I thought I was screwed. That is until I found out that the makers of Muscle Milk make a lactose free whey protein. How is it lactose free? I wondered. The guy in GNC told me they add the enzyme needed to digest they dairy, just like in the pill I would take. Awesome! I hope there's enough in it to help me! I went to Costco, because it was like $60 cheaper there, bought a 4 lb bag of the vanilla cream flavored whey and tried it out.  Guess what. It works! I don't have any tummy problems with this whey! Thank goodness! Now I can make sure I'm getting the proper amounts of protein after my workouts! Happy day.

Obsession of the Day

My obsession today is sandal wedges! I don't actually own a pair, yet, but I will before spring! I look at them every year but haven't loved them enough to invest in a pair yet. Today I was at Marshall's and saw a SUPER cute pair of kelly green wedges but they were $40, and I am a poor college student, so they are still at the store. I really like to wear heals but since being in culinary school my feet have gotten so used to being in Dansko clogs that heals KILL my feet : / Wedges are much easier to wear so I'm hoping I wont die in them. I have some really cute skirts that I never get to wear because I don't have any shoes that look good with them and I feel like a hooker when I wear them with stilettos so I just don't wear the skirts. But you know what goes with the skirts? Wedges! They also look really cute with jeans. Its a whole world of possibilities with sandal wedges!

P.S.
Both shoes shown are from Target! Which just happens to be my favorite store : )

Buffy The House Chicken

Buffy on the Couch

My Dad and Buffy

So this is Buffy, shes a chicken. During the summer when we are out by the fire she likes to hop up in our laps and take a nap. Weird little chicken. But yesterday my Step mom went out to the chicken area and found her pinned under a fallen fence, when she lifted the fence she say that Buffy had prolapsed, meaning her insides had been pushed out her bottom. Laura picked her up and brought her into the kitchen and gently cleaned her off and put some Preparation H on her bum and put her insides back in. This all happened while I was at school so when I got home at 5:15 Laura said, "We have a sick chicken" I asked what happened then looked at the couch and saw a bundle of blankets. I said, "Is there a chicken on the couch??" And sure enough there was Buffy chilling out in my Buzz Lightyear blanket. I sat down next to her and she poked her head up and made one of her little chicken noises. Laura took the blanket off her and she stood up, rearranged her feathers, got a bite to eat and laid back down and went to sleep. Silly Buffy. We made up a box for her to sleep in in the house to make sure she was OK in the morning. Today we kept a eye on her to make sure everything was working properly, which it is, and sent her on her marry little way back with the rest of the chickies. She is one happy little birdie!

Kitty Girl!

Oh my Phillip. I love waking up to this ball of fur every morning! If you cant tell, she is sleeping on my pillow, as always. Yes, I said she. I dont often wake up to her still sleeping, normally she is giving herself a bath. And let me tell you, she is not a quiet bather! I dont know what she does but it wakes me up! And she takes forever! When she notices in awake she is all in my face and wont leave me alone untill I give her some love, After that she will happily hop across my nightstand on to the desk to enjoy her morning crunchies and take a little, or a big, sip of water from the fish bowls.Since she has started to drink from the fish bowls my other cat Hemi has taken a liking to it, which means I am constantly having to refill the bowls!it doesnt hurt the cats so why not. They wont drink for a normal bowl of water if I set it out though, weirdos.