fuzzykitty

I am pretty thrifty.  I rarely pay full price for books but this time I had a very good reason!  Amy Sedaris, funny gal and author of “I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence” visited Bookpeople in Austin on Saturday and I just had to see her. 

 So we arrived at the venue an hour before the event, bought the book, and got a seat.  The place was packed; I briefly wondered if the floor might cave in from the weight but quickly forgot once we were all offered beer, not enough cupcakes, gingersnap cookies, cakey brownies, pumpkin pie, ,dad come home cake, cherry coke jello topped with cool whip and marshmallow, rice crispy treats decorated with whipped topping… all made by using recipes from the new book, well except for the beer of course.  Anyway, once Amy arrived she showed us how to make an odd eye soother she called an “eye burrito” out of beans and pantyhose and then showed the old “Land-o-Lakes butter boobs” craft to so that we could make the most out of the expensive butter by using the packaging and suggested sending it as a card.  She then took several silly and stupid questions from the audience, the guy next to Darrell asked the really bizarre question of “Would you like to join me and Father at the table?” which she said no and answered another question about Martha Stewart, who she kept calling a “he”, and autographed our books and posed for pictures.

 I had a great time and can not wait to read this book and try the recipes for myself!  It was well worth paying full price for her book, sitting for an hour, and standing for another hour and the two hour round trip drive.

 Darrell recently joined a weight loss challenge at work and has been eating several healthy things like salads topped with veggies, baked chicken, and fat free dressing.  I do worry about him sometimes because he eats a lot of these healthy things, just look at that humongous salad above! I guess it could be worse; he could be chowing down on a whole loaf of bread and icing it with a jar of peanut butter! 

 To his credit, he has lost three pounds since last week and I am very proud of him.

 Here I am at 6:41 AM in my tiny kitchen with my super cute new bag ready to go to work! 

 I am still working on finding a great cupcake recipe so that I may one day follow my true calling.  This time I used a recipe from Amy Sedaris, who has a new book out which I am dying to get, for Vanilla Cupcakes and the little mini cakes turned out great, they were light and not overly sweet but I wasn’t very impressed with the frosting, it was far too hard and sickeningly sweet.  Darrell said they were good but not good enough to pay the bills.  I will try Billy’s Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes recipe again. 

 I am not really sure how I ended up making the mini-cupcakes; I had started the day with every intention of making an angel food cake to celebrate the awesomeness of one of my fabulous co-workers! 

While I am on the subject of baking I am looking for a good excuse to make some chocolate frosted marshmallow cookies which I plan to rename them “Grandma’s Make Your Mom Sick Cookies” since my Mom told me that she ate too many, of which my Grandmother had made, and got very ill.  I think the name is perfect, it goes well with another favorite: Cookie Crack!

Recently we participated in Casino Night at our apartment complex and played Black Jack and Craps for a couple of hours and won $125 off of our rent for December.  It was funny because just the week before we were taking about taking a quick trip to Las Vegas but changed our mind once we started pricing trips.  It would be fun to go but I need a relaxing trip and to me Las Vegas is far from relaxing.  It drives me crazy when I close my eyes to sleep and hear the sound of slot machines ringing in my ears.  I guess I will just hold out for our trip to Seattle over Thanksgiving. It sure will be nice to see my Mom, my friends, and the city.

Today, I got the glue gun of my dreams!  It is a powerful 4.8 volts of ColdHeat cordless rechargeable gluing goodness and I can not wait to make another Monster Wreath!

 I am stressed out.  I made the mistake of reading my work email from home shortly after I arrived and had a tearful mini-breakdown.  I am exhausted.  I feel like I have worked a whole week just in the past two days.  While it is true that I would much rather be busy than bored… selling cupcakes and other baked goods to strangers from the back of my car is really starting to sound like a good idea.

 I need to refocus and remember what really is important.