PINTERSESSION!!

Soooo interesting fact about my school: my spring semester does not start until FEBRUARY.  I've been off for about 6 weeks.  The reason why we have such a long break is because my school has a winter session for all of January, and a lot of students use that time to take classes they don't have time for in the regular semester or to study abroad.  My freshman year of college I stayed home for all 6 weeks of break, and I almost died of boredom.  DIED, I TELL YOU.

 So I wound up taking a class last winter session because I was required to be on campus as an RA and I figured I should do something with my life.  This year I did no such thing.  Instead, I've been living at my apartment during the week and going home on the weekends becauuuuse I can.  THAT'S RIGHT.  I DON'T TAKE ORDERS FROM ANYBODY.

...sorry......

Anyways, my roommate and I decided that since neither of us are taking classes and both of us had a ton of things pinned on Pinterest that we wanted to make, we would use our free time to try out some pins.  Hence PINTERSESSION!

Do you see?  Winter session....Pintersession...like...winter but with pin.....
Okay you get it.


I've made a ton of fun things, so I figured I would share them here.

The first things Lizzy (my roommate) and I made were these scrapbook paper flowers on canvas, inspired by this pin.  We decided to make them blue and yellow, because they are our school colors (well...blue and gold).  I thought they turned out really nice!  Although I had forgotten how much I hate using modge podge.  Don't worry, I remember now.

TAKEN STRAIGHT FROM MY INSTAGRAM.
I have no shame.

I meant to make a post about these raspberry and mascarpone macarons that I made at the beginning of January.  But I forgot to take pictures of the process and they didn't turn out quite how I wanted.  So maybe I will make a post about the next batch of macarons I make, probably next week.  I will say that I didn't like these macarons as much as others that I have eaten/made/looked at.  I just...I don't like raspberries.  Or mascarpone cheese.  I'm not really sure what made me think I would enjoy them more if I put them together...
The green concoction in the cup is the smoothie that I talked about in my last blog post about cauliflower nuggets. I've been making those suckas all month.  I've started making a version that uses frozen berries instead of an apple, which tastes better in my opinion...but it doesn't turn green, which is half the fun of this smoothie!

I MADE MY OWN SOY CANDLES.  How cool is that??  Except I am literally never ever ever doing this ever again because it was a big mess, it cost more than just buying a candle, and I didn't even like the scent that I wound up with.  Plus, they look pretty sloppy in real life.  Thankfully the camera on my phone doesn't portray these things true to life.  I will most likely end up giving these away as gifts.  Probably to people that enjoy the combination of lavender and vanilla...heavy on the lavender.  Womp womp.

Ooooh instagrammed again.  You just love those filters,
don't you?

I didn't actually make this one, but it's my new favorite game!  I'm not sure if Lizzy got the idea from Pinterest, or just from someone's suggestion, but it was pretty ingenious.  In case you're not sure what this is (...did you have a childhood??), this is a guess who board with the faces of our friends instead of the weird cartoon faces that you would usually play with.  Karen Kavett made this awesome Doctor Who version, and she managed to get her hands on one of the older guess who board games that I grew up with.  We just used whatever they were selling at target!

INSTAGRAMMED AGAIN.  I'll neva stop.

Remember this blog post, when I said that I needed to update my dry erase calendar?  Welll I went ahead and did that...by making a brand new one!  This was made using scrapbook paper (for the background), a glass frame (to make it dry erase), and PAINT CHIPS (MY FAVE)!  There are actually a bunch of pins that inspired this one, but the first one I ever saw was the one Lizzy's friend Mallory made...which I don't have a link to, but it looked pretty freakin' cool.  I really just love the gradient look of the paint chips.  I did my best to make the colors match my bedspread (which is what the frame is sitting on top of...nice, right?).  It was kind of a pain in the ass to make, because I had to cut every color to size in order to make it fit the frame.  But I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

I'm beginning to think that maybe I have
an instagramming problem.

Cauliflower pizza!  I said I would try it in my last entry, and I ALWAYS follow through.  Okay, that's not necessarily true about like...school work, but it certainly is true about food.

This recipe was very successful!  I will say, much like the dipping sauce and breading being the main event of the cauliflower nuggets, the tomato sauce and cheese are the main event of this pizza.  The cauliflower doesn't have quite the same hearty texture as regular pizza crust, and it was a little softer than regular pizza crust.  But I still have reason to believe that there is more to this recipe than meets the eye, I just have to find it.  So there will definitely be a Cauliflower Pizza: the Sequel in the near future.

This is so far my favorite craft from Pintersession.  Lizzy and I gathered up some branches outside, and made these season canvases, inspired by this pin.  We made each season out of a different material.  Lizzy worked on summer, made with craft foam, and autumn, which was made with buttons.  I made spring, which was made with scrapbook paper, and winter, made with glittery scrapbook stickers and cotton balls.  Lizzy and I both had nervous breakdowns while making these.  Everything you see in that picture was individually glued down...except for the glitter stickers.  But glitter has its own special place in hell.  Despite the fact that making these induced several minor panic attacks, I am totally in love with them and can't wait to hang them up.

I still have about a week left of winter session, and next week is going to be a straight up spree.  There's a lot I still want to get done, including some crafts and last minute organizing.  But I'm on a roll!  I'M ROLLING DOWN A STEEP HILL AND I CAN'T STOP.

Sorry.  I'm done.

Cauliflower Nuggets aka IHOP Redemption

So yesterday morning I set my alarm for 8 AM with the intention of going to the gym or like...popping in a workout DVD or SOMETHING. Instead I rolled over and went back to bed until 9 and then spent an hour on tumblr. And then I saw a GIF of a cat eating pancakes so my roommate and I went to IHOP.

And then I ate cookies for lunch.

Needless to say, my New Years Resolutions are off to a somewhat rocky start.


Despite not having done anything AT ALL yesterday, I managed to sneak in a 30 minute nap while watching Maury. At that point I decided to snap out of my rainy day funk and actually do something productive!


Something that I've learned in the past few years is that there is no time like the present. Sometimes too little is too late, but it's always better than nothing at all. And that is how I spent the last half of yesterday.

If you could ignore the electric mixer and the crappy
homemade candles (that post is coming up soon) in the
background, that would be much appreciated.

I managed to fit five full servings of fruits and vegetables into my dinner. If that's not overcompensation then I don't know WHAT is. My dinner consisted of a slice of papaya (really, it's like a whole quarter of a papaya...whatevaaa), a green smoothie (an apple, a banana, a handful of spinach, greek yogurt, a splash of milk, and a bit of honey all smoothie'd up...it looks pretty nasty but it's really freakin' delicious), and CAULIFLOWER NUGGETS!!

Breading vegetables is surprisingly drama free
in comparison to breading chicken breast

I've been meaning to jump on the cauliflower train for like months. I really like the way cauliflower tastes as a vegetable, so even though I was skeptical of the claims that you can use cauliflower to make pretend chicken nuggets, I figured I might as well try it out. Even if they don't taste like chicken, at the very least they will taste like cauliflower...which I like.

So I hit up pinterest, which led me to this recipe, which I modified a little bit for convenience. I just used seasoned whole wheat breadcrumbs instead of panko, because it's what I had on hand. Also the egg whites I was supposed to dredge the nuggets in wound up being an egg white and a whole egg because of my butter fingers. Whoooops.

But they turned out beautifully!

(this is literally the exact same photo from above,
only I instagrammed it.  wow melanie.  wow.)

I'm gonna go ahead and say that they didn't taste like chicken...but they didn't taste like cauliflower either!  The texture was totally different from the steamed cauliflower that I normally eat.  It was much softer and a little bit...fluffy?  I think the cauliflower itself creates a nugget-like texture.  In terms of flavor, the seasoned breading in combination with the sauce were the main events in this dish.  It was pretty nomable.  I will definitely do this again some time.

And actually, I think I probably got more than 5 servings of fruits and vegetables...I used an entire half-head of cauliflower for the nuggets, and that slice of papaya was pretty generous.  I don't think that this meal necessarily made up for the giant meal I had at IHOP, but I think it was a step in the right direction.  In the past, when I let my day start off on the wrong foot I would let myself get stuck in that mindset.  As of lately, I've been trying to treat each moment like it belongs to itself.  Which is to say that I don't let the bad decisions of the morning give me an excuse to make bad decisions at night.  It seems simple...but this is a big deal for me.  I never used to think that way.  And I still don't think that way 100% of the time...but I'm getting there!

In the meantime, I'm going to do some more cauliflower experimentation...maybe give this recipe a shot!

Forgotten Resolution: Get Organized. A list for the future (...next week)

OOOH I forgot to list "Get Organized" as one of my New Years Resolutions. Mainly because it is one of my permanent resolutions. Because I am never organized enough. Yyyyikes.

So I'm going back to my apartment at school on Monday, which is when I am going to seriously re-organize and clean shit. I mean...why start as soon as possible when I could put it off til next week? Right?? Right???? (....so today I do not get to check off "Didn't procrastinate!" on my nonexistent NY Resolution checklist)


Here is a list of the things I would like to get done in January, which I will be keeping track of throughout blog posts! You can't ever tell me that I'm not ambitious.


1.) Clean all of the leftovers/stuff that has inevitably gone bad over break out of my apartment refrigerator. If any of my apartment mates are reading this right now, I am so sorry. I just...I...I'm better than this, I know.

2.) Clean my bathroom. My apartment is SO DUSTY, including my personal bathroom. It's just...it needs to be cleaned frequently sooo yeah. I also need to clean all the linens in my room.

3.) Dust the rest of my room. I seriously don't understand how dust accumulates so fast in my apartment. Actually, in Delaware in general...because my freshman and sophomore dorms were even dustier. No wonder I get sick so often!

4.) Actually...clean/reorganize my room in general. Yyyyikes.....okay this needs it's own list:
-Main space
-Desk
-Window/windowsill
-Book shelf--including sorting through/throwing out old papers that I will obviously never use
-Ditto for all the lost and forgotten papers in my book bags.
-Closet--mainly the top shelf. Yyyikes.
-VACUUM THE WHOLE FLOOR. I haven't vacuumed since October, guys. This is embarrassing.

5.) Update my dry erase calendar. I haven't updated it since September...which was just......no wonder I was so scatterbrained for like 50% of last semester!

6.) Order a new planner, because my old one only lasted me until December and I probably should have sprung for a new one in August.....I'm looking to get one of these fancy expensive (for me...) Erin Condren ones because it's pretty and will make me feel like an adult (or I imagine it will) and they have lots of features to get organizzeeeddd. I am not being paid to say this. As if. Does anyone even read this blog??? SOMEONE SPONSOR ME I'M A POOR COLLEGE STUDENT.

7.) DELETE ALL OF MY OLD E-MAILS. This is seriously going to take me like a day and a half. I have like twenty thousand old e-mails sitting in my personal e-mail, and even more unread ones in my school e-mail. Mainly because I linked them for smart phone purposes, so my school e-mail is super neglected and every time I log onto it I feel overwhelmed because gahhhhh.



....I think that might be it.......

I'm going to try and tackle 1-4 as soon as I get back to school on Monday, and hope to be done by Thursday. I will probably wait on numba 6 until I've got some more $$ if ya know what I'm sayin'. And I don't even know how to approach number 7, I'll probably get started and then somehow find myself curled up in the fetal position in my bathtub. I'm gonna have to make a plan to tackle that one.

WISH ME LUCK!! I think that getting organized is going to feel like a full time job this January. Which is good. Something about idle hands and the Devil's thing. IDK.