Real Housewife

So I was thinking today about how much of a housewife I've become over the past week between all my cooking and crafting. Then I remember that I don't have a house. Nor am I someone's wife. You could argue though that Bethenny had neither of these things when she got on Real Housewives of NYC and now she has a hot husband, a cute baby and signature cocktail empire. So there's some inspiration for me.

I did finish the owl pillow today and while he has some flaws, I think he turned out pretty cute. 

And he seems to fit in well with the other pillows. 

I also made some Valentines today.

Not sure if they will actually get sent before Valentines Day. Especially considering that I emailed some friends today to set up a dinner and suggested Monday night as an option and one of them had to remind me that Monday is, in fact Valentines Day, and that some of them may actually be busy. Oh good Lord. Just call me Liz Lemon. Maybe if I don't get the cards out by Monday I can save them for the next holiday, which seems to be... Presidents' Day. Oh goodness. That's enough effort for one day. Peace out.

New Blog Theme!

Get excited! I think there's going to be an additional underlying blog theme: my neuroses. Note, I wrote this entry at about midnight last night and then debated back and forth for a while over posting it. But if you can't obsessively ramble on about yourself on your own blog, where can you, eh?

My older brother and I recently bonded over the fact that we both have a touch of the OCD. For instance, in talking, we discovered that every night both of us set two alarms. I don’t mean we set two alarms on one device; I mean we set two separate alarms. For me it’s my phone and an iHome. Once we’ve set the two alarms, we then both feel compelled to check both of them to make sure that they are actually set. Maybe I thought I set them but I really didn’t, we think. Maybe I thought I pressed alarm on but I didn’t, we wonder. Maybe when I checked the first time to make sure it was set, I thought it was set but it really wasn’t, we muse. Two additional checks in addition to the first setting are usually sufficient for me.

Sound stressful? Slightly, but it’s not nearly as stressful as the compulsion I had from about the age of seven to ten to eat my Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Swirl Bread in 16 bites every morning. Four bites on the bottom crust, four bites on the top crust, two on each side crust and four bites for the middle. I don’t feel the need to do that any more. Really, I don’t. I can eat my toast in however many bites I want… like seven… or maybe even something crazy like nine! At least now what few compulsions I have are somewhat productive, like making sure my alarm is set or the 10 times I have to make sure my cell phone is on silent in the movie theater. Or at least I tell myself they are productive.

Speaking of numbers and crazy, I was recently telling my family about how numbers have gender. And personalities. Does anyone else do this? It’s a real thing. I looked it up on the internets. It’s a form of synesthesia called ordinal-linguistic personification. The much cooler forms of synesthesia involve seeing days of the week as a certain color or visualizing color with music but I guess you can’t choose your own crazy. Anywho, I saw a few other people’s lists on the internets and they were dead wrong. I mean four as female?! I don't think so!! So here’s my list. Feel free to compare it to your own. I had added the numbers’ personalities to the list as well but decided that was just too much crazy revealed for one day and deleted them. You’ll just have to stay tuned for more crazy to come.

1 – male

2 – male

3 – female

4 – male

5 – male

6 – female

7 – male

8 – female

9 – female

10 – male

Owl Pillow Underway

Okay, so aside from doing my laundry and watching a large amount of Netflix streaming, I didn't do an awful lot today. I did, however, get all the stitching done on my owl pillow project.

Here's the beginning stages.

And here is the completed stitch work.

Note, I use the phrase "stitch work" very loosely here is it is actually just some stitch I made up. Also of note, in the process of making a card for my grandfather's 90th birthday today, I learned that today is the 77th anniversary of the first singing telegram. So there's a Valentine's idea for you. You're welcome.

URLs, match messages and cookies

I googled "Caroline Quinn Presents" to see if my blog now came up. I was hoping that it wouldn't since I don't really want it to be easily findable other than to my family and friends. Instead, however, this woman named Carolyn Quinn came up though who works for the BBC and ACTUALLY presents things... on the radio... every Saturday. I am very thankful for this woman but not particularly pleased that google thinks "Caroline" and "Carolyn" are interchangeable. Not cool, google. Not cool at all.

I also tried to look up whether the url cqp.com was available. Nothing came up when I tried to go to it so I got really excited. I asked AS to look into how I might purchase this spot, but she said apparently someone already owns it. I bet it's those jerks at "Cosas que Pasan." I'm considering contacting them to let them know that CQP are actually my initials and I therefore have more claim to them than they do.

So I replied to a match message today. His was, "Aren't you too pretty to be here?" Corny? Yes. Kind of sweet? Yes. I'd actually seen his profile before and thought he was cute so I replied, "There's some pretty cute guys on here too." Before I hit send I thought this was brief, witty and flirtatious. After I hit send, I wondered if it was unclear who I was talking about. Maybe it implied I meant other guys but not him? Did he expect a longer email? Is he really 5'9"? Or is he actually 5'8" (acceptable) or 5'7" (unacceptable)? Should I have mentioned something about his profile? Should I have written more than one sentence? Was waiting about 20 hours to reply too long a time period or too short? Will he even respond? Only time will tell. Update (hopefully) to come.

As for craftiness today, I made two things. One was an iPhone case. It looked super cute for about 30 seconds before I put the iPhone in and the delicate fabric started to pull apart. I think I could make one that worked but just with a different, more stretchy fabric. The second thing(s) I made turned out much better. CF came over and we used out culinary goddesses skills to turn out some adorable Valentines cookies. They actually turned out as delicious as they look. Tomorrow I'm tackling an owl-shaped pillow with some embroidery involved, so get pumped for that.

My first loaf of bread that actually rose

At about 2pm on Monday, I decided that I needed a project so that checking out cops and secret service agents around the White House on my run was not the biggest event of my day. I ate cinnamon bread every morning in elementary school but no longer like the taste of Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Swirl Bread (without raisins) so without a bakery next door to my building (omg, that would be amazing), the only option left seemed to be to make my own. Having several hours to spare also seems to help when making bread. 

I found a recipe online that I felt I could manage and gathered all the essential ingredients (see above). Choosing to make bread in the afternoon, not too long after having eaten lunch, helped a lot too. I usually choose to make things right when I am craving them and therefore instructions such as, "Let the dough rise for one hour and 45 minutes" become fairly prohibitive. I made the dough over the course of the afternoon. I ended up letting it sit out for a long time in evening because I left for a happy hour engagement before I was done, but that didn't seem to hurt it too badly and may even have helped. Get the recipe I used here. 

There are two things I would change next time. One, I would substitute in whole wheat for 1/3 of the flour. Andrew says this is as much as you can safely do for the bread to still rise. Don't get me wrong, the bread is absolutely delicious but is kind of glaringly white. Second, there was this cinnamon bread that my dad used to bring back with him from fishing trips in Canada that had cinnamon and sugar on the top of the bread. In retrospect, it's pretty impressive (not to mention thoughtful) that he brought back entire loaves of bread from a (at least slightly) foreign country. Anyway, next time I would cover the bread in the egg/milk mixture and then coat on the cinnamon and sugar. 


Also, I'm tagging this with #MSF for "Make Something February." I heard about this bandwagon from my good friend A who writes a For Real Blog called Friends and Hammers. She and at least one other friend are trying to make something every day in February. I'm a little late to the party but am hoping to jump on board. 


Overall, my first bread that actually rose was a positive experience. If it hadn't risen, I'm not sure I could have taken the disappointment. 

Drum roll please...

... Welcome to my very first blog entry! Except for six glorious months back in 2008, I have been in school pretty much constantly since I started undergrad, the first time around. All that is changing though. I now have these glorious things called nights and weekends at my disposal and I plan to make the most of them. This blog will most likely end up focusing on my domestic pursuits and adventures in online dating. I'm not sure if this will make for a good blog but here goes nothing...