23

I'm back. Sadly I couldn't get into my blogger account for awhile due to site troubles/glitches. But now I can post again. woohoo!

I thought I'd start with a post about my birthday :) I'm officially 23. What did I do my birthday weekend?

I woke up to a wonderful surprise from my roommate, Katie. She decorate our apartment and left a cute, singing card for me (plus we also had ben and jerry's ice cream the night before, yum!).

I ate some delicious crepes with friends at Roll it up.

And.... I went to Las Vegas!

 

Emma navigated and I just enjoyed the ride :) perks of being the birthday girl I suppose.

Emma and I baked a chocolate cake. It had chocolate chips in it and was delicious.

I also ate oysters while I was there. This for some reason made me feel like an adult. non-fried sea food + birthday = maturity? must investigate further on next birthday.

Emma and I rode the New York, New York roller coaster our last night there. Sooo fun.

The House of Blues

We also went shopping, enjoyed the sunshine by the pool, and ate yummy food. And I got to see my wonderful Las Vegas cousins :)

We stopped at the St.George Temple on the way home. My friend Karianne is serving a mission in the temple visitor's center, but sadly I missed her by 20 minutes!! Still the temple was beautiful and I was able to leave a little note for my friend.

And then when I got home I had birthday packages and cards waiting for me in my mailbox!

Thanks to everyone for making my birthday wonderful :)

Currently watching: Ramona and Beezus with my roommate.

Best line: "Who could ever love a girl named Beezus?" "Jesus?" bahaha

Banana Cream Crepes

First things first: Happy Mother's Day. I didn't see my Mom today, but luckily she was just here for my graduation so it hasn't been too long (Love you Mom!!). If I was closer by I would have made her something delicious ... like crepes (Mom feel free to remind me of this when I come home in August). Which brings me to my post today.

One day I was walking through the bookstore and found this book:

An entire book of crepe recipes, on sale, no less. I couldn't resist. However due to my crazy school schedule I didn't get a chance to try it out until recently. For my first recipe I made the basic crepe with banana cream topping. Emily helped me out.

It made for a delicious breakfast. We also had bacon (yum). Emily also had a waffle (we found a waffle that was similar to waffle treats we'd both tried on study abroad).

The filling was pretty simple. I used whipping cream, bananas, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and just a pinch of nutmeg. It came out pretty good, although it made a lot more filling than I expected (I doubled it before I realized that one serving was more than enough banana cream for all). It also had a strong banana flavor. I think next time I would do a little less banana for a subtler flavor.

We also had other crepe toppings like jam, sugar and lemon juice, and whipped cream. I can't wait to try some more of these crepe recipes.

Currently watching: Holes. Which makes me want to read Holes again :)

"Dream" Boys, Sumo Wrestling, and Gold Coins

Ah, so here is My Last BYU Winter Semester AKA Things I Didn't Have Time to Blog About Part 2

A lot of this is pretty recent (the last two weeks or so). Why does so much always happen just as finals and final projects are due? lol

One night (way before final study time sucked away all our time) Katie, Emily, and some friends all played the classic board game Dream Phone. It's an apartment favorite.

"He looks cool in whatever he wears, but he's not wearing yellow." Oh Dream Phone!

Me and Emily with the Dream Phone listening to a clue! Katie actually beat both of us and won the game that night!

My ward recently had its closing social. For the first time EVER I am staying in Provo for the summer so its strange to see everyone leaving and not trying to frantically pack up my room during finals (I'm very grateful for the last part). At the social things ended up being unseasonably blustery and cold (Utah weather! It snowed this week!), but we still had a lot of fun. Katie even put on one of the Sumo suits! Go Katie!

Katie also went with me to an art show called Standing in Reserve (done in connection with CUAC). It was in an old building just down the street from my house (I found out about it from one of the TAs in my art history class who was actually in charge of the whole thing). It focused on technology. There were a lot of interesting pieces there. Katie and I particularly liked this interactive exhibit they had where they put you in a video game setting and you collected gold coins (I'm not sure how they did this, maybe one of those Kinect things?).

My family went to see the Taylor Andrews hair show last week. The theme was women in music. Elizabeth worked on the Pink section. It was so fun! And we got to see some of our favorite people: Elizabeth and her dad, Sam.

Elizabeth made that hair piece!!!! Isn't she talented?!

Despite the business and craziness it was a great semester! I hope Spring and Summer terms will be just as good :)

Currently: full from all the crepes I ate this morning, yum

VIPs, Cookies, and Misadventures in Gluten-Free Baking

My Last BYU Winter Semester AKA Things I Didn't Have Time to Blog About

Here are some fun things I did this semester that for some reason never made it to the blog in a timely manner (What was I doing with all my time? Oh yeah, studying like a crazy person):

This year at BYU I got to hear two interesting, VERY well-known people speak: Condoleezza Rice and Mark Zuckerburg.

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In January, Condoleezza Rice came. I really enjoyed her thoughts on education. You can read some of her remarks here.

Mark Zuckerburg, the creator of Facebook, came and spoke at my school. He did a question and answer session based on questions left on the BYU Facebook page. Senator Orrin Hatch came and asked the questions. It was great hearing Mark speak and hearing his perspective on things. Here's a link to BYU's news release about it. It has some of the questions he answered, as well as his responses.

Some other important people that came to visit? My family. Not only did my parents come this month to see me graduate, but my Aunt and Uncle also came to Provo to drop my cousin off at the MTC. We had lunch at Jdawgs before he left. Love you Jack!!!

I also made snickerdoodles earlier this semester. I bring this up not because it was particularly unusual, but because I always have the same problem when I make snickerdoodles. Really chewy, warm, and delicious when they come out of the oven. Rock hard an hour later. Seriously does anyone have a tip/recipe to help me out with this?

Even though they got a bit hard, they were still good tasting (providing you had some milk to soften them up).

Speaking of baking projects that don't go quite as planned...

Remember when I had the post called Conference: Sister Edition (Part 1)? Well Part 2 never made it up, but here's the short version. I attempted to make gluten free cinnamon rolls. Silly me, I thought I could simply substitute regular flour for gluten free flour (plus a little xantham gum). Well it's a lot more complicated than that. I looked up recipes later and I realize now that a combination of flour types would have worked better. Oh well! Thankfully I had regular gluten-full bread baking at the same time so we still had a yummy conference treat :)

Sad little gluten-free cinnamon rolls about to go into the oven.

This bread smelled (and tasted) so good! Plus it was pretty easy to make (You can see the recipe here). I didn't even use the bread machine.

Well that's it for now, but there's more to come!

Currently listening to: The Supremes (a favorite of mine)

Graduation Day

I did it.

I graduated.

From college.

Ok well technically I'm a student until August. I postponed the technical side of it until August.

But really. I'm done. As my dearest roommate Pash would say, "You're doing it Mimi! You're doing it!"

Anyway here are some pictures from the big days (it was sort of a two day affair):

Luckily I have some good friends graduating at the same time :) We got to hang out during convocation (during commencement we had to sit in alphabetical order).

Me and Elliot! My fav study buddy!

Me and Emily

My family also came out to see my graduate and it was a fabulous visit. They spoiled me!

Me and Dad :)

I'm kind of ruining this one by closing my eyes, but I still like it.

It has been great having Gabby here this year. She was able to attend all my grad stuff before going back to Texas, although she did get a little bored during convocation.

They even bought me a lei

We did lots of fun things including visiting my Aunt Mary, driving in the canyon, seeing Elizabeth's hair show, and eating lots of yummy places (the picture above is a fruit and cheese plate from La Jolla Groves, sooo good).

Oh, and after graduation Elliot and I rang the bell!

So I guess it's official :) Thanks to everyone who helped me along the way!

Currently: not studying. Do you know how good that feels?

Currently thinking of: the graduation song,As we go on, we remember... haha love it!