Would you give it all up to live again?

The Holidaze have officially hit the baking world. We've been crazy busy, which is great. We had a few down years when the economy took a down turn, but it seems like this year, people have really been making up for lost time. Even though we've been so busy, my moments of feeling "stressed" have been few and far between thus far. Sure, I've been mad or frustrated with people, but it wasn't the normal "stressed out, I wanna rip out my hair and scream", which I'm really thankful for.

To keep my self somewhat sane, I've been doing a little shopping. But not the normal "Let's go shopping for holiday gifts for friends and family!" Oh no, it's totally been all about me lol

Let me preface this with I don't usually like flats. I'm short, like *really* short. So when I've been drawn to shoes, it's always 4" or 5" or higher, just so I'm of normal height when I wear them. But now that I work in an office and I can't wear heels, I've really taken to flats. Now, don't get me wrong, I still love me some sky high stilettos, but I've come to the (saddening) realization that I do not live in New York or LA and have fabulous parties to attend on a regular basis. In reality, I live in the Midwest and I often go weeks, if not months, without an occasion to get all dressed up for.

I ended up buy a pair of brown flats this summer so I could wear my sun dresses and not wear my Birkenstocks and boots like I had been all winter and spring. After I got over the initial breaking in period, I found that they were actually pretty comfortable! (For some reason, I've always been ok with my feet hurting if there's 5" heels involved, but flats I never found justifiable lol)

Side note, I've been pretty obsessed with leopard print ever since I saw these:

I die.

So fierce I can't even stand it. But because of that whole "I live in Michigan and don't go anywhere necessitating me spend exhorbanant amount of money on shoes that will still on my shelves more often than not" thing, I couldn't bring myself to spend the $100+ to buy them.

So one night at Target (i.e. my fave store) I stumbled upon these:
How effing cute are those?!?! They are a little uncomfortable to break in, but for these, I will suffer hehe

I also picked up some other stuff including these:

Zebra and sequins? Yes, please.

I'm not sure why, I just find those so cute!

After all this shopping, I really need to buckle down on the spending. Winter is coming fast and I need new tires-sometimes I dislike being responsible lol

Lord knows I'm weak and won't somebody get me off of this reef?

It's been a pretty eventful week, to say the least. It started out with a test in my Logic class (which I got an 89% on- Woo Hoo!), moved on to work being crazy busy (the Holidaze have hit, and with a fury!) plus some good stuff, but my hormones were crazy so I was one big ball of nerves (and tears) for most of the beginning on the week. Yay....or not.

Thursday I went to the dentist for the first time in like 3 years. I know, I know, it's bad. I just kept putting it off and since I knew I was going to have to get work done, and I couldn't afford it, I really put it off. But my wonderful mother (and father too, although I'm not sure if he knows it yet) are going to help me pay for my dental work, which includes one filling, one crown and getting three wisdom teeth pulled. I'm getting the filling in two weeks and I'm going to schedule the appointment for the crown for January probably and I have to go see the oral surgeon about my wisdom teeth. Blech.

I was feeling pretty domestic this past week and ended up baking some Butterbeer Cupcakes (yes, from Harry Potter) in honor of the premiere hehe

The turned out pretty well:

They are butter cake (with cream soda and butter flavoring in the batter-yummy!), filled with homemade butterscotch ganache and topped with butterscotch butter cream and a butterscotch ganache drizzle (say that five times fast-whew!) I had a minor melt down, when I couldn't find mixing bowls in my new place and had to rush over to my parents house with all my ingerdients at 9:30 at night. But they turned out pretty darn good! I gave a few to my family to sample, and brought some in for my co-workers and everyone gave the rave reviews-so yay!

And speaking of premiere, you know I was at the midnight show!

They look so old! I can't believe it's almost over :-(

I liked the movie for the most part. The special effects were cool, the action scenes were pretty sweet and the I actually really liked the music too. But, they left out my favorite part of the book (with Kreacher and the locket-that part gets me every time I read it. So sad) and they shortened a lot, I'm sure because the book was so jam packed and even with splitting the book into two movies, there was just too much stuff to show. So, all in all, I liked the movie but the book was definitely better.

I already want to re-read the books again! I just re-read the entire series before this movie came out, so before the next one comes out (in July!!!) I'm going amp it up- re-read all the books *and* re-watch all movies.

Me= huge nerd

'Cause only in the movies can you replay every scene until it comes out clean.

I'm usually not too big a fan of movies.

For most of my life, I couldn't sit still long enough to watch a full length movie. I usually got distracted, or started day dreaming, or more often than not, fell asleep. It happened at home, at friends, even in the theater. It was bad. But the past few years, I've gotten over my movie ADD and started to enjoy movies a lot more.

The past few weeks I've seen some really good ones that I thought I'd post about.

First up:

City of God.

I saw this one the night before Halloween at the EMU Student Center Foreign Film Night. Leto convinced a Hannah and I to go see it. It's in Portuguese, with subtitles. It's about drugs and gangs in the slums of Brazil. It was way intense-lots of guns, and drugs, and blood. But really, really good. It could have ended up being a typical "redemption story" (boy grows up poor, experiences drugs/violence/etc, moves past it and becomes successful) but the cinematography was really great, as was the acting, so luckily, that set it apart from other films.

Secondly:

Due Date.

Zach Galifinakis is effing hilarious. I was late seeing the Hangover, but after I saw it I (along with the rest of the country) just fell in love with him. He's so odd, and his humor is kind of out there, but it works for him (probably because that's the roles he keeps getting cast in, but whatever). So him along with Robert Downey Jr, who is definitely having a career revival at the moment, were a pretty good pair. It was your average "cross country buddy movie" but I swear I didn't stop laughing the entire time.

Last but not least:

RED.

My mother and brother convinced me to see this. I wasn't that into it when I saw the previews. Action and action/comedy just usually isn't my genre. But mom was paying so I couldn't really say no :-) Luckily, I ended up liking it. It wasn't anything too spectacular-the action was exciting enough, the comedy was funny for the most part. Morgan Freeman pretty played his usual "wise old black man" and Bruce Willis did his best "action hero." John Malkovich was decidedly creepy, which isn't anything new but he was a close second to the best part of the movie. Miss Helen Mirren. I just love her-she's just so fierce. And pretty. And funny.

Oh, Mary Louise Parker was in the movie too. But I can't look at her without thinking of Nancy Botwin and Weeds. Blah.

At the moment, I'm having a study party and am almost all studied out. I mean, there's more to study, of course, I just don't know if I can do it! haha Hence, the procrastinating by writing this :-)

And I'd like to say, "I'm sorry", but we lived to tell about it .

I know I'm a little late, but I wanted to post a picture of my Halloween "costume". Halloween this year was pretty low key. The only parties that were going on, were on Sunday and since I had to work both Sunday and Monday, I wasn't really that interested. But, I did promise my co-worker I'd do my hair for work so....

I present "Walk of Shame Snooki" haha

I had a dress and stuff all picked out since I thought I was going to a party, but when I didn't I ended up just doing up the poof, throwing on a men's button down, and my Uggs (hence, the "walk of shame" designation). Surprisingly, I got a lot of compliments about my hair, which was kind of weird lol

This past Friday, my mom and I took a baking class at work where we got to make these:


We learned how to make fondant, then roll it out, cover the cake, dye it and make decorations and we left with a nice little 6 inch cake. I knew if I took the cake home to my house, it would go to waste, so I brought it with me to some friends who were more than happy to eat it. I still have about half of it left to eat, along with 3 lbs of fondant to use...oh my lol

Work is pretty crazy right now. It seems like as soon as Nov. 1 rolls around, everything goes insane. I've already had a mini meltdown so hopefully I got it out of the way and the rest of the holiday season will be smooth sailing. I can hope, right?