Texas Sucks, Cake Pops, Halloween Party...

'Ello folks! Well, here I am to blog about what was promised last post! OU-Texas was a blast. Had such a great time and most definitely hope to go back next ye-ar! And it helped quite a bit that the Sooners stomped those Longhorns ;) (I'm gonna reminisce on that rather than this last weekend's game......:'( ) Here are a couple of pics from that weekend! Had so much fun with these people Friday night!Game day attire! Lovin' my new boots ;) Big smiles after we won!

About those cake balls I tried making.....Well, the first batch I made for my coworkers tasted great, but was a very frustrating process. My first mistake was making the actual cake balls too big, therefore making them too heavy to stay on the lollipop sticks. And the coating on the outside was very thick as well and it was difficult making it look nice and smooth. To improvise for them not being on the sticks, I had to end up just putting them in cupcake holders:Solution for my problems the first time? Make smaller cake balls and use vegetable shortening (like crisco) to mix in with the candy melts. It thins it out therefore making it much easier to coat and they end up looking a lot better. My plan was to make cute jack-o-lantern pumpkin cake pops for Cameron's family's Halloween party last weekend. That unfortunately did not happen. Why? Well for one I couldn't find an edible black food coloring pen anywhere to draw on the faces. And finding small green tic-tacs for the stems? Forget about it. I searched everywhere for them. No luck. (Of course now that I don't need them anymore I will probably see them everywhere.) So my solution? Buy black sparkly decorating gel, and have a couple of Cam's nieces decorate them! It ended up working out really well and I think everyone like them. :)Scout and Mattie decoratingIf you're interested on where I got my tutorial on how to make them, click here (The cute jack-o-lanterns I wanted to make are on there :( ) and watch this!

The Halloween party was so much fun. I'll post a few pictures here but if you want to see more and better quality pictures, visit Cameron's sister Coty's page!Creepy Couple alert! I was a Dia De Los Muertos Senorita and Cameron was a super creep ring leader guy.Cameron and his mom, Shelli. Every year they keep their costumes a secret from everyone and compete to see who can look the creepiest/scariest. Who do you think won??Coty and I..her and her family were pilgrims and indians...they looked SO cute.Cameron's other sister, Candice and her half cowboy, half cowgirl costume that she put together herself. LOVED it. So good!

Next week I'm planning on making the (hopefully) yummy chicken tortilla soup. Fingers crossed it's just as delish as McAlister's! ;) I'll try to remember taking pics of the process and posting about the final result. Until then, blogworld...

Slackin'...but not surprised.

Here we are, another 2 months later. Nothin' blog worthy has gone on I suppose. Had a birthday, got a job, another semester started. But blog worthy things are coming up, yes siree! For example, Cameron and I are going to OU - TX for the first time ever this year. So. Excited. And of course the holidays are approaching, and if you know me then you know that I am super pumped for that....and that I've had a Christmas countdown on my phone since around the "250 days to go" mark. (Don't hate my Christmas love.) I am going to make it a goal to blog more about the little stuff, too. Not just the big things. ;) Like during this fall (which has officially started today!), I plan on trying to make/cook/bake new seasonal things. And hopefully I'll be good about taking pictures and posting about it. My first adventure will be making Halloween cake pops! Inspired by this. Another one to follow shortly is to make chicken tortilla soup. This soup I have no doubt will become my staple during the cold weather. :)

Must get some sleep now, have to wake up and coat and decorate the trial run of cake pops I made tonight. Hope my co-workers enjoy them this weekend! I leave you with a picture I took today of the bright sun, blue sky and white clouds after a rainy morning.

Spa Night and July 4th..

So, let's start with Spa Night.

The night before we went to celebrate 4th of July in Stilly with their dad, I stayed the night with Cameron's sister Candice to do a spa night with her and her daughters, Scout (10), Mattie (9), and Lilly(3). Let's just say, I learned something very important from this experience...and I have a temporary hate for bananas. But we'll get to that later...
So, the night started with the hair mask!
Ingredients:
-2 tablespoons of olive oil
-1 banana
-1 tablespoon of honey
-1 egg
-2 teaspoons of plain organic yogurt (be sure to skip the flavored stuff!)

The directions we were given:
1. Mix all ingredients together
2. Apply on hair and cover with shower cap
3. Leave on for one hour
4. Shampoo and style as usual

Here are a few pictures of us looking pre-tty fancy in our shower caps.

Next were the facial masks!
Ingredients:
-1 tablespoon of oatmeal, finely grounded
-1 tablespoon of plain, organic yogurt
-A few drops of honey

Directions:
1. Mix the oatmeal and the yogurt together in a small bowl
2. Add the honey, mix again
3. Apply mask to face, leave on for 10 minutes, wash off with warm water

Top left: Scout; Top right: Lilly;
Bottom left: Mattie; Bottom right: Lilly and Scout relaxingTop left: Candice; Top right: Me
Bottom left: Lilly and Scout; Bottom right: Lilly

Alright, time for the lessons learned:
When doing the facial mask, be sure to warm it up first. Or else you feel like you are putting on a slimy, grimy, cold slather on your face! Not very relaxing at all. If you'll notice, Lilly doesn't have that much on her face because she could barely stand the feeling! Poor girl was shaking like a leaf lol
Aaand now for the hair mask lesson. *sigh* Okay, remember where it mentioned the bananas? Yeah, be sure to REALLY make sure they are completely liquidfied. As in, be sure to purée. Otherwise, you'll run into the problem we did: Small banana chunks stuck in your hair. One would think they would come out fairly easily, but oh no. Poor Scout has this beautiful naturally curly hair and I spent about an hour on her head alone trying to get it all out. And myself, I probably ripped out about half of my hair trying to get it out! Its funny now- not so hilarious then. But, now we have a good memory to go along with it. :)Left: Scout's hair with the banana; Middle: The tub with only half of the banana pieces from my hair alone; Right: My hair with the banana

4th of July!
For the fourth, I spent the evening with Cameron and his family at his dad's house in Stillwater. It was a bittersweet occasion, because his dad, step-mom, and younger brother and sister are moving to Wisconsin at the end of the month. But it was such a great time, everyone had a ball! There was delish smoked chicken, a major water fight followed by a silly string fight, watermelon, then later time for talking and simply enjoying the evening with family. In total, I believe there were about 19 people there in all...so a full house! But it was completely comfortable...and I love that they already make me feel like part of the family. (If any of you are reading, thank you for that!! <3)Two of Cameron's beautiful nieces, Scout and AdelineLet the water fight begin!!Smiles everywhere!
Catherine and Mattie attacking Cameron!CHARGE!
Grandpa Brent getting in on the water fight action!My favorite picture from the evening...water crashing as it meets in the middle from opposing sides. What makes it even cooler is its girl vs boy, sister(Scout) vs brother(Gunner)!The water fight gang! Love how Samuel (far right) is shooting off his gun...makes me wish now that I would've taken a picture with everyone shooting off their guns at the same time!
Adeline looooved the watermelon...Lilly liked it too! Double fisting it!Grandma Sue showing some of the kids old pictures of their parents
Cameron and his sweet little sister, Catherine
Some good-bye hugs...
(Grandpa Brent and Mattie)

Like previously stated, it was a seriously great night. Hoping the next large get together is sooner rather than later!!

Worst blogger ever? Yeah, that's me..

Well, months ago I promised a 4 part blog post about our trip to NYC. Obviously, that didn't happen. I blame school. But to give the highlights: Had a bird poop on my face (LOL), had the best italian food and dessert (Serendipity's "Frrrozen Hot Chocolate"), I feel in love with NYC and I can't wait to go back!

What has been happening in the last few months? Not too much comes to mind but I know there has been a lot! Here is what comes to mind, though: my Grandma's huge and successful birthday in March. So many of her friends and our family came out- amazing. One of my cousin's graduated high school, another is becoming a dad, and my best friend found her wedding dress! (which was so fun to go shopping for, she is gonna look stunning on her big day!) And this last month was filled with birthday parties! Two of Cameron's nieces had birthdays (one of which was a family softball game- so fun to play again...but man I was SORE!) and my adorable nephew turned 2!

What is to come? Well, my birthday is in 11 days...pretty stoked about that. :) About to start another summer class, Cameron's sister's baby shower (which thanks to Coty and their mom, it's gonna be amazing!), I'll have three weeks off in August then it'll be time to start another fall semester! Speaking of fall, I'm more than ready for it to come. Bring on the cooler weather, football, holidays, and pretty leaves/trees.

I've decided that this will be my last effort at maintaining a blog...if I can't do it, it's just not meant to be! This weekend I'm doing a spa night with Cameron's sister and the nieces I mentioned before and spending the 4th with his family...going to try to do blog post about that or at least my birthday...we'll see!

New York City...Part 1/4!

So last weekend Cameron and I along with our friends Joey and Kristin got to visit the Big Apple. Now, let me start off by saying just one weekend in that huge city is not nearly enough! But it was still SO fun. So this is part one of the New York posts (if I crammed it all into one it would be entirely too long!)

Thursday night: Our flight got into NYC around 5:00pm. The trip immediately started off interesting! Upon walking out of the airport to find a taxi to take us to the hotel, a man approached Joey telling him that he could give us a ride. So we start to follow him, and doing so we bypass all the taxis....and start walking to the parking lot. Kristin and I immediately start dragging our feet and I'm sending Cameron the "what the heck?!" look. The guy saw our hesitation and showed us all of his taxi...credentials? Not sure what the right word for it is but he showed us his license and a small "NYC Taxi" sticker-license thing taped up on his window. Still hesitant, we climbed in the car and Kristin pulled up Maps on her iPhone to make sure he wasn't taking us anywhere else. Lol! But, it all ended up being fine, he was a really nice guy and we actually called him to take us back to the airport on our last day. ;)

The view flying in! :)
The lovely welcome sign we received...

Kristin had done some research of places to try while we were there, and found a really neat place called Jeykll & Hyde. We went to eat there after getting checked in to our hotel and it was a lot of fun! They have a "butler" that is in full character that would come approach us and say funny things, and he would also go to the back and control all of the things that would take place on the walls of the restaurant. There was a huge rhinoceros next to us, a werewolf, a gargoyle, a mad scientist...all of which he could control and use to talk to us. We were the only people in the restaurant, so we got a lot of attention! ;)After we left there we went to Magnolia Bakery to get some cupcakes! And they were gooood. (They had GREAT hot chocolate, too!!!)
Friday: We started the day off with some Starbucks across the street from the hotel and then headed to Times Square! I loved Times Square. So bright and colorful and lots of shops! :) And on the walk there we got to pass a lot of the theaters where they have many of the Broadway shows!! (I have a great love for Broadway shows/musicals. Sadly, we didn't get to see one this trip. But next one for sure!)Kristin, Joey, Cameron, and I (barely got myself in there!)(MY FAVORITE. Cameron took me to see it when it came through Oklahoma a while back, and it was absolutely amazing.)We stopped in at M&M World!
We had O'Lunney's for lunch...mmmm.

After O'Lunney's, we got on the subway and headed to Ground Zero. I don't know quite what I was expecting, but my heart was definitely not prepared for all the things I saw. Being there made what happen even more real to me than it was before, and it was hard to see and even attempt to put myself in the many shoes of the people involved. The people on the planes, the NYPD, firefighters, the families of those who passed, the volunteers, citizens of NYC...My heart hurt the entire time. A very somber experience.

The new World Trade Center being builtWhat Ground Zero currently looks like..
Memorial AlterWhat it should look like after everything is built.


Well that concludes post numero uno! The next one will be about the NJ Devils vs Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game! Which was SO fun! People treat hockey up there like the South does football! So keep your eye out for New York City...Part 2/4! :)