we did it!

yesterday kc and i signed the lease! ahh! we get the keys October 3! [excuse the blurry pictures...i forgot to turn the camera to Automatic until 1/2 way through the photo shoot]

kc excited in the dining room


kitchen...


[fyi - not where are our apartment will be. just a great shot showing some of them!]


dining...

to celebrate yesterday, i bought some new towels [super soft, 2 white and 2 green, they were on clearance!], walked out of Target withOUT paying for the 15-piece knife set i had stuck on the bottom of the cart [i took it back in and paid...], bought my friend bethany a birthday present and bought a few shirts. kc celebrated by buying something too.

yay! so excited!!!

birthday? that means cuppies, of course.

mum's bday cupcakes:
lemon cream cheese cupcakes
[cupcakes with raspberry on top had raspberry jam in center]

Mummy's Birthday

my mum's birthday is tomorrow [Sunday], so we've been discussing today what to do for it. my sister & her husband are going to come over for lunch [i believe] and then more family will be coming over for dessert later.

after tossing around ideas of making Tiramisu cupcakes or a Tiramisu cake, mum and i decided it would be easier and slightly healthier to make lemon cupcakes again. my plan is to use the same basic recipe as i did for my birthday cupcakes, possibly with some alterations.




oh - and in other news - kc and i are going to be SIGNING A LEASE ON MONDAY! ahhhhhhhh!

books!

i want this book.

Dinner for Architects: A Collection of Napkin Sketches

architects were invited to an imaginary dinner in honor of the opening of the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich, where they would sketch their personal greetings and congratulations on a paper napkin. plus - quotes from one of my favs - Mies van der Rohe! [barcelona chair, brno chair, glass house...]

found when looking for a picture of a Knoll Reuter Overhead [above] for a client.
looks like it could be a great townhouse-warming present...for...someone...to...get...someone else...
[EDIT: the BOOK is a good present, not the $3,000 chairs... well, they'd be a good prezzie, but totes unrealist...]
brno & barcelona chairs from knoll.com

wacky wednesday

• i dropped off my car this morning to get some...thing...fixed. i will have $400 less in my bank account by the end of the day :(
• after work i'm going with a friend of mine to my gramma's to look at the kitties. hopefully Christa will be taking home one of the two beautiful girls or three adorable boys that aren't claimed already!
• after the kitties, kc and i are checking out another apartment. i have high hopes for this one [even though they won't have anything open until mid-October], but i'm trying to not get too excited for it...
• if we have time after the apartment viewing, kc and i are going to attempt to make it to kickboxing.
• Season 4 of The Office comes out September 2nd! josh and i are going to prepare for this by watching Seasons 1-3 in the meantime. and we will too, because i remembered to bring the dvd's with me today :)
• Season 5 of The Office starts September 25th! i'm so excited! i've been watching some of the random commercials [a lot of Olympic references...] on nbc.com. you can check them out here.
• iNSPiRAL show @ Sherlock's tomorrow!
  

the bosses are traveling back from Europe today, expecting to be in late tonight. it's been an interesting experience without them - but a good one. we've been pretty busy and i've been going to meetings every other day, taking calls for deliveries and scheduling installations [not usually my job], receiving trucks and claiming damages [again, not what i normally do]. it's kind of been fun "running" the business, though i will be glad to give back all the crappy problems to the bosses. though really - things have been going REALLY well. we received crazy amounts of furniture to Gannon and it went without a hitch...installations have occurred almost flawlessly...and co-worker bethany and i have had fun going to lunch and leaving early to go to meetings...and going to breakfast...

and be thinking of / praying for our friends Stace & Shane who got married last year and live in VA. we are praying they get jobs in Erie and can move back home to be closer to their SKANK's! [oh, and their family...]

memo boards

found these through Real Simple September issue:

Designer Fabric Memo Boards from pulpproducts.com

(come with 25 wooden pushpins!)

also found these awesome fabric-wrapped photo albums:

albums & scrapbooks

and these awesome memory boards!

house hunting!

that's right folks - KC and i are in full force looking for apartments! ok, not "full force" [whatever that means] but we are looking harder than before! we visited three different locations [and four different apt. layouts] on Monday. Here's what we thought.

Location 1 [Apartments 1 & 2]
pros:

1. great location - central area, 10-12 minute drive for us both to work
   
2. opportunity of gated parking
3. really cool interiors
4. high ceilings
5. quiet
6. large windows
7. dishwasher & disposal
8. laundry on each floor
   
9. 2 full baths in Apartment 2
   

cons:

1. tiny rooms
2. gated parking is $40 a month per person!
3. other parking is off street or in another area's parking lot
   
4. at the top of our price range
5. no dining room
6. not much storage
7. small closets
8. 2nd Apartment didn't have as much light
9. 2nd Apartment had upstairs loft bedroom with no door and overlooking entry and living room
   

Location 2 [Apartment 3]
pros:

1. entry is at a super cute courtyard
2. good size kitchen with lots of storage
3. dining "area"
4. large living room
5. large 2nd bedroom
6. decent price

cons:

1. entry is cute courtyard...but also scary and secluded...makes us nervous for dark nights
2. kitchen kinda looked run down, pretty out dated...
3. 1st bedroom is slightly bigger than my closet
   
4. pretty much no privacy - 1st bedroom has a window open to the kitchen, 2nd bedroom is open to the living room and has no door
5. bathroom is really tiny and icky
   
6. very little storage
7. overall it was just dark
8. parking was on street - this wouldn't be too bad but it's METERED parking from 9-6. so, either make sure you leave before 9 and get home after 6 or take your chances. they ticket on saturday - so the guy said you can again - "take your changes" or pay for 8 hours...

Location 2 [Apartment 4]
pros:

1. 3 bedroom + dining room, good sized kitchen, pantry & bathroom
   
2. nice yard with beautiful view of lake erie
3. clean
4. basement for storage & washer & dryer
5. upstairs guy would probably shovel our driveway and neighbor would mow our lawn

cons:

1. bedrooms weren't too big, but that wasn't so much of a big deal
2. view is great - but there's a huge vegetable garden and old garage blocking it
3. on street parking
4. possibility of brand new house being built next door. this could be good or bad...
5. ok neighborhood...but a few blocks down it gets a little scary
6. upstairs guy seems to do a lot of woodworking in basement...what if he did this at 7am saturday mornings!?
7. pretty much we want to purchase the land at the back of the house which overlooks lake erie and the pepsi amphitheater and build a new house on it. we would then be able to watch fireworks and shows from our front lawn.

we plan on looking at another place next weekend that could be promising.

oh, and in other very sad news - they had to put my gramma's cat that had the kittens down on Tuesday. she was really really sick [some digestive disease]. couldn't keep any food down, super skinny and just moaning in pain. it was pretty sad, but the kittens are doing fine and she was really suffering. if you could give a quick prayer or thought for my grandparents for that and my gramma's got more cancer tests coming up soon [and has been having some post-cancer related health problems].

pictures

things have been absolutely insane lately. i can't even get my head around how busy i am. and yes, here i am blogging. but this is all this post is going to say.

recipes?

it was requested to me by one of my readers to make sure i include recipes for the cupcakes i make. i usually try to link to sites i get my recipes from or tell a little about how i made them, but i realized i didn't do this for my past cupcake endeavor.

so, here is the "recipe" for the Mudslide Ice Cream Cupcakes
[adapted from joy the baker. check there for better instructions :)]

cupcakes / ice cream:
breyer's chocolate "chip" ice cream
dark chocolate fudge cake mix
Irish Creme

ganache:
semi-sweet chocolate chunks
heavy cream
Godiva Chocolate Liqueur

i let the ice cream soften in the fridge for an hour or so [possibly a little too much]. then transferred the to a bowl and folded in the Irish Creme. i must have used 1/4 cup - enough so that you can just taste it. ice cream was put back in the container and then in the freezer.

added another 3 or so tablespoons of Irish Creme to the batter and greased the pans [didn't use liners]. i put WAY TOO MUCH batter in the pans, so after they were cooked, i had cut all the tops off, bagged them and threw them in the freezer for something like a future chocolate trifle. then put the cupcakes in the pans back in the freezer. i had almost two full 12 pans of large and mini cupcakes. joy the baker advises using 1 tsp batter for mini cupcakes and 1 T for regular. i read this but it must not have registered.

keep cakes in the freezer for at least 4hrs, then fill each to the top with the ice cream. i actually ran out of ice cream TWICE and had to use some extra vanilla and moose tracks flavors we had in the freezer. after this, cover and put back in the freezer. i probably did this at about 7 or 8 at night.

after they've been in the freezer overnight, take the cupcakes out of the tins and placed them on trays. cover and put back in freezer for at least 15 minutes. during this time, i made chocolate ganache using this recipe, along with a few splashes of chocolate liqueur [i added the liqueur to the liquid mixture before adding it to the chocolate]. after the ganache had cooled it went on the cupcakes [with the help of kt and kc]. it hardened fast, and they applied ganache as i applied the sprinkles. then, back in the freezer.

i think the irish creme caused the ice cream to not harden as much as it could have. we kept them in the freezer until we served them, and dished them out quick. they were still really really really good. i think there are two left in my freezer.

hope that was helpful! planning on putting some wedding pics from Friday's wedding up soon.

i love Met Home

found these awesome glasses in my Metropolitan Home magazine for September.

they are double-lined glasses to keep your hands unharmed and your drinks hot - or cold.

bodum.com

and the sparks flew..

co-worker bethany and i had to measure a few spaces today. unfortunately, these were in parts of manufacturing areas which meant safety glasses, ear plugs & closed-toe shoes [i almost had to put on the steel-toe booties...].

somehow, while measuring in a "safe" environment [around a 4" x 4" box of 4 outlets that sticks out of the wall a few inches], i managed to get my tape measure caught in between a not-all-the-way-plugged-in-tasklight-plug. this, naturally, caused the tape to singe, one of the prongs of the outlet to be almost completely burnt through and lots of sparks and popping sounds to keep it exciting.

i was quite freaked out after the event. i didnt really think anything like THAT could happen, but i was in a cramped space and could probably have been more careful. however - this plug was HALF WAY IN! that's not my fault. plus, i didnt even notice that.

my poor, only-a-few-months-old tape measure. last time i had a tape measure incident [i, um, stepped on it and cracked it], it split and eventually my fingers were badly cut up and bleeding all over [the tape snapped back at me fast, and i freaked, so i tried to drop it...the dropping actually made it rotate around and slice open my pointer finger]. yeah, they were pretty really bad cuts.









i'm not sure if these damages are dangerous or not...but i might need to get a new tape.

Real Simple

last night i made dinner for dad and i using a barbecue sauce recipe from the Real Simple summer recipes i received in my July issue. the sauce was made with

2 cups ketchup
2 tablespoons honey [i think i used more than this]
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

let me tell you - it was tastey. [sorry no pics :)]

after that i was really craving a smoothie, so that was made in mum's awesome little blender [one that you take off the top, fill it, put the top back on, flip it upside down and push it in to activate. like my technical terms?]. we had two white peaches, vanilla ice cream and cool whip. they were so good. i left the skin on, which gave it a really great color.