Blog Every Day in July: Day 1

So I left this blog with a bit of a cliffhanger back in May...

(Spoiler: I did.  Barely.)

Wellllll

IMMA BACK

I always pick Luigi when I play Super Mario Bros with my friends.

So I know at this point my blogging has been erratic at best....and I made all these promises to myself that I never really kept (ex: all of my New Years Resolutions).  And I didn't get to write about any of the awesome things that happened during the semester (turning 21, going to Dallas for ACDA, being a party-planner-extraordinare) and all the things that caused chunks of hair to fall out of my head (...every class I had).  The blogging world is MISSING OUT ON ALL OF MY CRAZY ADVENTURES.

CRAZY ADVENTURES

So there is no actual challenge out there in the blogging world called "Blog Every Day in July" (I google'd it), but I've decided that I need to get into the habit of blogging regularly.  And according to like, my nutritionist or something, it takes about two weeks for a habit to form.  So I'm going to one-up that ish and blog every day for a WHOLE MONTH.  And not one of the dinky months, we're talkin a big 'ol thirty-one day month.  It's on.

I'm gonna keep this entry short and sweet, since there's about to be THIRTY MORE DAYS of sweet sweet blogging coming your way.  GET USED TO IT.

Schedule Captains and Some Eggs

So after what was maybe the busiest and most stressful semester I've had in college thus far, I have MADE IT TO FINALS WEEK. Barely. I still have a mountain of work due tomorrow...so naturally I am taking a break to blog about it.

Earlier in the semester, my sister and I started doing this thing called Schedule Captains, where we would email each other our schedule for the day and then do periodic updates on our progress. We kind of fell out of the habit, because we both got too busy living in our schedules to type them out. I'm thinking that I might need a schedule captain for the next three days of my life. Unfortunately, Melissa is moving into her NEW HOUSE today...so I am not going to send her my schedule because she ain't got time fo' dat. Instead...THE INTERNET IS MY SCHEDULE CAPTAIN. WOOHOO. Here's what's in store for the next few days:

Today
11:45-12:45: Do video reflections for Conducting
12:45-1:45: Work on rep lists for Choral Lit
1:45-2: Lunch
2-2:30: Finish up rep lists for Choral Lit, OR start working on 2-year plan
2:30-2:35: Stretch/Facebook.  NO TUMBLR.
2:35-4: Work on 2-year plan for Choral Lit.
4-4:30: Go on tumblr BUT JUST FOR 30 MINUTES
4:30-5:30: Go to the library to get books.
5:30-6: Either decide to go back to my apartment, or stay in the library and finish up 2-year plan stuff.
6-6:30: Eat dinner somewhere somehow
6:30-7:30: Finish up 2-year plan or work on Music History paper.
7:30-7:45: Take a break.
7:45-9: Work on Music History paper.
9-9:15: Snack break
9:15-10:30: Keep working on paper.
10:30-10:45: Another break.
10:45-??: Keep.  Working.  On.  Your.  Paper.

Tomorrow (Monday)
7-8: Wake up/shower
8-9: Eat breakfast.
9-10: Work on paper
10-10:30: Meander over to Choral Lit final
10:30-12:30: Choral Lit final/GET YOUR LAST BUBBLE TEA EVER NOO
12:30-5: WRITE YOUR PAPER LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT
5: Turn your paper in, no matter how ashamed you are.
5-6: Cry in the fetal position.
6-7: Eat something because you probably forgot what eating feels like.
7-9: Practice piano stuff for MUED final.
9-10: Go over interview questions for MUED.
10: Go to sleep.  You earned it.  Hopefully.

Tuesday
6-7: Wake up/get ready for the day/tame the beast that is your hair
7-8: Eat breakfast
8-9: Practice piano stuff for MUED Final and go over interview questions
9-9:15: Meander over to MUED final
9:20-9:40: MUED FINAL WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T CRY IN FRONT OF YOUR PROFESSOR.
9:40-noon: Eat/sleep/cry/whatever
12-3: Start packing!!
3-whatever: Study for your history final

Wednesday
Music History final at 10:30 then GO HOME FOR THE SUMMER WOOHOOOO.

As you can see...life is going to be a bit crazy (crazier than usual...) for the next three days.  Hopefully I will be able to come back to this blog post and edit in updates about my progress.  Or I will cave under the pressure and run away to Canada with a new identity and a different hair color.  Who knows.

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I also wanted to share a recipe that I have been making for breakfast the past couple of days, because it is delicious.

When I was fifteen, I went on an exchange trip to Spain for 3 weeks.  As you can probably already assume, I basically ate my way through that trip.  One dish in particular that has stuck with me, even six years later, was the tortilla española...which is basically a big 'ol potato and onion omelette.  Only..it's so much more than that.  My favorite version of this was the one that the grandmother in my host family made.  She made it every day, and I'm pretty sure that it is the sole reason why I gained like fifteen pounds in Spain.  Something about the size of the potato chunks, and the sweetness of the onion, and the fluffiness of the eggs.  I still have dreams about that tortilla.  And I STILL.  CAN'T.  MAKE.  IT.

I am such a failure when it comes to cooking scrambled eggs...or omelettes, more specifically.  They just...they never turn out quite right.  Combined with the added pressure of putting potatoes and onions in that?  Nope.  Never made a successful frittata.  Sooo even though I just told you a story about a tortilla...that's not my recipe.

I'm not even pretending that these pictures were taken
with anything but the camera on my cell phone

This recipe was inspired by my favorite Spanish tortilla.  I had some left over frozen hashbrowns from a breakfast casserole that I made for a class, so I had intended to do a fakeout frittata.  Except...the onion that I had been keeping in a plastic bag in my fridge went bad.  Go figure.  Instead of onion, I just diced up some bacon and called it a day.

If this was iron chef, I would receive a 0 for plating.

Since I knew this wasn't going to be anything like the tortilla that I love, I didn't even try to make it a perfect circle.  It's okay...it was still so so so delicious.  You really can't go wrong with eggs and potatoes and bacon.  It's not possible.

Recipe
2 slices of center cut bacon
A handfull of frozen hasbrowns
Some olive oil
2 eggs
Salt n' peppa.

1. Dice up that bacon real good.  Yeah, you like that.
2. Put the bacon in the pan and let it cook up a bit.
3. Drizzle in some olive oil, then throw your handful of hasbrowns in and stir it around with your spautla. Season with salt and pepper.
4. While your potatoes and bacon are falling in love, crack your eggs into a bown and beat 'em up.  I like to add salt to my eggs while I'm beating them, but apparently you're not supposed to do that?  Do whatever you want, it's your food.
5. When your bacon looks crispy and your potatoes are looking golden, pour in your beaten eggs.  Maybe remove from the heat.  Actually...definitely remove it from the heat.
6. Make yourself an omelette!  I have no authority on this.  Just make sure your eggs aren't raw.
7. PROFIT


Wish me luck on my finals.  Hopefully I will make it out alive to blog another day.

Zippers

HELLO BLOG WORLD.  Ohhh how I have missed you so.  Today I'm going to be serious, I hope that's okay with everyone.

So back in February, I started watching this British TV show called "My Mad Fat Diary", which is a 6 episode series about a 16 year old girl who struggles with mental illness and a binge-eating disorder.  It's been two months and I still can't get over how good this series is.  I know it's silly to say that a TV show has been such an important thing in my life…but I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the subject matter of the show.

When I was fifteen, I joined weight watchers because my mom and doctor insisted on it.  I'm pretty sure that joining weight watchers was the sole cause of any teenage "angst" I had.

(I didn't have teenage angst.  Ask anyone who knew me in high school.  I probably could have afforded more angst and less sugar.)

Anyways, the point is…I've had a complicated relationship with weight loss.  I've been on and off of diets for six years and I've seen ugly numbers on the scale, and numbers that I thought were ugly at the time but probably should have appreciated more.  I've been to a dietician, to a support group, on online forums.  At this point I've failed more times than I have succeeded, and yet I'm still clinging onto the hope that one day something will finally click and I'll just get it done.  Kind of like the way I clung onto the hope that my ex boyfriend and I would get back together before he came out of the closet BUT THAT'S ANOTHER STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY.  

The difference, though, between clinging onto a relationship with a person and clinging onto a relationship with dieting, is that most people will tell you that clinging onto the person is unhealthy, while the whole world will keep encouraging you to lose weight.  And I could go off in some kind of rant on society's expectations about the way women should look and blah blah blah.  But the bottom line is--yeah.  I need to lose weight.  A month from now I will still have to lose weight.  A year from now I will probably still be struggling.  Because I'm not healthy, and being healthy is an actual important thing that people need to do. 

And when I say I'm not healthy, I mean both in reference to my weight and in reference to my lifestyle.  I eat pizza WAY more often than any person should eat pizza.  I spend a large portion of my day snacking on foods that are most definitely not snack foods.  I avoid exercise at all costs--I take the elevator up a single floor and I drive to places that are only a few blocks away.  These are things I am insecure about, but they are habits that I just can't seem to shake.  I get embarrassed about them, and I get even more embarrassed when people point them out (usually with the best of intentions).  And my insecurity just seems to fuel the unhealthy habits--because while they are my struggle, they also bring me comfort….and that is the hardest part about weight loss and body image.  I have an addiction that can't be cured by quitting.  I need to eat to live.  It's not as simple as cutting out carbs and eating more vegetables.  Food and fitness are only half the battle--the other half is all in my head.

That's the thing, though.  I'm really proud of the person I'm becoming.  There's a lot of things about myself that I like.  I'm a good cook, I'm funny and energetic, I've always been pretty ambitious which has led to a lot of success (and some failures, but I always learn from them), I'm pretty intelligent (…well, I think so), and I've managed to surround myself with people that lift me up instead of bringing me down.  I'm not an out of control party-girl at school, I've never done drugs, and I get good grades.  I always put family first, and I try pretty hard to respect my parents.  I think that as far as daughters go, my parents could have done much worse.  Which is why it kills me that I still get grief from them about my weight, and that I still feel like I have to fight to prove my personality to people who may be judging me based on the way I look. 

This scene from MMFD is so perfect, because it quite vividly and quite accurately illustrates everything I've ever felt about myself.  I wish I could unzip this outer layer of fat and insecurity and all that other bullshit, so that people would just move on and see all the things on the inside that make me a beautiful person.  I wish it was that easy, and that I didn't have to spend months trying to "discipline" myself to a thinner me. 

But we don't come with zippers.  I know that getting healthy is just another journey I have to take in order to reach whatever destination I am headed for.  It might take forever, and I might spend some time getting even more lost than I already am.  In the meantime, I'm learning how to really like myself despite all of the things that need work.  And I think, so far, I've been pretty successful.

If you have a chance, definitely check out My Mad Fat Diary.  Just look it up on the YouTubes.  It's only six episodes long, an hour each episode, and it really beautifully handles all of the topics discussed.  Also I've got a BIG FAT CRUSH on the main love interest but we're gonna skip that conversation because everyone I know is already SICK OF IT.

My main issue with Pinterest...

So I spend a lot of time on Pinterest (...I mean....did you SEE the post about Pintersession???), and for the most part I think it's a great place to go to for inspiration.

But sometimes this happens...

This popped up on my Pinterest a few days ago, and when I saw it I was like WTF IS THAT SQUIRT GUN THING.  So I read little blurb underneath the picture...

Which makes no mention of having any kind of fancy tool sooo that's weird.  So I clicked the picture to see if maybe the original source mentioned it, which led me to....

THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING

....how to fold a fitted sheet......

I...

well...

.....

........

Well...at least I know how to fold a fitted sheet now?

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I know it's been a while, and I had been meaning to post an update about my January resolutions and make some new February ones, but some stuff came up and it just didn't happen.  As it turns out, I have like a crazy busy week coming up so I probably won't get to post again until like two weeks from now. But I didn't want to leave this little blog neglected, so I hope that y'all enjoyed this mini post.

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.