Writing this made me hungry...

What do you do when you desperately want to bake something yummy but the kitchen is nearly stripped of the baking staples? I thought looking at pictures from previous baking experiments would help, but nope, it brought me to the point of needing to blog about it! Oh well, hopefully you all aren't sitting there with bare cupboards.

Dark Chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting.

They were surprisingly not sweet...at all, actually

I LOVE making home made soft pretzels.

Super chewy oatmeal raisin cookies

Butter cookies with raspberry jam.

I still haven't found a recipe for butter cookies that I am in love with. If you have any favorite recipes that you would like to share with me, I'd love it. I'm always looking for new ones.

Chocolate milk and spandex and bells, oh my!

Last weekend my little town hosted the largest bike race in North America, The Tour of the Battenkill. Can you believe it? My tiny little town with one traffic light in the center of the village has been the hosting this event for several years. Friday is the main set up day for many of the vendors of the expo, and Saturday numerous bike races in many categories take place. There are official races for kids around 8 or 10 years old to races for adult men and women, and then on Sunday they bring in the pros. Professional bikers from all over the world come the this Tour because of the level of difficulty it provides. One lap is 62 miles and the challenge is that nearly all the roads are curvy back roads, with lots of steep hills, and they alternate between paved and dirt roads. The Pros race this course not once like everyone else, but loop around it twice!

This year I worked at my family's maple booth for the weekend. The best part was watching the kids faces as I made their maple cotton candy.

Here are the winners from one of the races on Saturday. One of the things they are given at the podium is a bottle of chocolate milk, but not just any chocolate milk, it Battenkill Creamery Chocolate milk. You can't understand why people get so excited about it until you try some, so if you are ever around the Washington County area of New York, you've got to try it...apparently, it's also a good recovery drink for the bikers.

Speaking if chocolate milk, my little brother and his friend were given shirts as a thank you for "helping" at the milk booth.

And then my little guy came racing in, placing 7th in the kids race!

Here he is with helmet hair, his medal and wearing and holding new shirts that were given to him. He came home with about 5 new shirts after that weekend!

These two little girls are getting their picture taken with a famous racer Greg Lamond.

There were around 200 pros when the race started, by the time it ended, there were only about 50 left. Also, if you think you hear cow bells in the video clip, you are not mistaken! One of the big sellers over the weekend were little cowbells with the race logo on it. The kids ring them like crazy when the riders come through.

Seconds after he came through the finish line as the winner of 2012, this biker from Spain was surrounded by the press. I couldn't even get a picture of all the camera crews and reporters after this cause they came out of nowhere and took over the space.

Despite the chaos and overwhelming amount of spandex that invaded the local area, it made for a very exciting, topsy-turvy weekend in my sleepy little town. There were 3,000 registered racers this year, so I don't even have any idea how many more will come next year!

Meh, who really needs to do their homework?

The past couple weeks I have been procrastinating when it comes to my school work because I've been so caught up in dreaming up costumes for my England trip. I watch all the Jane Austen movies I own (which are a lot!) and sigh at every dress, bonnet, spencer and pelisse. I am a proud owner of the Regency Gown Pattern, the Elegant Lady's Closet pattern, the Regency Underthings pattern, and the Regency Spencer/Pelisse pattern all from Sense & Sensibility Patterns. If you have never looked there for historical patterns, now is the time to start! They are all such perfectly lovely designs and, from my experience, relativity simple to assemble as well.
As I am in school and still looking for a job, my funding is limited, so all I can do for now is dream up ideas and draw then out so I don't forget them. I have been able to make up a few "test" bodices, stays and a spencer out of some muslin to get an idea for sizing...I want everything to perfect, I mean, it is going to be worn at the Jane Austen Festival! I am so very excited for it!
So now, my dear readers, if you have any suggestions for me as to where I can find fabrics, bonnets and accessories for my regency outfits (or any outfit really!) that will be created in a few months, I would be ever so grateful for them.

Summer came during spring break!

I had my lovely holiday from classes a couple weeks ago in March (which shows how dreadfully overdue this is) and I had everything planned out. Though I feel I should know by now that things never go as planned for me! My plan was this: to have a happy week of reading and sewing or baking something everyday. The weather suddenly turned absolutely gorgeous! it was high 70's and low 80's the entire week! As my sewing nook is in the basement and the kitchen doesn't have very many windows, I didn't want to be cooped up. So it was out to bask in the sunny yard and read my ever growing pile of books. Here are some things of that week of sun-shinning bliss.

I'm one of those people who buys things off the clearance rack even if they don't fit because I say "oh, well I sew, so I'll just take it in and make it fit."...but then I never do.

These are the skirts I was supposed to work on over break

My little brother was very excited because he finally lost his first tooth!

I ate so pancakes with our fresh maple syrup...yumm!

This little guy knows how to clean his plate after pancakes

I finally got the papers I needed to graduate this spring. Yay!

Some of the books I was reading over break. I was happy to find "Mandy" on my little sister's book shelf. I've been wanting to read it since I was 10 or 12 and for some reason never did. Such a cute little book.

I'll have a real post sometime soon, I promise...hopefully :)

Such lovely people...

I have been able to do so many things with such lovely people lately. Let me just say first off that I think Daringside is wonderful! What or who is Darlingside you might ask, well Darlingside is a newer band that is starting to get their name out more. I got to see them play earlier this month and they are fabulous!
Surround - Darlingside
(the sound quality of this isn't the greatest, so you should probably go buy the album)
I love their music style and they band members are really down to earth and fun to talk with.

They were performing in the basement of an art building. Such a perfect venue!

Getting ready for the show.

I took my three youngest siblings out for an afternoon of skating and fun treats. The littlest one is 7 and has never been on smooth ice before (they skate on the swamp in the winter!) so he was falling all over the place! The first thing he asked when he got on was if there was a machine to make the ice so smooth. He was in awe of everything. We went across the street to Price Chopper and bought some snacks to munch on for the ride home.

He thought the individual Ben & Jerry's ice cream was the best and got it all over his face!

I've decided to make an effort to be more active and try to eat a little more healthy meals. I like to run so I've been doing that lately, but my friend invited me to go hiking with her and a couple other friends. We set off at the bottom mt. Anton at Merck Forest, VT., and made it to the top surprisingly quickly considering it was really steep. Coming back down we took some different trails which ended up being rather entertaining since we weren't exactly sure where we were going sometimes. We charted the hike after and found we had hiked about 6 miles and our legs were not very happy with us! The rest of the day we tried to do things that required minimal movement...at least with our legs.

We could see for miles at the top

Here's the group photo at the top. And, no, my friend an I didn't coordinate the plaid shirts.

I recently found out that one of my very good friends had never been skating in her life! Shocked and appalled by this information, I set a date to kidnap her and teach her how to skate. The first time we ended up sitting on the couch and watching Disney Princess movies all day. (Which, if you're not going to go skating, vegging out to Disney movies is a good way to spend the day.) But the second try was more successful. By the end of the afternoon, I got her to skate around the rink without touching the sides at all...so proud of her! ;)
Since she and I are both fairly tall (5'8" - 5' 9") we generally don't wear high heels....ever. So whenever we go to the mall we have to stop at a shoe store and wobble around on the tallest heels we can find. We're actually not too bad considering we never wear them!

The silver ones where completely covered in glitter.

March Comes in Like a Lion...

Every once in a while that phrase applies to the month and this March was one of those times for us. March first rolled around and with it came the first real snow fall we've had since October! My excitment was soon subdued when I realized my school was the only one in the state (ok, maybe not the state, but pretty darn close) that wasn't closing for a snow day. The funny thing is that for up-state NY, a 6 - 8" snow fall like we had is a normal event most winters, and most schools wouldn't think of closing for that little bit. But because schools hadn't been giving out snow days due to the lack of snow, they were ready to give them out now. Needless to say, not many people showed up for classes. I think the largest class I had that day was maybe 8 people in my Lit to Film class, which is normally one of the bigger classes I have.

Zeph helped me shovel out the van before I left.

I love country roads.

The drive to school was beautiful.

I love it when the snow sticks to all the branches.

When I got to school, I ran into the field house to get ready for volleyball, only to find that I was only one of two students who showed up for it! So we spent a couple hours passing and serving to each other... my bruised arms weren't very happy with me after that.

I love this weird thing hanging from the ceiling.

The windows are tinted shades of green, blue and a light purple-ish and its looks really cool when the light comes through the colors.

I spent my break reading, eating Nutter Butters and watching the snow fall.

It was kind of nice to be on campus when there weren't many people around and everything was so quiet. But I was glad to get home and be cozy under blankets with some hot tea and a good book.

The snow can make the campus look so pretty sometimes.

URL change

Just a quick update to say that I changed my URL. Still the same blog and whatnot, but it's easier to have the blog title and URL be the same. Just so you know. Have a happy day :)