Liebster Award

My super cool friend Andria nominated me for a Leibster Award! I get to answer some questions which I think is fun, and it gives me an excuse to blog!

Andria's questions:
1. What is your favorite type of book to read? Fun ones! That means mostly YA fiction but I like to branch out to other things too.
2. What is your dream job? This is a good question. When I figure it out I'll let you know!
3. If you could visit any country, which would you visit? Any country in Europe really, but probably France especially. I've wanted to go there since middle school for some reason.
4. Where do you think you'll be in ten years? I have no idea. Married?
5. If your 16-year-old self could see you now, what would he or she think of you? I think I would be surprised at where I am/who I've turned out to be, but pretty pleased as well.
6. If you could donate one million dollars to any charity, which would it be? Huh. I've never really thought about it but maybe Kiva or Charity Water.
7. What do you consider to be your greatest strengths? I think I am a really good listener, and I try to be a decent mediator and see both sides of every story?
8. If you had to describe yourself as an animal, which would you choose? Grumpy cat! Just kidding, but I guess maybe a cat? I'm definitely a homebody and not generally super hyperactive or physically active.
9. What is your favorite type of music? Movie soundtracks! Also a little bit of everything.
10. How old were you when you had your first kiss, and how did it happen? See #2 :)
11. Who is your favorite figure from history? Walt Disney! And other cool people.

Yay! You guys can answer these questions too if you need some blogging motivation!

Denny's

Back in November, my roommate Diane had been waiting all month for the special Hobbit menu to come to Denny's. We were pretty excited when we finally got to!

 

This was my super delicious cookie milkshake!

This was a red velvet pancake puppy...Mickey shaped! :D

 

Treasure bites! Lemon poppy seed french toast pieces! Delicious!

The food was obviously Denny's average quality, but it was fun with a Hobbit theme and a fun splurge for dinner!

2013

I can't believe I haven't blogged since Halloween! I guess the end of the semester gets a little busy sometimes. 2012 was a pretty eventful year and I don't want to forget anything so here's a quick rundown of what happened.

• I spent my first semester working and going to school! Turns out working is generally pretty awesome and I like having a job to distract myself from school things.
• I got to meet Shannon Hale! She also came out with 2 new books, both of which I loved.
• I took Econ 110 and not only passed but ended up liking it!
• I got promoted when summer started and I spent the whole summer working, usually 20-30 hours a week but sometimes 30-40! I worked EFY and Education Week and had fun and has mostly nice customers. ;)
• Lauren and I finally got to live together!!!! It was too awesome for words.
• I GOT A CAR! I'm still really excited about that.
• I took some classes and realized I could graduate sooner than expected!
• I drove to California in one day basically all by myself. I also went to Disneyland which is of course a very important part of my year.
• School started! 
• I got a new nephew, Finn!

 All in all, 2012 was pretty successful I'd say! Here's to the coming year being just as good.

Halloween 2012

I've decided that Halloween is my second favorite holiday, after Thanksgiving. What could be more fun than dressing up as someone else for a day?

Friends! From left to right: An inflatable sale balloon, Rosie the Riveter and two Newsies!

In the Cougareat there was a contest to decorate each store. Of course we won with our awesome Harry Potter theme! We had Harry Potter music playing, and we had 30 Harry Potter books (all in different languages with different covers) all propped up around the store. We even had floating candles and a starry night sky just like at Hogwarts!

It was a successful Halloween! :)

Recipe of the week!

I wanted to share one of my favorite recipes I've tried recently. This one is a little different than normal; it's a vegan recipe! I found this blog, The Vegan Stoner and I loved that the recipes are presented so visually, and that they are usually pretty simple. This is where I first heard about TVP (textured vegetable protein) and after discovering it in bulk at Sprouts I decided to try it in this recipe:



It's as simple as described and the TVP is tastes basically like some ground beef tossed in there! TVP is also great because it cost me about 30 cents for a cup of it, so it's not even expensive to try out! Of course, this was only vegan until I put cheese on top of it....it's the thought that counts right? Thanks to the internet you never know what recipes you'll end up loving! :)

Post It Note Madness

Lauren strikes again for the last day of school with some hilarious post it notes! This girl never fails to make me laugh.

First and last day of school notes...still on my computer

Twitter Note

These next two I didn't find till a couple days later, but one right after the other and I thought they were so funny!

I'm pretty sure there's a couple more I don't have pictures of yet, but you get the idea :)

And this one showed up in my wallet on the first day of school this semester, via roommates helping out, which I certainly wasn't expecting :)

I'm so grateful for the amazing friends I have in my cousins!

Pirate Marathon

One of the things on the list of things to do this summer was have a Pirates of the Caribbean movie marathon! Of course, Lauren and I had to bake something so we decided to go with the theme and make some of these awesome pirate hat shaped cookies!

Source: here

 We found this cool recipe we wanted to try! But of course, pretty baking things don't always turn out like we hope...

I don't know that this picture does justice to how completely unlike the recipe these cookies turned out. When they were baked (for some reason I don't have a picture of that) they didn't resemble hats at all, more like triangle-ish blobs. At least they tasted decent and we had fun making them.

We watched the first two movies, and didn't make it to the third one eve though we mostly just wanted to watch that one. Instead we went and got fancy soda with Courtney and that was probably a better choice anyway. :)