Awww!

The BF, who I know I keep mentioning (I'm no less intolerable about him in real life either, sorry), has been away on travel for work for over a week now, and won't be back until Saturday. At first we thought he would be gone a week and a half. then we thought it would only be a week, and then he called me in the middle of the night one night to tell me he would be gone another week. I was pretty unhappy about that, especially since we had made some plans that he would be missing.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I came home yesterday to find flowers on the porch. I literally did a double take - I looked at them, closed the door, opened it, and looked at them again to determine they existed and were for me. There was even a note! I was thrilled.

xkcd cake

Back a month or so ago when I still had time to bake things, I made this. It's three out of four panels of an xkcd comic. I sent it to work with the BF and his coworkers chose which xkcd strip to use. It is far from my best work, but it was good practice with both fondant and piping. I got a little impatient near the end, so some parts are sloppy.

I'm turning into a housewife

For our one-year anniversary, the BF thought up an awesome gift he was so sure I wouldn't guess. After he told me he got me the "next level up" version of whatever it was, I knew immediately. He got me a KitchenAid mixer. He apparently spent some serious time researching them, and got me a shiny new professional series standing mixer that matches our kitchen.


















Creaming the heck out of some butter and sugar.



















This was a definite user error. I wanted to see just how much flour it could handle' I should really have used the splash guard and started it out slowly.















And here is a not-so-great picture of something I made with the mixer - a 12 layer cake! It was tasty.

I'm back! And I've moved

Whoops, there was a SERIOUS absence on my part there. I'm back! I will...probably blog more!

The biggest, most possibly life-changing event that has happened in my life lately has been yet another move. I moved for the third time in maybe 13 months, and this time it was a big deal. I moved in with my boyfriend. I spent a heck of a lot of time and thought and angst, condensed into about a week to make the decision, before I made the move. I'm glad I did.

There are tons of things I could say about the whole shebang, but one thing keeps coming to mind...I live in suburbia now! I have not lived in anything resembling a suburb since I was four, and even then it was more of a small-town neighborhood. Where I live now isn't hard-core suburbia for sure, no housing developments named after trees with cul-de-sacs and dead ends and new trees, but the BF still calls it "lovelyland."

And, despite my usual antipathy towards suburbia, I really like where I live! There is one serious reason: I am close to EVERYTHING. Specifically, a Target, a Joanne's Fabrics, two grocery stores, and a good pizza place. I can walk to church if the urge strikes me, even if the walk is long. I'm pretty close to the smaller mall in the area, which has a movie theater. I could use a closer ice cream shop, but this whole region seems to be bad at ice cream shops. I think it's the winters.

Overall, the move was a really good idea.