Happy Late Birthday T.J.!

So my big brother is no longer a teenager! He's a grown up now...kinda.


For his birthday, T.J. got the various delicious foods(because college boys like to eat.), the movie Tombstone, and some sort of computer thing I don't understand. But he was excited about it.


So Happy Birthday Big Brother!

Dad, Wildlife Extraordinaire.

Dad found more wildlife. According to Dad this is a leopard frog, and it was found in one of the drainage pipes in our back wall in our yard. Just hiding out and chillin'...

Blueberry Muffins

The other day I made some blueberry muffins from pretty much my favorite recipe on Allrecipes.com. These muffins are good because they taste good, they look good, and they have a crumb topping(delicious!).


I've been having one for breakfast each morning, but they're really good anytime. Though, if you try to make them, be careful, because if you fill them too full, the crumb topping can spill over and fall on the bottom of the oven and burn, which ruins the normally delicious smell of muffins baking. Other than that, they're really easy. You should totally try them!

Lightning!

So while the weather in Texas has more mood swings than a middle school girl, and is generally frightening and impossible, it does make some really good pictures.







I took these pictures by standing in the car, and balancing my camera on top of the car...right next to a tall, metal lightpost(in a mall parking lot). In hindsight, this was possibly, probably really stupid. But I didn't get struck by lightning, and accomplished a sort of photographic goal for myself...


I finally got a picture of lightning! I feel so accomplished. Like I have photographer street cred now. :P

I can live here now, they have a Yogurtland. It's been, like 2 months since my last trip to Yogurtland, and I don't know how I survived.


But the new Yogurtland is finally open, and I can finally get some good California eatin'. (Yogurtland will always remind me of California, and the beach, and Cerritos Mall. How I miss them all...)


Also, this Yogurtland has a Pumpkin Pie flavor(which is next to the cheesecake, so you can mix them.). Delicious! But strangely void of color...

The Death of a Toad

So the rain has been driving out all sorts of new Texas wildlife. Including toads and tree frogs. Every time I see a toad in the backyard it reminds me of the poem we read in A.P. Literature...

The Death of a Toad
Richard Wilbur

A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.

The rare original heartsbleed goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,

Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn,
The haggard daylight steer.



It's not the most cheerful of poems. But I literally think of it EVERY TIME I see a toad, or hear about a toad.

So we've been having some terrible weather here because of Tropical Storm Hermine, which pretty much just made its way through Texas in the last couple days. I swear it rained more here in the last 3 days than it has in the last 3 years in Southern California(I has rained more that 15 inches in some places!). We had a rather scary moment where there was a tornado in Dallas. There is a video of it on CNN's website.


It was pretty scary because we could see the storm on the radar, and the projected path of the tornado, and we could tell that it was headed right in our direction.


Thankfully, the tornado pulled back up into the storm clouds before it got to us, but it was a tense moment! We weren't close enough to see it ourselves(that ok, really, I'd rather see one heading away from us than towards us...), but we had some pretty severe rain and wind ourselves. It cleared up for a little while, but then started pouring again around 2:00 a.m.(pretty much exactly around 2:00 a.m. I was awake.)The storm has gone now, so we're enjoying some peace now, until tropical storm Igor comes around...

Girl Time

Yay!! Shopping Day! Mom and I both had the day off today, so we decided to go shopping! I think we needed it.


Ack! I was getting rained on. It rained a lot today. But it didn't matter to us, because we were in a mall. (Oh wait, I just remembered, there was a tornado warning for our county I think. Nothing serious. Just a warning.)


Drinking chai tea to keep our strength up...


Okay, this mall has an ice rink(and a movie theater, and about five department stores...).That means this mall is too big.


Yum! Sbarro's Pizza. I love pizza...


Mom got a quiche.


And cookies for dessert!

We each bought a few shirts, but I haven't taken pictures of those yet, so if I ever do, I'll show them to you.

Chai Spice Recipe

Found the recipe I used for the Chai Spice CookiesChai Spice Cookies on the Better Homes and Gardens Website. The link will take you to it. Let me know if you try making them. :)

Chai Spice Cookies

Finally, I got around to making this recipe. I ripped it out of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine from December 2008. It's cookies with chai tea in them. Yum!


You just empty two tea bags into the mix, and add some pumpkin pie spice, and it makes sort of a lighter, more mellow gingerbread cookie.


I think they're really tasty, though they taste a bit too flour-ey, but I think that was my fault. I used too much flour when I was rolling the dough out.





They taste how Autumn feels, so I made them in the shapes of leave and acorns and pumpkins, then added icing. But I'm pretty much the world's worst cookie icing person, so most of them came out really ugly. This one was one of the better ones.


I love how the shape of the cookie matches the shape of the leaves on the tree in our front yard.

Say It With Sugar

Red Velvet Cupcakes. Delicious.

Rainbow

It's been pretty rainy the last couple days. This has also been the first time I've been able to step outside and say "This feels comfortable." It's been a bit cooler and I love it. I can't wait until Fall!

The Woolie Ewe

Yay! Mom and I went on an adventure to find the yarn store and we did!The Woolie Ewe is rather unimpressive from the outside, but then you step inside and it's like BAM! Yarn!


They have yarns I've never even heard of before, and some that I've only seen on Ravelry (Which, if you knit or crochet, is an awesome site. Full of free patterns and advice and all that fun stuff.)


This place was just packed with yarn. It was amazing. A lot of it is reasonably priced too, especially if you can get it on sale.


See that down there? That's the yarn I got. The yellow stuff in the middle. It was $4 per skein. This is not outrageous for yarn. Especially for yarn that is part merino wool, part alpaca, and part silk.


It is softer than any other yarn I've worked with, and I'm kind of in love with the color. I normally don't like yellow, but this isn't an annoying, loud yellow. It's more golden, and looks like Autumn and leaves changing color.


It's probably going to get made into a hat. Specifically, a beret, because my school is freezing and a beret keeps your head warm while not looking stupid if worn inside.
And it will probably be worn often. :)