Alissa's Birthday Party

I have recently moved in with some girls from my ward who live much closer to everything I do. Last Sunday was Alissa's birthday and we decided to have a birthday party for her.

We decided on the cake after some inspiration from other friend's cakes. Sarah and I were running and she mentioned to me that she had wanted to make this cake and then about a week later my friend Emily (who is an amazing photographer) posted the same cake that Sarah and I had talked about on her facebook page. So I decided to steal the idea and make one for Alissa. In all honesty, famous bakeries are making this cake too so I'm pretty sure this is not the brain child of either Sarah or Emily. I promise that the cake looks way better than the pictures, but the knife wasn't so great and cutting the thing because I made it so stinking tall was a task. My friend Emily's cake picture looks much more beautiful plus she used fondant (which I hate) so it is a cleaner cut. Frosting this cake took one pound of butter and one pound of shortening (I wanted to keep the frosting as white as possible). It was "fun" to make or would have been except I only own one nine-inch cake pan. Which means I essentially had to bake 6 cakes...ugh. Other than that, I wouldn't mind making it again.

iMac and iPhotos

I finally did it. I've been saving up my money for months and months and months so that I could finally buy a mac. My laptop has been dying a slow death and making loud dinosaur sounds (and moving at the speed of a dinosaur for months). Yes, I was wowed by its beautifully simple all-in-one style (I have a small room and the less computer I have taking up space in it the better), its incredible screen and its simple to use iphoto and imovie programs....among many many other things. And sure, I now feel like my meager graduate school savings has become almost non-existant but I don't have any regrets and so I guess it wasn't a bad thing. This week I have, of-course, been messing around with the photo booth program, where I take pictures of myself in the worst possible lighting and half the time after I have washed my face or worked out and then go to iphoto where in no time at all I make myself look super beautiful. No wonder when they show pictures of stars without makeup we all gasp in horror. Its amazing how much better you can look after your photo has been doctored up a bit. Below are some of my examples





Okay, I do have to admit that the original for this one isn't "too bad" because I had actually done my hair and makeup on this day so I don't look like i have huge bags under my eyes, but you have to admit that the touched up one is about a hundred times more appealing.





Dear mom, thanks for donating the genes that allow me to have bags under my eyes. Dear iPhoto, thanks for providing a tool that allows me to officially get rid of them forever. The first photo on this section is me before going to bed, so yes, I have in fact washed my face and I do not have any makeup on (which is kind of obvious).

Finally: My fun digital effects

When I was a kid I loved the A-HA music video "Take On Me" and so I was totally messing around with the effects and stuff in iPhoto and when I did this picture it made me feel like the lead love interest in the video. Although, just before posting this I actually googled the video and watched it on you tube. The drawings in the video are much more like sketch book drawings than my newly created version...its amazing how much our brains can enhance images. I'm still posting it anyway though. Maybe you can google the song "Take On Me" and pretend with me (my hair is better than the girls in the video...I'm so glad we are not in the 80's anymore).



Last but not least. When I was a kid I loved the "Archie" comic books and this photo reminds me of that. So, as a final thought, I would like to thank iPhoto for helping me to relive my youth and erase ten years off of my face.

A Sad, Sad Day

Sometime between the hours of midnight and 11:00am Ducky was murdered in cold blood. No suspects as of yet but justice will be served. Please, no flowers. The family asks that all donations be made to the Save-our-Ducks-Made-of-Wood (SoD MoW) Foundation in the forms of $50's and $100's please (cash only). Please send the money to Alyssa who will spend-errr-dispose of the funds as she see's fit.

Gloves, gloves and more gloves!

I don't buy many knitting books. The reason for this being is that I usually think the majority of the patterns are ugly and am thus paying $20 (or whatever) for one great pattern when billions of free patterns are available on the world wide web. Two years ago, however, Moroni and I were strolling through The Loft in the German Village (a really awesome book store) and I stumbled upon a book which I know I have mentioned before called "Knitting New Mittens and Gloves" by Robin Melanson. This book has by far the best patterns for gloves and mittens I have ever found and I love a majority of them. It also easy to adapt these patterns to different sizes and yarn types. I decided to make gloves for all my friends (well not all of them....because I just have to many:)) but a good number of my close friends here in Columbus. I wanted to do it on a budget also. I went to Jo-Ann fabric and bought 4 skeins of the Lion Brand Wool-Ease Worsted Weight yarn in four colors at buy one, get one 50% off (a total of about $12 for all of the yarn...yea) and began to knit, knit and knit some more.

1. Alternating Current (p20). I had to modify these gloves slightly because the pattern called for chunky yarn. So I used smaller needles and cast on more times...(if you have the book and want to do it with worsted weight instead and want to know my modification I will let you know if you leave a comment). The cute thing about these gloves is that you can knit other wrist bands in different colors and patterns.



2. Filigree (p60). No modification necessary!


3. Jack-in-the-Box (p85). This is a modification of the flip-top mittens. I find that the adult small size ends up being to large and the kids is too small so I modified the sizing to something in the middle of the two and then rather than create flip-top cuff I just bind off at the end to create fingerless gloves which are always nice to wear over other gloves here in order to keep your hands warm but making it so your fingers can still function!



4. These are pretty much of my own creation. I used the modified guidelines for the Jack-in-the-box flip-top mittens but with an entirely different pattern. (see #3)



5. Tapisserie (p124). These were probably my favorites. They also called for a finer yarn than worsted weight so i had to be very creative with the modifications because I ended up taking out 16 rows in the pattern. I also had to figure it out right in my head ahead of time because its not like I wanted to start over in my race to have these to people by Christmas!



6. Accomplice (p9). These were the first pair I started knitting over Thanksgiving while we were in New York. I wasn't actually sure if I liked the pattern or not, but I must say the picture in the book did not do them justice. They ended up being pretty cute and really easy!

Christmas and New Year's Fun

A stroll through the park in Gahanna....
Moroni and I love the little city of Gahanna near his house because there are cute little shops and a great bakery and its small so relatively easy to walk through. During Christmas they have a huge tree (which I don't have a picture of because my battery died) and the boardwalk along the creek has Christmas lights up all over the place...here is us walking in the freezing cold through the park...




Wildlights at the Columbus Zoo...every year our friend Carly gets us cheap tickets to wildlights at the zoo and we usually go and brave the cold, this year it was so great because we went and it was in the 40's! I didn't even need gloves. Also, my brother-in-law Kevin's (Amy's husband) brother and his wife Brittany just moved to Grove City (south Columbus) so we invited them to come along...now I just need to get Amy and Kevin to move here!





The night before New Years it was decided that we would be having a New Year's party at Moroni's house...so we all made different food items. I made swedish meatballs with cranberry-orange relish (in place of lingonberry sauce) and had fun playing The Beatles rock band and lighting sparklers at midnight!

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A Christmas Story

Anyone who knows me, knows I love the movie "A Christmas Story" and anyway who is my family shares my love of this movie. If you remember, last January we went to the Christmas Story House in Cleveland and while were there I purchased some cookie cutters in the shape of a leg lamp, a turkey, and of Ralphie in his bunny suit. This year I had a twelve nights of Christmas movie mania ( a different christmas movie each night for twelve nights hosted at a different location by a different person)...an event idea, I might add, that I stole from my friend Emily who did the same thing back in Washington like four years ago. The first night of-course was our kick-off night and of-course the movie was "A Christmas Story"...of-course. So I baked up some sugar cookies and this is what I ended up with. I must admit, the frosting looks atrocious (I ran out of time) and I wanted to be more fun with the leg lamps like iced in stalkings etc, but I do think the print-up of Ralphie's head is a nice touch. Yes, they were delicious (but isn't anything that has butter, sugar and four?).

Philadelphia

At the beginning of December me and a post-doc from my lab along with our advisor attended the ASCB conference in Philadelphia...you would think these pictures would be of the conference...but that makes for boring pictures. These are of Li and I having some fun in the city. I love Philadelphia, however, I have been informed that I was definitely in the cleaner nicer part...whatever...the buildings were beautiful and I LOVE history, so its fun to go to a place rich in American History. It inspired me to go back and restudy the constitution and read my favorite book on George Washington (1776). Now I just need to find a good one on Benjamin Franklin...I will take suggestions!